Naming yourself

How do you find a name for a project? I'm currently trying to come up with something brilliantly smart and interesting for our acoustic guitar + vocals duo. I wonder how these extremely high-paid naming agencies do their job. I tried some of those band name generators on the net, but nothing really came up I liked.

My first thought was to call it AudioMousse, because the concept was to make smooth music for bars and cafés, kind of like dessert for your ears. I think there is already some music project with that name somewhere in the world, though, I found some URL that had the name in it on a french server. I also tried to come up with some funny word play names with the whole dessert/desert thing, but I think if we call the project desserted people will just think we have a typo in our name :)

I guess I'm already thinking too hard about this. Creativity on demand is not something I believe in.

La Fonera

S60's Tommi just posted an "advertisement" for FON's La Fonera for free offer to create a large network of Wifi access points which people share. I wanted to leave the following text as a comment, but it got so long I decided to post it here instead and make a shorter comment.

We had this offer in Germany as well. I think for a lot of people over here, the catch was pretty much not having clear information on the legal situation. It's not a pleasant thought to think that you share the WiFi access because you really like the idea (and it is a very neat idea, in my opinion), and a few months later the police comes knocking at your door holding you responsible because someone used your access point for something illegal. I for one have never really been sure whether "just running a la Fonera and people log in with their user names" is really sufficient, or whether you need to take additional precautions (IP logging or whatever).
There have been lengthy discussions in German forums, I don't know what the legal situation is like in Scandinavian countries.
For me, it's another good idea that I won't be part of because there is substantial legal risk, at least until someone clarifies the situation legally or fonera-infrastructure wise.
Also - I am having some problems buying the "we just wanted to create a community for people to share" slogan ;) It's still a well financed start-up which will use the infrastructure to make money. That's fine with me, some people seem to forget that aspect, though.

Helsinki

Helsinki was fun and very exhausting. I didn't get too see much, basically the insides of cabs and hotel rooms. My GPS mouse didn't feel like finding satellites and getting a fix, so I was only able to do some LocoBlogging on the second day.

These things I will remember:
The small Embraer we flew with. It's one of these airplanes where I just have to go "aaaawww...how cuuuute". The food on board was surprisingly good, some scrambled eggs and broccoli (?!?) for breakfast. My colleague said the Finnish flight attendants sounded like Russian call center agents. I was more reminded of Xenia Onatopp in James Bond Goldeneye. Service was very nice. Additional entertainment factor: watching one of the ladies struggle with a baggage compartment for about 10 minutes. Nice leather gloves though.


The office building. Nice people, great food in the canteen - much better than in Bochum though it is the same supplier. I especially loved the fresh bread that you can take with each meal, it was so good. I was stunned by the variety of margarine/butter spreads they had. I think they offered 6 types and 2 of each.

The hotel room. We stayed at the Holiday Inn City West and had Executive Rooms because the regular ones were booked. Suh-weeeeet. You only got to the 9th level by using the room key card, I felt extremely important. I liked the design of the room very much. Great shower - one with a tiled floor on the same level as the rest of the room, and cute little slippers to go with the bath robe for each guest. The breakfast the next morning was very good.

The flight back. I bought delicious Karl Fazer chocolate with mint candy at the airport. Read Chocolat by Joanne Harris for about the 5th time, I just love that book. Tried tomato juice with salt and pepper for the very first time. Wheenver I'm on a plane, I see people ordering tomato juice and always thought "Hey, I want to try this - but not now." So now I tried it, it's actually pretty good. Reminds me of the tomato stuff I put on self-made pizza, just in a more liquid form. I guess thats what it is, anyway.

All in all I hope I'll get to go again, maybe with a little more time to see the city in between.

Small flash of genius

I was wondering why I can never manage to write a private blog and keep the work stuff out, or write a blog that is more technical but doesn't have the tendency to turn into a diary. Part of it is that I don't have a specialized area for which I would be able to gather enough info to post regularly. There's more though...
Took me pretty long (duh) to work this out, but well, I can be slow at times ;).
So here's the revelation: When I work, I want it to be something that I can be passionate about. There is no way I can keep anything with passion out of my private life or vice versa.
So I guess it's that simple - I blog about things I'm passionate about - forget the other categories.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.

