Chris Betcher

A few weeks ago, I got an email at work advertising a free technology event for teenage girls run called DigiGirlz .  It was being run by Microsoft Australia and it's aim was to promote careers in the IT industry for girls.  It's a good idea. Women are far too under-represented in IT in Australia (and probably other parts of the world too) so I'm all for supporting any initiative that can help attract smart, creative women into the world of technology. The event sounded like it would actually be pretty interesting.  It was being held at Microsoft's main Australian Offices at North Ryde and offered a chance to meet some of the inspirational women who work at Microsoft to find out what they do, and to have a chat with several Australian universities about the sorts of career paths that IT might offer. There was also a couple of hands-on workshops in Microsoft's Photosynth and DeepZoom technologies, as well as a chance to to see the new Project Natal gaming platfor...

I take a class of kids with some pretty severe learning difficulties once a week to do some computer stuff with them.  A few weeks ago, one of the girls finished her work early and since there was only a few minutes till the bell she asked if she could play Tetris online .  A moment later when I walked by she was playing the game and she was totally awesome at it!  I mean, I was blown away at just how fast and accurate she was...  this is from a student that usually really struggles with many other intellectual tasks. Tetris, although based on a simple concept, is a game that requires a good sense of spatial awareness, timing and multitasking to play well... and this girl was playing really well! I called her regular teacher over and pointed out how good this girl was at the game.  Her teacher had never actually played Tetris before and wasn't quite sure how the game worked, so I asked the student to give her teacher a lesson in how to play it.  It was gre...

Thanks to my Montreal mate, Sharon Peters for pointing me to this hilarious video highlighting the side effects of Halo 3.   I laughed and laughed... not that I would be obsessive, or anything like that, but I did find this very funny.  ;-) [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZOkF0McZKIw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]