In the spirit of anarcho-capitalist-warm-fuzzy-anti-establishment (alright so that’s pushing it) consciousness expansion and technological empowerment, I am proud to announce the foundation of a series of meeting guaranteed to satiate your curiosity, tittilate your senses, and delight your sense of accomplishment. It’s an offshoot of NH Media Makers geared towards creating a fun learning environment for new technlogies.
The Time:Sunday, October 5th 11am to 1pm - Date and Time unconfirmed! Watch this post for changes!
Meeting will officially start at 11:30 to give everyone time to mingle and get settled. Meeting may end earlier or run later than 1pm. Let me know if there are any conflicts here!
The Goal: To provide an open, informal, and comfortable learning environment for anyone who is interested in “new media”, specifically internet-based forms of media, and the systems and tools which make the newest forms of media run, Macs, Windows PCs, and *nix-based systems. If you don’t know the first thing about Macs, Windows PCs or what *nix even is, it’s ok. If using the formatting tools on your email program are intimidating, or if the term “formtatting tools” leaves you at a loss for words, that’s ok too.
Meeting #1: Intro to Blogging
This is for the person who says to themselves “I want to get my writing published on the internet, and I want it to look professional and attractive.” Or “How do I write things to put up on the internet?” Or “What the heck is a blog?”
For this meeting, I can and will personally commit to going over the basics of Wordpress, since I am most familiar with that. I will also go over some HTML 101 topics, which is critical for writers who wish to publish on the internet. I am looking for help for people who want to talk about other platforms, TypePad, Drupal, etc etc.
The only requirement for attending is a desire to learn more about computers and the internet. The requirement for presenting is to have something you want to share with others. That’s absolutely it.
Of course we’ll do our best to stick to one topic per meeting, to give all attendees the best introduction and help on each of the billion topics as possible.
I am also looking for is people who want to learn! Tell everybody and their brother who has ever wanted to publish something to the internet. Come find out how to run your very own blog, and help us decide what the most enticing topic of conversation is for the next meetup!
Future ideas include:
HTML and CSS 101 - Don’t even know what CSS stands for? That’s ok! Learn the basics of HTML, XHTML and CSS, and get reference resources and practice ideas.
Video meeting - From the basics of using your webcam to slap a video up on YouTube, to putting together or participating in a web series.
Photography meeting - Photophiles share their favorite techniques, tips, and equipment recommendations. Figure out how to share your work, get noticed, and enjoy photography more.
Podcast/audio meeting - Wonder what a podcast is? Want to know how to listen to them, even if you don’t have an iPod? Want to learn how to make audio to distribute via “podcast” or the internet? We’ll go over all that good stuff!
Image editing - Ever wonder how the captions get on all those lolcats? Want to crop a photo so you can email it? There are all kinds of easy ways to edit images, and lots of folks to share their favorite techniques.
M$ Alternatives - Don’t want to pay for licenses for the Inext generation of Microsoft Office or Outlook? That new version of AIM really making your computer choke? There are alternatives, and best of all… they’re 100% FREE.
TV Alternatives - Don’t throw away your television, but do figure out how to make your home network, internet-based content and your TV circumvent your pricey cable bill.
Windows 101 - Learn more about the system you might have been working with for years. What to turn off, what to keep on, how to maintain and support one of the most popular OSes in the world for the best possible experience.
Mac 101 - Learn what it takes to make the most out of a system known for it’s sleek, artful presentation. It’s not just for artists and college students! Come see the real thing and learn how enjoyable and approachable the Mac OS can be.
Linux 101 - No neckbeard required. It’s an open-source (community supported), lean, mean operating system. Linux may run some your favorite sites, but it can run your home computer in ways you might not have expected.
And that’s really just the list of topics I came up with in a short amount of time. There are probably a few dozen that could take up several meetings to cover the basics! Of course no one has to attend ALL meetings, and I’d encourage everyone to follow their passion and speak their mind. These meetings are meant for you, for me, and for anyone else who wants to attend. As I learned from the GI Joe cartoon: Knowing is half the battle. If you’re fighting with your concerns that you just “don’t get” computers, or code, or a specific kind of tech, it’s OK! Bring your questions, bring your lack of experience. We’re here to share!
