Meetup is a free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere. The service is primarily designed to connect folks locally, but the user base is international. So if you travel regularly, you could plan to connect with other folks in other cities.
I discovered Meetup.com through blogging and hope to meet some other local creatives through the network. For more information, visit Meetup.com.
As one recently inducted into both the blog and Pocket PC communities, I wondered if the OSS community had brought the two naturally complementary technologies together yet. It seemed to me there were two main points of convergence … writing and reading blogs offline. Happily, the OSS community provides!
I just got home from three hours of great play with Jackie and Adam. They very graciously introduced me to the basics of single-hand rapier fighting. As with my experience on Henry V, I am very impressed with how similar the discipline of Stage Combat (SC) is to the discipline of actual martial arts study. While SC is very stylized for dramatic effect and actor safety, it seems to require the same sort of mental acuity and focus as classical martial arts training.
After my rapier lesson, I did my best to introduce Jackie and Adam to some of the fundamentals of Japanese swordsmanship.* Mostly, we focused on basic sword ettiquette (how to hold, carry, exchange blades), simple cutting mechanics/postures, and historic/societal dynamics; all of which I hope may be of use to them if staging a duel, battlefield or “dojo-challenge”.
Everyone enjoyed our “play time”. I hope Jackie and Adam got as much out of the time as I did. At the behest of both of these talented fight coreographers, I took a look at www.safd.org, the website of the Society of American Fight Directors. The following blurb is lifted from their site and outlines what SAFD is all about. I intend to further investigate and perhaps participate in a workshop over the summer.
The Society of American Fight Directors is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting safety and fostering excellence in the art of directing staged combat/theatrical violence.
* Disclaimer: Out of respect for my teachers, I need to be clear that I did not introduce any specific techniques from either Shinto Muso Ryu or Muso Jikki Den Eishin Ryu, nor did I present myself as a qualified teacher of either art.
ESPN.com, the online sister of the ESPN cable networks, serves up more than half a billion page views every month, so when the home page of the site dropped all layout tables in favor of structural markup and CSS-driven layout, the Web design community took notice.
I caught wind of this article at Six Log. For those new to Cascading StyleSheets (CSS), interviewer Eric Meyer is the author of Eric Meyer on CSS, considered by many to be the definitive CSS “bible” at the moment. Put Eric Meyer together with a post-mortem on ESPN.coms move to CSS and other “forward-compatible” technologies, and you have a great case study in why table-based web design will soon go the way of the Dodo.
For strike, Jay (my buddy) and I took charge of the storage space, making sure that items were correctly and appropriately stored. It also involved a fair amount of heavy lifting.
Really? All I recall is Drew shooting the proverbial sheet while everyone else worked their backsides off. 
In all seriousness, Drew worked hard that evening. All of us did. That said, I am told it was a relatively light strike; as our set was rather spartan as sets go.
As chronicled elsewhere in this blog, Henry V was my first theater experience and it was a joy. From the first fight call to last call at the last cast party, I had nothing but fun. Everyone was wonderfully supportive of this first-timer and I made friendships which I am sure will carry forward.
I just realized, it is Friday night and I do not have fight call.
/me gets a little misty.
I have intentionally decided not to blog about Henry V for at least two weeks. I want to let the experience sink in; particularly in light of the war in Iraq. Until then.
reputation management is crucial. so crucial that i would do some more free consulting for them if i still were in the bay area. i really want them to suceed.
Two things you gotta love about Gregor … his vision and his willingness to commit to said vision. In this case, he give props to Affero, a project “created to facilitate funding for Free Software and Open Source projects and to facilitate more effective dialogue among groups”.
Gregor mentioned Affero to me over a year ago, as he did with Blogging. I’ve learned to listen to Gregor with more purpose since then. 
PS: While you are at it, be sure to check out Affero Helps Open Source Developers Take Online Reputations With Them, the article Gregor references.