Make Tyler Weird

[Justin Edwards]

There's been a pretty good response so I'm moving this project to it's
own thread.

As i see it the goal of MTW would be the exact same as the make austin
weird movement: Encourage the use of local business over national
chains whenever possible.

I mentioned in the project wishlist that I was originally thinking
about doing it interview style, with a heavy emphasis on video,
however i am totally open to other options (especially since i don't
own a video camera or any editing software).

Any advice as to what methods would accomplish the goal most
effectively with a quantity of work that will fit within an evenings
and weekends schedule?

[Justin Reese]

Naturally I'd love to do some video stuff, but video has a way of being a tremendous time suck. Doesn't fit into a Hack Day as well as some other stuff. If/when I get more free time and a faster video workflow, I think video stuff, like maybe profiles of places like Stanley's, would be awesome.

[Christopher Groskopf]

I think we could find ways of highlighting what's weird without video (though it would be great if we could do it).

I've been playing around with setting up a LocalWiki instance for Tyler. (TylerWiki?) I'm not sure exactly how that would overlap with MTW but it would give us a place to prominently spotlight local biz we like.

Similarly Justin E. and I have been discussing this art map idea, which could be a way of featuring art that makes Tyler weird?

At the risk of being too ambitious, maybe MTW us a way of glueing these various ideas together? (loosely, of course)

What else is weird? Businesses, art, _________?

I love this enthusiasm. You guys are getting me fired up.

C

-- 
Christopher Groskopf

Sent with Sparrow

[Christopher Groskopf]

Been thinking about this idea a lot. A few things:

* Does one of you guys already own maketylerweird.com? It's taken by a Dreamhost customer. (We could always use the .org as a fallback.)

* We should totally get the same domain in Spanish as a redirect, so we can print bilingual stickers for local businesses. "querarotyler.com" is what Google gives me.

* I'm wondering more and more if a LocalWiki platform isn't right for this. It would save us building a CMS. We could build out pages for all the local, independent businesses and also other things about Tyler that are cooler than average. It would allow others to contribute content and we could setup guidelines to ensure it grows toward encouraging weirdness (i.e. no franchise businesses represented). And since it's open source it doesn't really tie our hands at all in terms of what we do down the road. See what Denton has done with LocalWiki and just imagine us spinning it toward slightly more editorial ends:

https://dentonwiki.org/

* I took my nascent "tylerwiki" instance off ice so you guys can play around with it. (Feel free to mess it up.) Thoughts on this idea?

http://ec2-23-20-191-25.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Although I may be naive, I can actually really imagine this site taking off. It seems like something Tyler under 40 would really benefit from.

Cheers,

Chris

[Joseph]

Justin owns the domain 

Sent from my iPhone

[IgrowBeards]

I'm that dreamhost customer :) And i very much like the wiki idea. That let's us get something up quickly which i think would be great to keep us all motivated until it generates enough steam to be self sustaining. Seems like we would pretty much have carte blanche regarding customizing the design with localwiki which is always something i look for when evaluating any platform. If you want to get with me I'll be glad to set up the dns for the domain to point to the proper place. Good call on the spanish domain - I'll snatch it up once we have an authoritative translation. Any native spanish speakers in the group?

-- 

IgrowBeards

Sent with Sparrow

[Christopher Groskopf]

Wonderful. I'm happy to just let this server I've already setup
transform into the real thing. (Which is to say, I'll be careful not
to blow it up.) If folks want to start building out pages for their
favorite local spots, I don't see any reason not to get started. We
can organize it as it builds out.

@Justin: I setup a static IP on that box so you have a place to point
the ANAMEs at your leisure: 23.21.110.229.

One detail, I've currently got this hosted on an EC2 micro, which is
cheap enough that I don't mind subsidizing it, however, if we decide
we need to bump the hardware up we may have to start thinking about
finding a patron.

