• Web Standards Group (February 2009)
• Web Standards Group (May 2009)
• Web Standards Group (July 2009)

These photos are a mixture of the presenters:

the hosts:

the attendees:

and some food:

Now the question is: when is the next meeting?

But maybe I don’t have to :)

The talk at Last night’s meeting was from one of the authors of the book, Kevin Yank, who talked about CSS tables which has been supported by Firefox and Opera for quote some time, but will be finally supported in the yet to be released Internet Explorer 8.

As well as listening to an excellent talk I was able to catch up with a few people, mostly Wes but others I know from WSG. As usual I had my camera with me and took quite a few photos, all in RAW which should force me to improve my digital workflow.

Web Standards Group (November 2008) – a set on Flickr

This was a door prize at Monday’s Web Standards Group meeting where I listened to how the website for the Premier of Victoria was redone to better engage with users through the use of the open source CMS Joomla and the tie in with services such as Flickr and YouTube.

As usual I was also taking photos. However as there were so many people the talks were not held in the back room where my 28mm lens works quite nicely, they were held in the main room and the lens struggled. The April meeting was also in the main room and the 50mm f/1.8 lens I borrowed worked quite well. Especially across the room to where the speakers were.

I’ll be keeping an eye out on eBay for a 50mm lens. In order of preference: the f/1.4, an original f/1.8 and then the II f/1.8.

Web Standards Group (September 2008) – a set on Flickr

• Melbourne Perl Mongers (June 2008)
• Melbourne Perl Mongers (August 2008)
• Web Standards Group (August 2008)

At some later point I need to change the name of each photo to be descriptive, not just the image filename.

Wednesday night was Perl Mongers at a new location, across the road from Federation Square. Wes brought along his 50mm f/1.4 lens which is a significant improvement over the 50mm f/1.8 lens that I had used previously.

Melbourne Perl Mongers (May 2008) – a set on Flickr

(That raspberry wheat beer was very popular…)

On the Thursday night was a WSG meeting, tied in with the Web Directions South conference, where I was back to borrowing the 50mm f/1.8 lens. There was hardly any light and the lens (and camera) really struggled.

Web Standards Group (May 2008) – a set on Flickr

While most of the photos look ok when small, some are really bad when the large versions are viewed. Adjusting the light levels just made it worse.

The upshot of all this is that I have more practical experience with different lenses and I now know that in the situation where a 50mm lens (on a crop body) is suitable, I should really get the f/1.4 over the f/1.8. A pity about the massive price difference.

But that isn’t really what I want to talk about.

In a repeat of the recent Perl Mongers meeting I borrowed a co-workers 50mm f/1.8 lens. This time I kept the lens on my camera all night as it was working really well.

At the venue there was hardly any light but I was able to get some shots:

Downlight above Gerry, reflection from the projected image and light from the laptop screen.

John was directly lit by the projector, downlight for the background.

Light from behind the bar.

In this case the narrow angle of view at the 50mm turned out to be what was needed as I was able to take these photos from the other side of the room. It is definitely something to consider in my future lens choice.

One other change I made was that instead of having the camera in aperture priority with it wide open, I had it in shutter priority at (mostly) 1/25 second in order to freeze action with the intention of lightening the photos later if they were a bit too dark. It turns out that I only needed to do that to one photo that had nowhere near enough light.

I wasn’t that interested in the talk as I had already seen it, definitely at a perl mongers meeting leading up to an OSDC and possibly another time (excellent all times I’ve heard it). But as I was saying to someone earlier in the week:

“The ‘talk’ doesn’t matter, the ‘talks’ do”

After linux.conf.au 2008 was over I really regretted not going as it won’t be held in Melbourne for a few years. Then by the time I thought about going to BarCamp Melbourne the registrations were well over the limit. More regret as I hear it too was excellent.

Because of this I decided that I will make much more of an effort in going to (and possibly helping with) more of these type of community events. Even if the topic of the event doesn’t necessarily interest me. I generally get as much or more out of the discussions over drinks/dinner (the ‘talks’) than I get out of the main presentation (the ‘talk’). It is this type of thing that makes it a community.

Compared to the Webates the turnout was low, but it was still respectable. As for the talk itself, it was good. Although it was less technical than I had hoped, it still showed how blog tools can be used for a sites that does not look like a blog, instead it can (for example) look like a news/magazine site.

Afterward we ajourned to the pub where discussions continued. It is a different experience talking with people that are not as technically involved as I am as they provide an alternate perspective.

One other thing is that this has encouraged me to having a proper look at converting my friend’s site (ride-extravaganza.com) to be based on Wordpress which would make editing easier and provide the ability for vistors to leave comments about each ride.