Man it's early. Got up at 4.40 this morning. Found out yesterday that I will be flying to Helsinki today. Right now I'm too tired to be nervous. At least we have a hotel room now, sleeping at the train station because all hotels were booked due to a conference didn't seem too appealing.

GPS receiver fully charged, phone ready, hopefully some good ol' LocoBlogging will happen!

Spreading the N97 "news"

This story is funny, at least in my opinion.
Some guy posted his self-made photoshop designs for a phone in Forum Nokia, hoping for some Nokia attention. His design is pretty cool if you ask me, looks like a touch screen candidate for me, fitting in nicely with the N-series tradition.

Apparently, someone with limited English knowledge misunderstood the whole thing and spread the news that the new "Nokia N97 multimedia computer" had leaked. As things go with all these blogs and news sites around, Engadget Mobile soon spread the word - though they did mention that the source of this may not be to reliable.

Now imagine being the guy who made this design at home. He only wants to land a job with Nokia because he's into design and mobiles, and a few minutes later his pics are all over the net - and some people are actually drooling over the phone, loving it! Now that would make me feel good.

I guess with music it's not quite that easy. I can hardly claim the demos I have at home are from the new Jill Scott album. You'd have to be heavily hearing impaired to believe it. Please don't make me go into details why - I don't want to start crying.

Tidbit

I had planned to go rehearse with a band today.
I mention that "Oh, too bad, I won't have rehearsal today!" at work. A colleague hears it and goes: "Oh, a rehearsal for what - something with pom poms?"

Reinvention or just shedding my skin again?

Every few months I usually get this moment where I look in the mirror and think "Jen - you need to change something about you!". This has led to about 20 new hair colors, hair cuts, various piercings, a tattoo, new clothing styles, attempts to wear contacts, different shoe styles, hours of standing in front of the mirror and trying to decide whether the result is good and the spending of hundreds and hundreds of Euros within the past ~7 years.

Today - same thing. This time, it's the hair color, the all-time classic. Nothing like some good acrid chemicals on your head for half on hour to make you feel better.

Now I'm wondering whether this is
a. constant reinvention where I somehow turn into a slightly different person every few months and feel the need to adapt my looks to my current self or
b. shedding just another layer of "old self" until I will have finally reached my final state resting peacefully and for once not worrying about my hair in my grave or
c. just the one personality of the many that are within me that is currently strongest and an indication that my sense of identity is not always stable, coherent and back with confidence.

The latter would explain much from puberty, PMS, bad hair days and mood swings to girl flicks and the famous "NOOOO! I don't have anything to wear!!!" when there's not even enough room left in the dresser to squeeze in the left toe of a pantyhose.

I'm also getting the feeling that this appearance-changing thing is something more women do than men. Women either change their looks or move around furniture in the apartment for hours until the "karma" suits their needs. With the neat side effect that their respective partners are sufficiently confused and break various bones when trying to go to the bathroom at night. "Honey, this couch was not at that spot before!" - "I know, but can't you just feel the energy flowing in the room now?" - "[Insert various expletives here]"

Do men do this, too? I'm trying hard to come up with something that would the fit the clichée. Like arranging the toy sports car collection, changing the style of breast hair or coming up with a new move to scratch their balls?!? The "metrosexual" group probably goes for the hair dying, too, but I'm having a really hard time imagining a Arnold Schwarzenegger type of guy saying something like "Honey - I feel so... different. I think I have grown, spiritually, I mean. I need to go to the hair dresser, right now!" But then, you never know. I haven't seen all of America's weirdest home videos, maybe the highlights are still out there.

Well, since Helsinki will be delayed for another week or so, I have plenty of time for metaphoric skin shedding. Who knows, by the end of the week I may go by the name Lisa Smith and be a blonde girl wearing pink leggings with pink blouses and bringing a poodle with a ribbon in it's hair to work. I do suspect I would have a few things to explain to my boyfriend in that case, though.

Now I'm debating with myself whether I should add something more to this blog entry. This has already reverted into 50% diary again, so I might as well rant on. Maybe it'll make me smile in 50 years.

Today, open and communicative as I am, I added a sentence to an email to the person organizing the business trip where I said "Wow, I'm really nervous about this trip, I'll be glad to sit in the right plane, so I don't care which flight we book ;)". Now for me, this is a perfectly normal reaction to your first business trip, it was meant to be funny, and I don't think anything is wrong with it. Now let me try to describe the reaction I received in person.