Cheers,
C

[Joseph McCullough]

What are the specs of an EC2 micro? I've got a VPS with okay specs, but it doesn't have that EC2 reliability (although I have read numerous complaints about micro instances randomly shutting down/going offline, but that might be the vocal minority)

--
Joseph McCullough
Vert Studios - Lead Developer
903 330 5057
http://www.vertstudios.com/

[Justin Reese]

I have a lifetime free hosting account with Joyent on one of their shared Accelerators. I'm happy to offer that along with any requisite SSH access/etc. required.

Again, it's a shared host, so you know all that entails, but for a localwiki install I think it'd be plenty capable. I have 30GB/mo of bandwidth and rarely go over 2GB.

[Joseph McCullough]

Looked up the specs of my vps:

40 Gig storage, 1Gig RAM, (1.5 burst), 500GB bandwidth

[Christopher Groskopf]

The micro is a half gig of memory and dual 1.4ghz cores (at burst).
It's a lightweight, but the site is varnish'd so I suspect it won't be
an issue. the micro's real handicap is disk I/O, which isn't
particularly relevant for a wiki. Bandwidth is essentially unlimited
at negligible cost.

I'd like to stick it out on EC2 if we can, but it's good to have some
alternatives if it becomes an issue. :-)

C

[Joseph McCullough]

Understandable. I'd probably be willing to foot the extra for a small/medium if we need it. 

[IgrowBeards]

Changed the dns - we should have a pretty url soon.

-- 

IgrowBeards

Sent with Sparrow

[Christopher Groskopf]

Added some content to this over lunch:

http://23.21.110.229/

(DNS hasn't taken yet.)

Also, I fixed the maps so that when you're creating a new one it will
center on Tyler by default (rather than Davis, CA).

Cheers,
C

[Justin E.]

We are getting the wiki filled out slowly but surely (although any
additional help with content would of course be appreciated).

So far i've kept my feature posts fairly dry and straightforward with
regards to the writing, but i wonder what is the proper level of
personality to put into a project of this nature?

Is a less formal, more friendly approach a better fit or is a
community project like this best kept to just the facts?

On Apr 2, 1:19 pm, Christopher Groskopf <staringmon...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Christopher Groskopf]

I think I would suggest that when in doubt we follow DentonWiki's lead
(https://dentonwiki.org/). I would describe their writing as "human".
See this article on "The Square":

https://dentonwiki.org/The_Square

Given that we are writing with the express purpose of encouraging
"weirdness" in Tyler, I don't see any reason why we need to constrain
ourselves to Wikipedia-speak.

That being said, folks vary in their capacity to write that way--I'm
pretty rubbish at it--so I don't think we should coerce folks toward
any particular writing style, just set the example we would hope they
follow.

Thoughts on that?

On an related note, Justin mentioned to me yesterday that he is
attempting to make at least one edit per-day to maketylerweird.com.
I'm going to set that same goal for myself. If a small group of us
were to do that we would have quite a lot of content in short order.
Anyone care to join us in this initiative? Even if you're just
stubbing out lists of places that should be included that's a really
helpful contribution.

Best,
Chris

[Justin Reese]

Agree on the tone. It's *very* hard to nail. I'm going to try for conversation, for the way I'd say it aloud. It's tempting to drop in jokes, but I'll try to remember these are reference documents people may return to; my joke could become a speed bump on repeated readings.

Because the whole point is the uniqueness of local shops and individuals, I say anecdotes and information that don't fit into rigid metadata fields are encouraged, so long as the anecdote is truly about the subject and not the writer.

But Chris, I agree wholeheartedly that the best style manual is the content itself, so let's just write some good stuff and hope the pattern holds. I too will shoot for at least a contribution per day.

- Justin

[Justin Reese]

One other thought: It's a wiki, so we're bound to stomp on each other's toes from time to time. I promise not to get my feelings hurt.

- Justin

[Jacob Lindsey]

Is there eventually going to be a cover photo like there is on the Denton Wiki?  I would be happy to go downtown and snap a couple of pics if someone doesn't already have a picture they'd like to use.

On Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:09:58 PM UTC-5, Justin E wrote:

[Christopher Groskopf]

I'd love to replicate that cover art style--I think it's very
effective on DentonWiki. I'm pretty sure that presentation requires
some template hacking that I haven't gotten into yet, but it shouldn't
be terribly difficult. Def on the short list of presentation details
to work on.

C

[Justin E.]

Jacob - noticed you've been editing the wiki, thanks so much for
pitching in! :)
I'm working on a completely different design but until I get a local
copy of the wiki working I'm not certain how far i'm going to be able
to take it. Ultimately i'd like to do something pretty eye catching
and that would work better on mobile devices but until i get things
set up i'm not sure how easy that's going to be with localwiki
software.

No matter what happens with the design though we can always use good
photos, so any you want to take I'm sure we can find places for.

Thanks again for your edits - great to have you working on the project
with us :)


On Apr 12, 12:31 pm, Christopher Groskopf <staringmon...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Jacob Lindsey]

You're welcome for the edits, I am so excited to be working on this project!  I will continue to add stuff as I have time.  I will try to make time to take some pictures this week.

I have an idea that I wanted to run by you guys.  What if there was an urban/commercial development news arm of MTW or Hack Tyler?  I know I love keeping up with the development goings on around town and I think it would be a good resource.  Most of it probably wouldn't be news to you all but as this grows and spreads around I think it would be a Good Thing for people to be able to see what is being developed/proposed in the central city.  I'm not sure how this would be implemented.  Maybe a separate section on MTW?

Thoughts?

[Christopher Groskopf]

Jacob, I'll echo Justin's sentiment: thanks for pitching in!

Regarding the property news idea, I have two conflicting reactions:

1) That's something I would like to read.

2) It seems a little far out of scope for MTW. (I'm a big advocate of small, focused, loosely connected projects.)

What format were you imagining this might take? I'm thinking if it's something like Tumblr that would be easy to build up as a separate site and then link to from MTW and HT. I wouldn't be opposed to branding it "A Hack Tyler project" like I'm doing with tylerpublicart.com. Others should weigh in this since it's quite different from the other projects underway.

We should take more about this. (I also owe you an email re: North Tyler which I will send today.)

Cheers,

C

-- 
Christopher Groskopf

Sent with Sparrow

[Jacob Lindsey]

Chris,

I agree that the development news idea doesn't entirely fit into what we are doing here.  I do like your idea of small, loosely connected projects and think that a Tumblr would be perfect for what I want to do.  I can go ahead and set it up and we'll figure out the branding later if that works for you.

[Christopher Groskopf]

This is mostly for Justin the Red, but for anyone who wants to hack on
the theme/design for MTW, I've setup a repository with the relevant
files and spin-up instructions:

https://github.com/hacktyler/maketylerweird

Anyone is welcome to try the local setup, but I found the process for
spinning up the site on Vagrant to be tremendously easier than a local
install. If you follow my instructions you will get a running VM
serving the site on http://localhost:4567. That VM will be sharing
folders with the local folders in the git repository (quite a trick),
so if you edit the files in the repo the changes get picked up in the
VM. Full instructions are in the README.

Note you'll have to download the ~700MB VM image to get it running.

Cheers,
C

[Jacob Lindsey]

Hey guys, I started a tumblr for my development news idea. It's obviously in the very early stages but I wanted you all to take a look. I'm not crazy about the name I have for it currently, I feel like it's too long, I'm still brainstorming for something else.

rosecitydevelopment.tumblr.com

Please be harsh in your criticism if necessary!

[Igrowbeards]

Good stuff man :)

Justin
Sent from my phone
903-920-9514

[Christopher Groskopf]

Jacob, this is fantastic! Let me know if you come up with any data
crunching / mapping needs and I'll be happy to pitch in. I also have
the 2011 property tax data for all of Smith County. If that would be
interesting to you I'm happy to send it along.

