We just got back from Val D'Isere, France on Saturday night - more on that another time (oh the stories!). It hasn't been all fun and games though. When I'm not at my full time job, here are some of the things I've been spending my time on:



We've been tooling away at this little project and although sometimes it's hard to make time for it, I genuinely think it's an interesting little online space. I was really excited when the amazing Cory Doctorow linked to one of my posts on the wonderful Boing! Boing!, resulting in thousands of hits to the page. I'll admit that I was a bit star struck (Cory Doctorow said, "Amy sez!!!" OH. MY.).

Anyhow, here are links to some recent posts by me:

• Murder Inc.- The Psychology of the Battlefield
• iPhone Users Keep Snow Reporting Honest
• Enchanted Dolls
• Orson Welles on Privacy, the Passport and Personal Rights (you can read what Boing! Boing! has to say about the post here)
• The Love of a Powerful Woman

Lost and Looking is a project I came up with because I find the Missed Connections posts on Craig's List to be heartbreaking, sad and hopeful all at the same time. I am also trying to take more photos and push myself a little bit in terms of what I am photographing. The goal is to post one image a day to loosely correspond to a Missed Connection post from the previous day. You can learn more about it here, follow along on Twitter or join the Facebook group. Oh, and this was my first experience buying and figuring out how to use my own domain name. Yay me!


I am currently working with a fantastic group of people to bring Ignite London #2 to this wonderful city. The first one was amazing - great speakers, a supportive, capacity crowd and a wonderful venue partner in Ginglik. The next Ignite London will be held on Tuesday, March 2nd at The Luminaire to coincide with Global Ignite Week. O'Reilly has managed to get people from six continents and 60 cities involved and are expecting 600+ talks and over 10,000 people to be involved. There's even one being held in Antarctica!

It is pretty cool to be involved in this kind of global event. I also love the sense that we're all working towards creating this great experience together, though in some cases we are located hundreds of thousands of miles away from one another. We are currently accepting proposals from speakers (until February 9th) and will be releasing information on tickets within days - along with the launch of a new website and an announcement about some pretty fantastic speakers we've already confirmed. If you want to follow along, visit the Ignite London website or follow us on Twitter.



Last, but nicest, is that we're getting married this spring. Neither of us are fussy wedding people and we're just going to do something very small with a few very close friends and family. I really never thought I was the marrying kind, but I'm excited about this - not the wedding itself but being married to this particular, quirky, kind, wonderful man.

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Those are the highlights, crammed in between a week in the French Alps and obsessive reading of the Steig Larsson Millennium trilogy. I've got a few things up my sleeve yet and have been doing a little bit of freelance work for some lovely companies in my homeland. It's not perfect and sometimes I feel a little overrun, but as the days stretch longer and it gets a little brighter outside, the only word that feels really appropriate right now is, swoon!

How has your January been? Are you working on anything you are proud of? I'd love to hear about it.

I am totally making these cutie pie olive and carrot penguin appetizers at my next cocktail party. Maybe a pre-birthday drink fest in February before dragging reluctant friends out for karaoke?

I think they are the perfect martini favour.

Image by Mathea Tanner.

Quiet and pretty.

Via @pekingspring

We've been working from home today because of a continuous snow fall in London. The biggest worry here is that you'll be able to get to where you're going but won't be able to get home after wards.

My Canadian friends would laugh. In Saskatchewan we lived with feet of snow and -30 degree temperatures for months on end. And today I've been driven to stay indoors because of a few inches but did sneak out into the danger zone to take the above first person footage with my Flip.

The truth is that this place is really not equipped to deal with this kind of weather. There are no (or very few) snowploughs and it takes forever for the streets to be gritted and the sidewalks shoveled and salted. We don't use winter tires and the snow quickly turns to glare ice when the temperature drops. In a city with the congestion of London, slippery roads very quickly translate into car wrecks and is treacherous for pedestrians.

Tomorrow is supposed to be better, but heavy snow is in the forecast for the entire weekend. Hopefully it all passes by the 16th or our flights to France may be very, very delayed.

It is pretty though.

In addition to moving from Cardiff to London this year (yay!), I've also had a great time of exploring new places and re-visiting others I'd never been to before. So, for posterity sake here's the list (* means I'd never been before):

• Paris, France
• Versailles, France*
  
• Istanbul, Turkey*
  
• Indianapolis, USA*
  
• Bath, UK
  
• Manchester, UK*
• Salisbury, UK*
• Tenby, Wales*
  
• Toronto, Canada
• Niagara Falls, Canada
  
• Calgary, Canada
  
• Banff, Canada
• Bad Lands, Canada
  
• New York, USA
  
• Boston, USA*
  
• Rotterdam, Netherlands*
  
• Amsterdam, Netherlands*
  
• San Francisco, USA
  
• Monterrey, USA*
  
• Carmel, USA*
  
• Yosemite, USA*

Places I visited but didn't include on the list because I was either there fleetingly, so often that it didn't feel like a journey, or because the place is too familiar include: Regina and Regina Beach (Canada), Swansea and Ystradgynlais (Wales) and Detroit (USA).

I am really looking forward to the next year and the journeys it will bring. I'm especially excited at the prospect of getting to Japan, India and Italy, which have all been at the top of my list for a long time. Really, I am just very lucky to be in a position to travel so much and, as an added bonus, to do so with someone I love. (Barf, right?)

I've just posted a bunch of photos from our November 2009 trip to Manchester. You can see the rest here.

Happy New Year mittens! I'm thinking it will be a good one. x

Image from Hilobrow.