I was sitting at my desk, harmlessly and concentratedly working (you heard that, boss?). The trip organizer comes by and smiles at me brightly, sitting on the side desk, I take off the head phones, and here we go.

As soon as my full attention is on her, her facial expression turns into that of a kindergarten employee who talks to a 4-year-old who has dropped her chocolate cookie in the mud.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaawwww... everything's gonna be alright, see, Stephen will be with you (Names changed to protect the innocent) and he's done this before, so you'll be - just - fine. I'll get you a cab so you don't have to worry about anything. Just remember - don't you take any liquids with you on the plane!"

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, I am nervous. That happens, shocking as it may be. I have spent 12 months as an exchange student in the US, 4.5 months in the UK during a semster abroad and 3 months in the US again during an internship. I can be self-sufficient (if I want to)... The assumption that I would need somebody to take care of me or else I'll get lost and will scream for my mommy to help me hurt my I-want-to-kick-ass-in-this-job-pride! And just because I freely admit that I am nervous doesn't mean I think I won't be able to get things done!

I have to smile at myself right now because that short well-meant conversation has turned me into a spiteful little woman.
I'll calm myself down with a nice bath and some acrid chemicals in my hair ;)

The flat I've been waiting for - mobile internet here I come

Quick news flash. Tommi from S60 mentions that 3 will be offering flat fee packages in the UK, including Skype, Instant Messaging, eBay etc.

This is definitely moving in the right direction for me. I would love to be able to actually use all these neat features my phone has, but with the data prices right now, I'm already worried about keeping up my mobile GPS blogging. Making free VoIP calls with me mobiles, Web 2.0 (bingo...) services on mobiles without these ridiculous costs, maybe even some UMTS TV streaming - sign me up.

Now I wish we only had an operator like that in Germany. Let's see how quickly things change! The last rumors I heard were the first speech flat rates for end of 2007, but that did not include data rates.

Some days just rock!

Now this has been one of those days that start out pretty bad, but then everything seemed to be going right. I forgot some medication at home and my yoghurt, got stuck in traffic, had a headache...
But oh well, as it turns out, these were the numerous highlights of my day:

* I will fly to Helsinki on a business trip on Monday, staying until Wednesday at the latest, meeting some cool former colleagues of mine in between

* Had a neat idea for a LocoBlog feature, informed Will Bamford about it and he said it was the extremely brilliant idea of a genius..ummh...well. OK. That was slighly exaggerated. He said it was "a pretty good idea", but nevertheless, I'm having a rush of this "Oh, the really cool people who develop these awesome apps like my idea!" feeling. If that ever gets implemented, I will glow with pride for a week or so.

* I will be meeting up with my mom to go dancing and be gorgeous in our beloved club in Bonn on Saturday

* Lunch time was fun because I got to talk to nice American and Finnish colleagues who actually speak during lunch break, instead of silently devouring the bad cafeteria food. I felt understood, some kindred spirits there! Yay!

All in all, I feel a lot like myself, if that makes sense, more myself than I usually felt lately. And it seems that "myself" is doing pretty well at the moment ;)

I'm pretty nervous about the whole Helsinki thing. I guess I'm behaving like this young fresh-from-college girl who is doing her first business trip. Hey, guess what - that is my first business trip and I am young and in my first job after school. I've also never been to Finland, but luckily I'm not going alone, so that'll be OK. Plus, I get the chance to meet up with Tuomas and Anja, his really nice girlfriend, at least I hope that'll work out. Should be fun!

I'll try to keep my LocoBlog up to date with some pictures of the whole trip. Let's just hope I can fix the problem I will be sent to fix. I just hope I'll be able to fix things quickly. Leaving a good impression in front of the customer would be nice...

I realized right now that I think I need more space - in my blog entries, that is. I'll try to make smaller paragraphs from now on, hopefully that'll make the text easier to read!

The coffee machine - center of the universe, or something like that.

I think one of the best investments any company can make is buying a nice automatic coffee machine and some tea-cooking equipment for it's employees and find a spot/kitchen to put it.

