Monthly Archives: July 2006

BarCampRDU

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Went to BarCampRDUthis Saturday. It went pretty well for an “unconference”.

Some good talks were seen, and Greg presented some of our ideas in the “Destroy The Music Industry” talk. It seemed to have been well accepted.

Talked to some of the folks from Raleighing and mugshot. The place seemed to be filled with ibiblio and lulu folks as well.

I skipped the ever present agile/extreme talks. For some reason it seems like every time I go to one of those talks it is someone trying to sell a book. I always get a very snake oil vibe that consistently turns me off from the concept.

The “wetware” talk was pretty good, though it hit upon alot of well tread territory (a touch of GTD, mindmaps, personal wiki’s, etc).

The “Future Of Social Browsing” talk was interesting. It was mostly centered around claimid, flock, and mugshot. I like the general idea of openid/claimid alot, but some of the ideas associated with it seem a bit useless (XFN, etc) and seemed to focus mostly on ways geeks can keep up with other geeks.

The “Future of Publishing” talk was pretty lame. More of a sales pitch for a computer book publisher than any real insight. Maybe 10 minutes into the future of publishing, instead of 10 years into the future I was hoping for.

But for a free “unconference”, it was quite interesting. Mostly because of the people there. Which is of course, more or less the point.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

inkscape tracing

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I finally decided to give inkscape a try at importing and vectorizing some of my doodles.

It did a much better job than I expected. It choked on some of the larger doodles, but then, I can’t really blame it for choking on say, doodle31.

Take a look at some of the example traced svgs. That just includes the SVG’s that do not crash firefox ;->

Which reminds me that I need to catch up on the doodle scanning. I think I’m one or two dozen behind.

logo

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I’ve decided I need a logo. An Adrian Likins logo.

What that logo shall be is to be determined.

Once I have a logo, then I can start work on The Brand.

Red Hat High

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I spent a good chunk of this week helping teach a class on music and audio production for Red Hat High, a week long camp for rising 9th graders.

I was very nervous before the class started, as I assume we were under prepared and the students would have trouble with the tools. But that was not the case at all. A few minutes of instructions to get the basic, and they were off running.

The first day or two were mainly getting the students introduced to the tools (Audacity and Hydrogen).

Then after that, we were onto the projects. One of the parts of the camps was that the students are to present what they did over the week tomorrow to all their peers (and parents?). So each student was to prepare 2minutes of audio for the project. They could do pretty much whatever they wanted to. Some wrote pretty sophisticated song patterns in hydrogen, and overdub vocals or freely licensed loops with audacity. Some folks did interviews, or “talk shows”. Pretty high quality output for a week of only a few hours a day (9am-noon everyday).

It was interesting discussing some of the various issues related to copyright and reuse of music with the students, who generally don’t really have to think too much about this.

Spent a few hours today doing a collage/mix/remix of the students work for the presentation tomorrow. I think I managed to learn more than a few things about the tools this week.

We had a pretty good student/teacher ratio (15 students, and typically three teachers [myself, Greg DeKoenigsberg, and a few other folks]). But one things for sure, teach a class of 9th graders will wear you out.

Red Hat High

Posted on by

I spent a good chunk of this week helping teach a class on music and audio production for Red Hat High, a week long camp for rising 9th graders.

I was very nervous before the class started, as I assume we were under prepared and the students would have trouble with the tools. But that was not the case at all. A few minutes of instructions to get the basic, and they were off running.

The first day or two were mainly getting the students introduced to the tools (Audacity and Hydrogen).

Then after that, we were onto the projects. One of the parts of the camps was that the students are to present what they did over the week tomorrow to all their peers (and parents?). So each student was to prepare 2minutes of audio for the project. They could do pretty much whatever they wanted to. Some wrote pretty sophisticated song patterns in hydrogen, and overdub vocals or freely licensed loops with audacity. Some folks did interviews, or “talk shows”. Pretty high quality output for a week of only a few hours a day (9am-noon everyday).

It was interesting discussing some of the various issues related to copyright and reuse of music with the students, who generally don’t really have to think too much about this.

Spent a few hours today doing a collage/mix/remix of the students work for the presentation tomorrow. I think I managed to learn more than a few things about the tools this week.

We had a pretty good student/teacher ratio (15 students, and typically three teachers [myself, Greg DeKoenigsberg, and a few other folks]). But one things for sure, teach a class of 9th graders will wear you out.

[view at adrianlikins.com ]

cvotc event

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I particpated in the cvotc event in Danville this sunday. I had a blast, got worn out, and finish fourth place in my class (novice). Of course, that was out of four. Oh well. First event. A couple of stupid mistakes got me 5’s (highest possible score, with 0 being best). Without that I think I would of been close to second. First place finisher was way out in front, but he was an experienced enduro/scrambles rider.

I thought I was going to get some pics, but I was on the bike from 11am to about 5:30, so didn’t really get a chance. Everyone in my class was riding a sherco 2.9, and made me think that maybe it would be wise to alter the appearance of my bike. They all start looking the same with a bit of mud on them.

4th of July weekend

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As of Friday morning, I still hadn’t completely decided what to do for the extended 4th of July weekend. Eventually decided I should visit my parents.

Then it occurred to me that it would be fun to be able to ride the trials bike on my parents land. But how to get the bike there. I don’t own a truck or a trailer, and my car doesn’t have a trailer hitch.

But perhaps the motorcycle would fit inside the car. It was worth a shot.

So after some measurements with the tape measure, I went to work putting the bike in the back seat of my car. First step was to get the back seat out. Then some minor dissasemly of the bike (wheels, rear fender, and gas tank off). Then a bit of munging, and it fit.

pic of my Sherco 2.9 trials bike in the back of my car

Once I got it packed up, headed home, and unpacked it in the morning.

pic of my Sherco 2.9 trials bike in my parents back yard

My parents have 8 or so acres, so I had plenty of room to ride. The most fun was the creek crossings. Though I ended up with the bike stuck halfway up the bank plenty of times.

Setup some random man made obstacles as well (car ramps, logs, wood piles, etc). So got some practice in. The heat was a bit rough though.