[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Awesome meeting tonite....and found items

[Jason Plumb]

So I used to be pretty diligent about posting a summary of each causal 
gathering, but it ended up being too much, so I've dropped it.

It occurred to me, though, that there's some great value in explaining 
to the lurkers what we've been up to, even if it's in a limited way...so 
here I ramble....

First order of business, though -- I grabbed a few abandoned items from 
our table.  Anselm:  I'm almost 100% sure I have your iphone charger 
(white brick with white usb cable with ipod connector), and I strongly 
suspect with your *HEAVY* iphone habit, you'll be needing it in the next 
few days.  :)

I also grabbed a Columbia fleece(?) jacket left on the back of a 
chair...roughly where Dan(?) was sitting.  If it's yours, let me know 
and I'll get it back to you...

Tonight was pretty crazy and interesting and fun.  In my opinion, 
Vendetta is really starting to SUCK for our meetings -- we've simply 
outgrown it and they don't seem terribly interested in helping us (tho 
they *do* *tolerate* us, that's hardly a selling point).  Mostly, it's 
just getting too loud...and trust me, I use that expression SPARINGLY!

I certainly didn't get a proper chance to meet everybody or to see what 
they were showing off, but there was TONS of gear around this time, 
including:

    * Paul's USB Atmel based JTAG interface --
      step 1 of a muhhahahhaha rad board in progress.
    * Don gave me a box of cool Intel audio recording toys from
      the surplus shop....for use with HAYWIRE (circuit bending
      workshop I'm hosting in January)
    * Dan showed off some preliminary GPS based boards and described
      some amazing yet simple interfaces he plans to build with them
    * Brian demoed his wireless zigbee enabled two-way thermostat
      home efficiency hack!  Sweet LCD embedded into a home-control
      thermostat project.
    * Brad set up his luggable and midi controller and projected VVVV
      visuals on the whit brick walls and answered the slaughter of
      questions from most of us!  It was really a thing of beauty.
    * Stan brought an Alphagrip controller and let us play with it
      and fail to type correctly with it.
    * ...and probably several other notable things I completely missed!

All in all, there were a bunch of new and welcome faces, and a lot of 
CRAZY INTERESTING ideas being kicked about.  Aside from the space 
complaints, I'd say this was a big success and I'm quite excited to see 
where we take this in the upcoming months.

As always, we're looking for people to help present and help organize or 
otherwise assist with DorkbotPDX events.  If you have something you'd 
like to show or present in a more formal manner, now is the time to 
start planning an event!  The email list, website, and irc channel are 
all choice methods for getting the process going!  We're specifically 
interested in [new] spaces for meetings, so if you know of something, 
please let us know.

Thanks again to everybody for coming out and sharing a good and 
stimulating time!

-jason
http://noisybox.net