San Diego IndieWeb Camp 2024: Community Play
N.B.: There’s no way to comprehensively encapsulate 2 full days of an IndieWeb Camp. Here are a few impressions and posts and links and memories. Here are a few select photos and thoughts.
Left to right: Anthony, David, gRegor, Al, and me.
David has been building keyboards lately. 3-D printed in parts, and then hand assembled, including soldering. He’s gotten quite good at it! He wrote at the camp about Switching to ClassicPress. His example has me thinking about doing that very same thing. The WordPress ecosystem has been terrific for me, but there’s a new patina of disappointment and drama settling on it right now and it has me considering other options.
Angelo attended remotely. On a recent IndieWeb Homwbrew Website Club Angelo opened up his site to allow those who logged in with their website to make changes to it. Do you remember the first time you encountered a Google Doc and multiple people were typing at the same time? I remember that experience with an editor called SubEthaEdit, on a local network. I’m pretty sure it was at a BarCamp in Los Angeles that I first experienced it. It may seem utterly normal to us now to group-edit a document, but 20 years ago it was miraculous.
I have attended a number of BarCamp-type events over the years. This is the third IndieWeb Camp experience. The first was San Diego 2023. The second: Portland this year. And I’ve attended UX Camp DC several times. An event called BeCamp in Charlottesville, and some DevHouse type hackathons.
In a session at IWC, Al Abut dubbed this experience “COMMUNITY PLAY”.
I love that. It’s something I want to lean into. By playing together we cleave to each other. We find whether and how we get along. Play facilitates that. And when we can play together, we can also attack hard problems together. I feel strongly that here in the US we are entering a year where there will be hard tasks to do. Dread is in the air. Prepping for the year with play and good camaraderie feels useful.
Thanks for reading.
¡Feliz OBidad!
I rode waves today.
Felt great.
It’s a good sign when I wipe out in ways that are new.
I wrote about bodysurfing and data this past weekend during IndieWeb Camp. Science involves the collection of data. I suspect I won’t have much new to offer in terms of visualizations or new insights about my sessions until I–which is to say Dawn Patrol–and now Strava catches more data. One can’t rush that. Here’s the next share. Yesterday’s session failed to transmit to Strava.
Today’s session was ACTIVE. Lots of WHOMP.
OB
Ocean Beach, San Diego is specific. It’s known as a hippie enclave. It’s been known as that for decades. The “Fish” style of surfboard was invented there. The Black was the first “head shop” I ever went to. Fun fact, the beginning of Almost Famous is on the main drag of OB: Newport Avenue. The movie starts at Christmastime, on Newport Avenue, in 1973.
Here’s what’s at the end of Newport Avenue in 2024.
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas”
It was sunny at 1pm when I went to the beach. Air temperature was 58°F (14.4°C). Water the same. I wear a shortsleeved / short pants wetsuit. People sometimes ask me when I come out of the water–“How’s the water temperature?”. No answer satisfies them. I guess it’s not winter weather.
Some days when I first get in the water and immerse my head it’s an instant ice cream headache. But some days not. The mechanism adapts. And if it persisted I would not stay. I’m glad to be in the water. I think of the years I spent without a wetsuit and regret the waters not swum. It was 3 years ago I first wore a wetsuit during a session. One of the benefits of having this blog is I can read what I thought after the first time.
Wetsuit First Use. It’s different. More buoyant. Less flexible. More hydrodynamic. Less able to judge how long it takes to get from A to B. Warmer. I felt a bit like a cat the first time you put it on a leash.
I’ve grown comfortable since then. No longer like a cat on a leash.
Plein Air
After the session I met Kevin, who putting the finishing touches on a beautiful watercolor of the pier.
I was glad to meet him and see wonderful artwork.
It’s hard for me to think of snowmen and fireplaces as being better than an afternoon like this.
Good waves. Whimsical decorations. Artists making art. People enjoying the beach.
This is Christmastime in San Diego.
Monday Afternoon was fun.
Bodysurfing And Data
I’ve been using Dawn Patrol (Dawnpatrol.cloud) during my bodysurfing sessions for about a year now. I don’t use it the way most of its users use it. I tag my posts with dawnpatrol.app when I am able to use the app to get interesting ride data or when it helps me find videos of my rides in Surfline.
Most users use a surf watch, or Apple Watch, plus a stand-up surfboard.
I use my actual phone with the Dawn Patrol app to track my bodysurfing.
Warning: This is not surfing advice. It is risky to use your phone like this. My phone has been okay, but there’s a risk of damage and loss to both ones equipment and ones person. There is always risk in a physically demanding activity like bodysurfing in the ocean, which is the wilderness.
After a session, I can see the waves that were captured by the app. This morning I went to OB here in San Diego, produce an export that looks like this.
That’s a map of rides that were captured. There are settings in the app that determine what movement data constitutes “a ride.” Most of our phones these days detect movement, they detect direction of movement. Dawn Patrol turns that recorded data into rides.
Yesterday I added a subscription to “Soul Surfer“–a paid upgrade to Dawn Patrol that lets me send the recorded data to Strava. I signed up for Strava just yesterday. I’m not sure what I can do with that data yet, but I’m fascinated to see how people track their runs, workouts, hikes, and bike rides in it.
Here’s the first session, from this morning, I am able to share from Strava:
That visualization doesn’t look like wave riding. It might be like swimming. My use case is unusual. I’m not quite a swimmer, but I do swim during my sessions. I paddle out and fight the oncoming waves. I reckon with rip currents and drift. I’m not quite a surfer, but I ride individual waves. My rides are not as long as those of a surfer on a surfboard (or a bodyboarder, or a surfer riding an inflatable mat). But in my mind the session is s set of rides, not a single extended path.
The Dawn Patrol export looks more to me like how the session felt. When I see long curved lines, that represents longer, better rides. I was able to follow the breaking wave. Shorter rides more perpendicular to the beach less desirable but also fun.
Here at IndieWeb Camp San Diego yesterday we discussed locative and motion data. I think the Strava and Dawn Patrol data might also work as Activity Streams (https://activitystrea.ms). Activity Streams are an open data format–a JSON based data format–to share activity information. This data was collected by these services, but in a very real sense it feels to me like data that belongs to me. At the moment though, it doesn’t feel like those data are portable. “I’ve got to get my steps in” people understand. And it would seem crazy for measurements of my steps would only be owned by some company. I like to think that more people will feel the same way surf data.
I find myself drawn to doing more programming, visualizations, and about this kind of data, and I’m hopeful I’ll get the chance.
Thanks for reading, and if you feel so inclined, feel free to leave me a comment or suggestion about this.
from Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DDK6Y2hyXEY/ via IFTTT
Logo-i-zer. I love making little websites. This one creates a new ARTLUNG logo based on colors. (You can make websites too! What website would YOU make?)
from Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DDELDcBx9yi/ via IFTTT
Kelly took this one of me bodysurfing today at Scripps. Thank you @hellokellykuhl! #stoke
from Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DC8EU7Wv1jC/ via IFTTT