Digibury 2.0

I can't say anything about early editions of Digibury as I am a new digibee (yes, I just made up a word - Oxford English Dictionary here I come!) at attending these lovely gatherings, but I can only appreciate the evolution of the event. I mean - have you seen the new website? I love it when things evolve rapidly and naturally and there is no doubt Digibury has this down to a t. Check it out if you don't believe me!

Last event's structure adopted a slightly different format which allowed members not only to interact with the speakers and ask questions, but to physically play with Arduinos and to create our own light painting artwork! Yeah, that's right, now's the time to pity yourself if you've missed it!

Really grateful to meet Emily Turner from 100and40 which taught me a really valuable lesson - there are no such things as social media experts! What?? Yeah, they are just as bogus as Santa or the Easter Bunny! (Exception being that we like Santa and the Easter Bunny's all right I guess).  I think it is incredibly reassuring to hear that you do not have to be an expert in something when we live in a world where everybody needs to brand themselves, where most people are sceptical in social situations unless they know at the start what their mission is and what they'll get out of it. It's such an immense pressure to label yourself as an expert these days, that just hearing Emily's words lifted a massive weight off my shoulders.

Learning about Arduinos was a lot more fun than expected! I am not qualified to get into the techy part and explain it to you, but they let us program the LEDs which meant that all present were thinking about how we could transpose our new gained skills into creating magical light shows for our Christmas tree...We actually got to create our own personalised message on camera.



This is when I realised I don't know how to spell my own name backwards... (Disappointing. Really disappointing.)

I won't even try to describe how much fun this was, you can check all the cool paintings on the #canthack website. <--- must see for all interested in programming and maybe even DIY one of a kind Christmas lights making?

Amazing evening, had so much fun and a big thank you to Deeson, Simon, #canthack and Emily - for making all this possible, but personally I must mention a massive THANK YOU to Emily, who gave me the courage to put this out for the world to see:

My name is Ioana and I am absolutely positively no expert in anything. I like loads of stuff and enjoy a whole bunch of other stuff, I can go as far as saying that I am good at doing some of the things I do, but I am positively 100 % NO EXPERT at doing anything!!!...not even at eating chocolate unfortunately...and you know what?

That's fine with me. 

Blondie's gone

I had enough of my old hair colour which over time changed from a nice shade of blonde to a really hay-e looking kind of colour and I just had enough of.

I got the kit and the colour that I chose, but the most important element in hair colouring can not be bought in stores - make sure you have a friend who is willing to get down to business and get their hands dirty LITERALLY. I used to do it myself, but after getting multiple shades of colours for the spots I had completely missed, I decided to get (un)professional help.

Plus, let's face it it will be fun having a night in playing beauty parlour and gossiping about stuff. My friend, if you see this, thanks for agreeing to go to work tomorrow with black spots on your hands and I will be explaining the black spots from my ears, forehead, neck, cheeks and hands. It's been great fun, though!

And that's my thought of the day!

The golden apple

I need to express my gratitude and congratulate Apple for their excellence when it comes to customer service. I've had my phone for nearly one year now and even though it did seem to be a dodgy piece of kit since day 1, I somehow managed not to report it until 1 month before the end of my warranty.

Spoke to my network supplier on Friday evening who put me through to Apple customer service. Without too much fuss, they made an appointment for me to go see them at the Apple store in Bluewater today at 7.50 pm.

I had to go, but I was pretty disappointed thinking that it was too close to closing time and the staff will be grumpy so I was sure nothing will get sorted.

My phone, as crazy as it was, would freeze or decide to terminate my running applications whenever I was doing something relatively important...but whenever I tried to show this to someone, it would work perfectly normal. Damn black sheep undercover!

So obviously, when meeting the guy from Apple...my phone was not working to it's normal default standard that I was used to.

Great shock when the Apple employee just said that they'll replace it without too many questions asked. They did not want me to leave their store in disappointment. And I sure didn't! I got my new phone which works unbelievably well (I was probably too used to the faulty one) and I am currently writing this on my new phone. Apple do really have outstanding customer service and they sure got a little fan club in our household!

It still felt like I was pulling the plug on an old friend when I had to erase everything of the old one...all i can say now is goodbye my dear friend!

And that's my thought of the day!

Weekends are short

How is it fair that you have to work 5 out of 7 days and spend just 2 days with the ones you love?

How is it fair that out of a 24 hour day you sleep 8 hours, work an average of 8 hours and get 8 hours to spend with your loved ones?

Who chooses out of free will to spend an equal amount of time with family and friends and work colleagues?!

Even worse, if we spend as much time with work colleagues as with family, why do we not get a vote when hiring new people? No matter if you like them or not, you have to spend an awful lot of time with them...

All in all, I think it's unfair that we gotta work as much as normally acceptable to be able to secure a pension to allow us to do what we wanted to do in the first place.

But I guess it's just me moaning about a Sunday night knowing I've got to wake up early again tomorrow... Promise to have more cheerful thoughts tomorrow!

And that's my thought of the day.

Warhorse

I will keep this one short and sweet. Have you seen the film Warhorse?

I refused to watch it until today as I knew it was going to be emotional. And so it was, but in a different way than I had expected. It was so much better than I had ever thought.

Absolutely loved it and am curious to see what other peeps think about it. Are you like me and refused to see it to spare yourself the tears or were you brave enough to watch it when it came out? What did you think about it?

And that's my thought of the day.

I ♥ innocent people

What are you interested in?

✔ Men                 ✔ Women

I love the fact that there still are people out there who can take a simple fact like this Facebook question and still interpret it in a really innocent way, with such clean and pure minds, without having been touched by the dirty rules and perverted games encouraged by today's society. There still out people out there who use social media for SOCIALISING rather than stalking old partners and flings and today, I want to thank these people for probably making our world just a little bit better.

Now, for all of you who went straight into laughing and thinking about the exact same thing I did when I first read this statement on someone's profile...shame on you! :)

And that's my thought for today.

Thought of day 1 - I am a tall shorty

They say to be careful what you wish for as it may come true. And so it did!

For some strange reason, my height is so embedded in my brain that whenever I buy new trousers I need to buy long ones or I believe that they are too short for me to wear. I need to see the word ‘long’ written on the label or I won't buy them. However, I hate being tall! Absolutely bloody hate it!

Today, the lovely sun decided to finally show Canterbury some good lovin`, so I got to wear my flip flops in a sign of celebration… and my jeans kept slipping down getting caught between my heal and the shoe, making me step on them with every single step I took.

Now, most of you would generally most likely find this annoying, but I loved it! I finally got my wish and I felt really really short!

And that's my thought of today.