So please, comment, email, tell a friend. We’ll be here, and we’d love to see you, too.
Note: I’d love to be able to webcast or record the instruction part of the session for future reference, anybody interested in helping with that, email me.
First off, it was great to see everybody again! I had missed the last two Media Makers events and kicked myself pretty hard both times. Thanks to my cat and the fact that I have a memory like a (rusted) steel trap, I was able to make it out to Newmarket in time to schmooze a little before everything got started.
Everybody is really busy! I took some general notes on each person and everybody had something fun or interesting to share.
Talked about film projects he’s working on, stuff in conjunction with NewtonStudios.com and BostonFilms.com (bostonfilms.com links to a weird page about internet connection sharing??) - Zerk.tv
Mentioned that he is scoring a film (horror film I think it was).
Bryan White of Cinema Suicide -
Launched Soundtrack Apocalisse, featuring soundtrack reviews. Apocalisse is Italian for apocalypse! Neat!
He’s got tshirts for Cinema Suicide now! They’re really cool looking, done in fake movie poster style, with Cinema Suicide’s URL on them. Go get one now so you can say you were in at the ground floor.
Quoted by Ghost Adventures, who will soon be putting out a DVD (which may or may not contain some of those CS group quotes). (Correct me if I’m citing the wrong Ghost Adventures group.)
He mentioned gearing up to do a documentary about the less-than-savory history of Portsmouth, NH and doing some paranormal investigation to coincide with the area. Talked about a lot of really interesting history surrounding Portsmouth. Things I’d never heard before like all the old aqueduct work that has survived, and the old tunnels under the city surviving from old military installations. It sounds like there are a lot of really fascinating subjects he could cover in a Portsmouth documentary and I look forward to hearing way more about it.
Cinema Suicide got covered by local entertainment paper: The Wire. The story is mentioned on the front page, so if you see a copy, go grab it!
Rob is a writer, a musician and photographer. He’s got a pretty awesome flickr profile at santaplausible (which is a name I just absolutely love, by the way). He’s looking to collaborate and learn more about cool stuff to do on the internet.
Shawn is a writer and I believe he said he’s also done some teaching. He’s interested in getting involved in more media and web-based projects.
Over at GeekForceFive, he experimented with adding a Question of the Day to a video post he did regarding his recent NIN concert experience. This got some of the best feedback he’s seen yet, and he is considering making Question of the Day a regular feature on GFF. Sounds like a terrific idea and I hope he keeps us posted!
He’s also forging a community area for GFF at geekforcefive.ning.com - ning.com being a resource for people who want to take a sort of plug-and-play approach to social networking/community sites.
Got BIG plans for the upcoming SXSW, trying to get a panel together on “Can social media save the world?” and is looking for support to get this exciting concept off the launchpad and into the conference. The idea behind this panel was inspired by her recent experiences at PodCamp Boston.
Got a site going called UptownUncorked.com, which has a neat wine glass shape going on with the first U that I think is really neat and would totally like to see develop more as a concept.
Recently attended a Mashable event in Boston. Also mentioned that she’s a frequent attendee of Boston. Any Media Maker folks who are interested in Boston events should probably contact her for info on carpooling and so forth.
I finally got to meet @debdebtig! I’ve been following her for a while on Twitter because she’s a locally active person. It’s nice to be able to put a face to a name like that.
Deb is a tech communicator (all types of media, not just writing), as well as a local farmer!
She’s got nheggs.blogspot.com and will be branching that out to include an official site (NHeggs.com) as well as adding some web service profiles for her chickens, giving people a day-in-the-life look into what it’s like to be a hen on the farm.
Anecdotally - Back-in-the-day, her husband ran the largest BBS in southern New Hampshire! How cool is that? I myself didn’t spend much time on the internet during the BBS days, I spent more time trying to stay up late playing Shining Force on the Sega channel without getting caught. :3
He’s also written a book! It’s called Practical Rails Plugins and it’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s pretty exciting to have published authors in our midst.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Nick is a freelance developer, working primarily with Ruby on Rails, but is awesome enough to provide services above and beyond that as duty calls.
