In Case of Emergency, Squeeze Box

Since May 1st, 1999, the accordion has proven to be a handy not-so-little thing to have handy. I now present a couple of moments last week that were made better by the ol’ squeezebox.

DemoCamp 15

On Monday, we held DemoCamp 15, the 15th regular gathering of the Accordion City tech community. The idea behind DemoCamp is to have a forum in which software (and even hardware) developers can show off their current projects in action, network with their peers and share ideas. I like to think of it as show-and-tell for geek grown-ups, followed by beer and nachos instead of milk and cookies. If you work in high tech or are just curious about the industry, you should really drop by a DemoCamp.

Generally, people demonstrate their projects on the own laptop computers, hooking them up to the projector when it’s their turn to present. You’d think that after about two decades, they’d have worked all the kinks out of hooking up different laptops to a projector, but projectors still balk at that sort of thing. We had some projector difficulties early in the demos, but I brought the accordion and broke out some tunes while David Crow worked out the video problems.

I performed by own rendition of the computer programming parody song, Code in C, which is sung to the tune of the Beatles’ Let it Be. Trust me, if you’re into computer programming, it’s amusing.

Hallowe’en Subway Party

Another attendee of last week’s Hallowe’en party on the subway train has posted his pictures on Flickr. A photographer going by the name of “JaMmcat” took about a hundred shots of the party, including a couple of Yours Truly performing accordion rock and roll in places where the sound system the organizers brought couldn’t reach:

Click the photo to see the whole set.

To see JaMmcat’s photos from the subway party, click the photo above or click here.