1. Brown Dog Gadget Kits
These are supercute, relatively simple (some soldering) DIY electronics kits.

2. Solar Print Fabric
Perfect for a child or a crafty type, solar print fabric from (the unrelated!) Cox & Cox.

3. Han Solo In Carbonite Silicone tray
How long have you wanted to make ice cubes, jelly or chocolate in the shape of Han Solo in Carbonite? Yea, of course, forever. Now you can.

4. Vintage Lightbulbs
I love Rockett St. George. At least once a week I go to their website to drool and dream about the day my house isn’t in a constant state of disarray. These lightbulbs are gorgeous, so is everything else there.

5. Lilypad Arduino Beginner’s Kit
The ladynerd in your life will LOVE this. Next year she can make you an email counting t-shirt for Christmas. Win win.

6. iNecklace and Heart Spark
The other night I wore my iNecklace to Brian’s talk at the RI. Everyone was going just a little bit crazy for it. Unfortunately, it seems the iNecklace is sold out (again). As of the 4th of December, they have 23 in stock! Get one quick! As of the 5th of December, they have 7 in stock! Unfortunately, it seems the iNecklace is sold out (again). Instead, have a look at the Heart Spark. I am currently waiting for mine to arrive. And I can’t tell you how excited I am about it….

7. SparkFun Arduino Beginner’s Kit
You’ve been hearing loads about Arduinos. It’s about time you jump in feet first.

8. Sugru
Stocking filler!! This stuff is soooo useful that you *need* to have some on hand at all times. That is all.

9. Lumiphone
A kit to make your own theramin-like Lumiphone, from UK-based Technology Will Save Us. They’re not wrong. (More Technology Will Save Us gear via Rough Trade East.)

10. Atari Wall Stickers
You know you want to…

Some other ideas that I didn’t put on Twitter:

*Fund a Kickstarter Tech Project In Someone’s Name- there are loads and loads of tech projects you can help out. For less-nerdy-more-booky, see: Unbound

* Someone asked me about kids’ electronics kits. My older son had a Hot Wires kit a few years back. My toddler currently loves playing with Squishy Circuits.

* Handmade books are excellent gifts. A few years ago I made my sister a handmade notebook which was part-blank pages and part-zombie survival guide. Here is an Instructables on making your own notebook.

* Combining a few of these together: a while back I funded my lovely friend Suw through Kickstarter for her handmade book project Argleton. You can now buy Argleton for your Kindle.

Finally, just a note. I turned off comments on my blog a while back because I was getting inundated with Brian-related stuff. Sorry. If you want to say ‘hi’ or comment on this list, I’m on Twitter. If you have anything you want to say to or about Brian, he’s on Twitter.

“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

Now, I could have written about tons of women in tech that I admire: game designer Jane McGonigal, musician Laurie Anderson, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, physicist Cinzia Da Via (she designs and builds 3D silicon detectors for CERN for Christ’s sake!) or even Suw Charman herself.

There are loads of women out there doing interesting, excellent, remarkable things in science and technology… and, yes, they are often overlooked in favour of the achievements of men in a similar field.

The guide on the Ada Lovelace Day site says, “It’s up to you how you interpret the phrase “in technology”. We’re not just interested in hardcore ninja programmers, but any woman who creates, invents, or uses any technology in an innovative way. Feel free to interpret it as widely as you like.” Therefore, I want to write about the women who I believe are the REAL unsung heroes in technology: the women “behind” the successful men- their wives/partners. They, I believe, are the most overlooked women of all.

They are the ones who look after the home and the children when their partner is off ‘at work’ (the fact that these women may have careers and lives outside their marriage as well, doesn’t come into it)- doing the shopping, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, putting the kids to bed, dealing with the bills, going to all the parent-teacher conferences at school, making sure their partner has clean clothes for his next conference… Sometimes they, themselves, are the most remarkable, intelligent, amazing, successful person, but no one really bothers to find that out because, you know, their geek husband is “so much more interesting”. They sometimes find themselves ‘dropping’ their careers and lives in order to move halfway ’round the world when their partner gets offered a really amazing job in Silicon Valley. Sometimes they are the ones who ‘tag along’ to the conferences, not really knowing anyone, sometimes sitting in the background shyly. Some of these women are ‘only involved because of who their husband is’ – well, that’s what people think anyway… Sometimes these women are entirely invisible- we never see them, meet them or hear about them at all, for all intents and purposes some of these women don’t even ‘exist’. At best these women are overlooked, at worst these women can be hated.

Occasionally, the feeling about these women is that they have “cashed in” or “bagged” their partners, implying, of course, that they are only in it for the ‘notoriety’ or ‘money’. Not only does this degrade the women, but their partners as well. Are these men really so stupid and shallow that they could have the wool pulled over their eyes by a woman who only wants them cos they had an idea for a website 10 years ago which eventually became successful? Surely these intelligent men are better people than that?

Sometimes these couples form business or creative partnerships bringing together both of their strengths, creating something more powerful than either one could create individually… yet the woman’s contribution is minimised or ignored by everyone else.