He’s also been involved with a zine called ink19, which as I understand it started life as a paper zine and has since evolved some digital tentacles to better propel itself through the cultural miasma that is the internet. The primary focus of ink19 is music, but they cover other fun stuff like movies, television and various other exciting whatnots.
Nick has a dream! A dream in which it is much easier for people to read and distribute webcomics. That’s a really awesome dream. One which we can probably all get behind.
Sub-question: Should we do a group event to brainstorm all the possible features and needs of a webcomic reader/distro system? Could be a really entertaining and worthwhile project, and could ultimately unseat things like WordPress when it comes to web comic creation and distribution! (and how boss monster would that be? pfft. very.)
Brian Turnbull -
Another newcomer, and recent transplant from Chi-town (Chicago). He’s a professional photographer and has recently collaborated with ZapNap.
Brian and Nick worked with a client to very recently launch Razume.com, a site in which people can have their resumes reviewed by their peers (and probably also by hiring professionals!).
He’s also working away on a pilot for an HD webisodic show called Thomas in Wonkyland. The premise came about at an improv event a while back, and some of those same players are coming back to work on this concept. It sounds absolutely hilarious and I can’t wait to see it!
John recently helped his wife make a 1 minute movie for a film festival called le 60, a bunch of 1 minute movies to be shown in Boston in mid-September. He shared with us a really inspiring story about how he contacted a musician in Germany that he really admired, and was able to get some unique music for the project from that communication. Very cool. Incidentally: le 60 is accepting submissions through August 15th, so there is still time to participate in this project/contest.
Jill Silos -
Jill is an author and cultural historian who works with grad students at UNH, as well as other local college-level students in the area.
She is working on a book called Everybody Get Together: The Politics of the Counterculture. The book in project form won an award back in 2005, and I think it’s safe to say everyone in the group was very interested in the finished product when it’s ready for release.
She’s learning to play guitar and apparently does a pretty mean D minor, but is still looking for tips on how to transition between chords.
As for myself, I talked a little bit about exciting new developments at work, and a few of my ideas for RKNet.
RKNet will be featuring content from paid bloggers. I am still taking inquiries about this, although I have had several interested parties contact me already. Email giania [at] gmail.com if you wish to get more info about the program.
The purpose of the paid blogging program is to free me up to do the following: redo the RKNet template, develop really cool merch ideas, strengthen affiliate relations. Eventually I want RKNet to be something like boingboing without the awkward lesbian “unpublishing” drama. Baby steps.
Chris had a really terrific merchandise idea for RKNet, develop “random kitty” plush toys, literal random kitties, probably small batch or one-off items to keep things interesting, and cement their status as collectors items.
I talked briefly about an idea I had to create a site to specialize in supporting local farmers and local farmers’ markets by providing a centralized site catering to their needs. Deb let me know that in her experience it’s actually pretty difficult to keep up with the normal demand, much less deal with greater exposure. I’d love to work with some people on this concept, to come up with a variety of ideas on how a site like this could help the most people, and maybe make some money.
Some things I neglected to mention:
I’ve got a soup! giania.soup.io it’s a kind of micro-blogging, tumblr sort of service. It’s lots of fun and allows for quick sharing of some of your favorite (or least favorite) items on the internet.
I attended the Boston-based An Event Apart conference. I have transcribed some of my notes, but there’s still a lot left to put up. Stay tuned.
I mentioned a friend’s ninja doll project but forgot the URL ( ninja-dolls.com DUH), also posted the URL in the comments at the NH Media Makers blog.
As mentioned gingerly so as not to offend the nice people at Crackskulls, I am a HUGE fan of Dover’s newest coffee shop, Adelle’s. As we get more people at NH MM, we may run out of room at Crackskulls. I spoke briefly with one of the people who works at Adelle’s and it sounds like they might be interested in hosting an event like ours. I believe they have wifi there, and I’m working on getting them their own website so news/events can be posted there also. I’m really dying to try one of their bacon cheddar scones.
