Marsden is Here

So I'll be on duty at Spacecraft tomorrow from 2pm, so I'm putting the hard word on all my friends to show up and say Hi (and bring a project) :D

Canterbury Innovation Incubator
200 Armagh St
Christchurch
2pm-7pm

There'll be a sign on the door - just ring the bell or txt me to get in.
~~~
( other random stuff included in this post so as not to spam friends lists too much )

What was Creative Space starts back again this Wednesday evening, and I'm on a sort of promise to pimp it this year :D

Spacecraft is a space in Christchurch, New Zealand for people to hack, craft, make, create and work on projects.

For some of the things people were working on last year have a look around here

As Phil put it intiallly

I've been interested in the concept for quite a while but after spending some time in similar setups in Europe I'm even more convinced it would be a great addition to the city. While I could spout on about it having social, community, technical, educational and creative benefits I'm really only suggesting it because I want to be able to work on projects and hang out with interesting people at the same time.

The evening & afternoon sessions last year proved the potential and the group is currently in discussion about finding a dedicated, 24/7 space which can be outfitted & where people can set up & leave their projects-in-progress.

If this is something you would like to be involved with please pop in to any session or join the conversation on the mailing list. Over summer (or until space is found) we'll be every Wednesday, 7-11pm at 200 Armagh St (the Canterbury Innovation Incubator). Gold coin donation for regular attendees.

~~~
I attended several sessions last year. It's a good place to get out of the house, focus (you might think that having people around would be more distracting, but not so. Everyone is working on something) and get stuff done. The NeverWinter campaign in particular benefited, but once or twice I just took along a book to read.

The feel is social/recreational, the people are friendly, the facilities include wireless internet (bring your own laptop) and there's tea/coffee/etc in the kitchen (covered generally by the gold coin mentioned above).

Since it looks like I'm getting to be involved in the next phase of SpaceCraft's development, expect to hear a lot more about it this year.

There are about 10000 images, mostly photos that Picasa has access to. According to it's status bar it was trying to index ~25000 somethings. It stopped with ~10000 whatever-they-are to go, and won't restart indexing. I know it hasn't identified every face including some very clear ones that it should have no trouble with.

Reading the help forums it seems this isn't a unique problem, especially for people with large photo collections. There is a possibility that once all existing faces are assigned it will restart indexing. I have a hunch it reached about 10000.

There are 2104 left to do - I can't remember if I saw 8000+ at one stage or only 6000+ but I was assigning while it was still indexing. So I assigned 4-8000 faces yesterday. (It's suggestion and grouping features still leave much to be desired. There is no quick way to recover from mis-labelling a face, But the effective autocomplete feature makes labelling so much faster.)

There's still the question of retaining this data over my planned New Years system wipe & reinstall. But at least I have a feel for how long it will take if I have to do it all over again.

On the one hand this is proof that I can still focus obscenely on a project that interests me (or perhaps that just triggers my OCD) and it's gratifying that my brain has been able to drag quite a few names up from the murky past (while only 2008/2009 KAOS pics are in the system I have family and gaming (SAGA/OURS/KapCon) collections stretching back to the early 2000s)

On the other hand
- My spine is feeling quite compressed from the hours I put in yesterday, although I managed to retain fairly good posture for the day (I think)
- The photos include Kaye & Martyn's wedding, which was an uneccessariy bittersweet reminder this close to the anniversary of their accident
- Plowing through faces brings ... unhelpful associations as well as good. In particular repeatedly seeing the faces of various women I've been attracted to over the years is not having a positive effect on my state of mind.

~~~
The Creative Space BBQ is this afternoon - I'm not really sure I'm up to going out and socialising with a bunch of people I barely know but it will get me out of the house.

Vaguely getting thing done at home.
A couple of phone calls.
Vaguely getting things done, a ponderous game of Hunters & Gatherers, and pizza at Creative Space
Blowing stuff up in Privateer, because the joystick is behaving itself at the moment.

A few weeks ago I posted about Fibre from the Farm as reported in the Christchurch Press. On Monday Close Up had picked up the story (watch on TVNZOnDemand).

Today Chris Barton has picked up the theme in his NZHerald column.

~~~
The Sci Fi Soc movie this week was Tron, which has aged remarkably well. A lot of the futuristic stuff is, well, still futuristic.

Next weeks movie is Soylent Green

~~~
Last night at Christchurch Creative Space there was a presentation and discussion on future options for the group. It will be repeated on Sunday and anyone who is interested is welcome to come along.