It’s been a while since I last posted but that’s because I’ve been really busy completing year 4 of my degree (only 2 more to go!) and starting a new job! Anyway I finally got around to posting some of the new stuff I’ve been learning and for this instalment I’ve created a video cast on the basics of getting MEF to integrate with Castle Windsor.

Why would you do that I hear you ask? Apart from it being pretty cool It means that you don’t have one central place that you are registering everything with Windsor. Each project takes care of it’s own registration making the application less tightly coupled and easier to extend. I think it looks pretty tidy and there is so much more you can do with it than I’ve done with this little app but it’s just there to serve as a foundation. Have a play see what you think and let me know about the interesting things you’ve done with it. I’ve uploaded the code here if you want to pull it down and have a play.

S

If the below video isn’t showing you can see it on vimeo here or youtube here.

Using MEF with Castle Windsor from Sara on Vimeo.

Remember to vote for GirlyGeekdom in the Cosmo Blog Awards!

When trying to save on energy costs, leaving a PC on overnight for a full year can cost $360 in energy, depending on where you live. That’s a new netbook, or the price of an energy efficient monitor.

So it is of interest to most people to turn off their PCs (not just the monitor) while they aren’t using them. However, there’s a reason why most people leave their PCs or Macs running when they aren’t using them. We don’t want to wait two minutes for a computer to start. We want it to load now. Right now.

What’s the solution? Getting computers logged on and ready at ultra fast speeds, so you don’t feel like you need to leave your computer on in order to get a jump start. How can an average geek girl do this? Simple solutions are always best.

Clean Up, Clean Out

Computers need regular clean ups. That’s why most people recommend defragmenting and running disk clean up software at least once a week. These are good habits to get in to, however, there’s additional things you can also do.

You could also clean out registries. You can also turn off unused background software that you don’t use. Did you know iTunes often starts up in the background when you start up your computer, even if you haven’t clicked on the program yet?

Yes, you could hit Control, Alt, Delete and then take off the individual programs one by one… but it’s after they’ve been loaded, and a lot of work if you are wanting to turn off your computer every night.

You could do all of these things individually, or you could get a program that does it all for you, all at once. Programs like System Mechanic will take care of the defragmenting, cleaning disks, registry clean up, and more. I’ve used it on my PC for a few of weeks, and from the first time I used it, it boosted starting my PC from a few minutes, to a few seconds. Brilliant.

Dumping The Unwanted

Unwanted software is often cluttering up my PC. You know what I mean. That software someone promised would be great. That game you played twice and then went back to World of Warcraft. Spacemonger helps identify large quantities of space being used up by your programs and then you can choose what to extract, where to move things too, etc. Sometimes you discover files you never even knew you had, like those programs you downloaded and forgot about.

So store them away on an external hard drive. Don’t have one? Buy a small, easy to use one like Verbatim or similar.

How does this save energy? Your computer doesn’t have to work so hard loading up your computer when you unload all of that data somewhere else. Start up is the big eater of energy. Your computer loads faster as well when it has plenty of free space on it.

Do you have some tips on getting your PC to run faster? Want to share? Leave a comment!

Geek girls are probably some of the highest users of energy. I don’t known about other geeks, but I like to keep my energy bill low. There’s more money to spend on games that way.

Perhaps you’d like to contribute a little bit to saving energy for the sake of the planet as well as saving green on your phone bill. Any way you look at it, there’s usually at least one reason to be self conscious about how much energy you use.

Centralize and Unplug

Computers, printers, cell phones and Wii consoles, in my house, go into a single extension strip cord strip. It makes it easier to unplug them all at night and plug back in later. That saves over 30% on my electric bill when I’m able to unplug all of that hardware.

Want some bonus points? Use separate electric strips, one for your TV, computer and Playstation, the other for your printer, fax and other devices you don’t use every day. Keep the less used strip unplugged until you need it.

Cold Water Cleaning

Do you really need to run the hot water as often as you do? Heating your water counts for a big percentage of your electricity bill. You can cut back simply by learning to love lukewarm showers (it’s better for your skin!) and washing a few loads of laundry (at full loads) with cold water. Your whites and brights do not need to be washed in half as much hot water as mentioned. Every other load can be hot to brighten clothes.

By the way, do you linger at the computer, trying to finish that last dungeon as your ‘water warms’ in the shower? You may as well be tossing dimes out the window. Be ready to get into the shower when the water turns just warm enough to your touch. Save even more money by lowering the temperature on your hot water tank.