Sometimes the men ask their partners to take over or run part of their business, the feeling from outside is often that ‘she’s just got that job cos she’s his wife’. Clearly, if he thought she was incapable in that role, he’d know his business would suffer…

Sometimes these women have their own separate success within the tech fields, but should their career ever cross paths with their partner’s – eg working for the same company – then again, according to some, ‘she’s only got that job cos she’s his wife’…

Sometimes these women give up their own careers in order to fully support their partners and look after their families at home. Often people (admittedly mainly women) think this is appalling, entirely ignoring the important and valuable job these women are doing at home instead.

These women may not be programmers or designers or scientists or mathematicians or entrepreneurs or consultants or developers. Instead they are a Muse, a Test Subject, a Critic, a Collaborator, a Guide, a Teacher, a Student, an Inspiration, a Motivator… a Partner. They are the reason why their men are able to succeed in changing our world.

Don’t forget them.

(there’s swearing in this so don’t turn up loud at work)

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

“The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favour. Don’t have grandparents in Florida? Not Jewish? No problem! You can still become a schleper and make change happen in 2008, simply by talking to your relatives about Obama.”

More here

“On this day, of all days.”

“On this day, of all days.”

Why should we want to understand Time?

How the minus sign protects the past from the future.

On Life in the Universe.

Loads more here.

Why should we want to understand Time?

How the minus sign protects the past from the future.

On Life in the Universe.

Loads more here.

I have now completely changed my mind. With this whole Sarah Palin thing, McCain has shown that he is clearly chaotic and dangerous. He should not be in charge of a country which has so very much at stake. America has a chance to step out of the darkness, a chance to wake-up, a chance to join this wonderful world we live in. This will NOT happen with McCain in the White House. If he puts so very little thought into who he chooses as his running mate – the person who could end up being the Vice President of the country for 4 whole years- what amount of contemplation will go into, say, starting another bloody war?

It’s clear now that the McCain camp more-or-less tossed a coin when it came to choosing a Vice-Presidential running mate. McCain spoke to her once on the phone and once in person the day he offered her the job.

“Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.”

She had ALREADY been given a lengthy questionnaire which asked for information on ‘personal matters’, but she didn’t feel it appropriate to mention that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant in that questionnaire. She waited until Wednesday, the day before they offered her the job, to let them know that. She had informed them about her husband’s DUI and McCain aides say they had already found out about the ethics investigation she’s under in Alaska (you’d think the Republicans would have had enough of those for a while).

One of McCain’s advisors said, clearly using this week’s Acceptable Republican Terminology (in italics): “We made a political determination that the American people would not object to a female candidate with a 17-year-old daughter who was pregnant. We believed that parents all over America would understand that life happens (my emphasis). The team made a recommendation to the senator that these issues were not disqualifying.”

“Life happens”. Hmmmm. Now, in normal language that would read “mistakes happen”. You know, the condom breaks, she forgot to take a Pill, he didn’t pull out in time, they weren’t given adequate sex education to understand how to prevent themselves from getting pregnant, their parents either never talked to them about birth control or forbade them from using it. You know, those kinds of mistakes.

BUT… because last spring when Obama used the word ‘mistake’ when talking about sex education the Republican Machine took the quote out of context and said that he was talking about abortion. Well, of course, they can’t use the word ‘mistake’… so what do they do instead? Use a completely ridiculous sounding sentence- “America would understand that life happens” (when you’re busy making other plans) – with that good ole Manchurian Candidate-like trigger word ‘LIFE’ which wakes up this crowd of Bible-thumping zombies hiding out in the backwoods.

Speaking of Bible-thumping zombies, this is Sarah Palin at her church. it’s about 14 minutes long, if you don’t have the time to watch it all, let me just tell you that at one point she says that she thinks the War in Iraq is ‘God’s will’ and that God wants drilling for oil in Alaska’s 20 million acre wildlife refuge. Seriously.

The documentary explores the idea of Time – what we think it is, what it isn’t and asks ‘does it exist at all?’ He talks to all kinds of people from the Director of the US Naval Observatory which keeps the Master Clock, to cosmologist Max Tegmark (who acts out what it would look like if he were to fall into a black hole), to theoretical physicist Neil Turok who talks about how Time may *not* have had a beginning. He explores Einstein’s theory of Time as well as newer theories of ‘granulated’ Time…

I’d like to point out the videos where he is talking about the idea that the Maya of Mexico predicted the end of the Universe in 2012. The sensible amongst you may not realise, but there are a sizable number of people around who seriously think that the world is going to end in December 2012 because one of the many calendars used by the Maya ‘ends’ then. Here is what I think of that.

I’m not alone, of course, in my distaste for this kind of ‘whacky stuff’ being taken seriously… Here’s what Brian thinks…

They filmed loads and loads of stuff which won’t end up in the programme, so the director Paul Olding is putting some of it up on YouTube. Here’s a bit of Brian and Jerry from the Talking Heads messing around which won’t be in the documentary ;)…