Thanks to Jonathan for the great write-up for tonight’s Homebrew Website Club Baltimore! It is awesome that so many people came out and had such great discussions! I am sad to have missed it!
Baltimore’s third November 2017 meetup for Homebrew Website Club met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on November 29th.Here are the notes from the broadcast portion of tonight’s gathering!
Marty and Jonathan take a stroll down musical memory lane to 90's Alt Rock. How did bands transition between hair rock to grunge and its effect on the masses? What were concerts like and the merchandise they sold? Plus, fan write-ins for Duet It or Screw It.
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
You probably don't care about this post unless you're a member of Hostel!
5 of us practiced at the theater thanks to the kindness of Richard who let us in and helped us practice. Here are some notes that are hopefully accurate!
We explored the space and thought about ways to use it best. For example, we can bring the sidelines way forward towards the audience and give ourselves a sense of space by bringing the chairs downstage away from the wall, treating the columns like a back line.
Warm-ups we did:
Pass-the-clap. Around the circle, across the circle, moving around the room.
Vocal warm-ups led by Kim. Roll head down one vertebra at a time, bend all the way down to touch toes, wiggle around while rolling up one vertebra at a time. Make noises while mashing up cheeks and temples to loosen face muscles. Make sounds from different parts of the sound apparatus, starting with nasal "hee hee hee", then throat "heh heh heh", mall-Santa belly "ho ho ho", creepy dude groin "huh huh huh". Then go back up making sounds in reverse order.
Flocking exercise. As Richard played a song, one leader leads an improvised dance around the stage. Everyone else follows along trying to match movements. Richard changed song after about a minute, new leader self-selects and we repeat.
We did an exercise that is from Rick Andrews, though many folks learned a similar one from other instructors. It involves two players at a time.
Round 1: Audience gives a one-word topic. Players are seated and act as themselves having a normal conversation. Say truthful things that you believe or happened to you. Not trying to be funny, not trying to be characters. The conversation can become funny because conversations can be funny, but should not be jokey.
Round 2: Audience gives an activity that requires some amount of doing things and moving around the space in addition to a new one-word topic. Players do the activity while talking about the topic (not about the activity), still being themselves saying truthful things, not jokey, etc.
Round 3: Audience again gives an activity and one-word topic. Each player chooses a voice modification like talking more deeply or nasally or gritting their teeth (slight modifications only, no accents). Scene begins same as round 2, but the voice modification draws you into a character, so you can drift from your true personal stories/beliefs.
We were almost out of time, so we did a little ~6 minute set that started with "Real Talk" - basically starting with an input and doing Round 2 of the exercise until someone comes in to start a tag run or scene based on it. Any full scene wipe starts again with a real talk conversation and some object work.
Marty and Jonathan find out about the life styles of the lobster. Everything from eating habits to activities they do under water. Jonathan also has an update on Dolphin Crush.
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
Below are notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup.
jonathanprozzi.net – Is back after lots of travel and writing a post about that, including a roadmap of getting back into things. Archived several posts from his old Hugo site into his new WordPress site. One of his 2018-01-01 goals is to practice posting status updates to his site instead of Facebook.
brksavage.com – Bought a new domain for a blog a couple of months ago, transferring it to BlueHost now. Been looking over old content. A 2018-01-01 commitment: small goal - write something small and publish it before end of year.
derekfields.is – Working on getting a JavaScript-based CMS called apostrophe.js working for his site. Probably going to host it on Heroku. Also learning the Windows subsystem for Linux, because developing on Windows "doesn't feel right" since he's not using .NET or similar.
bouhmad.com – Working on a first post to go up tonight! Realized the original scope for his "first post", which was going to compare multiple host-based intrusion detection systems, was going to take weeks! So, he's starting off with one, then planning to get back to it after he graduates (hopefully!) in December.
martymcgui.re – Been working on a new way to store and display webmentions on his site. Currently has one site that pulls them from webmention.io with JavaScript, and one site that polls webmention.io for new mentions every time it is compiled by Jekyll. Started building a webhook in Python but has now moved to PHP because it should be simpler.
dariusmccoy.com – Just got started with his domain, just a landing page. Wants to add more content to it.
Thanks to everybody who came out! We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the next one! We'll be meeting again on November 29th.
Marty took a relaxing trip and Jonathan brought in his friend Kristen to help co-host the show. They got to meet Sharon O'Haren to talk about the new fads in massage. This episode should keep you from stressing out.
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
Jonathan and Marty welcome Gil Grubman on the show to talk about traveling with not so friendly people. Gil talks about traveling to your home country, eastern Europe, and the proper Buffalo Wing.
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
djfalcon23.github.io – Buying his dream domain (TBA once it is registered). Been reading lots about getting into tech industry, dealing w/ impostor syndrome. Planning to turn some of these into notes and/or posts on his site when it is up.
Podcasts about tech. Derek has been trying to find podcasts about cutting-edge tech, but been frustrated. For example, Friends Talk Frontend has good content, but he finds the hosts annoying. Adam recommend Talk Python to Me because it is funny and timely, focusing on new tech. Marty recommends the Contrafubilists because it is kind of an anti-cutting-edge tech podcast with very thoughtful hosts that take apart the marketing speak behind technology trends.
Also got off into the weeds about good story-driven podcasts. 😅
Talked about a theoretical "disruptive student" detection system that uses computer vision, motion detection, face recognition, to log "overactive" students and generate reports. Generated a lot of interesting discussion about unintended consequences of technologically "simple" systems.
Talked about the problems of trying to digitize the rules of complex human systems and the problems of measuring outcomes, determining what "just" algorithms looks like, etc.
Thanks to everybody who came out! We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the next one! We'll be meeting again on November 15th and November 29th.
