Staticfree Blog

Updated: Claimed! Good sir Faboo will be living with us next year.

Are you looking for a place to live in Rochester, NY next Fall? Does the notion of housemates who brew beer (as black as coffee), stay up until dawn (not partying), and enjoy the finer points of Linux sound appealing?

Well, we (Tina, Ryan, and myself) are looking for one or two someones who fit the bill. Rent is cheap, the people are swell, and the location is fairly near RIT.

Want to know more? Contact me if you are interested.

Specs

price

$850/month rent + heat + utilities, total. About $300/mo./ea. for 4 people; $240/mo./ea. for 5.

time

Starting in the fall, but perhaps summer as well.

location

81 Barton St. Five miles north of RIT across the river from U of R. Very near an excellent park with a nice view of the river. Across the street from river trails that lead up to the city.

room

2x 10.5'x9.5' rooms, carpeted. One with a closet, the other with a dedicated 20A wall outlet. 1x window each room.

Internet

Cable (extra-fast) and DSL for redundancy. Secured WiFi access point in the center of the house. A household server with plenty of space for storing files and hosting websites.

misc. house stuff

Kitchen, 1x bath, dining room, living room, furnished attic, washer/dryer, decent-sized back yard.

people

Two geeks and a lady: Ryan, Steve, and Tina. We're reasonably clean, stay up late, and occasionally listen to loud music. We generally don't have parties, we drink responsibly and eat well.

One of the main things I've discovered about Rochester is that all the good stuff is hidden. There are nice walkways along the riverside and canal - paths that go all the way from across my street to the downtown area. There are wonderful small restaurants, like First Taste Grill on Park Ave. which has amazing french toast. But, unless a local told you about them, you probably wouldn't find them.

No local told me about Artisan Works until just yesterday - and I've lived here for 5 years. This place is the Disney Land of local artistry and art collection - it's huge. I spent a number of hours there and didn't get to see all of it, let alone absorb it all in any detail. Every square foot of wall - including hallways and stairways - has art hanging on it. In one place, even the ceiling has pieces hanging from it.

There is a section they call The Workshop and Blvd. Geribaldi which has the work of the Artisan Works resident artists displayed everywhere. The resident artists have workshops there where people can see more of their work.

I was brought there by Mark Groaning who makes (amongst other things) spherical geometric figures out of metal. His work is found all around Artisan Works - mostly laser-cut metal designs, but also paintings as well.

We were very lucky and were given a tour by Louis Perticone, the director of the place. He showed us absolutely everything, including one particularly long hall there had an enormous number of master works. I was quite impressed by the Salvidor Dali collection, but liked more some of their other collections (whose info I neglected to copy down).

As the entire place is non-profit, they partially support themselves by hosting parties. Apparently there was one recently that I was told I was invited to (although having received no invitation, I'm not entirely sure if that's the case). Hopefully RIT has another event there - I'd love to go back.

The more I look into this place, the more I find that no one in Rochester seems to know it exists. It's an impressive place - certainly not something one can experience in even one visit. Tina and I will be going back sometime soon - anyone care to join us?

At Geekhaus, we have an electric stove that is very fond of producing smoke. Most likely, that's due to its age and general uncleanliness, but that's besides the point: it sets off our smoke detector frequently. Thankfully, our smoke detector has a cute little button (which we jovially entitled "STFU") that silences it for a short period of time. Alas, this is located on the detector itself, so it's often hard to reach.

So, what does a slightly intoxicated geek do at 2:00am? Run up to his room, rummage around for telephone wire, his Dremel and soldering iron and install a remote STFU button. It's mounted on the doorframe, right next to the stove for convenient silencing while cooking. And it is this reason, amongst many others, that I love living in this house.

This winter, I have experienced two things things in Rochester that I never have before:

1. Shoveling out my car (I only recently got one).
2. Seeing numerous people bicycle by in -20°C weather.

After an hour or so of #1, I realized why #2 exists: you don't have to shovel out, scrape off, or otherwise dewinterify your bicycle. Of course the major drawback of that being that most bicycles don't have heated seats or something to keep your face from freezing off.

Liz has officially announced the new Lab for Social Computing over at many-to-many. Starting this quarter, I'll be working at the lab in addition to running the Social Computing Club. The lab and the club should be a great way to help get RIT on the map with social computing.

Currently, I'm one of two undergraduate researchers who will be working there. As of now, our main efforts lie in helping get the lab on its feet (website work, wiki work, etc.). Once that's more stationary, it'll be interesting to see what direction we start going. I'm really looking forward to diving into some code again.

I just got word that the Social Computing Club I've been helping start at RIT has been approved and is now officially recognized by the student government. This means we can now apply for student government funding, have a table at club days (there's one upcoming Nov 12th), and other such nifty things. Yay!

We meet regularly in Java Wally's. (Check our page for more details.) We are presently a discussion group, covering the latest topics in social computing, social software, communication, blogs, social networking, etc., but will eventually be working on laying the foundations for social software development at RIT. Hopefully we will be working with some companies on projects in our field in the near future.

If you're interested in learning about how the future of social interactions could be shaped by technology, have neat ideas of your own, or just want to promote your blog software - come by for one of our meetings. If you're not at RIT but want to learn more about social computing, check out our page.

UPDATE: The club has a new homepage over at the Lab for Social Computing's site. Check it out!

A local Rochester church has decided to make their way into the information age by putting up an entirely different type of steeple. I'm sure the Minister appreciates that his audience gets full cell reception during his sermons, ready to interrupt his dramatic pauses with ill-timed electronic hails.

Well, like an RIT construction project gone terribly wrong, Winter hit Rochester like a sack of bricks. Starting with 45mph winds and topping it all off with horizontal, vertical, diagonal and other snow, a near blizzard started and then vanished in a few hours. All that remains are tattered trees and a suspicious cold, white residue on top of most things exposed to the outdoors.

I grabbed some photos here and there, even grabbing a shot of the finals-week coffee shop drum circle.

Java's is a good coffee shop. Not a clean, well-lit place - but a more homey, humanistic type of atmosphere. Where poets, signing and missing words into mics, while flocks of sleep-deprived students poke the plastic keys of their laptops, away in their own worlds. Where an all-nighter is curled up in a dark corner on a couch, stealing a few hours where they can.