Efilon pointed this out earlier in the ormgas IRC. Thanks!
This looks absolutely awesome! In the underwater environment I see shades of Ecco the Dolphin (boy did that game used to creep me out), and character designs that seem to remind me of Odin Sphere.
It’s been put together by a group called Bit Blot. Improvements to the way the character looks and behaves have been made since the time this video was made, according to a response to feedback left on the YouTube page for this video.
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But yeah, there’s a lot of detail in her animation now and it has been updated a lot since this trailer was made (February) due to feedback. We haven’t had any complaints from people who have played the game.
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There are more videos, as well as screenshots and written details about this game at the Bit Blot site. Such as the fact that it is due to be released tomorrow! Yup, Aquaria drops on December 7th. Aquaria was also the winner of the 2007 Independent Games Festival competition, which only adds more cred to this already tantalizing 2d adventure game.
For anyone who takes censorship seriously, I would strongly suggest taking a gander at Susie Bright's articles on “NSFW”. (As pointed out to me by the intrepid Regina Lynn at Sex Drive Daily. Read her take on the matter, too..)
I myself have been known to use NSFW to caution people when I'm providing links to other people's content that may, indeed, get your ass put into a sling at work. Yet I don't pre-qualify my own content that way often, if ever. That is a bit of a double standard to say the least, and realistically isn't fair to the owners of the other content to have the stigma of the “inappropriate” put on their work by me.
The other challenge is that the NSFW tag is subjective much like harassment laws in the (US) workplace are purely subjective. However, if the “harassment training” I was forced to attend recently is any indication, you are not allowed to do anything, at all, ever, that could be construed as offensive to anyone. If someone reports you for being offensive, you are in trouble, regardless of context or intent. While that may not be strictly the letter of the legislation, that was the very clear impression I had walked away from that meeting with.
This relates directly to NSFW because by rights, pretty much EVERYTHING is not safe for work. In a world that makes sense (to me personally), idle surfing should be punished on the basis of excessive abandonment of duties. However, due to harassment laws in this country logic need not apply. Welcome to America.
What say you, gentle reader? Are acronyms and concepts like “PC” and “NSFW” ways we fuck ourselves out of free speech by way of self-censure to avoid the warm spittle of the more reactionary members of society? Or are they a necessity that helps protect all society and not just the reactionary individuals?
Also, in the spirit of NSFW, I was going to post up something clearly “NSFW”… but I didn't want to repost any SG girls photos and nothing else really was what I wanted. So instead you get this:
Challenge: iPods are pretty famous for taking the liberty of wiping themselves out when you plug them into a computer other than the one you set it up on in the first place. It’s got a bad case of “are you my mommy?” that makes it hostile to other PCs but you really want to be able to manage the music on more than one PC using your iPod. What to do? Read the rest of this entry »
For any of you who have worked retail, I’m sure the term “Black Friday” is already in your vocabulary. It is likely said with a great deal of dread for those still in retail, and pity or disgust for those who have moved out of retail.
Seeing as Thanksgiving is as good a time as any to pause and think about the things we’re grateful for, I think this is one term that fits. I am very thankful that I am not working in the mall during this upcoming Black Friday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_convention
Much like the recent console launches and their ensuing horror stories, something about major commercial events really seems to bring out the worst in people. My heart goes out to the people patient enough to work during what will undoubtedly be another grueling holiday season without snapping. The endless christmas music alone was nearly enough to break me. Didn’t they come up with something in the Geneva Conventions against torture?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_price
Speaking of torture, the other thing to keep in mind when you’re out there scrambling to get “something for the guy/gal who has everything”, is that you’re invariably going to be played more artfully than a Stradivarius.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradavarius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
Just remember that in the end, the holiday shopping season is basically a hunter-gatherer game. As a rule, it’s better to be a player than it is to be one of the played. “Savvy” isn’t just a five letter word afterall, it’s a mindset.
