David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

This weekend, as per my last blog post, I attended ROFLCon (also on Facebook) as a volunteer. I wish I could say that I had intended to volunteer from the beginning, but I must admit that truthfully signed up initially because I needed a ticket as I didn’t register in time (I had known about it for a while, but the not-registering is another story). However, upon meeting the ROFLCon organizers and starting to get into it I was totally hooked. I set out originally to volunteer for just one day (Friday) and attend regularly on Saturday but once I got into it there was no was I could stop.

Let me be clear about one thing, this was absolutely the best executed convention/conference I have ever attended that and that sentiment seems to be universal. I can also say without qualifier that this was the best weekend of my entire life. I met some wonderful people, had many lolz, drank much Brawndo, partied like a rockstar, danced the night away, took a ton of photos and some great video, and I was Rick Rolled on several occasions.

All of the panels were superb. Everyone was so friendly. Everyone who was cool was there. I feel sorry for people at PodCamp NYC, as there’s no way it was anywhere near as cool as this. Seriously. PodCamp is cool, but there’s a ton of them. This was unique. There are talks of another ROFLCon next year, but it’s going to take a lot of work and there is some feeling that it might be like getting lightening to strike twice. Surely it would be bigger, have yet more coverage and such but I do wonder about recreating the experience again. It really was something magical.

So more into detail about the amazing things. Kevin Driscol held a great panel on Soulja Boy and the dance culture that has surrounded his videos. He taught us all the dance, and about 20-30 of us (mostly white nerds that can barely dance) video taped it and put it on YouTube and elsewhere online.

I finally met iJustine and Brook. For some reason I really felt that with all of the other social media bloggers and podcasters that I know that surely I’d have at least ran into them before, but I hadn’t. In case anyone has any doubts, Justine and Brook are both very nice, smart, articulate, funny and great people. They are by no means simply just cute faces on the internet and to discount either of them as such is a severe mistake. I was somewhat shocked to find that moot from 4chan is actually a nice guy and doesn’t really like anonymous being assholes to everyone either. Negative points for anonymous (outside of their talk) for being assholes. Very uncool. Props to the girl that stole their boombox. She’s cool. When Anons were trying to Roll everyone Moot stood up and wrote on the chalkboard, “This Sucks”. Oh, and Ben Schultz (LeeRoy Jenkins) is the shit. Super cool guy. It’s odd to find that the Tron Guy (Jay Maynard) has almost the same day job I do.

I had some great conversations with the Brothers Chapp from Homestarrunner. They are very laid back guys that obviously have a great sense of humor. I hope to get to hang out with them some if I travel to Atlanta at any point as they really are great. The Mozilla/Firefox guy, Alex Polvi, was really awesome and bought me a drink while we were at Great Scott dancing. Seeing him (as the Firefox) fight the TripAdvisor Owl in a brawl outside the MIT Media Lab was amazing. I got to talk to Bre Pettis again from Etsy/iMakeThings/NYCResistor. Cheez from ICanHasCheezeburger was really funny. I feel really silly using all of these positive superlatives here, but there really is no other way to describe the events of the weekend.

The Barbarian Group threw an amazing little VIP event that really gave everyone some great time to connect in a more intimate setting. Afterwards at Great Scott there was much dancing had by all. Each night there was little sleep, but that is to be expected. I look forward to the next ROFLCon as well as to getting to know all of my new friends that I have made there, especially the organizers and volunteers.

I took a TON of photos during this, but so did many others. Check out all of our photos on the ROFLCon Flickr Pool. I wish that I could have blogged more during this, but all of the time on my laptop was spent editing/selecting between the 15GB of photos that I took. I still didn’t get a chance to color correct anything past the first set, but maybe I’ll see what I can do in the future. I’m thinking an EyeFi card might be useful for the next events I go to. I love Aperture, but the edit/upload process does take a bit of time.

Tags: Uncategorized

I’m volunteering at ROFLCon (being held at MIT). It’s a really sweet conference on internet memes, humor, viral marketing, etc, etc. There’s gotta be 700 people here at least, if not more.

Right now is just the opening panel, and I can’t type much but I’m putting video/photos to my flickr account. Check it out! Updates coming soon. Tickets all sold out, so if you aren’t in… you’ll have to live vicariously through the web.

Also follow @roflcon on twitter. w00t.

Tags: chuck norris, flickr, mit, roflcon, stata, tron guy, twitter, Uncategorized

Did you like TechCocktail last year? Do you enjoy great conversation, amazing people, free food, free drinks and an awesome time? Are you a member of the local Boston tech community? If yes, then you should really clear your calendar for May 15!

Brian Balfour and Jay Meattle are putting together an awesome event called POPSignal. It is Thursday May 15th, 6:30 - 9:30pm at Tequila Rain near Fenway and is just a great informal get-together of the Boston Tech/startup community. If you’re looking for a new job, trying to break in, or just want to see everyone you already know and have a great time come on by!

