I’ll admit it; I laughed.
Thanks to Brian Alkerton for the find!
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Maslow 2.0
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Thanks to Meghan Mahoum-Nassar for the find!
Three years ago today on St. Pete Beach, I married Anitra. Since then, we’ve had a wonderful life together, and I’m eager to start year four. Here are some scenes from year three…
This is from the New Year 2018 party at Michelle and Erinn’s place:
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At the nipa hut at Tampa’s Filipino festival:
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Catching the Florida Orchestra at Ruth Eckerd Hall:
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Behind the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando:
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At Mardi Gras at Universal Orlando:
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With author Daniel Pink at Oxford Exchange:
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At the Christmas party at the Bayanihan Center:
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On St. Pete Beach in December:
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Seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Straz Center:
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Taking shelter from Hurricane Irma in “Fort Kickass”, our renamed closet under the stairs:
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On a 4th of July boat ride to see the fireworks at Key West…
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…and recovering from that boat ride (and the drinks) the day after…
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…and getting back on that horse that evening:
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At one of Miami’s many art deco hotels:
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Having brunch at Sweet Liberty near South Beach:
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Having dinner at KYU Miami with Bob and JR:
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Visiting Delight, one of our favorite places in Toronto’s Junction neighborhood:
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On our tour of Niagara’s cideries:
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And finally, in her lovely dress on the dance floor at Malwarebytes’ holiday party
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Happy anniversary, sweetie!
Every week, I compile a list of events for developers, technologists, tech entrepreneurs, and nerds in and around the Tampa Bay area. We’ve got a lot of events going on this week, and here they are!
Monday, March 5, 2018
- Tampa Bay SQL Business Intelligence and Analytics — Monthly Meeting @ Microsoft Corporation, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Code for Tampa Bay Brigade — Reconnect at our March Meetup @ Entrepreneur Collaborative Center, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Cool ‘n Confident Toastmasters — SPC – St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus @ 6:30 PM to 7:45 PM
- Nerd Night Out — Pints & Pixels: Retro/Indie Gaming @ Brew Bus, 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM
- South Tampa Toastmasters @ Unity of Tampa, 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
- Westshore Toastmasters @ FIVE Labs, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
- Brandon Boardgamers — Tuesday Night Gaming @ Cool Stuff Games, 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Tampa Bay Bitcoin — BlockSpaces DTSP – Bootstrapping a Local Blockchain @ Grassroots Kava House, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Tech4Good Tampa — How to Connect Better With Supporters Through Email @ Panera Bread, 2285 Ulmerton Rd, Clearwater
- Tampa Hackerspace member meeting @ Tampa Hackerspace, 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Learn Cybersecurity Tampa — Info Night @ SecureSet, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Game Club Tampa Meetup — Tuesday Nite Roleplayers (RPGs) (LFP) @ Grand Arena of Mind Expansion, 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
- St Pete .NET Meetup — .NET Configurations and Transforms with Matthew Albright @ Bank of the Ozarks Innovation Lab, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Peter’s Clearwater Bitcoin Meetup — Show up and learn, share and chat about Bitcoin. All are welcome! @ PostcardMania, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- St. Pete Beers ‘n Board Games Meetup for Young Adults @ Flying Boat Brewing Company, 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
- Open/FREE Coworking for Latino Tech Entrepreneurs @ FirstWaVE Venture Center, 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM
- 1 Million Cups St. Pete — Me v PMDD, Inc. / Line Of Vision (LOV) @ St. Petersburg Greenhouse, 9:00 AMz
- Tampa Bay Scrum Masters Guild – March @ Nielsen, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Grand Gamers of St. Petersburg Board Game Night @ Critical Hit Games, 6:00 PM to 11:30 PM
