Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

Recycling and disposing of eWaste can be a challenging and expensive process. But thanks to the good folk at Apple, there will be a free recycling event this weekend in Canberra.

In conjunction with the ACT Government and Queanbeyan City Council, Apple will be holding a community e-waste recycling event on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of August 2009, from 9am until 4pm.

Computers and other e-waste can be dropped off at:

• Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre, Mugga Lane, Symonston
• Mitchell Resource Management Centre, Flemington Road, Mitchell
• Park n’ Ride car park, corner of Cowlishaw and Anketell Streets, Greenway
• Waste Minimisation Centre, 5 Lorn Road, Queanbeyan

All householders and non-commercial organisations can take part by bringing their e-waste (computers, laptop, monitor, scanner, printer and computer-related, peripherals, TVs, video players, stereos and mobile phones) to the drop off locations.

Note that whitegoods, overhead projectors, damaged e-waste, contaminated equipment or other hazardous waste are not accepted through this recycling program.

For more information:

• Phone Canberra Connect on 13 22 81
• Visit www.tams.act.gov.au
• Visit www.apple.com.au/environment/recycling/program - more useful information through this link

Eye sight is blurry upon waking up. Near vision is still very blurry - I need to have the text on my computer monitor set to large!

Far vision is still much clearer.

The surgeon's assistant informed me at my Day 1 check-up that my eyes are not used to focussing on near things. I'll have to work much harder on that to get the eyes used to seeing close. I wonder how much of the near vision blurriness is caused by that?

In hindsight, I should have taken a few more days off work. Sitting in front of the computer for 9 hours straight yesterday resulted in very sore and red eyes. Unfortunately my client has very tight deadlines this week which was why I didn't take any time off.

Everything is going well. I'm pleased by the progress the eyes are making.

Immediately after the surgery my vision was extremely hazy. I had three drops to administer ever hour. I spent a few hours napping as the longer you can keep your eyes shut, the better it helps the healing process.

Day 1 was fairly good. Distant vision was vastly improved. Near vision was still very blurry. I also had my post op check which went well.

Day 2 was even better. Near and far vision was improved. Vision was occassionally hazy but I'm pleased about the progress so far.

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

A night of comedy, spandex, black lace and wicked satire - that describes the current show at Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant in Melbourne. I’ve been to the Dracula’s Cabaret Restaurant in the Gold Coast twice and have loved every minute of the dinner and show combination. The food is great (sourced locally) and the cocktails are just stunning.

My hubby and I will be visiting Melbourne next week as I will be getting laser eye surgery. To celebrate, we are attending Dracula’s on Saturday. We have also ended up with two spare tickets which Dracula’s will not refund.

Do you know anyone who might be interested in buying these two tickets?

The details of the dinner show are as follows:

• Date: Saturday 6th of June
• Time: 6.45pm until late
• Location: 100 Victoria Street, Carlton Victoria 3053
• Price: We paid $72/head but I’m more than happy to negotiate a really good price as I need to move these tickets - please make an offer!

The ticket price includes a 3 course meal, show and a ghost train ride.

Please contact me if you’re interested.

I'm still alive. Caught up with just being and living.

I attended my friend's wedding ceremony last weekend. It was a gorgeous vintage themed wedding. The sky was blue, the sun warm and the atmosphere was just oh so elegant. I snapped the photo above while the professional photography was organising the bridal party and guests for the initial photo shoot.

We went to the Gold Coast for Alastair's 30th birthday over the Easter break, where we spent a wonderful week visiting the theme parks, dinner at Dracula, got some roaring 20's photos taken, and lots of time spent in the massive spa pool. It rained for much of the time that we were there, but that didn't put a damper on things. I had a bit of a incident with my back (which is still causing issues) but all in all, it was a great trip. We had a friend fly in from Perth to celebrate with us so it was really fun!While I'm terribly inactive on LJ, you have better luck keeping up to date with me via twitter (I'm @RuthEllison)!

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

BarCamp Canberra #2 was yet another successful event! There was a great turnout with 71 registered users and other folks dropping in and out through out the day. We had representation from Canberra, Yass, Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne (did I miss out any other cities?). Two streams were running simultaneousness for most of the day with great presentations running in both rooms.

Who presented?

