Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

February 2007 Posts

Sunday, Not Monday - Bonus Days

Fri, 02/09/2007 - 04:22 -- rprice

I am realizing a bit too late that if you have a monthly event, you need to standardize the date.

Any other dates/times/locations will inevitably be bonus events.

This month's Florida Creatives is in a different place on a different day - never again.

How does 3rd Monday at Crooked Bayou sound? We can build a relationship with that place, they seemed to like having us on a slow night. This means the next event is March 19th, right after St. Patty's Day.

There are a couple of Bonus Events coming up I want to discuss with people - one is Grandma Party. This is a one-day craft bazaar that is more than a bit bizarre. Hosted in April in the parking lot of Stardust, dozens of crafters, activists, musicians, videographers, art installationists, farmers, hair stylists, and lots of other -ists gather to hang out, eat soy dogs, drink lemonade, sell their wares and have fun.

I bought a booth for Florida Creatives to try and garner some support from the DIY community. Lots of people there participate in other initiatives like Assembly, and this will be our "coming out" to them. It would be interesting if we could leave some voicemails on the Grandma Party Hotline - 206.666.4.SEW - to show them we are supporting the event.

Later I would like to buy a booth for the Fringe Festival in May, but I don't have $325 in my back pocket, so I'd like to pass a collection plate.

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Temporary Insanity

Tue, 02/06/2007 - 20:15 -- rprice

Don't ask me why, but I just wrote a song. I don't write songs, but this one just kind of got stuck in my head and I didn't know who to share it with, so i wrote it down - with chords and everything.

It's about evil Starbuck's Coffee and (partly) how it makes me run to the toilet.

I used my little Casio keyboard from like 20 years ago -- if that doesn't date me, what will? It still has all the stickers on the white keys with the little # and b in the corners. I tried to write a song on it last week and I realised it's hard to write a song when you HAVE to... when that happens you should go to the PodSafe Music Network and grab a Swedish pop-punk band instead.

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There are also brand new episodes of Shrink your Ecological Footprint and You can't spell crapface without PFA from this weekend posted. Those are two podcast talkshows I record with my friends, the first over Skype to Arizona, and the second locally in my living room with a sweet echo. (really)

On Sunday, I am getting jazzed up about having our #3 installment of Florida Creatives Happy Hour at the Copper Rocket starting after 3PM. Immediately before that is the Enzian's #2 installment of the Indie Film Slam revival.

Tomorrow John Rife and I are getting together at Dandelion to talk about refreshing his videoblog a bit in anticipation of a major road trip (he will be phoning home every few days with a new video). We are planning on doing some Google Maps mashup stuff as well as the standard blogging/feeds thing. I am hoping to be able to get some microformats in there as well. I would like for John to be discoverable by people outside of Orlando who might happen by. I know YouTube has (some imitation of) geo-identification, but I don't think it gets included in the search results. Tagging and research will help, and reciprocal links (as many as we can get). I hope John meets some bloggers along the way, and makes plenty of MySpace friends.

This will be a fun 3 months of online marketing blitz, especially considering that the location (not virtually, but physically) and focus of the content will be changing almost every day.

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Last but not least, the very talented Damien McKenna has been acting as my second set of hands this week, doing some work on a Drupal 5 site for a client. He just got this very spiffy and finally bug-free system going where you add an image (or several images) to your node (this one's for a single project in a portfolio). Once you save the form, a module called imagecache auto-generates thumbnails for you. Last but not least, these images are munged into links to one of those spiffy AJAX image boxes, like lightbox or in this case thickbox.

The payoff? Instant photo gallery. Pats on the back for Damien.

If you're still reading, thanks for enduring. I haven't written many posts like this since my LiveJournal days. The last two I've done have been videos.

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Four Eyed Monsters: Enzian, Wed Feb 14

Sun, 02/04/2007 - 18:09 -- rprice

Start a little romance but rule out conversation. Communicate only through videos, art, emails, written notes. Then share the experience with the world in a narrative film and video podcasts under the banner of “Four Eyed Monsters.”

I think this is taken from the Apple site.

