Tag: Twitter

2016 in numbers

2016 in numbers – or how to make sense of your personal data

thegirlinthecafe

Here is a little disclaimer for this post:

  1. <nerd alert on>
  2. This has become a bit of a long post … don’t say I did not warn you
  3. And I am not a designer – so this is not pixel perfect. But for this purpose it is good enough for me. If you look very carefully you’ll probably spot some pixels that aren’t completely aligned but then I am not a designer. I hacked this together in Google Draw, it’ll have to do. I’ll try to explain how I gathered all the data.

1. Cycling to work

This shows the number of times I have cycled to work this year. In order to automatically track this I created an IFTTT recipe which gets triggered on my phone  when I pass a certain location on my route to work. I can only pass this spot on bicycle and will only pass it when I cycle to the office, so this works fine for me. IFTTT logs this in a Google sheet, so the only thing I need to do at the end of the year is check how often this is logged.

So I cycled to work 105 times this year.

  • (Since I am also tracking when it rains (as you do…)) – I only had to cycle 5 time through rain. This is only 4,7% of the time (quite amazing when you think about it).
  • 105 cycle trips to work have saved me about €220 in gasoline and has also saved me from the stress and frustration of standing in traffic jams during rush hour.
  • It hasn’t saved me from some serious bruises though, as it turned out that taking a turn on a frozen cyclepath makes you fall flat on your face… (be careful cycling in the wintertime is the lesson here).

And finally, here is a graph (click for larger version) showing how much I cycled per month. (from the last 4 years). Seems like I finally figured out this year that I can cycle to work in the fall/winter too. Let’s see if we can tackle the spring too in 2017.

Cycle stats
Cycle stats

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To all of us who need some …

thegirlinthecafe 6 Comments

(If you like the above Sondre Lerche – Good Luck song, download it free and legal in MP3 format here)

Latest news from the find-a-job-rollercoaster-ride:

I have not heard back from the recruiter I visited yesterday, so either the jobs were already gone or she didn’t like me. I will send her an email tomorrow to check up on it.

And after a very long day of waiting for things to happen today (ok I admit that I did stare at my phone for some time today!) – I got a phone call (really like it when they call, I like to think that they are genuinly interested when they do) from two new recruiters, and an email from a third.

So here is the plan:

1. I will meet with recruiter one at 10am tomorrow for an introduction interview (that’s them trying to figure me out)

2. At 12.00pm I will meet recruiter two. Now recruiter two is incredibly interesting as in one hand she holds my CV and in her other hand she holds my dream job. I have seen the job description and checked out the website of the company where the job is at, and oh my – how I would want that job! She will interview me to get to know me and to hear more about my work experience and after that she will decide if she is going to propose me as a candidate. I am not counting on anything, but fingers crossed here.

3. On Monday I will have another introduction meeting with recruiter three.

So that will keep me occupied the next couple of days, and the recruiter interest is kind of a good thing. Of course I am also still sending of job applications and I am amazed by the number of recruitment agencies in London. One of them surely must have a job for me?

Five very random notes to end this post with:

  • I am hugely enjoying Jamie Cullum’s new album (I’m all over it is one of my favourite songs). Anybody else out there likes him?
  • Here is a very handy page telling you (in a beautifully designed way!) when and when not to use an apostrophe. Very useful!
  • The Brit with the most difficult to guess twitter name must be Alexander Armstrong. Xanneroo? Come on! I do like him though, he is tall and lanky, a tiny bit posh and very funny in Armstrong & Miller. Miller is on Twitter too by the way. (Bennylicious, honestly guys ..!)
  • And actor Jim Carrey is on Twitter too. Not only that, he has one of the most creative websites I have seen in a while. Check it out on JimCarrey.com. Amazing.
  • I am trying to think if I am going to do a this-is-not-a-christmascard-exchange this year. What do you all think? I know I made the unforgivable mistake of not posting all your cards online last year, but I have just ordered a scanner and I promise that that won’t happen again. I am just polling interest here, the official announcement might come later – if I have a go from my audience … (oh an to take the stress out of this all – we could move the whole process to January?)

Why I like Twitter

thegirlinthecafe 15 Comments

(Photo by Shareski licensed under CC)

I think Twitter is dividing the world in two: people who absolutely don’t get it and people who do understand that Twitter is indeed pointless babble most of the time, but it’s also useful at times.

It took me a while before I understood the usefullness of Twitter. I mean, what could possible be useful about shooting off short 140 characters long messages in cyberspace right? And do I really need to know about what people have for lunch and what the weather is like where they live.

But maybe I can explain why Twitter is becoming more useful to me by giving you some recent examples.
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SweetArts, Crowdspring and Chewinggum actually

thegirlinthecafe 13 Comments

Yes it has been a bit quiet and I also sometimes wonder myself if this film ever gets made but things have started rolling again now. I had a production meeting yesterday and while we still haven’t found a Dan yet we are now also working on confirming locations. We also know that the shoot will take 4 days, which will probably be a part of the weekend and some working days. Finding Dan is probably going to be a nightmare (there is only one Bill Nighy in this world and he is way out of our league and also the busiest man on earth) but let’s see.

There are so many loose ends to this film at the moment that I just try to take it one day at the time and trust that my producer knows what she is doing. She does because she is good. I relax while thinking about how I want to shoot things and drink tea, lots of tea. While nibbling on a Jammie Dodger.

I’ll keep you posted.

Apart from the film, I am trying out Crowdspring because I want a decent logo for a business card and other purposes. Crowdspring works as follows: you pay them the money you want to spent, you set a time limit (next Monday is the expiry date for mine) and designers around the world can submit their design. I pick the one I like best, designer gets paid – simple. I like the idea of it, the fact that people around the world can submit their work.

Choosing one I like is more difficult than I thought though. Actually there aren’t many that I really like just yet (I am quite picky) so I hope some more suggestions will come in. If you want to give your opinion (please do, I could do with some second opinions) have a look at what has been submitted so far.

And the Chewinggum actually, well what can I say. Love is all around.

Oh, and Stephen Fry on Twitter will brighten your day if you like the man. He is currently in Africa filming Douglas Adams’ book Last Chance to See as a documentary. If you are on Twitter too, let me know, I would love to follow my readers. You can follow me here.