October 10, 2009

Mostly MiniSoOnCon

I's sick. Yes, sick. As tough as my immune system is, stress is a killer.

I think I'm sposed to be sick though, as odd as it sounds, I needed a break from responsibility. It doesn't take much for me to get overwhelmed as it is, and lately my life has been becoming busier and busier.

So my body is now forcing me to rest and I'm resting to the best of my ability! Unfortunately I missed the Supercrawl because of this, which sucks much ass, but it was out of my hands and I'll just have to go to the regular art crawl next month.

Where was I? I can't write when the music is blaring and I have been having to play music as of late to drown out certain other noises (no no I'm not hearing voices in my head lol). I won't go into detail except to say it sucks and I'm too tired and sick right now to do anything else. Ugh.

Anyway! Some of the stuff I've been up to in the past month...

Last Friday was MiniSoOnCon at Think Haus! I wasn't going to go because I would have to go solo and I'm very shy and introverted and all that fun stuff. But I went anyway and was pleased to see that most of the other guests in attendance were just as shy and introverted as I am! I've never been to a hacker conference before so the sight of a room full of people sitting quietly, looking at their laps in complete silence was both hilarious and refreshing.

It did not remain that quiet all night though: once people started to get to know each other and of course get some alcohol into them, it was pretty good times! A lot of people showed up. People from Diyode (from Guelph), HackLab.TO (from Toronto), KwartzLab (from Kitchener), think|haus (from Hamilton,of course), FouLab (from Montreal), as well as other hackerspaces and someone even came out from Rochester! So yeah I met a lot of awesome people and we managed to get hackers from all over Canada to come out to our humble space.

We had a yummy bar-b-que, despite the bad weather, and a well stocked bar - I don't remember the bartender's name but she was awesome.

We had (what I now understand to be a hacker con tradition) really cool frikken badges. I mean, I saw these things being made at the space and didn't quite get it until the finished product was presented:



The picture doesn't really do it justice - but it's awesome and everyone in attendance wore one.

According to what I've been told, the tradition is to hack your badge and see who can do the coolest thing with theirs, which, I suppose, is why our lounge area was filled with drunk people soldering - mhmmm, unfortunately I don't have a photo of that madness.

See that little house there? That's the Think Haus logo. Don made that! He is awesoma powa.



Paul (TH) graced us with demonstrations of the long awaited http://www.emotiv.com/ - the thing reads your mind maaaan! No, srsly, you put it on your head and it detects your facial expressions, eyeball movement, emotions, thoughts, actions, and "can be used to control not only a virtual environment, but also a live environment through the help of micro-controllers and actuators."

I love this thing, the implications get me very excited!

The other cool thing going on was the arrival of the CUPCAKE Makerbot (3D printer). It wasn't assembled until the next day of the con, so since I didn't make it that day, I didn't see that, but here's a video cause I only vaguely understand why this is awesome:



That lovely gal is Leigh Honeywell from Hacklab T.O. and the fella behind the mic is Wayne MacPhail giving us awesome coverage.

Isn't our space da bomb? It's been being "fixed up" for four months and is now officially a workable hackerspace.

I wish I could have taken pictures myself but my camera is acting wonky.

Needless to say it was awesome (especially considering Think Haus is only four months old!) and I'm looking forward to it next year.

What I did find interesting was the very small percentage of females in attendance: Adina and I from TH, Leigh and Alex from T.O., the bartender gal, and maybe one or two others (I mean no offense it's just my memory sucks right now). Then a crap-load of mens. I love mens the best, but it begs the question, why? Where are the geeky gals? I know you're out there! Come over to the dark side, we have beer! (and cookies, and cupcakes!).

This little MiniSoOnCon attendee is on the right track!


zomg she's cute!

What else... Oh Tetro! haha

Hamilton just had a film festival called Festitalia International Film Festival. I know, it aint TIFF, deal. Riley and I went to see a film called Tetro, which turned out to be an okay movie. The best part of the night? Discovering that Jackson Square cinemas got brand new seats for the event! Yay! Clean theater seats! And they're slightly more comfy too, woot!

Anyway, that was fun, next year I wanna try to see more of the films. Hell, next year I might go to TIFF.

Before that, I went away to Parrysound to stay at someone's cottage for four days. I LOVE going there, it's so relaxing and peaceful surrounded by nature. Last year upon arrival, as soon as I stepped out of the van all my heartache and stress dissipated and I was at peace the whole time I was there. Of course it came back when I came home, but at least for that short time I was at peace.

I expected/hoped for the same this year, especially since my stress this year is quite a bit less than it was last year, but no such luck. I was at peace, but there was still things nagging at me in the back of my head. I'm pretty sure I know why now but all in all it was a good time. I swam in the lake and it was COLD! but very clean and refreshing. I paddled a rowboat all by myself *proud grin.* I made a smore (I love love bonfires) and did some meditating and crocheting. Yep.

There was also The Locke Street Festival followed by Pagan Harvest Festival: the former was too crowded and hot, the latter was pretty cool, very peaceful, lots of shady areas to chill.

I got a great tarot reading from Franco Minatel - he did a reading for me a few years ago but I didn't recognize him until he started reading my cards.

The day ended as the very bright sun was making its way below the horizon, with all joining a circle for a little closing ritual, which was quite nice.

Then I went home and got drunk with Tim lol.

That's it that's all I'm done.

Alright, bugger off then.




Love M

2 comments:

Thanks for reading <3