Ada Lovelace day or my tribute to women in technology

Today, in honour of Ada Lovelace day, 1800 bloggers have taken a pledge to write about a woman in technology. I’m one of those bloggers.

First off, a bit about Ada because I don’t know how many people are familiar with her. The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, she was born in 1815 and met Charles Babbage in 1833. In 1841-42, while translating Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, Analytical Engine, she also wrote a set of notes. That set of notes contains in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by historians as the world's first computer program.

Now there are quite a few women in technology. Not as many as men and certainly not as famous. Well, the one I am going to talk about today was famous, but for different reasons. Hedy Lamarr was born in 1913, in Vienna. In 1937, she disguised herself as one of her maids and fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce from her first husband(who, despite being part Jewish, was consorting with Nazi industrialists, up to the point where Mussolini and Hitler attended his parties). After her divorce she moved to London and later on to Los Angeles. There she made her debut in American films(she had already starred in 5 movies prior to her move) with Algiers. She is possibly best known for her roles as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille Samson and Delilah as opposite Bob Hope in My favorite Spy. She appeared in more than 35 movies and almost managed to have more husbands than Liz Taylor(she stopped at 6 so Liz still wins).

So what does this glamour queen on the 40’s have to do with technology? Well, in 1942 her and her husband at the time, George Antheil(a composer, so next time you decide to mock either an actress or a composer for being dumb and not understanding real science you should remember this) were granted a patent for a Secret Communication System. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. It wasn’t implemented by the USA until 1962, when it was used by military ships during a blockade in Cuba.

Still not impressed? Then I suppose I should tell you that the frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in WiFi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.

So go out tonight and have a drink in honor of Ada, Hedy and all the other women in technology.

Thank you, Captain Retarded

So, I finally booked my ticket to go back to Romania for Easter break. Meh. Not exciting. Far more exciting is my trip to Scotland and Brussels before I fly there. That should be fun. But seriously, my airline is retarded. You see, I’m flying through city C(Constanta) to get to city B(Bucharest). City C is considerably closer to my home town. City C is also further away from Brussels compared to city B. However, the ticket for C costs 50 Euros more than the one for B. So to make this clearer for you: despite the fact that we’re stopping in city C, it costs 50 Euros more to get off the plane there.

Dude, that’s retarded.

And now for something completely different, I went to the ball last night. I managed to find a pretty dress and even prettier shoes(seriously, I’m in love with them. I am 5 seconds away from writing a love poem). They’re impossibly skinny heels and rather high as well. But I walked on them. All night. Without falling. Or twisting my ankle. I rock! I might post pictures of the heels or even of me at the ball if I can find a decent one.

My last point of the night. Watchmen is awesome! Seriously, go find a cinema right now and watch it! Warning though, it is violent and graphic so don’t expect unicorns and puppy dog tails. Well, there are some puppy dogs but you don’t want to know what happens to them. If anyone wants a more extensive review, let me know.

I've lost all hope for humanity

A new picture of Charles Manson was released today.

These were two of the comments on one of the websites I follow.

I just...give up. And hope they're playing stupid.

New look

Um...I did mention I am bored, right?

Opinions on bloggie's new look? Credit for the picture in the header goes to frerieke over at flickr, edited by me. Be sure to check out the entry below.

Dude.

Also, cookies is you guess the author of the quote in the header without google.

In which I rant

Dude…I’m tired. My insomnia is coming back with a vengeance. And by that I mean that I now consider myself lucky if I get 3 hours of sleep at night. And the weirdest thing is that I am tired, well, exhausted, but it’s not an ‘I need sleep tired’, but an ‘I need a beach and a cocktail’ tired. Of course, the fact that my department has decided that this is the week they kill us. While everyone else is finishing lectures we’re…not. And not only that but we’ve started labs again and we’re supposed to do these with a partner and my partner isn’t here. Which sucks. Did I mention that this is on top of the huge amounts of work we have to do? And the weekly tests?

Sucks.

Really, really sucks.

But hey, it just gets worse from here. So I should enjoy it, right? Before exams start again.

Fuckity fuck.

