I got the opportunity to attend BarCampDC yesterday, an unconference filled with lots of fun people from the (still relatively small) DC startup community. It was a great opportunity to meet people from the area; while my internships in the Bay have (this summer especially) provided ways for me to meet the tech community there, Hopkins hasn’t made it a priority to get events like this here (though I’ve tried to convince them a few times). My beneficent overlords also provided some of the funding for this BarCamp, which was cool (BarCamps are funded by lots of smaller donations, rather than a few big ones, to prevent any one company from dominating discourse; at this BarCamp, the max donation was $250, and they had more than 36 sponsoring companies). It was my first time at a BarCamp, and I had a blast.

Last post, I discussed the set of projects I had to accomplish this semester/year. Since that time, in between my mother coming to visit, various installments of homework, and needless drama with JHUMagic, I’ve managed to get some major work done on one of them: Mnikr.

Hello, friendly blogoverse!

One product of my youth and inexperience is that when people around me reminisce about the “good old days,” I almost invariably don’t remember when said days existed. For instance, in Montana, old ranchers always get together and remember the “good old days” when we had “real” winters; for reference, in my lifetime I have seen 3+ feet of snow on both August 22 and June 19, and I didn’t have a Halloween costume that wasn’t quickly retrofitted to work with snow pants until I was 13. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how hellish the “good old days” must have been, given what they’re being compared to.