Category: Meetings

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CREATESouth 2012

Deciding to go to this year’s CREATESouth was a bit of a last minute decision. Seemed like everything was going on this weekend. CREATESouth, Cupcake Camp Summerville, Pet Fest, LUG meeting (which ended up getting moved).

CREATESouth 2012 was smaller than previous ones I’ve been to, but I think this year was better, with presentations that were more interesting. Keynotes by Philippa Ballantine and Heather Solos were both very good.

Lunch was once again delicious BBQ provided by Andre Pope and Proud Purveyors of Pork.

BBQ lunch

There were a lot of sessions that I would have liked to see. I ended up going to the DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting, Budget Barista and BBQ sessions. I found all of the sessions interesting and inspiring.

The DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting session was perhaps the coolest one with a hands on part where we actually got to do some sand casting. Packed sand to make molds, and poured the metal to make these little CREATESouth logos. I think I may have found a new hobby.

Metal casting at CREATESouth

Budget Barista was a good session looking at some of the variables that go into making a good cup of coffee. Did you know a hot air popcorn popper can be used to roast coffee beans? I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but have been known to consume a cup now and then. After seeing the Aeropress in action at the session, I think it’s my new want item.

Aeropress in action

The Art and Science of BBQ ended up being an outdoor session with Andre Pope talking about how to do BBQ and showing his BBQ rig. I learned that you don’t need a big huge smoker setup to do BBQ and that it’s easier than it looks. You can make BBQ in a slow cooker, which I’ve done before but never really considered it real BBQ. Now that I know better, I’m inspired to do more BBQ.

Art and science of BBQ

Had a really good time at CREATESouth this year, and I’m really glad I decided to go. Got inspired to do new things, at least two of which I’ll probably do. The metal casting sounds like it will be really cool to take up as a hobby, but it’s probably not something I should get into right now.

Check out my photos from the day over on Flickr.

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Penguins and coffee

Today’s Charleston Linux User Group meeting was held at the new Coastal Coffee Roasters in Summerville.

Brad’s roasting operation is in full gear and during the meeting we got to sample his iced coffee. It’s not just regular brewed coffee poured over ice. It’s a cold brew process that results in a remarkably tasty, non-bitter refreshing cold drink perfect for these hot summer days.

Today’s meeting covered the latest happenings with Summer PyGames, an update from the recent Southeast Linuxfest, a demo of a machine planned for use as a server for a new community computer lab, the new Makelab Charleston and various other miscellaneous topics.

CSCLUG meeting at Coastal Coffee Roasters

After the meeting wrapped up, Brad gave us a tour of the roasting operation.

Coastal Coffee Roasters logo on the side of a large red coffee roasting machine

Starting from raw green coffee beans

A handful of green unroasted coffee beans

talking about the roasting process

Explaining the coffee roasting process

and the finished product

A pail of freshly roasted coffee beans
Showing off a bag of coffee beans

If you’re in the area, stop by and pay them a visit. Pick up a bag or two of coffee and try some of the iced coffee.

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A week at SPIE Medical Imaging

Last week I went to my first SPIE Medical Imaging conference.

As conferences go, SPIE MI is a more technical conference, and the work being presented tends to be a little more on the bleeding edge of things than what you might find at RSNA or AAPM. Since most of what I’ve done in the past has been more clinical and not as bleeding edge, it’s not a conference that’s high on my list of ones I want to go to. This time though, it was an opportunity to present some of the preliminary Monte Carlo work we’ve been doing. There were three posters accepted from our group and I got to go present them.

SPIE MI bounces between San Diego and Orlando each year, and this year it was in Orlando at one of the Disney Resorts. I flew in Friday, and since the conference didn’t really get started until Sunday (something I didn’t realize beforehand, really) I decided to spend my suddenly free Saturday at Disney World Epcot. Fun place. Much, much fun. I could have easily spent another day here.

Epcot

The rest of the week was spent at the conference seeing what would be coming my way a few years from now and catching up on studying. I did get to spend a day wandering around Downtown Disney. A fun place to go people watch, especially in the evening.

Downtown Disney at night
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Southeast Linuxfest 2011

The third edition of Southeast Linuxfest is coming June 10-12 once again to the Marriott Renaissance in Spartanburg, SC.

Organizers are busy working behind the scenes to put together another great event for this year. SELF is currently looking for vendors, sponsors and speakers and volunteers.

If you want to find out more about SELF, want to help or are interested in participating, contact us or come hang out in the SELF IRC channel.

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Another Southeast Linuxfest over

Judging from the response from most people, this year’s Southeast Linuxfest was another hugely successful event. There was a snafu with getting decent Internet access to the meeting (big AT&T fail), but it seemed like most people put up with the hotel internet, worked around it with cell phone tethering or cell phone wifi, or just lived without it for a couple of days. Overall things went off without too many major incidents and there was a lot of positive feedback from the attendees. Things seemed a little chaotic at times but it was all good.

Not sure about the exact attendance numbers yet, but there were almost 540 people that registered online. It definitely felt like there were more people here than there were at SELF 2009. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear final attendance numbers close to 700.

Learned a lot of new things to look into at DrupalCamp. Excited about learning how to do more with Drupal. Problem will be finding the time to play with it.

Managed to score a bunch of geeky t-shirts this year. Came back from SELF with 9 more t-shirts than I left with. A couple of them I bought, while the rest were freebies from various exhibitors.

SELFShirt.JPG

Even managed to go out and do some photowalking with Michael DeHaan of Puppet Labs and Ian Weller. We hit a shut down Krispy Kreme and got some interesting photos there using the neon red glow from the DOUGHNUT sign that was still lit up. Then we spent some time taking photos at an interesting fountain. Had a good time.

Fountain.JPG

KKWall.JPG

Also came back with around 2.6GB worth of photos, including a few videos from Dual Core‘s performance Saturday night. After making a first pass to weed through the obvious rejects, there are close to 550 photos still to go through.

By late Sunday, most of the volunteers and organizers were pretty wiped out.

KJNap.JPG

Looking forward to helping create another successful SELF for 2011.