And I cannot even find a dress. See, this Cinderella is going to the ball. The chem society ball. Well, chem and every other science they could find, because you wouldn’t want to release us in the general public. Scientists are their own species. * So, yeah, the ball is on Friday. As in less than 2 days from now Friday. And I don’t have a dress. Not even after the almost 3 hours of shopping I did today. I guess that just means more shopping for me tomorrow.

Fuckity fuck again.

The good part is that because of my lack of sleep I am finally up to date with my work. Dude**, I even studied for my law tutorial. That’s how bored I was. I’m writing fanfiction again(as soon as my latest story is going up on ff I will torture you with a link. It’s intense. But I am biased.). No more emails going for weeks without a reply. Next I might start cleaning.

Bwahahahaha. I’m not that crazy.

*Please don’t pet the scientists. And, for your own safety, don’t go near their cages close to feeding time.

**No, I don’t know why I keep using dude. Just go with it.

Also. Chet Baker is awesome. And Noel Gallagher's unplugged album is not bad(The Butterfly Collector and Fade Away are my personal faves.).

Oy, vey, it's back

Before I go to my scheduled post, you must check this out! http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality
It's aweeeeesooommeeeee! (Warning it only works if you have a printer and webcam...if you don't I'm willing to make a video for you just 'cause it's that awesome. Or you can just look it up on youtube.).

Warning: This post contains details about my dating life.

Just thought I'd throw that in. Ahem, now to my point. I have an interesting karma when it comes to dating. Which translates into many interesting exes. There's the dude that started planning our wedding after a month of dating. The ribbons on he chairs were going to be blue. And it was supposed to be on the 12th of July. Can't remember the year. There's the guy that didn't bother telling me about his other girlfriend in a different town. Found out a year after we broke up. Things started making sense. Of course, couldn't forget the guy that showed up at my door at 1.30 in the morning, because he thought we could smoke a cigarette and listen to Bon Jovi. Did I mention we'd gone out once and I had no intention of ever seeing him again? They're just the highlights of a rather long and shall we say, exciting love life. But this karma is transferable. And for the past year and a half I basically only met and dated nice, normal guys. Of course, I've had a couple of real life friends cursing at me because they got the it. Irina, sweetheart, I'm sorry about stalker dude.

Up until now. 'Cause, you see, my most recent ex is apparently also crazy. I won't go into the details here, suffice to say I've had quite an unpleasant surprise this week. Which means that my karma is now officially back. I didn't ask for it. I could very well do without it. If anyone wants it, I'm more then happy to try to send it your way. Hey, it makes for good stories! No one...? Oh well...

At least now I can call another friend and tell him it's safe to go dating. The poor guy had a lot of bad surprises because of it.

Thank you for the happy thoughts

It's not enough that every time I try to read a paper there is an article about the failing economy and recession and whatnot. If it's not something about the 13 year old boy who had a daughter who might possibly not be his. Or the crazy lady that gave birth to the octuplets. All positive news. Cheerful and delightful. So cheerful in fact, they make me want to bang my head against a wall. Nooooo, that couldn't possibly be enough. You had to ruin this one for me too, didn't you?

The one I'm talking about is my monthly chemistry magazine. It's a fun read. Stem cell this, molecule that, bonding there, blah-blah whatever. Not today. I get home and my magazine is waiting for me neatly in the postbox. I go throw a load of laundry in the machine and settle with a cup of tea in the kitchen, ready to be educated.

And then I see it. One article about how BPA(found in plastic bottles) will give us cancer. And then we'll die. Next page. Lab accident kills student. Next page. PFCs(found in food packaging, pesticides, clothing and upholstery) will cause infertility, liver problems and then give us cancer so that we die. Apparently we can't even smoke pot anymore.* Because we'll get testicular cancer and die. **

With all these wonderful articles, no wonder I was wondering about the kitchen, mumbling something about cancer. Which prompted my lovely friends to steal my magazine away from me before I decided to join a nudist colony and never use plastic anything again or sit on furniture. And start smoking weed. At least that's once cancer I can't get.

*not that I do. I'm just making a point.
**as you can see, it was a completely invalid point. Because I don't have testes.
***Also, I am aware the BPA debate has been going on for ages. It's still as depressing. I think I might have to start “Good news and puppies” weekly magazine. Just to cheer the world up.

Sheesh...Next you're going to tell me that watching Heroes will cause me to get cancer. And then die.