Hypotheticals. It will mostly be about hypotheticals, I'm afraid - things I'd like to do, if I was going to Burning Man, which I won't be. The over $300 price tag alone is enough to rule out that event for me, but I can still go into the lab (or what passes for my lab), play, tinker and share with anybody who is going.
My primary interest will be in taking some of the project ideas, and building on them. Do what you know - I have some knowledge of chemistry, which is needed in Solid State work, but I'm not a chemist, so I'll shy away from projects heavily dependent on that subject. I am a Mathematician with a Physics background who branched into Electrical Engineering, so projects involving Electronics are ones in which I'll take great interest. My main hobbies are cooking - which I've pursued since I was a small child - photography and theatre, so you're probably see some references to performance, which might sometimes draw on the theme camp ideas, some two dimensional art done by photographic printing, and some relatively easy recipes which can be done outside, requiring a minimum of clean up. Maybe. No promises.
There are some things, however, that I can guarantee will be missing. No fire - it's not safe in my area, and the city government of Chicago seems to take the subject of fire somewhat personally, anyway, for some reason. No high priced project ideas - none of that business of buying $2000 worth of lumber to build something that will be incinerated at the end of the week. No meat - the recipes will be vegetarian ones. Nothing appealing to "prurient interests". No announcements of upcoming events - even if I end up holding those, I will only announce them offline, but in fact, probably won't announce them, at all.
The kind of event I'd like to see is a gathering of some friends who invite their friends, who can do the same, everybody bringing something on which they've enjoyed working; one that never gets too big. If it grows to more than a few hundred people, one splits it in two, with each half going its own way, so it never grows so large that it needs to be anything more than an informal gathering. One would run out of room at any location we're likely to reach otherwise, anyway; there are no great wildernesses for hundred of miles as one goes away from Chicago, just small forests and parks. How much promotion does a small private party need?
For now, but not indefinitely I hope, much of this will have to stay on the theoretical level, proposals, not prototypes, because my budget is very limited, and I have no place to display work, anyway. If you see an idea you like, and would like to embellish on it further, please feel free, as long as you show me the same courtesy I show to those from whom I borrow, giving me credit for that I did and linking back to the page on which it was done. The point of this isn't to get somebody else's ideas or my ideas to go viral, but to learn from some creative work that was done in the past, and get back to the idea of culture being something that ought to be a cumulative thing, even in an ephermal city.
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