At the coffee machine, I have
* heard interesting details and news about our customer which the managers shared over coffee many times
* laughed so hard I couldn't stop over other's jokes
* introduced myself to new colleagues, making faces familiar for both of us
* shared fascinating conversations with managers, fellow developers and the cleaning lady
* made some really nice hazelnut latte's
* eaten many slices of someone's birthday cake or muffins
* had our software architect (who was down with the flu but had to work crazy overtime) confide in me that he's only a tiny step away from breaking down
* spilled coffee endless times
* heard some really nice words of encouragment when I was overwhelmed with a new task and under heavy time pressure after 3 months in the job
* found some time to take a breather when concentrating too hard

That was some of the best networking, motivating, communicating, inspiring, caring and laughing I have experienced in my job.

So - in case anyone accidentally reads this blog - what do you do at the coffee machine?

Disclaimer: No, I don't sell coffee machines for a living... :)

Internet gardening for the advanced

In a model of a learning entity, be it a learning organisation or a student, feedback is usually a key point. Through input of results, others' opinions, ideas, theses, you can reevaluate, adapt, change, decide whether it's worth pursueing what you do or think - you grow (yes, that's where the title metaphor comes from).

I feel the internet has sped this up immensely. Looking at my own poor, tiny little blog I started a few days ago, I got "instant feedback" which I did not expect at all. My previous post was inspired by another blog entry, so I linked to it. So this morning I look at my blog, basically knowing that noone on earth will have read it because I did not promote it at all, but surprise- there was one comment. And it wasn't spam... The author of aforementioned inspiring post commented. Hallelujah, the gods of blogsphere have heareth my name. Seriously though, that was really motivating! Even though I'm not sure whether I will be able to keep up the posting this time (yes, this is not my first - or second - attempt at maintaining a blog), there was interaction and feedback, with minimum delay and no previous network at all. Yay! Now I'm already growing, I guess, since I keep philosophizing (is that a word? in German it is...) pondering why I even blog.

I feel like some people have these marvellous ideas to share, funny anecdotes, inspiring comments, awesome concepts... if I was one of them, I would have felt it. I enjoy skimming through these different blogs everywhere though, and every once in a while an entry will inspire me enough to write, which is mostly for myself, because it invites me to linger with a concept for longer than just a fraction of a second. Maybe I had this really cool idea that shed some light on life. Maybe I even had the most brilliant invention which I could have made millions of dollars with. Knowing me, I probably forgot both after 3.5 minutes because a cat came jumping on my lap loudly demanding a paw massage, or some other every-day triviality. So yes, this is the blog-against-forgetting-to-buy-milk (metaphor! metaphor!) for a 23-old with memory and concentration problems. Go buy me anti-ageing skin treatment.

Back to the growing. Since I believe that this fast, more widely-spread communication increases the speed, variety and amount of feedback we get, I think the net can help us grow - "please ask your doctor for medical advice and always read the instructions" - if applied correctly and as prescribed.

I also think that the internet itself as the meta-community grows through the same principle - buzzword time, Web 2.0, here I come! With increasing interaction and ways for the creative, brilliant, average, bored, helplessly depressed or freshly-in-love enthusiastic individual or a dedicated community to shape the internet and all it offers, with all this feedback, the internet grows in terms of technologies, concepts and communication, all the time feeding back results, preferences, new ideas and even new technologies that will transform the web.

Don't worry, I won't go so far as to suggest this Gaia-type of semi-consciousness for the internet (read David Brin's Earth?), but I do think the way the internet is devloping is fascinating to watch - it might be worth not only looking at what is developing, but also how it does that.

One of the "How To Be Creative" principles Hugh MacLeod wrote about says that in order to be creative, you need to do it for yourself. I think one of the most important skills in life is being able to distinguish between
* the situations in which you should take the feedback you get from others to heart and reflect on what you're doing, trying to grow and polish the rough edges of who you are and what you do
* and those in which you simply shouldn't give a sh*t what anyone else says, go by intuition and provide the most important feedback yourself, because that is who you are.

Amen, Reverend Jenny.

Women in Technology / I in Technology

I came across this post by Miss Rogue a few days ago. She writes about women in technology, or the (felt) lack thereof. Even though she says she can't speak for "the women" in technology, I definitely found myself nodding all the time, agreeing, and I bet I wasn't the only one.

This issue really has been nagging at me for quite a while. Even back in high school, I was the only girl in computer science class and felt as if the boys in class pretty much considered me neither male nor really female, but more an alien of some sorts (The invasion of the strange female geek). At university, we were pretty much 50% women in our class, but hey, that was business information technology, and most of the girls definitely were in for the business part.