- Tampa Artificial Intelligence Meetup — Meet us at SOFWERX! @ Doolittle Institute SOFWERX – Ybor City, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- Tampa Bay IIBA — Navigating Business Analysis Education, Certification, and Resources @ South University, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- Design St. Pete — On Design Thinking – Part 1 @ Cottonwood Bayview, 6:45 PM to 9:00 PM
- Laser Cutter Orientation — Tampa Hackerspace, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Tampa Bitcoin and Crypto Wealth Mining — Bitcoin Mining – ICO – Crypto Trading @ Bitcoin Mining Investors, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Thursday, March 8, 2018
- Tampa Bay Professionals (IT, Sales, HR & more) — SALES LEADERS – Step 1 in Managing Mistakes: what Sales Leaders need to know @ WebEx Live-Online Session, 8:30 AM to 9:00 AM
- RedHat’s Containers and Cloud-Native Roadshow Tampa @ Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM
- Tampa Bay Blockchain Developers Meetup — Open code @ Blockspaces, 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Suncoast Caring Community Toastmasters @ The Garden House at Suncoast Hospice, 5:45 PM to 6:45 PM
- Learn Cybersecurity Tampa — Hacking 101: Metasploit 101 @ SecureSet, 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Front-End Design Meetup — Learning ES6 with Alvaro Cruz @ Bank of the Ozarks’ Innovation Lab, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
- Largo Board Games Meetup — Hero Realms: Ruin Of Thandar Campaign 5 @ 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Games & Grog (Board Games & More) @ Peabody’s, 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM
- Tampa Bay UX Group open hours @ online, 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Friday, March 9, 2018
- Lean Coffee for All Things Agile (Waters Location) @ Panera Bread, 6001 W Waters Ave, Tampa, 7:30 AM to 10:30 AM
- Lean Coffee for All Things Agile (Downtown Tampa & Seminole Heights) @ FOUNDATION coffee co., 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM
- Café con Tampa @ Oxford Exchange, 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM
- Tampa Cybersecurity Meetup — OWASP Tampa Chapter Q1 Lunch ‘n Learn @ SecureSet, 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
- Pinellas Gamers! — Meet up and Play! @ 10851 Endeavour Way, 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
- Lean Coffee for All Things Agile (St Petersburg / Tyrone) @ Panera, 2420 66th St North, St Petersburg, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Saturday, March 10, 2018
- Machine Shop Lathe 101 (Members Only) @ Tampa Hackerspace, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
- Nerd Night Out — NNO Book (and Movie) Club: A Wrinkle In Time @ AMC Woodlands Square 20, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM
- St. Pete Makers — Open Make Night / Open House @ St. Pete Makers – new location, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Sunday, March 11, 2018
- Bitcoin Basics: Understanding the Future of Currency Tampa Florida @ Four Points by Sheraton Suites Tampa Airport Westshore, 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
- Ethereum Tampa Bay — Intro to Solidity and Hello World smart contract @ Blockspaces, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- Game Club Tampa Meetup — D&D 5e Gaming group (FULL) @ 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
- Ask a Dev Tampa Bay @ Black Crow, 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- Kids’ Open Make Day @ Tampa Hackerspace, 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
- Tampa Bay Blockchain Developers Meetup — Intro to Solidity and Hello World smart contract @ Blockspaces, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- Sew What? (Textile Arts & Crafts) @ Tampa Hackerspace, 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
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On Monday morning, I had the pleasure of attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newest branch of the Blind Tiger Café and Ella Bing Haberdashery, two establishments that share a space in Tampa’s SoHo neighborhood.
Roberto Torres, outside the Blind Tiger Café in Ybor City.
This Blind Tiger is the third branch of Roberto Torres’ café (the other two branches are in Ybor and Seminole Heights), and like the other two, they serve fantastic coffee that they roast in-house (I’m especially fond of their nitro cold brew), tea from TeaBella, and Mother Kombucha in a wonderful setting. Unlike the other two branches, this one has food offerings, including some incredibly addictive guava-and-cheese pastries that I had to tear myself away from.
Here’s what Roberto had to say about the food in the Tampa Bay Times:
“We wanted to elevate our offerings at our newest location,” Torres says. “So we decided to do food. We hired 22-year-old chef Reilly Bierhaus, from Bloomington, Ind. He attended Tante Marie Culinary Academy in London. He graduated with a Cordon Bleu diploma and after graduation went to work at Duck & Waffle in the United Kingdom. He came back to the U.S. and wanted to find a challenge.”