Feel free to use the "A project of Hack Tyler" brand if you so choose,
though certainly don't feel pressured.

Also, I started stubbing out "Local Issues" pages on MTW. I gave
plugged your new blog on the "Downtown Revitalization" page. Feel free
to add other content as you come across it:

http://maketylerweird.com/Downtown_Revitalization

@JustinTheRed I also stubbed an Alternative Transportation page that
would be a good place to gather any bike safety resources you can
find:

http://maketylerweird.com/Alternative_Transportation

Great work!
Chris

[Jacob Lindsey]

Oh man, that is so great!  Thanks for adding that link on MTW!  And I am officially branded with Hack Tyler.  : )

[Jon Reese]

Had a few minutes to throw together some logo ideas for Make Tyler Weird. Like 'em, hate 'em, ignore 'em... you won't hurt my feelings. :)

Jon

Jon Reese Design

214.868.8777

www.JonReese.com

[Christopher Groskopf]

Nice! I enjoy #2 and #6 the most. I know Justin the Red has been
kicking around ideas for a site-wide design, so it would be
interesting to know if/how these fit into his thoughts.

Best,
C

[Justin Reese]

No home runs, but the top one is weirdly attractive to me. It just seems to fit the vibe.

Top left is good, too. Readable, nice integration of rose. Instead of a heart can it be a hemp leaf? I mean people are going to suspect anyway. Kidding.

- Justin

> <MakeTylerWeird_logo_ideas.pdf>

[Jacob Lindsey]

Good stuff man, I like # 2 and # 5.  

Are we going to be making a sticker at some point?

[Jon Reese]

Absolutely we should, once the logo's nailed down. I'd definite stick one to the ol' back windshield. We have some time though, since makes sense to wait on deciding on the final logo until after JustinTheRed gets the site designed and set up. Will help us determine what direction to take the mark, methinks.

[IgrowBeards]

Jon thanks a ton for the work on these!

I hate logo design + totally suck at it so it's wonderful to have someone talented in that area helping out. 

I really like the basis of 1. Not digging the gradient particularly but i like the overall shape and layout. I think it would look really good on a badge type background and would also make a cool but affordable die cut sticker.

#2 is great design, but i think the rose *and* the heart make it a little too typical tyler if that makes any sense - too approachable maybe?

I also really like #4 - no crits on it at all - i just really like it.

Here's the design work i've done so far - this is super rough and not even all the layout/content is in place yet. Also as i've mentioned previously until my local copy is up and running i don't know if it's even going to be possible/feasible to implement a design this divergent from what localwiki ships with. If nothing else hopefully this will help to give an idea of the vibe i was hoping to capture.

In any case I'd love some feedback and help getting it together and getting a logo picked, designed, and implemented. 

-- 

IgrowBeards

Sent with Sparrow

[Jacob Lindsey]

Gotcha.  I can't wait to see what JustinTheRed whips up.

[Christopher Groskopf]

I'm a big +1 on stickers once things develop a bit. It would also be
good if we picked a logo that degraded to black-and-white nicely so we
can print some cheap flyers to put up at local businesses.

Also, this is niggling, but I think any logo probably should include
".com", so people know it's actually a thing and not, as it were, a
lifestyle choice. (Granted, it may be that too.)

C

[Jeffrey Mills]

I like the logo and the rough layout. I'm with Red in logo design; I hate it and suck at it (probably the former due to the latter).

I have one suggestion, can we somehow not make it all look so professional? lol

Seriously though awesome work, wish I had more to contribute to the project.

Jeff

[Jon Reese]

Good advice Jeff! I'm used to making "polished-looking" logos, so I'll rethink it from a more tangible, grass-roots, analog point of view. Thanks

- Jon

[Jon Reese]

Oh and Chris, thanks for the great feedback too! Definitely both are good things I'll keep top of mind for the next round.

- Jon

[Jon Reese]

Oops, forgot to include Red... THANKS JUSTIN! Also good advice, I appreciate all the response.