This indie-film/podcasting/internet phenomenon is coming to our fair city, and I intend to let people know about it! I posted it to my Upcoming.org, as that is how I'm letting people know about events lately.

Arin Crumley and Susan Buice created this film and they're taking it all over the country. They have three five screenings in Florida on this day, so I don't know if they're actually going to be here, but come and see the film anyway. Also, right now I don't know when the screening is. Their blog didn't list a time. Still, it looks like most Enzian screenings are happening at 6:30 and 9:45, but call ahead and ask them yourself The show starts at 9:30 PM, and you can order tickets on the phone. (407) 629-1088

Do you have a Four Eyed Monsters story? I know Darren does. Darren, are you paying attention?

F.E.M. on MySpace

Here's a podcast with the filmmakers.

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Ryan Price vs. Skype, PayPal, Gizmo, Verizon

Sat, 02/03/2007 - 12:27 -- rprice

I have a girlfriend who lives in England. I have a Skype account. Hell, I even have a Skype phone in my Sony Mylo, and I got it mostly because I wanted a more telephone-like experience when talking to my girlfriend. I have, however, not been having a fun time with Skype today, nor my Verizon Wireless phone, nor option number 3, the Gizmo Project. I'm not even going to qualify any of these services with a link.

First off, Skype's online store is down. WTF Skype? Did your developers fall asleep at the wheel? I'm sure you're getting ready for some fun pre-Superbowl beefing-up because you'll be running ads or something, but I need to buy more credits! The site has looked like this all day:

skypeskype Hosted on Zooomr

Second, I figure I'll just dial my damn cell phone, it can't cost that much, right? Well Verizon seems to think that there's no reason you'd want to make an international call unless you authorized it! Sure, your phone might get stolen or the kids might get a hold of it, but when I'm in a situation where my mobile is my only phone this starts to get very frustrating. Thank you Wendy at customer service for being so nice, but why don't you people want to take my money? BTW my account is under the control of my business partner and his wife, I can't add the international "Hoo-Ha" to my phone.

Lastly, I remember reading about a number of new VOIP services over on Techcrunch, so I check out the Gizmo Project. OMG they have a Mac version. Create an account, I want to buy some credit, hooray for PayPal, and then my transaction is immediately cancelled!

gizmogizmo Hosted on Zooomr

I have decided against leaving the house for a phone card because I'm afraid that if they don't have any more cards at the store I will throw things at the nice service industry workers.

Update: About 10 minutes after posting this, the Skype store was functioning again and I got my credit. In the interim, I was talking to my friend Emily and she offered to try and get her Verizon international calling turned on. Turns out this will take until sometime on Monday.

The prologue to all of this is a major annoyance with Skype: their international calling rates are some of the cheapest around. To call England is supposedly just 2.1 cents/minute. Apparently this rate doesn't apply to international mobile calls. My calls end up costing more like 22 or 23 cents/minute instead. Why Skype, why? Luckily Kait is getting a landline this week.

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Muppet Mobile Lab gets ready to roll through California Adventure

Sat, 02/03/2007 - 06:56 -- rprice

Bunsen and Beaker

From Jim Hill:

this next phase of Disney's "Living Character Initiative" program. These folks were just standing around at the party, minding their own business. Only to have this rocket ship-shaped craft roll up right next to them. And the next thing they knew, these remote controlled AA versions of Bunsen & Beaker would begin interacting with them.

Hooray Disney for actually leveraging your purchase of the Muppet characters.

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Mr. A for Effort 2/2

Thu, 02/01/2007 - 19:30 -- rprice

Sorry John Theisen for forgetting your name, you're welcome Brian Feldman for remembering your name, thank you 1R OMA for being a fun and cheap way to experience art, thank you Chris for the CommuniTEA and the HUMMUS!, thank you roomies for being artsy fartsy and attending events so I don't go places by myself, thank you Damien for working so hard, thank you Charlie for my Skype phone number, thank you Kait for being the best ever, and congrats on the new apartment girls!

Florida Creatives 2/07 is only 9 days away! Check Upcoming for details.

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