Energy Efficient Hardware

Saving energy by using energy efficient appliances and computer systems will green up your bottom line. For example, monitors that are on all day long use up a whole lot of energy, but you can save 25% or more using energy efficient monitors. Check out the Dell G2410 or the HP LE1901w. Look for Energy Star qualified products.

Other energy saving products, from the weird light bulbs to new faucets that uses less water, can help reduce your utility bills. Companies are consciously trying to provide new products with super efficiency.

So how much can you save? For every $100 you normally spend on your energy bill a month, you could save as much as $20 or more by trying these three steps alone.

Next Thursday, March 25, 2010, AAUW will release a new report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, which focuses on innovative ways to help girls and women succeed in these fields.

In an era when women are increasingly prominent in medicine, law, and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? The AAUW report presents eight key research findings that point to environmental and social barriers — including stereotypes, gender bias, and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities — that continue to block women’s participation and progress in science, technology, engineering, and math. The report also includes up-to-date statistics on girls’ and women’s achievement and participation in these areas and offers new ideas for what each of us can do to more fully open scientific and engineering fields to girls and women.

You’ll be able to download the report on the release date, but we also wanted to let you know that we are live-streaming a panel presentation with the report’s authors and experts, which audience members will be able to comment over live-chat and Twitter. This live-stream event will take place at 9:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, March 25.

Some years ago I got a Digital Photoframe, and recently it’s just been used for pictures but it got me thinking about how I used to use it.  So far this is what I’ve come up with:

• Photoframe
• FlashCards – help you to remember stuff!
• HowTo Video’s (as that one does video playback too with sound!)
• Podcasts (it has mp3 playback so you can put your podcasts on there – via sd card)
• Mindmaps – draw them on the pc and save as image files but the text has to be quite big

At the time I was thinking about it for educational use rather than for the original intention. So if you are a student or you are studying for exams etc then consider creating your revision notes to be displayed on that digital photo frame that someone bought you at Christmas time. Put it to good use!

If you remember, last year brought the very first Ada Lovelace Day, Founded by Suw Charman-Anderson where loads and loads of bloggers, male and female wrote about their geeky, science, technology and mathematical inspirations.  Well it’s coming back round again.

Keep the 24th March at the forefront of your mind for a blog post about who you think of as one of your most inspirational women in science, technologyor mathematics!

To help you along finding that inspirational person here’s a few suggestions of ways to find that special someone:

• Think about people you looked up to as a child
• Think about whether someone close to you inspired you
• Think about teachers who encouraged you in these areas
• How about looking back through history at famous women in these areas
• Business owners
• Entrepreneurs
• Work colleagues
• Friends
• Someone who is making a difference to the industry
• Artists
• Designers
• Writers

Whoever makes you think about these different subject areas in a way that makes you want to work in the industry is someone worth considering for an Ada Lovelace Pledge!   Write a post about the up coming pledge whilst you’re at it… In fact just borrow mine if you like & add to it!  Inspire change and inspire future technologists, scientists and amazing mathematicians!

A while back I got the opportunity to catch up with some great people at the Beam Presents event, and chat to them about their technologies, what they do and how young people might be able to get into something like their jobs.

The second of these video’s to be released out into the wild is the interview I did with Timothy Hill who is the designer behind Ferguson Hill.  It was really great to find out about the face behind the beautiful designs of the hardware!

So here you go!  Enjoy!

Last month we launched the Manga Competition for people to win one of two copies of the Manga Guide to Calculus courtesy of No Starch Press who are the publishers of the Manga Guide series.  Whilst this competition was going on @decisionstats came up with a fantastic suggestion!  That we should try to get companies to sponsor sets of these books to give out to parents!  I love the idea, and I’m going to see what No Starch Press can do to help us with this.  The books are good quality and content really educational but still lots of fun.

So if you work for anything from a small business to a large corporate and would be interested in backing the Manga for Education pledge to get these books into schools then please do get in touch.  I’m going to see if I can get No Starch Press to reduce or provide these books at cost price to companies who give them out for free to parents or children as part of their corporate social responsibilty policy.

So without further ado I bet you’re all wondering who’s won the Manga Guide to Calculus books? Well here you go!  In order of my top choices!

In First Place

@deepfour's daughter's entry (12 Year's Old!)

For me this entry won not just due to her age but also due to her passion for technology and manga!  @deepfour’s daughter has been teaching herself Japanese through Manga Songs on YouTube.  In fact she loves Manga and art!  Lets see if we can get her into Technology, Science and Engineering with this book!

