GEEK 3

[Howard Dickins]

GEEK 3 "Return of the Tech B@stards"

8 Geeks!  Eight.  2x4.  2-cubed.

It seems the event is now gathering a bit more pace - although it's still
early days really.   Last night we had an attendance of:  Matt & Rhi Moore,
Ian Wootton, Steve Anderson, Carl & Nick Morris, Andy Best and of course Me.
It was good to meet you all.

The venue, Nos Da in Riverside, was certainly better than our first effort.
It was a bit noisy still, but not too crowded - so we may go there again.

The conversation subjects were still quite computer-oriented, albeit with
a healthy dose of retro-computing and some retro-gaming aspects.

Among our show+tell offerings we had:
  Steve's modified Asus EEE (the original 7" model)
  Carl's tin of Chicken Claws from Malaysia (bizarre!)
  Andy's GP2X (a linux-based handheld games console)
  Andy's Arduino - not that it was doing anything useful (yet!)
  My Drawdio - a strange circuit-bending musiacl pencil.

So, for all that were there, how do you think it went? 
(And what could we do better?)

I'd certainly like to expand the subjects we talk about beyond technology.
(More history, more fiction, more science, more music etc...)
And at some point it would be good to get down to some more 'skill-sharing'
although I don't know how that would work ("what? in a pub?")

Also, I know several of us are on twitter:
@andybest
@asiandon (Nick)
@irregularched (Steve)
@carlmorris
@dorkomatic (Me = Howard)
@ironyboy (Ian)

A few of those that are on the mailing list, but haven't made it to
an event are on twitter (and probably a few other sites too...)
[Note: I'm *still* a facebook refusenik!]

Anyway, keep in touch!

Howard

Lastly, I'm aware that this email cc-box arrangement is a little clumsy. 
So we could move to some other arrangement... 
1) Matt mentioned the possibility of hosting it properly somewhere
2) or we could use the cardiffgeeks name+site perhaps?

Discuss!

[Howard Dickins]

Yeah, "Not Even Remotely Dorky" is kinda fun!  (Actually, my sons Josh & Will came up with that one.)

Also Steve, what was the name of that American bloke who did those adverts?

And what else did we talk about that I'd forgotten?

H

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Steve Anderson <st...@twindx.com> wrote:

2009/2/24 Howard Dickins <hdic...@gmail.com>:
> @irregularched (Steve)

@irregularshed, even!

It was good to see a turn-out. 10 people for the next one please!

Very interesting chatting about the non-Flash side of Adobe AIR - I
thought its capabilities were common knowledge, but maybe that's just
because of the nature of my work. If anyone wants to know more (and
see what I'm getting myself into) there's a PDF of the O'Reilly book
"AIR for Javascript Developers - Pocket Guide" available from Adobe:
http://onair.adobe.com/files/AIRforJSDevPocketGuide.pdf

Andy - the design tool we were unable to remember the name of was
called Thermo. It's now had a name change, and will be released as
Flash Catalyst:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/

Finally, the name/list do-dah. As much as I like Tech Ba5tard
(cleverly obfuscated to get around mail filters) it needs to be
cleverly obfuscated to get around mail filters. And we weren't just
talking tech, so it fails more than Gmail did today. I'd like a name
with more humour than Cardiff Geeks though.

With that in mind, I think Howard's son's "Not Even Remotely Dorky" is
fabulous.

Steve

--
Irregular Shed - http://www.twindx.com
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
455FE10422CA29C4933F95052B792AB2

[Howard Dickins]

Yeah, good point Matt + Rhi. I'm hoping that we don't just do computer stuff all the time.
Some of the people that are on the mailing list are interested in other things such as:
medieval history, archery, fencing, role-playing, science-fiction, fantasy-fiction, maths, physics etc...
(but most of these haven't made it to a meeting yet - even though they've expressed an interest
in the events - I hope they make it sometime.)

Howard

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 8:48 PM, matt <ma...@matthewmoore.org.uk> wrote:

Steve Anderson wrote:
> Everyone:
>
> We have a group.
> http://groups.google.com/group/not-even-remotely-dorky
>
> Steve
>
> 2009/2/24 Carl Morris <ca...@nativehq.com>:
>

> Not Even Remotely Dorky works because we can refer to it by spelling it out
> N.E.R.D. - four syllables of fun.
>
> I'm up for joining a mailing list, just pass up the info.
>
> thanks!
>
> Carl

>
>
> Steve Anderson wrote:
>
>>> 2009/2/24 Howard Dickins <hdic...@gmail.com>:
>>>

>>>> Yeah, "Not Even Remotely Dorky" is kinda fun!  (Actually, my sons Josh &
>>>> Will came up with that one.)
>>>>

>>> Let's run with it.
>>>
>>>
>>>

Well, I was going to say that we had at least two other suggestions
(mine and one other) that we ought to at least put it to some sort of
show of hands.  Rhi does think it's more accurate as she thinks it's
more a computer nerd group than a geek group.  I'd tend to agree, even
tho I self identify as a geek.  But if the groups made, then I guess
it's done to an extent.

Who ever bought the gp2x, can you bring it to the next one as well?
I've always fancied one of them, but never had a chance to fiddle with
one.  You can't buy them any more they've bought out the next version of
them, which don't look as good.

Matt