Category: Talk Nerdy To Me

In my professional life, I run two businesses (my web design biz and Camp Tech, which offers practical, professional tech skills training in a fun & friendly environment in downtown Toronto). I am so happy to celebrate Camp Tech’s first birthday tomorrow!  Of course, celebrations are better when you include other people, so to help spread the cheer, we’re doing a 50% off sale.  You can get a ticket to any class in Camp Tech’s fall roster for half price, if you use the promo code BIRTHDAY at checkout.  Yay!

NOTE: The promo code only works on Tuesday, August 20, from 12:05am – 11:55pm EST.  There are 10 tickets per class on sale.

 

There’s a little feature on me in TorontoMomNow, posted today.  They call me “tech mom”.  I figure that’s pretty accurate.  Read the article here.

Yesterday I attended the “Hack for Her” event at Google Waterloo, co-presented by Girl Geeks Toronto, Girls in Tech Toronto, and Women && Tech.  It was so much fun!  You can read all about the event in this article.

The photos above are from the day, which included a mini hack-a-thon (the photo of me looking like a total bossypants while presenting my team’s pitch is by Dov Stern), followed by drinks, food, and total goofiness hanging out at Google Waterloo. It’s a super fun place, but I don’t know if I would want to work there every day. Feels a bit like hanging out in a University dorm.

PS – I really really wanted to go down the Google slide, but it was closed.  Liability’s a bitch, huh?  Instead I posed a photo looking like I went down the slide.

 

 

Do you follow Chris Hadfield on Twitter?  If not, you totally should.  Commander Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut living in space, onboard the International Space Station, and he’s very active on Twitter.  He shares breathtaking photos of Earth (like the one he posted last night, above, of the full moon over the Earth’s atmosphere), and interacts with other people.  If you tweet to him, odds are, he’ll tweet you back!  Technology is so amazing.

I was at a small business tax seminar last night, and my pal Jenna and I were talking about scanning documents and receipts.  I scan important docs, but I’m still pretty old school with my receipts – I keep all my business receipts in files.  After almost 7 years of being self-employed, that stuff is really starting to pile up.  I decided right then to go completely paperless, and stop the mess.

Thing is, my scanner sucks.  It’s perfectly functional, but it’s a beast… I have to pull it out, set it up, connect it to my computer, use the lame-o software that it came with to do the scanning, then take the document into Photoshop to touch it up, and finally save it as a PDF.  Mega pain.

Jenna said that she uses a Doxie to scan everything, and it couldn’t be easier.  The Doxie is small (but big enough to scan a fullsize piece of paper), lightweight, and super easy.  It automatically saves documents as searchable PDF files.  It has fantastic software that plays nicely with Evernote, Dropbox, and more.  It easily syncs to your computer (or iPad or iPhone).

I just ordered one. Take that, clutter!