About Laurie Darcey

Welcome to Naturally Speaking: a website devoted to my wildlife and conservation interests, highlighting my love of nature photography and personal travel experiences.

I spend my copious free time traveling the world and am an avid nature photographer. My work has been published in books and newspapers around the world.

You can contact me via email at led AT perlgurl DOT org.

You can also find me all over the web:
Flickr|Yahoo! 360|Friendster|Linked In|MSN Spaces|Blogger|Phlog

On The Early Years

I grew up in California, Switzerland and New England before heading to school in Santa Cruz, California, where I spent time stalking wild sea otters and hiking at the Northern Elephant seal rookery at Año Nuevo State Reserve.

On Travel

I've traveled extensively and the list of places I've visited grows all the time. I've criss-crossed the United States and Canada several times, alone and with others and I've lived and worked abroad. I've traveled by foot, by car, by train, by plane, by ferry. I speak a few languages, enough to be passably polite, but mostly badly.

Thank goodness a smile goes a long way, that's all I have to say.

My parents will tell you I'm a picky eater. This was certainly true when I was 8, but when I went off to college, I decided I didn't want to miss out on cultural experiences. And the easiest wy to experience culture is to eat, so if it's not endangered or likely to land me in the hospital, I'll try just about anything once. So yes, I've eaten gator on a stick in New Orleans, frogs in France, Indian Ocean oysters so fresh they wriggle when you put lemon juice on them, wild game in Kenya, wild boar stew in Japan, exotic truffles smuggled into China via someone's socks and apple tarts in Brittany. I have a special love for barbequed freshwater eel. My husband and I love to sample local beverages as well, from the wine regions of South Africa and California to the beers of Ireland and Asia.

I've got tons of travel stories...

In South Africa, I dove with 4 meter long great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated bull elephant. This inspired me to start an online African Field Guide. I've been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine with two male lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup d'état in Thailand, walked part of the Great Wall of China.

And written several completely unrelated novels.

On Love

I met my husband, Shane, while we were both in college. We bonded while roadtripping and enjoy international travel, photography and backpacking. We circumnavigated the planet for our honeymoon and I still haven't gone through all 80+ GB of pictures. I've also started dabbling with wildlife and nature videos. Short ones, often available on my sometimes on, sometimes off, nature podcast. We recently moved back to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

On Work

I got a BS in Computer Science at the University of California Santa Cruz, which resulted in a successful career in software development. A couple of years ago, I founded a mobile software company named after the brain sucking monster of Xhosa and Zulu tribal mythology, the Mamlambo. Together with my husband, we run Mamlambo, a wireless developer and content provider with an environmental twist. Some of our mobile applications help support conservation efforts for wildlife around the world.

I am a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the IEEE Women in Engineering Society, and Women In Technology.

More Pics (From My Flickr Account)

On PERLGURL.ORG

Since a certain perl personality asked, let's clear this up, shall we? Perl stands for "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" and it's long been one of my favorite programming languages. The three books I took to college were Strunk & White, UNIX in a Nutshell, and Learning Perl (Camel was too expensive!).

Once upon a time, I had great plans to run a website that covered all things perl-related. I had just finished school and wanted to move my website off .edu servers I had administered since high school. Shane, my boyfriend at the time, gave me the domain perlgurl.org for my birthday. Yes, he gave me a domain for my birthday, isn't that sweet? (He still renews it, too!)

But as time went on, I decided, for a variety of reasons, to stop using my personal website for tech-related stuff and it became solely about my interests and travels. Why? The short answer is that I had to say RTFM one too many times and I was getting a bit cranky. I have always been someone who wants to share knowledge - that's why I write and tech review. But it seems like every time I try, I get inundated with demands (not requests) for me to solve other peoples' programming problems and get treated like I caused them in the first place. Now, instead, I lurk on the perl forums... anonymously posting little tidbits here and there. ;)