Meg’s

This past week, Matt and I attended the ShareIT workshop at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. The workshop was fun and interesting, and this marks the first time I have ever been to the UK.

We left the USA at 8pm-ish our time and arrived in London 8am-ish their time. We weren’t able to check into our rooms in Brighton until 2pm at the earliest, so we had some time to kill. Thankfully for me, Matt had done a study-abroad in the UK awhile ago and knew his way around. So we took a train from Gatwick airport over to the London Victoria station. From there we were able to walk to a bunch of popular tourist sites.

First place we went to was West Minister Abbey. This is where all the kings and queens get married and coronated. Visible from West Minister Abbey is Big Ben, and all the Parliament buildings.

After that is was a short walk over to the National Gallery. Admission is free, and they have a cloak room. God bless the National Gallery, because we were able to leave our heavy carry-on bags with them while we continued to walk around. The Gallery itself was pretty impressive. Matt showed me some of his favorites.

At this point, we still had some time to kill and we weren’t quite sure where to go, so we decided to head to St. Paul’s Cathedral. This is where, in the movie Mary Poppins, the beggar woman sits and sings “Feed the Birds”. When we got there, there was some kind of service going on, and there was a small parade of guardsman and a band. The steps to the cathedral were blocked off and a big crowd formed to watch. We decided to go ahead and eat lunch and see if they would open it back up again in an hour. (We ate lunch at this cute little place across the street called Apostrophe. I had the corn chowder and some tea.) After lunch we were able to go up on the steps, but we weren’t able to go in.

We rode the tube back to the National Gallery, picked up our stuff, and started walking towards Buckingham Palace. I got my picture with one of the guards, of course, and it looked like the queen was in because the flag was flying. You could have bought tickets to go in and take a tour, but we were quickly loosing the energy to stay awake and wanted to find our beds in Brighton fast.

I have signed up for two races in August. The first is the Glade Springs Inaugural Charlie Williamson Memorial Triathlon 2008, on August 16th . Its a sprint triathlon, in a place near Beckley, WV. Its only about an hour and 45 minutes away from where I live, and an even shorter distance for my parents. My sister (Jenn) and aunt (Judy) are planning on doing this race as well. It seems like we are race buddies for life, since whenever one of us signs up for a race the others follow suit.

The second race, is the Charleston Distance Run 5k, on August 30th. Once again, Jenn and Judy are running this with me. This time, my cousin Jon will be running the 15 miler that is happening on that same day. Should be lots of fun since I’ll get to visit with my family and get, yet another, free t-shirt.

Yesterday, Wes and I made it into Amsterdam and took a bus into Utrecht. The 8 hour flight was tiring, so even though we got in at 8am we had to take a nap once we made it to our hotel. Our hotel is a little wacky. Its called “Hotel Little Siam”, and you can even check out pictures of it on their website : http://www.littlesiam.nl/ You have to go up this crazy, steep and narrow staircase to get to the room. The room is pretty small, but I guess if you want anything bigger you have to be willing to pay more than 85 Euro a night. Thankfully though, the hotel is only a 10 minute walk from the Station Centraal, which makes it a prime location to be.

Once we were done with our nap, we didn’t have much time left in the day, so we just ate dinner and enjoyed some beer. There were tons of people sporting orange jersey shirts and crazy hats in support of the Holland soccer team which was playing in the Euro cup games. Also, there are millions of bicycles. The streets all have lanes for cars, bicycles, and walkers.

Today we walked into the old part of town, where there is very little traffic except for bicycles. We saw the tallest bell tower in the Netherlands (Dontoren) , and went inside the cathedral next door Domkerk). After that, we went to the Museum Centraal, which was a dream come true for a music box collector like myself. They had every kind of music box/player piano, you could imagine. They had a player organ designed my Leornardo Da Vinci that played violins on the inside! The also had a large automatic music player that was at least 20 feet high and 30 feet wide. It was all pretty impressive.

