RuthEllison.com

Wow, what a year! 2011 has certainly speed past in a blur. When I started putting this post together, I never realised how much of a truly epic year it has been. There’s been lots of food, travel, conferences, adventures and did I mention food?! Continue reading →

Bailey’s is one of my favourite alcoholic drinks, so when the time came to make cupcakes for CupCakeCamp held at Skepticamp in Sydney, I decided that I needed to do something with Baileys. So here’s my Chocolate Bailey’s Mini Cupcakes, adapted from Ellie’s Lovely Lemon Cupcakes and Maison Cupcake’s Chocolate Bailey’s Cupcakes with Chocolate Bailey’s Buttercream Icing.

Continue reading →

Yesterday, hubby and I (along with a car-load of family & friends) made the very early morning drive over to Sydney for the very first Skepticamp Sydney 2011. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, with lots of interesting things learned.

“SkeptiCamps are informal, community-organized conferences borne from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Everyone from casual skeptics to the experienced participate, give talks and get to know each other. Diverging from the traditional lecture events which have dominated skepticism for decades, these ‘open events’ tear down the barriers to organizing substantive (and fun) events by building on the wildly-successful Barcamp conference model from the tech community.”

Source: Skepticamp.org

Continue reading →

A few months ago, I tweeted about a number of PDF sessions run by Adobe and AGIMO. The slides and advice are now available from AGIMO’s Web Guide PDF Accessibility page.

In summary, PDFs can be used as long at least one other accessible format is provided with all PDF documents.

Continue reading →

It’s the last day of 2010 and it’s time to reflect on what a good year it has been. I’ve helped to organise BarCampCanberra and TEDxCanberra. I attended a number of excellent conferences (including UX Australia and TAMOz), meant lots of interesting people, and celebrated many special birthdays this year (including an 18th, 21st, 30th, 40th and 50th!). I’ve helped to judge the Australian Web Awards and the McFarlane Prize.

My love of robots have continued, with new additions to the robot family including another lawn mower robot, a robot dog from @lozz, and some very cool retro robots.

2010 definitely seem to be the year for babies in our social circle. Every time I opened facebook, it seemed like another friend was having a baby! There were also many engagements, hens nights and weddings.

Most importantly, my interest in skepticism has grown significantly over 2010. I learned about the importance of taking a critical thinking approach to all areas of my life. Attending TAMOz in November has really helped to reinforce my growing love of science and education. I’ve learned about citizen science and grassroots skepticism (take the Stop AVN cause as an example).

So what’s my new year resolutions for 2011?

• Want less
• Do good
• Keep taking a critical thinking and an evidence-based approach to life
• As 2010 has gone past in such a blur, I’m planning on taking the time to slow down so I can appreciate each moment.
• Address my vegetable phobia within the first half of 2011!

A happy new year to all of you!

A belated Merry Christmas and seasons greetings to all of you. Hubby and I spent our first Christmas Day at home. With no commitments, it was a wonderfully relaxed day filled with lots of computer gaming :)

Every year, I hand make a small number of cards which get sent to a select number of friends and family. In return, I sometimes get a Christmas card back. Every year, I go through the whole, “now what can I do with these Christmas cards” thing. This year, I thought I’ll take a quick look at different ways of keeping your Christmas cards out of landfill.

Cute Sock Monkey Christmas Card by sunsetgirl creations

• I love these flickr photos of cute little boxes and magnets made from recycled christmas cards
• Recycled ribbon spool ornaments – this one uses recycled christmas cards and old ribbon spools!
• Birdhouses from Greeting Cards – cute little bird houses
• Recycle and Reuse Christmas Greeting Cards – this is a great resource – lots of links to crafty projects you can do with your christmas cards, including creating gift tags, miniature gift boxes, magnets and more.
• DIY Holiday stars – takes a bit of time but fun looking holiday star, also good as a tree topper
• Recycled Christmas Card Ornaments – make christmas tree ornaments with your old cards.
• Recycle them in your yellow-lidded recycling bin.
• Donate them to your local child care centre, school or nursing home for their craft activities.
• Make them into new cards for the following year.
• Create a keepsake basket from your old cards

Plexiglass trees by Lauren Manning

Avent calendar cones by Francine Clouden

While this isn’t made from Christmas cards, I love this advent calendar made from paper lying around your house.

Any other fun ways to recycle your old cards?

Yesterday afternoon, I received a provocative tweet from my husband. “I have a surprise for you”, stated the first tweet.

“Is it a good surprise?”, I asked.

“Depends”, was the answer.

“Do I get more clues?”, I asked.

“It’s white, and textured and not a cat” was the reply.

Shortly after, I was picked up from work and I got to see my surprise – it was a brand new Kobo eReader from Borders book store! Here’s a brief initial review of the Kobo eReader, based upon my short use of it.

Continue reading →

Like any good information architect, I’ve been doing a bit of a content audit of my clothes and re-evaluating my existing clothes categories. What this has resulted in is a number of clothes that need to be given away. While there are a number of religious-base organisations that are happy to accept our donations through the charity bins or at their shop front, it’s much harder trying to find non-religious organisations.

Here’s a list of non-religious charitable organisations in Canberra that are happy to accept clothing, books and related items. Please feel free to suggest other Canberra based organisations.

• The National Brain Injury Foundation (NBIF) is one of our personal favourites. A shop front is located on Genge Street, in the Griffin Centre. You can support them by purchasing items from the shop front or dropping off a range of items in good condition (we’ve dropped off clothes and household bric-a-brac).
• Lifeline accepts books, magazines, DVD’s, Videos, CDs, computer software, and some Bric-a-Brac. They hold the very excellent Book Fair three times a year in Canberra. For more information about donating items, read Ways You Can Help or drop items off at 66 Heffernan St, Mitchell and all Video Ezy Stores.
• The Smith Family has various donation bins around Canberra. They accept clothing, footwear, blankets and linen only.

As always, please check with individual charities for up-to-date information. Please DO NOT DUMP items outside closed shop fronts or charity bins. It costs charities large amounts of money to clear items that get left out in the open plus it can be a fire hazard. It’s extremely frustrating to see items and even rubbish (including non-working electrical and computer items) dumped next to charity bins. If it’s broken and you don’t want it, neither does the charity!

Other resources:

• Giving unwanted goods to charity – list from the ACT government
• Yoink! – While Yoink! isn’t a charity, it’s a great way to recycle items that you don’t need. I’ve used it numerous times to get rid of unwanted (but functional) items. Plus, it’s been designed and developed here in Canberra!

PS: I wish the Red Cross, RSPCA and Koomarri had store fronts in Canberra!