Happy Birthday Fireproof, thanks for being awesome! x

Thank you for all your get well messages and things, they were of course vital to my healing process, so thanks! :)
OK let the blogging continue!

Danielle Bunten Berry was one of the great innovators of multiplayer gaming and transformed the gaming space with the funky M.U.L.E. from 1983. In the game, four colonists struggle for a new planet’s resources using customisable cyborg mules. But the game is not about a violent struggle, it is about business, and just as in ordinary business you can either compete or co-operate. The game was one of the early titles published by Electronic Arts, a newly founded company dedicated to treating their developer talent as artists and stars, and Danielle certainly was one.

However, Danielle Bunten Berry wasn’t officially a heroine until 1992. He was a hero. Daniel was a male to female transsexual, and in 1992 performed a sex change to finally be the gender she wanted to be.  She later regretted the decision, quoting lost relationships, a disconnection from her old life and a lack of understanding from the people around her.

In 1998 Danielle was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association. Two months later, she died from cancer, never finishing the Internet version she was working on of her 1983 hit M.U.L.E.

Even with her success and career in the relatively open-minded business of game development, Danielle struggled, just like many people living outside of the norm still do. Once, that norm was just being male, and for a big part it still is. For me, recognising heroines and heroes that bring something good to the world while daring to show who they are is a big step in overcoming prejudices. That is why I want to celebrate Danielle Bunten Berry.

Today is International Ada Lovelace Day! An international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. We’re fans of all those things here at Media Molecule so we had to join in the other thousands of blogs worldwide that are celebrating today.

Not sure who Ada Lovelace was? Well, she’s most well known for writing what is considered to be the worlds first computer programme…

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was born on 10th December 1815, the only child of Lord Byron and his wife, Annabella. Born Augusta Ada Byron, but now known simply as Ada Lovelace, she wrote the world’s first computer programmes for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage had invented.

Ada had been taught mathematics from a very young age by her mother and met Babbage in 1833. Ten years later she translated Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s Analytical Engine, appending notes that included a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the machine – the first computer programme. The calculations were never carried out, as the machine was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

Understanding that computers could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, Ada suggested that the Analytical Engine “might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” She never had the chance to fully explore the possibilities of either Babbage’s inventions or her own understanding of computing. She died, aged only 36, on 27th November 1852, of cancer and bloodletting by her physicians.

Andra Keay has made a rather nice presentation about Ada for today too:

Read more about Ada Lovelace on Wikipedia, check out the discussion on Twitter with #ALD10 or head over to the official Ada Lovelace Day site, where you can register your blog and submit your favourite heroines as part of the celebration today.

Last year we celebrated Ada Lovelace by making a rather cute Ada Lovelace costume for your Sackgirl, which is still available to download from the PlayStation Store.

We will be donating some money to the various charities doing their best to help out, and we’re posting this here to ask if you might do the same. Pwetty pwease?

If you can spare even a small amount, then please check out this page on the BBC to find out how to help. Thanks all.

Requirements:

• Must be able to play a gig in Surrey, UK in December

• Must be awesome!

• Must be glamorous, to match our party getup.

• Must be able to keep a straight face whilst game developers dance around them.

• Must be prepared for stage invasion at any moment

• Must be up for a good ol’ drunken cheesy sing-along

In return we will give you some money, and the odd glass of champagne! To apply, send an email to jobs@mediamolecule.com ideally with links to some sample music. Thanks :)

It’s made by our friends over at Doublefine – they’re awesome. No really, we’re really good friends with them, look here’s a video in which Tim Schafer calls us jerks!

Anyway, we took some photos of it as it ran for its life underneath a sofa prepared to turn us all in to Human Slaves in an Insect Nation (the spiders are not insects, but in a war they will side with the insects). Ahem.

Sackboy even came and said ‘hello!’. He didn’t seem too phased by its hairy legs and the cluster of eyes on its forehead. It’s probably that big wooly hat keeping his head a bit too warm.

Come to think of it, kengo is quite a good name for a pup isn’t it? Don’t tell Kengo I said that though, he might come over here, bark a bit and try to hump my leg or something!

Kevin Derken, who has chosen to be known as klav9 in the world of internets, sent us a ‘selection’ of various stickers he made for a gallery installation last August, isometric pixely chaps based on famous characters from movies, games and that weird and wonderful place: reality.

The truly awesome stickers were distributed throughout the office; personally I ended up with an Anchorman set, a Ghostbuster, and some members of Team Zissou.

Other things we got sent after talking loudly on twitter: lots of teabags!

Thank you Mm friends, you really are the best people ever!