Now we are just hanging out in the hotel, taking a break. Really, I should be working on my presentation for the ICLS doctoral consortium (the reason I’m here), but I’d rather be walking around and seeing more sights. I’m very jealous of Wes. While I’m doing conference things he’s going to go take a train to Germany and visit his friend who is living there. I guess we’ll just have to come back to Europe another time for me to see more sights!

This past weekend, my sister (Jenn), my aunt (Judy), two friends (Stephanie and Dereka), and I did a triathlon. We had all been training for it since January, and the day finally came. I was so nervous the days before the race that I was having problems eating and sleeping. But the day came and went, and we were all trimuphant. I finished the race way faster than I thought I would, in 2 hours and 1 minute (02:01:18). Here is the break down of all the little parts.

Swim (750 meters): 00:22:53
Transistion 1: 00:04:34
Bike (14 miles): 00:56:22
Transistion 2: 00:01:32
Run (5k): 00:35:59

I am amazed at how well I did on the 5k after all that biking. I had lots of fun though, because Jenn and I finished the bike around the same time and ran the 5k together. We would walk for a bit, then pick a couple land marks and run for a bit. The entire bike and run parts were flat, but by the time it got to the run it was hot and humid outside. I was taking water from the water stations and dumping it on my head. Jenn and I finished the race together, just like we finished our last 5k. I had a really great time and I am planning on doing another one soon.

I was looking up articles that dealt with game playing and gender, and ran across this one -
Jenson, J., S.d. Castell, and S. Fisher. Girls Playing Games: Rethinking Stereotypes. in Future Play. 2007. Toronto, Canada: ACM.

I found the article really interesting and I have a few pieces of “food for thought” to share with you:

1.) The paper recognizes that games are increasingly being used in educational contexts, but that we must consider if the increase in game-based learning “threatens to compound and intensify girls’ disadvantage” since far more boys play games than girls.

2.)The Sims is the top selling PC game of all time, and is considered to be a “cross over hit” since it appealed to both men and women. One of the reasons cited for this success is the fact that their design team included women.

3.)In past research on gender and gaming they have claimed that girls like to focus on coordination and interaction when playing video games. But is this always true? This paper argues that no, girls’ preferences and modes of game play depend on their condition and their context. They summarize this point by saying we need to attend to “how and under what conditions girls/women play the way they do, without attributing to that way of playing in and of itself any enduring or fixed significance.”

I especially like this 3rd point. Its saying something that we would already know, if we just took the time to think about it. (Also, this point has been echoed in recent discussions on the ubuntu-women’s list. )Of course we shouldn’t pigeon hole women’s interests into just “interactive” games, women are interested in a diverse kind of video games, women are diverse! Instead of trying to make the perfect game for women, we should just encourage diversity in all projects so we can reach a diverse audience.

April 22nd is Earth Day in the United States, and one of my favorite days to be on campus. On the drillfield, they set up all sorts of tents that host the environmentally savvy students and their clubs. Usually you can buy all sorts of neat things like reusable grocery bags and sunflower plants. Its rainy today on campus, but it seems like the Earth Day celebrations are going full steam ahead.

It seems like going green is a rising trend in the US, which is certainly a good thing. I have heard that the US only has 5% of the world’s population but we use 23% of the world’s resources. I really hope the green fad lasts, we need it to. I’ve always been a recycler, but I’ve been trying to up my greenness. On Sunday I decided to test out what it would be like to ride my bike to work. Its about 8 miles away and took me 40 minutes. As I get better at biking it’ll take me less time, so I’m thinking about going green (and saving green on gas) this summer by bike commuting.

Here are some useful links for you:

Happy Earth Day!

This year we had the 10th Annual Women in Computing Day. We were able to host 82 girls this year, which makes it a record breaker I think. The coolest part by far though, was we got the hokie bird to show up! It was amazing.

Guess who’s going to ICLS 2008! Thats right, its me!! I was accepted to the doctoral consortium. Besides being able to go to yet another awesome conference, the conference is being held in THE NETHERLANDS! I have never been anywhere near that part of the world before. I am so pumped!
http://www.isls.org/icls2008/