If you’re running monitarily tight this year, you may want to add this blog to your reading list: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/
You might also want to check out: http://www.makezine.com/
and the undoubtedly related: http://www.craftzine.com/
Once again, good luck to all who brave the horrors of Black Friday, and have a great Thanksgiving.
I was poking around in my google mail, when the news crawl, ticker, whatever you want to call it, came across with the blurb mentioned here. It sounded relatively interesting, so I clicked. Go ahead, check it out. I’ll wait.
http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/forbesonfilm/ve_fof111706?partner=rss
As those of you who followed that link can see, I sat through no less than a minute and a half of advertising and financial news data that had absolutely nothing to do with the article I was supposed to be seeing. For those of you who didn’t visit that link, allow me to provide a breakdown.
First 10 seconds: Summary of upcoming content. No mention of the article shown in the above link.
Next 30 seconds: Samsung commercial.
Next 100 seconds: Various financial news, again, no mention of the linked article.
Next 30 seconds: The EXACT SAME Samsung ad.
Next 20 seconds: Another ad.
Then and only they did get they get to the “point” i.e. the piece about Jack Black. It was apparently about the upcoming Tenacious D movie, but by the time I got to that point, I was so irritated by the barrage of un-asked for information I no longer had any interest in the information that actually related to the link that brought me there.
Color me stupid, but I was under the impression that have the attraction to internet media had to do with the lack of bullshit and filler one typically associates with the more “traditional” forms of media. Television, for example, is stuck with static streaming, and basically have to bend the way their revenue source wants them to bend. Internet content is a bit more fluid in nature. They could rip that down, promote it, or move it however they see fit at any time. I could understand running an ad before the main content, and even another one after, but this was ridiculous.
To get people to read this article here, for example, I wouldn’t draw people in using links for Viagra or casinos, feed them this article, then say “oh by the way, Viagra is great if you’re at a casino”. That would be a shitty thing to do. There’s a lot of internet, and not all that much time. Incidentally, based off of this ill behavior on the part of Forbes, I’m half-tempted to go marketing this article with Viagra and casinos, since I’ve now mentioned them. Or maybe a slightly less competative term, like maybe “emo” or “pony midget porn”.
Hey, why not? If the big dogs can use deceptive content presentation and linking tactics to get people to watch their advertising, why can’t I? Afterall, the promise of relevant content is what makes MySpace so popular, isn’t it? “Hey look my friend from high school, hey look, cursors and diplomas and lots of people to date through x service… wait, where’s that friend of mine again?”
Time to sign me up for some contextual advertising… post haste. Jerks.
After visting the TokiDoki site I have found something to lust after. A crazy-hot slipcover for my iPod Shuffle. Mmm….. it’s Shuffle-icious. I discovered after a little poking about that they’re available from iSkin. There’s covers for iPod Mini also. I spend a good deal of time attached to my iPod, escaping the mindless chatter and din of the office, so to be able to feign a little style while I’m at it would be dead sexy. That, and it’d go well with my TokiDoki clutch purse that I picked up while in Vegas this past Feb/March. It was quite the find, in a little shop operated by some sweet, shy asian ladies. I can’t remember off the top of my head the details of the shop, but I’ll likely edit that in when I get home.
I was also shown a really neat little app earlier (courtesy of Doctor Launch from the Ormgas IRC channel). You can locate this app at Virtual Constructs under Downloads. Remember Mega Man 2? Remember the intro screen for the Robot Master stages? Well, how would you like your apps to launch like Robot Masters? Word. I like it a lot. If that makes no sense to you, visit the guy’s site and check out the details yourself! Nyah! It’s a novelty I’ll use myself for a bit, and probably expose others to at every given opportunity.
I dreamt about vampires and serial killers and dragons. I dreamt some crazed bitch tried to kill several people, myself included, with pencils. What was disturbing, is that she attacked, we all blackedout, and came to with pencils sticking out of our chests. This in and of itself was bothering, BUT with the added twist of my cat, my Ducky, staggering up to me with a pencil buried at least an inch and a half deep into her below the collarbone. I pulled it out and looked at it in horror and disgust, and she snuck away hopefully to someplace safer.
