braindump of What is your Passion as hosted by Ryan Joy at Pablo's Fiesta in room 103

Derick Bailey says that he spends his days blogging and getting paid for it. Ryan: on second Tuesday of november there will be a talk on why one will be a tech evangelist. "Anne Epstein" says that it is sort of a Headspring thing that people go to conferences and brown bags. There are few people in the room... we are getting started though. Ryan: When going to open conferences in the past he always hears about passions outside of tech. He is into photography, whiskey, robotics... he owns a boat. He eats directly out of his fridge and loves cooking. Derick: +1 to Whiskey. He says Balconies Whiskey from Waco is good. He loves code electronics, blogging. Another guy asks about Derick's blogging. Derick has never given me grief about how much he blogs. Guy in blue shirt doesn't like ranting over blogs. Anne blogged a lot more when she had a terrible blog. Derick tries to maintain a positive persona when he blogs. Guy in blue shirt mentions putting in new floor in home. Ryan asserts that such home projects are a passion. Guy in blue shirt mentions that his attention goes in different directions. He mentioned a time when another asked him for help with a computer that had a bad hard drive. He advised them to slowly migrate data to another computer. This got him interested in getting an A+ certification. His passion ultimately is learning. Anne is renovating a property she rents via YouTube movies. She is into ballroom dancing and asserts its heavily expensive when you consider lessons, airline tickets for yourself and another. Guy in grey hat is passionate about family and Bible ministry. He is also interested in robotics. Marshal is the name of the guy in the hat. Do/while/foreach/dowhile are examples of loops. Ryan some people are just bad interviewers. He has pushed people about encapsulation and had then struggle to articulate it when he knows they use it. Guy who lives in the middle of nowhere likes home brewing and HAM radio. Instead of having hardware components that tune to signal you can now do that in software. We've started talking about tweeting in morse code. Guy who lives in the middle of nowhere wants to get into robotic prosthetics and 3D printing is apparently helping amputees build their limbs. Guy with grey ponytail likes music. He started on trumpet when he was eight and he is on piano now. Music eats his disposable income and money goes into recording gear. He is 52. In his forties he did martial arts. He likes genealogy too. He wanted an escape from technology. Sharon Chichelli (spelling?) asked him about eventual travel. I could find acting again perhaps. Guy with grey ponytail mentions the Austin film society. We talked about dungeons and dragons some. Another guy suggests dance classes. He suggests you hold a character when you dance. All of Ryan's passions are analytical. With photography and cooking it is very much a self taught type thing. (as is code) Ryan sometimes goes to photography meetups and picks their brains about other meetings. Sharon likes pinball. She says its cool electronics. She has been under the hood of a pinball machine. She took a class at Laguna Gloria. She revisited ink bottle and "gum" erasers. Derick mentions "drawing on the right side of your brain/mind" a book. He bemoans his long art takes. He designs logos for open source projects. Inkscape is software he uses. "Paper" for the iPad is an app he uses to draw. He is pulling up some illustrations. He had drawn a snail with a jetpack. He made a series images for a screen cast that were to compare HTTP requests to an airport. Eric Hexter has played drums since 3rd grade. He loves metal (music). He is into robotics. He plays drums at his church. He wrote a program to help his daughter to win a conch in a school contest. Paul Herrea (spelling?) is a drummer too. He has played professional for a year and it sabotaged his passion. He wonders of he loved playing music or being on stage. He was in a cover band. Guy in purple converse with accident: speaks to passions that have irregular hours like being a chef or being a musician. Paul thinks its more fun to be in the audience than onstage. Ryan is recapping the hobbies listed so far. He thinks everyone in the group shares learning/teaching. Guy in purple shoes mentions gaming. Sharon: if you are drawing cards off a deck of cards the future is knowable, not so with dice. Ryan asserts that this is why California allows blackjack gambling but not craps gambling. Guy is purple shoes likes "pulling things back" and asking why is it this way. Guy in middle of nowhere: we destroy reality by categorizations into language. Derick: read Neil Stevenson's Snowcraft staring Hero Protagonist. Guy with ponytail: Diana doytche (spelling?) suggested that people develop filters for languages and learn moreso in Vietnam and China to have perfect pitch. Guy in sneakers: think of birdsong and the way animals communicate and he asserts music is the beginning of language. Guy from nowhere: they have taught dolphins to play specific games with whistles. Each dolphin had its own whistle as though a whistle corresponds to names. Ryan is a news and information junkie. Ryan puts on Bloomberg podcasts when he codes. The room erupts in a "how can you do that?" chorus. Ryan starts the day drinking coffee and ends the day drinking coffee. He loves twitter streams a tweekdeck. Purple converse guy will accidentally type things he hears while working. Ryan said that he is over the need to listen to everything in an information stream. Sharon challenges Ryan to medicate for a minute without multitasking. It's lunchtime. We are ending.