Stumbled back into here last night for really no reason other than alcohol, and I figured I should make amends.

Wondering what's up but I see that it's dead as ever. Which is perfect. Sometimes, you just need to have a space where no one is so you can be a goddamn human being again. Or a transgendered hippy space saucer. Whatever it is you kids are into nowadays. Mostly, I'm here because I need to get back into writing again, and writing often. 

I'm finally out of college with my degree in computer engineering and 35k in the toilet, which I guess isn't much. Doing freelance Android app development, frontend and backend, and leading a small guild of coders who meet in a Target starbucks twice a week. We refer jobs to each other and help each other out where we can. It's pretty fun, but the clients are drying up or not paying on time. I've got another 4 months until I need to start paying back student loans, which means I'll need a job-job. My resume's in one hand, and Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle MacDowell is in the other. But I'm really hesitant to push that submit button whenever I'm applying.

See, because right now, I have this idea. 

My big passion project right now is a makerspace cafe. I've got a business proposal written up, and an investor, and now we're negotiating for space somewhere near my hometown with someone with experience running cafes. Everything is going crazy great, and I'm excited as hell. 

The basic concept of it is that it's going to be a coffee shop with a work/study commons which offers tools in an adjacent warehouse if you've got a membership. Typically those memberships go for 150 bucks a month, which is pretty expensive. But by attaching a coffee shop to it, I think I can reduce the membership price down to $30. Think "tools" like 3D printers, lathes, saws, CNC mills, that kind of thing. We'd teach classes and have workshops, host robotics competitions, and more.
 
Anyway, my life is mostly revolving around this right now. But some other projects I'm working on are:

1.) an MMO for Android Phones where people cast spells at each other via minigames and gestures at their screens kind of like a spellbook. 
2.) a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book engine for Android (I'll toss it up on github when it's ready)
3.) a robot arm that attaches to my back and holds my phone in front of my face. Sounds dumb, yeah I know. But you can use it as a camera gimbal, which is schweet, and it's useful if you need both hands and your phone is clunky like mine. Eventually I want to write a companion app for it, a cute little pet AI which responds to commands and recommends articles and interesting things for me to read occasionally. When I get there I promise to put the build of materials up. 

Still though. None of this is putting food on the table -yet.-

Anyway, what are you guys working on?

What do you mean by helldump? If it's just trolling then I think that's just the backbone of this place. If it ever got reaaaallly bad then I just don't remember much about it...maybe I left before it got bad.

Well, not a hub, but getting there. The vibe is subtle though -- more garage spaces are being set up, bio and AI are a bigger thing (bio's getting huge), and there are definitely more robotics firms moving in. There are so many meetups too, for a variety of technologies relating to programming, tech, bio, philosophy even. Coffee shops are filled with these meetups, and this is stuff that normal people are doing in their free time. What really irks me though is that it feels very top-down. A lot of the money is coming from university grants and offshoot firms, for example, or it's being funded by our local engineering companies. The culture is kinda stagnant... That money tends to sit up there, right above most people's grasp. No one really wants to learn something cool if they have to spend 300 bucks a month to rent lab space. I also think that our school system puts too much emphasis on "college" and less emphasis on tech and craftsmanship and curiosity.... standards which end up shafting a huge portion of the population. 

Soo my thinking is that a space like this will help. 

Ha, okay "joning" hits a chord there. All that got (somewhat) tempered out once the internet became mainstream. As for saltw, I'm sure we just grew up.

Bahahaha ohh man that was Climbtree? I was wondering where the hell *that* came from.

I thiiink the issue with my area is about the culture. All the people my age who stuck around generally grew up through an era of all these school budget cuts, so after they cut classes like woodshop and auto and band, our districts shifted gears and pressed heavily on the "college readiness" nonsense. Our education was without spirit or soul, so I feel like our group doesn't have as much of the curiosity or the diy element as some of the 50-somethings who wander into my meetup.

What I really want is a creative space driven by the local groups rather than me just going out and buying a CNC mill and 3d printer and slave-driving the process. But tuning to the culture isn't an easy feat.. Guh.