<rough.jpg>

[Jeffrey Mills]

Lol I was just kidding about the too professional thing. I just see that phrase a lot on clientsfromhell.net a lot. 

FYI that is a hilarious site for anyone in web/print/IT field if you haven't heard of it you'll waste your whole afternoon reading the stories.

Sent from my iPhone

[Jeffrey Mills]

Also, Justin and Justin probably have the design end covered, but if there is anything I can do to help I would love to be involved. I'm a pretty descent photographer and have a lot of underused equipment if that's useful.

Jeff

On Apr 17, 2012, at 10:16 PM, Jon Reese <des...@jonreese.com> wrote:

[Jacob Lindsey]

How would you all feel about a 'Neighborhoods' section on MTW?  I think it would be a good resource to have the historic neighborhoods around downtown, brick streets, azalea district, charnwood, etc mapped out for the site.  Maybe even have sections for North Tyler and other depressed areas that we could use to highlight the more interesting homes and architecture.  Is this too far out of scope for MTW?  If so, no hard feelings, I'm just brainstorming.

[IgrowBeards]

I personally feel like that's well within the scope.

-- 

IgrowBeards

Sent with Sparrow

[Jon Reese]

Should it be a subnav (or "sort" if you will) on the Map page?

- Jon

[Jacob Lindsey]

I'm not sure about the implementation.  I was thinking a 'Neighborhoods' section on the front page then sub-pages for each neighborhood that would include a map, notable structures and a description of the area.

Sorry for being thick here, but would the method you're referring to be adding a section to the existing map that's on the site now?

[Christopher Groskopf]

No! I mean yes! I mean it's not out if scope! 

There is already a dead link to Charnwood on my user page. This is absolutely something we should do. I can even import the city's boundary shapes into the map. ( I can do this for parks and such too, but haven't yet.)

Chris

-- 
Christopher Groskopf

Sent with Sparrow

[Justin E.]

Jon,

What is the font that you're using for the first two logos? I think
it's a good fit and want to pull it into the headlines etc if it's web
embed-able.
-Justin (the red)

[Jon Reese]

#1 is Mocha Mattari, #2 is Dirty Headline

- Jon

[Christopher Groskopf]

Site will be down for a few while I run a backup and upgrade.

C

[Christopher Groskopf]

And we're back! It is now safe to continue the enweirdifying. This update should fix the bug with including page titles. (It's nice to know the developers!)

By the way, for those that don't follow the dashboard (http://maketylerweird.com/tools/dashboard) as religiously as I do, we've crossed 70 pages and hit 10 registered users. :-)

And then there's this:

You guys rock. Seriously, I'm blown away. Nobody could look at this say that all the action is in south Tyler.

C

[Jacob Lindsey]

Ha!  70 pages of central Tyler goodness.  Awesome stuff everybody.

And Chris, do you think you can go ahead and import the Azalea District map into the page I made?

[Christopher Groskopf]

Yessir, I've got this on my list for today. Going to take a crack at it right now, but if it doesn't work straight out it may be later this evening before I get it right.

Cheers,

Chris

[Christopher Groskopf]

Done for...

City of Tyler: http://maketylerweird.com/Tyler

Azalea: http://maketylerweird.com/Azalea_District

Brick Streets: http://maketylerweird.com/Brick_Streets_District

I'm going to email the city and request a better shape for Charnwood, since the one I created overlaps slightly with Azalea.

Cheers,

Chris

[Jacob Lindsey]

Sounds good buddy, thanks a lot!

While we're on the subject, is there anything that can be done about the map feature not placing the markers where they need to be?  When I click on any place marker, the description pops up where it supposed to be but the marker is usually several blocks to the right.  Any ideas?

[Christopher Groskopf]

I've seen that too. Def a bug in LocalWiki. I'll try to dig into it and/or produce a good bug report when I have some time.