In Second Place

@GingerNic - Science it Works

@GingerNic’s entry really made me smile as it really brought together the essence of geekiness, gadgets and cute little manga characters. For someone who’s not really into her drawing this is really quite good!

In Third Place

My Manga Sister by dreamsaddict

DreamsAddict submitted four different manga images, this one really fitted the Geeky but Girly bill quite well however considering today it was snowing in the UK and we are expecting more snow at the weekend maybe I should have selected this one of theirs for the 3rd place!

@gingernic and @deepfour please send me your delivery addresses and I’ll have your copies of the manga guides sent over to you!  I don’t think they will arrive in time for Christmas but class them as a New Year’s gift!

On Twitter I have been teasing some of my followers telling them this post was coming well here it is! Not so long ago we managed to get our hands onto the Manga Guide to Physics, which is a great way for anyone into physics, especially if they like Manga but don’t necessarily have an interest in Physics. And now we have finally got hold of the manga guide to calculus.

I bet you’re now wondering if the Calculus book is as good as the Physics one? Well if you read my last post about Physics you’ll know that laws and theorum’s really aren’t my thing and that I didn’t like maths that didn’t involve what I call real numbers… So opening up this book and seeing lots of funny squiggles and x2 etc is never a good sign… however once again these scary looking formula’s are intermingled with beautiful artwork and a great story using real life examples of applying calculus to go with it. To be honest I actually loved this book, I think the concept of the Manga Guides series is a fantastic way of breaking down some of the barriers to learning and making the content accessible to all!

Key content includes:

• Using differentiation to understand a function’s rate of change
• Apply the fundamental theorem of calculus, and grasp the relationship between a function’s derivative and its integral.
• Integreate and differentiate trigonometric and other complicated functions.
• Use multivariate caluclus and partial differentiation to deal with tricky finctions.
• Use Taylor Expansions to accurately imitate difficult functions with polynomials

Ironically some of the stuff in this book I never got taught in school and never learnt at uni either so it’s actually a book that’s taught me a fair few things about calculus which was fairly unexpected, and if I ever needed to quickly look up any of the calculus forumula’s it’s one of the first books that I’d look up and see if it’s there. Not only is it educational it’s just really well written. I’ve posted a few images of the content so that you too can see what it looks like. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s beautiful and fairly in depth all at the same time.

Competition

So as part of me taking a look at this book I got in touch with No Starch Press and they have offered to give away two copies of The Manga Guide to Calculus. So I thought that it would be a nice idea to get everyone having some Manga fun and drawing their own Manga Geek Characters! The best 2 designs will win a copy of the book each! This is a very subjective competition and I’ll leave the entry date open until the 11th December. Please leave a link to your entry in the comments area below and I’ll let you know on the 11th December who’s won. If I only get 2 entries then I’ll be very disappointed!

BTW here’s a few images I decided to draw over the weekend. A little inspiration to get you started, and I don’t draw much myself. Please be aware that if I find anyone cheating and offering other people’s work as their own they will be disqualified!

Bonus Tweet!

rchiswell @girlygeekdom Have you seen http://www.mangahigh.com – aims to make all maths fun (not just calculus!). [plus it's written in PHP ]

We asked our Twitter followers for their hints and tips on how to get through the clearing process of UK universities as well as bringing together as many resources that were simple and effective for you as possible. With there being up to 50% less clearing places within many universities this year there will be a lot more demand for these places and as such we want to help those of you who are looking for information on the process and how to get through the process as effectively as possible.

We also want to support and help those of you who are wanting to get into the Technical courses as we want all those places filled! Best of luck!

Top sites for help:

UCAS Clearing Guidelines

The Independent – Help & Hints on Clearing

Govornment Guidelines on Clearing

Student Rooms – The Clearing Forum

Clearing Vacancies.co.uk – Their useful Magazine!

LifeTracks tips on clearing

TVU Clearing

And then we went over to Twitter and started asking around!  We even got a couple of admissions tutors giving hints and tips on what they are looking for.  The general feedback seems to be show passion for your subjects with reasoning behind why that subject.  Be prepared to do similar but not identical to what you originally wanted and ensure that the message is simple & clear.

So here are the twitter based recommendations.  And yes there are a couple of conflicts such as asking a teacher to help but do be there as well otherwise the uni can’t offer you the place!

Twitter Suggestions