As I have yet to master the art of splitting my self into two, here’s a quick run down of the talks I heard:

• David Page introduced us to the concept of the Yubikey - a usb key authentication system. It provides single or two factor authentication and is quite affordable. Catch The Yubikey presentation on slideshare.
• Rohan Mitchell shared his adventures in online business. My favourite slide from his presentation? Slide 18 The Learning Curve, which involves:
  1. Make something cool
  2. ???
  3. Profit!

  Catch the rest of his Adventures in Online Business on slideshare.

• One of the highlights was Pamela Fox’s presentation on making the google map for the Victorian bushfires. It was fascinating hearing about the solutions they came up with in the challenging environment, with key issues being the short time frames and lack of open data. It really highlighted the problems we face when data (particularly emergency data) is not made available in formats that enable reuse. Read more on Pamela’s blog post BarCamp Canberra 2: Mapping the Fires.
• Another highlight was Joseph Gentle’s presentation on Artificial intelligence. He took a complex subject and made it really easy to understand. Loved it.
• Craig Thomler took us through his experiences on blogging as a public servant - a very informative presentation.
• Linda Gehard ran an interactive impromptu workshop on the good and bad of mobile phone design.
• Darren Menachemson gave an interesting talk about designing out evil, complete with great graphs!
• Caronne Carruthers-Taylor gave an interesting presentation on her experiences with UX and design. Catch her presentation Change the world with UX: user experience in federal government on slideshare.
• Dean K held an interesting discussion about the No Clean Feed recent rally and opportunities to influence the decision makers. He also raised the idea that the solutions we propose need to provide a way for Stephen Conroy to save face.
• Nathanael Boehm introduced us to Resilient Nation Australia.

My presentation

I did a light hearted presentation on The Uncanny Valley:

Find out what else happened

Didn’t make it to BarCamp Canberra #2? You can:

• Watch the presentations on slideshare
• See the photos on flickr
• Find out who came to BarCamp Canberra #2
• Catch the twitter stream
• Visit the websites mentioned in the presentations, tagged in my delicious bookmarks

Thanks

Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein, Nathanael Boehm, Craig Thomler, Rae Buerckner, Darren Menachemson) for putting together a great event and the sponsors (acidlabs, Five Senses Coffee, UX Australia,
Keith Lang, Australian Anthill, Electric Shadows Bookshop).

Can’t wait for BarCamp Canberra #3!

Originally published at RuthEllison.com. You can comment here or there.

It’s Ada Lovelace Day - an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

From the Ada Lovelace Day pledge site:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

I have many female friends who are doing wonderful work in the technology industry - too many to name but here’s a few Aussie females that I’ll like to sing out about.

• Donna - she is a great information architect, the Queen of Card Sorting and contributes much of her time to the web community. She’s always happy to share her knowledge and experience.
• Caronne - I love her passion for the work we do. She’s an extremely supportive person and manages to balance work, life, web community stuff and life with two teens. She does amazing stuff with advocating great user experiences in Government agencies that many people don’t hear about!
• Susan - one of the many challenging things of being a women is the ability to juggle multiple stressful components of our life. Susan is amazing - she loves the work she does and some how, manages to balance work, family, photography, blogging and web stuff!
• Viv - a special person I used to work with who is passionate about accessibility and user experience. She’s a solid rock for any team that she’s on and is always quietly working away in the background getting stuff done. It’s people like Viv who work so hard and never seem to get recognition for the hard work they do - so here’s my shout out to you Viv!
• Lisa - is amazing. She knows a lot of things about accessibility, usability and user experience. We have a very similiar approach to the work we do. She’s a very calming influence and I admire her passion for the work we do.

There are many other females out there who also doing great work (I’m looking at you Teresa, Amie, Suze, Lana!).

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

I'm very pleased to have been given the thumbs up that my laser eye surgery can go ahead! It was a bit dicey for a bit as I'm a borderline case. The good news is that it can be done, but it will have to be done in the Melbourne clinic of the company that I've chosen. All post op care can be done in the Canberra clinic.

Hubby and I will take a few days off work, drive down to Melbourne, have the surgery then head home.

I've scheduled it for early June as I should have completed my project by then.

In other exciting news,my littlest sister has passed her driving test today.