It’s being generously sponsored by TripAdvisor, T3 Advisors, and Atlas Venture.

Events like this generally fill up rather quickly. Go to the Eventbrite and confirm your ticket now!

Tags: betahouse, boston, brian balfour, jay meattle, POPSignal, startup, tech, Tech Cocktail, Uncategorized

If you are like many digital photographers, you may shoot a rather excessively large number of photos compared to what you would have shot with film (keep in mind that Ansel Adams only generally took a dozen or so sheets of film with him on a camping/photography trip). If you’re shooting with a camera that is capable of it, you should be shooting RAW at all times. The only downside to this is that every image takes up a lot of space!

Basically you’ve got gigabytes full of awkward poses, poor exposures, or just boring and crappy photos that should never see the light of day. Aperture can save your hard drive space however!

You should take all photos that are absolute horror stories as an “X” in Aperture when sorting them out. You shouldn’t put anything rated as such unless you’re basically saying that you want to trash it later. Then, make a smart folder of all photos rated as “X or lower”. You can now select all of these and delete them. This will cut the size of many Aperture libraries in half.  Then simply empty your trash and thats it! So simple, but I’ve seen a lot of Aperture users not doing this for some reason and running out of drive space quickly.

Tags: aperture, apple, cleanout, drive, library, optimize, shrink, space, Uncategorized

I suppose I have to thank my friend Viv for turning me onto reading up on feminism. I saw on Digg, and then on CNN (originally reported by the Baltimore Sun) that there was recently a Maryland case in which (in short) a woman said for a guy to stop while they were in the middle of sex. He kept going for 5-10 seconds and didn’t listen. She filed rape charges and the courts agree, it’s rape. I agree with the courts. What I’m simply shocked by however are the reactions to it. Only 8 states now allow for a woman to withdraw consent in the middle of sex

Attorney Julia Morrow in an CNN interview said several shocking things:

• In Maryland this is going to open up the flood gates [to frivlious rape cases]
• Individuals need to take responsibilities for their own actions
• ..putting yourself in that predicament.
• This won’t keep hoards of women… from running to the police and making out rape complaints.
• If she agrees to the ultimate act… and engages in the act [and changes her mind], should that guy have a felony conviction?

I think this is common sense and I wonder how this is not applicable in all 50 states? The issue that kept being brought up is some “stopwatch factor” nonsense, along with the allegation that all women would vengefully charge men with rape for the fun of it and that the courts will be clogged with rape cases now.

If the courts only were full of rape cases now! Only 16% of rape cases are reported to the police. The process of reporting a rape and charging someone with it isn’t something that people take lightly.

The complaint about 5-10 seconds is utter nonsense. First of all, sit back and time out 10 seconds. Now think of it being a really bad 10 seconds for you. Imagine yourself being violated for 10 seconds. Imagine a root canal or something painful. 10 seconds is kinda a long time depending on the circumstances.

I’m just wondering how dim a guy has to be to not notice that his partner is clearly saying no and pulling away for that time period. Also I’m imagining that his reaction to it will have a lot to do with hers afterward. If she says No sometime in the middle, and he stops, comforts her and talks to her then I’m guessing that everything is ok. If he keeps slamming on for 10 seconds, gets rougher, won’t let her go, and afterwards doesn’t understand why why is upset- then that is pretty clearly rape.

“[So] are you going to let me hit it?” he said, according to police. “I don’t want to rape you.” (This doesn’t sound like pillowtalk or foreplay to me- dave)

…she agreed to sex “as long as he stops when I tell him to.” As he began, she told him to stop because he was hurting her, but he kept going for five or 10 seconds, she said. (she had already tried to warn him that she might need him to stop, he should have been paying attention!)

Just because someone consents initially does not mean that you can do anything and get away with it. You might be hurting them, or they simply might have some other reason that they no longer want to. I was with someone once and a certain position brought up some really bad memories from a prior experience that they had in an abusive relationship. Within about half a second I could tell that something was very wrong and we stopped and talked about it. My first attempt at sex experience didn’t go so well. She was “consenting” but the attempt was very painful for her. Had I been a complete jackass and just forced it and made it happen, and she said no then… clearly that would have been rape.

The only thing that strikes me about this case that I do not like is the hypocracy involved in the details of the situation. It was an 18 (they keep referring to her as woman in a very stately manner on the news, attempting to imply that she “should have known better”) girl and two guys aged 15 and 16. Had the genders been swapped, then the older guy would likely be charged with stautory rape. As is, of course guys at 15 are able to consent to sex, whereas girls aren’t.

So again, in short, anyone (guy or girl) can revoke consent to any sexual act at any time. A sexual act without consent is rape. Perhaps there are different degrees/severities of rape and of course common sense must come into play, but violation is violation.

Tags: 5-10, baltimore, cnn, digg, maryland, media, rape, reporting, seconds, sex crimes, Uncategorized