Chris

[Christopher Groskopf]

Thanks to Tyler GIS's not-so-secret REST endpoint for GIS data
(http://www.smithcountymapsite.org/PublicGIS/rest/services/) I was
able to extract a proper shape for Charnwood w/o going through the
human machine. (Not that they've ever been anything but helpful.)

http://maketylerweird.com/Charnwood_District

I also found shapes for the following, if anyone knows enough to write
about them:

* Short-Line Residential Historic District
* East Ferguson Street Residential Historic District
* Donnybrook Duplex Residential Historic District

I'm happy to add the maps (takes about 10 mins each) once the stubs are written.

Cheers,
Chris

[Jacob Lindsey]

Awesome.  I will try to work on writing up some pages for those neighborhoods next week if no one else has gotten to it.

[Christopher Groskopf]

FYI, Justin and I sat down tonight and hammered out Copyright and Editorial policies for the site, with the hope that by doing it early we'll save ourselves much trouble later on. Feedback is appreciated:

http://maketylerweird.com/Copyrights

http://maketylerweird.com/Editorial_Policy

Cheers,

Chris

[Justin Reese]

+1

I like that the policy is short and clear with a formal dispute-resolution policy.

Is "Repeatedly adding inappropriate." a typo?

- Justin

[Jon Reese]

Very nice, Chris!

I feel like a heel not having contributed yet... I love the ETORBA trail locations... very helpful. OK, time to start contributing...

Jon

Jon Reese Design

214.868.8777

www.JonReese.com

[Justin Reese]

Jon: Did you know Shawn Walter maintains that map list (and started ETORBA)? You should definitely get in touch with him if you're more interested in that. ETORBA is biking-specific, but I'm sure there's tons of overlap for off-road running… or whatever you call that. Running in the woods? Wood running? Mountain running?

I'm hoping to lure Shawn into contributing to the Biking pages directly.

- Justin

On Apr 22, 2012, at 3:28 PM, Jon Reese wrote:

> Very nice, Chris!
>
> I feel like a heel not having contributed yet... I love the ETORBA trail locations... very helpful. OK, time to start contributing...
>
> Jon
>
> Jon Reese Design
> 214.868.8777
> www.JonReese.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 21, 2012, at 2:06 PM, Christopher Groskopf wrote:
>
>> Done for...
>>
>> City of Tyler: http://maketylerweird.com/Tyler
>> Azalea: http://maketylerweird.com/Azalea_District
>> Brick Streets: http://maketylerweird.com/Brick_Streets_District
>>
>> I'm going to email the city and request a better shape for Charnwood, since the one I created overlaps slightly with Azalea.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>>
>> On Saturday, April 21, 2012 1:00:33 PM UTC-5, Jacob Lindsey wrote:
>> Ha! 70 pages of central Tyler goodness. Awesome stuff everybody.
>>
>> And Chris, do you think you can go ahead and import the Azalea District map into the page I made?
>>
>> On Saturday, April 21, 2012 9:44:46 AM UTC-5, Christopher Groskopf wrote:
>> And we're back! It is now safe to continue the enweirdifying. This update should fix the bug with including page titles. (It's nice to know the developers!)
>>
>> By the way, for those that don't follow the dashboard (http://maketylerweird.com/tools/dashboard) as religiously as I do, we've crossed 70 pages and hit 10 registered users. :-)
>>
>> And then there's this:
>>
>>
>>

[Jon Reese]

No I didn't, but I had a suspicion! I was talking to Weston DuPree when I was at Elite Bicycles a couple weeks ago and he said he was going riding with Shawn that night, so I figured that with Shawn's passiona bout off-road biking, he was getting to be the figurehead/spokesperson/(mascot?) for ORB in ET. :) 

BTW, I hereby stake my claim to “ETORRA”!

[Christopher Groskopf]

Thanks guys!

@Justin I corrected that typo. It was meant to read "Repeatedly adding
inappropriate content."

Cheers,
Chris

[Shawn Walter]

I love being talked about! I love ETORBA! I love mountain biking!

[Justin Reese]

I'm sort of sorry I told you about this.