There was confusion, I guess I was a vampire, I ran outside a room and blocked the doors to keep people glowing purple from killing me with swords.
Dragons started to appear from somewhere and began to kill any of my kind who were exposed. I ran into some juice bar with Kat, fretting over the exposed nature of the windows and hid under the counter. It was totally empty, but people started flooding in and at some point in my hiding I was asked for a ticket. I didn’t have one and after some serious bitching, I fled, running into some kind of hotel stairwell. I ran into several actors who were characters in this farce. Couldn’t tell you who all. I was just looking for someplace underground to hide.
I found this area that seemed secure, there were strange crates and stuff everywhere. I remember sorting through shaped eraser thingees (like the kind you’d get as a kid in school, only way stranger shapes). I remember Jay going out through this huge blast door thingee with some kind of box, he was in hiding too. I regretted not telling him that I cared about him before the door was shut, and I worried that it might be a sign that he’d be taken. There was strange sorting of egg-crate-looking thingees.
At some point after all that I woke up, feeling like crap because I stayed up too late watching movies.
Pi and The Day After Tomorrow, respectively.
There were some cinematic similarities between the movies and the dreams, but that’s the only connection I draw.
I wanna know why Jay keeps showing up in the more epic dreams I’ve been having. I so rarely dream about people I know.
The other night I dreamt that Ash got a phonecall, and grabbed me right away. Ian was in Texas being held after some kind of something went wrong. Texas was for some reason only a 4 hour drive, so we got all our shit together, and me, Jay’n'Ash piled into my car and headed out. For whatever dumb reason we had to drop off movies or something, so we made a stop in this plaza, it was ill-lit and there were people I knew from the mall and other such places acting very strange. I got sort of lost just in this one lot, and we wound up behind what I assume was Care Pharmacy. There was this major downgrade leading to a bridge that looked almost like it was constructed from popcicle sticks, that’s how secure it looked. It was sort of like 4 bridges stuck together side by side. There was only one older man down there picking his way across. The bridge was blocked by some signs stating it was unfinished and brown paper bags with candy in them. It had started snowing and I was a bit nervous. I’m pretty sure this is the part of the dream where Jay gave me shit from the back seat about my driving. I basically told him to shut it, and went down. I drove down, but when I got to the bridge I was walking (alone) and I moved the bags, taking some baggies of carmel creams as I went across. After I got across, it was back to the car, and we were finally headed towards the highway exit. I was like “95 south, right?” and Ashley told me it was actually 95 north I wanted to take, strangely enough. I did, and it was a twisty-as-hell exit, narrowing as it went, and it went on for some way. I wound up at these train tracks, and a trestle, which I climbed across, and went down a short elevator, only to realize that there was no way this was going to work at all. So I backtracked long enough to see the highway down a short embankment, and I thought that if I walked back up the highway, through the exit, and then back to my car, I could figure out where I went wrong. I scrambled down to find myself knee-deep in snow, trying to avoid cars and get back to the side, because I’d gone too far. Off to the side, things started to appear, first movie props and then models of cities that might have been. Some kind of voiceover, or maybe it was internal monologue, started explaining that these were the remains of ancient civilizations. I ended up entering a cave filled with water that was only shin deep or so, and there was someone at the entrance carving a boat, and the interior of the cave was huge, and had pictures painted on the walls. I remember thinking that Ian would just love this, apparently the fact that he was in Texas being held captive or soemthing was no longer an issue. It was about this time it either transitioned into another dream, or I woke up. I remember telling a mostly-asleep Ian about it, and he said that A) he forgot most of it as soon as I finished telling it to him, and B) I should write it down. So I’ve written it down, and it’s still weird.
Some kids play in the sandbox. We play in the.... litterbox??? The RKNet staff is pleased that you decided to stop by. Currently this is a multi-author project, with a rotating cast of totally kooky characters. Contact giania [at symbol] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to play here too.
and it’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s pretty exciting to have published authors in our midst. 