Now I work as one of the few women in our company who do software development, part of which entails crouching in front of the screen in a windowless cellar. Kind of. I think we're 5 (young) women among ~50 developers, and not all of us are really the "girly girl" type.

So here's the deal: How do you gain respect among your fellow developers when you
a. are a young woman fresh from university, the youngest developer in the office
b. majored in business information technology instead of "real" computer science, lacking major software development experience
c. somehow still want to feel like an attractive young woman and behave like one

Chris and I attend a lot of events where, even though I'm perfectly capable of conducting myself in a conversation about Open Source, I'm rarely invited into those conversations. Chris, on the other hand, is greeted warmly and enthusiastically. You may say it's because I'm not a developer...but guess what? Neither is Chris . [...]
The biggest issue here is that people assume Chris is a developer, but never make that assumption of me. I have to contribute quite a bit (sans mistakes) before being accepted.

That is exactly what I experienced. It seems to me that usually new male colleagues are regarded with a kind of "let's see whether he's good" attitude, while women are seen with a "ooooh. a woman! is she his secretary?"-type of attitude. Obviously, that doesn't happen all the time, but usually I have to make a number of really smart and knowledgeable comments before people actually think of me as a developer.

Thaty seems to go along with a loss of "female qualities" as well though. I think I've done quite well in terms of earning respect by my colleagues. Loving to make jokes, being communicative and owning a USB-cup warmer definitely helps. I rarely were skirts, dresses or high heels, though, mostly because it's just not as comfortable as sneakers and jeans - which can still look nice and feminine. What really really bugs me though is that whenever I actually do wear high heels, a skirt or whatever, that seems to be an event for my male colleagues worthy of a calendar entry. When I wore high heels two days before CeBIT, people actually asked me whether I would wear these shoes for the whole day of the fair. Hello, I am a woman, not stupid! The sheer amazement at the clothes in my dresser that most defiinitely declare me as a woman who sometimes likes to dress pretty and sexy shows me that even though they accept me as a female developer, they still don't really see me as woman who happens to be a developer instead of a hair stylist, school teacher or flight attendant.

You know what the really bad thing is? This is not something only man do towards women, but also women among each other. When I see other women at the cafeteria at work, I usually assume they work in business or administration, especially when they don't look obviously geeky. I only noticed this a few weeks ago, and I am very much trying to get myself to be more open-minded.

Honestly, I think this is something we ladies should work on ourselves. Instead of mentally scratching each other's eyes out and assuming she only knows how to switch on the hair dryer instead of writing some nice code, feel a little pride that this woman over there might just rock in her job just as much as you do.

Can I marry this mobile phone, please?

I got my hands on a Nokia N95 on Wednesday. Alas, I am in love...
Seriously, I've been stalking this phone ever since the first specs leaked for the "N83" as it was rumoured to be called. This phone just has everything I need.

* GPS without having to carry around a separate bluetooth GPS mouse
* WLAN
* A2DP (finally Nokia's beginning to have more A2DP-enabled phones)
- 3.5 mm jack for head phones and TV-out
* 5 MP cam should be perfectly fine for the once-in-a-while snapshot I take, e.g. for my LocoBlog.
* form factor and design are nice with all that's crammed into the phone

So my first hands-on impression of this phone is basically - fantastic!
I am really really impressed by the display. The demo video that I found on the phone played in stunning DVD-like quality. The form factor is nice and not at all as bulky as the N93. I also dig the double slider mechanism with the dedicated media keys. I didn't get a chance to test the audio quality with some good headphones or A2DP so I can only hope that's as impressive as the screen resolution. I guess battery life will be kind of problematic with all of these features integrated, but I don't mind charging every morning in the car on my way to work for all these features. I didn't get to test the new S60 browser with the miniature page preview, but that should be kind of neat for surfing without a touch screen, too.

So the plan is to
- get the phone when it comes out & I can afford it - it is "planned" to sell this phone for €550 but somehow I find that hard to believe...
- get myself a nice car stereo with A2DP so I can stream all of my music in the car
- only carry one device instead of phone, mp3 player, GPS mouse
- live happily ever after

OK, I'm sorry, I know I am really enthusiastic about this one but... the N95 just rocks.