That challenge is cool spins on traditional cafe fare: Bierhaus is making gluten-free muffins and vegan cookies and there are signature breakfast sandwiches, acai bowls, quinoa salad and celebrations of indigenous Tampa foods like guava and cheese pastries.
Brent Kraus and his bowties.
Ella Bing Haberdashery is the brick-and-mortar version of Brent Kraus’ store for gentlemen’s accessories, which include beautiful bowties — some made of cloth, some made of hand-carved wood — sunglasses (all made of wood and sold in cigar boxes), hats, socks, cufflinks and other accoutrements for the well-dressed, or those who aim to be.
The ideation workshop at the Dali Museum, April 2017. Click to see it at full size.
Now that the Blind Tiger/Ella Bing joint store is open, I can now talk about: I participated in an ideation workshop for it at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg last April. Facilitated by Nathan Schwagler, the founding co-director of the Dali’s Innovation Lab, it was a two-day workshop in which I and about 18 other locals helped brainstorm ideas and concepts for Roberto and Brent.
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The stores were packed with friends, well-wishers, media, chamber of commerce, and even governmental types that morning to have coffee, try on some bowties and sunglasses, and take part in the various opening ceremonies.
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Our local Congressperson Kathy Castor, representative for Florida’s 14th congressional district (“the fighting 14th!”) was there to take part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony and present the businesses with an American flag that has flown over congress.
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Castor praised both Brent and Roberto for their hard work and its beautiful outcome, and pointed out that the Blind Tiger is just one example of what immigrants (Roberto came to the U.S. from Panama) can do. She also reminded the crowd that immigrants are twice as likely to start a business and are disproportionately involved in entrepreneurial activities.
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I had a chance to talk with Ms. Castor. I told her about my upcoming trip to D.C. to do an augmented reality programming workshop and tutorial at RWDevCon, my plans to tour around D.C., and to try the guava-cheese pastries. She was kind enough to pose with me for the photo above, which I’m including in the portfolio for my Green Card “re-up” interview next year.
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With the ceremonies concluded and a delicious Blind Tiger iced coffee in hand, it was time to get down to the second part of my mission: checking out Ella Bing’s wares and getting a pair of their wooden sunglasses. Ella Bing’s shades are handmade from different kinds of wood — bamboo, walnut, redwood, ebony, and zebrawood — and they stand out.
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I think it’s been long enough since Tucker Carlson stopped wearing bowties that they’re no longer ruined. It may be time for me to pick up a couple of Ella Bing’s gorgeous ties. And maybe some socks. And cufflinks. And a hat. I worry that I’m going to end up dropping a lot of money at this place.
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In the end, I went with a nice chocolate-colored pair of shades. I’m going to have to ask Brent what kind of wood these are made of. They package them in an old cigar box (an homage to one of Tampa’s original businesses), and while I took it, I opted to wear them out of the store (with the tag removed, of course). Shades this nice have to be worn!
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What’s on Ulysses Klaue’s mix tape?
There’s a scene in Black Panther where the secondary villain, Ulysses Klaue (played by Andy Serkis), where he offers CIA agent Everett Ross (played by Serkis’ fellow Hobbit co-star Martin Freeman) a link to his Soundcloud mix tape. Later on, when interrogated, Klaue breaks into the early ’90s one-hit wonder hit, singing the “Don’t hurt me” refrain from What is Love by Haddaway.
These two little bits led me to wonder: what else is on Klaue’s mixtape? A number of fans are wondering too, so I though I’d put together this best guess. For those of you who didn’t know, I was a DJ at Crazy Go Nuts University in the early ’90s, so I know this stuff pretty well…
Haddaway — What is Love
KWS — Please Don’t Go
2 Unlimited — Get Ready for This
Urban Cookie Collective — The Key, The Secret
Black Box — Everybody Everybody
Crystal Waters — Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)
2 in a Room — Wiggle It
Snow — Informer
Betty Boo — Doin’ the Do
Kris Kross – Jump
Messiah — Temple of Dreams
Rebel MC — Street Tuff
C&C Music Factory — Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
Utah Saints
Sir Mix-a-Lot — Baby Got Back
Culture Beat — Mr. Vain
Right Said Fred — I’m Too Sexy