August Meeting Topic

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Justin Burns

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Jul 20, 2011, 8:35:23 PM7/20/11

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Posted to our forum at http://hakolyhak.org/forum/august-topics

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One of my goals for the near future is to get to a point where we've got meeting topics picked out a month or more ahead of time. With the July meeting just a week and a half away, I thought we could start talking about what people might like to see in August.

The hands-on workshops seem to be working out well, but we don't want to burn out John and Keith, who have put a lot of effort in the previous and upcoming topics. I think it might be fun to switch things up a little, too.

I'll throw out a couple ideas I've been kicking around, but I'd much rather hear suggestions from our members about what they'd like to do. We can stick with a presenter/audience structure, or try out something less structured...

Anyway, the two ideas I had were:

1. HTML5 - It's gaining a lot of momentum lately on the web, with virtually all modern mobile and desktop browsers offering support. It's a pretty big improvement over HTML4.01 (especially if you count the additions in CSS3). It's also the easiest way to build and deploy an application that will work seamlessly across phones, desktops, and tablets. The addition of Local Storage capability allows for some new and interesting "app-like" behavior, including websites that work even when you're offline (by caching and synchronizing the local storage).

A lot of people already know HTML4, but maybe haven't had a chance to check out the latest and greatest that HTML has to offer.

2. Ballistics Lab - There are a bunch of really easy-to-construct plans on the new for creating desktop trebuchets, requiring little more than wood, glue, a counterweight, and a few simple tools (saw, drill). Assembly is pretty straightforward, but people would be encouraged to experiment with ratios and weights, and we could input the results and make some pretty graphs. If we still want to do this at the library we could either pre-cut the wood or just use a miter box (w/ a small vacuum for cleanup) and find some ammo that won't do any damage.

If we wanted to break with tradition and hold this meeting elsewhere, we could potentially use power tools and do all the cutting as part of the workshop. This would also free us up from a strict 2 hour time constraint. One of our members, Nick, is a mechanical engineer, and has constructed large scale versions of this project. If he's available, he might be able to give a short presentation on the mechanical principles involved before we start launching stuff at each other :) Also, if desktop catapults are too boring, I fully support building a big one out in a field somewhere...

Anyone else want to throw out some ideas? Got a topic you've been wanting to talk about, an idea for a workshop, or just a really cool hack that we could kill 2 hours playing with? Let's hear it!