If you’re going to be in the downtown Providence, RI area tomorrow, Thursday Sept. 13, please join us for the monthly Web Developer Lunch Hour meetup.

This time, my coworker Chris will demo Ruby on Rails.

Please RSVP [meetup.com].

Check out the beta of the new RI Nexus site, full of news and resources about information techonology and digital media in Rhode Island.

I wrote some new Drupal modules to support it. Feedback and suggestions are welcome!

I’m holding the next PHP meetup for the RI area tomorrow evening (Tuesday) at Trinity Brewhouse in downtown Providence.

If you’d like to join us for free-form discussion of web development, PHP, and various types of beer, please RSVP.

We have a new location and a guest speaker for our April meetup. Nate Abele of the CakePHP project will be here to show off the rapid web development framework and answer questions. We’ll make time for discussion too.

The new location is a really nice conference room at the Johnson & Wales Academic Center, with everything that implies (i.e. a projector).

All programming skill levels welcome. If you’re going to be in the Providence, RI area and can make it, please see here for more details and to RSVP:

Providence PHP April Meetup [meetup.com]

Lots of geeky news. I took over officially as organizer of the Providence PHP meetup this month, and our next event is at 729 Hope St on Tuesday, February 6 at 7 PM. So join us for coffee, pastry, a wide-ranging, informal discussion of anything related to programming with PHP, or all three.

This time, we’ll probably share some of the projects we’re working on, so bring some screenshots or a quick demo if you’d like. (If this starts to run long, we can always go into more depth next month.)

Please RSVP.

We’re holding another lunchtime meetup this week, this time at Tazza on Westminster St. So if you’re in the Providence area this Thursday, Dec. 14, come join us. I’m sure your employer won’t mind.

Please RSVP, though:
http://webdesign.meetup.com/410/calendar/5255909/

If you’re interested in web development topics, work in the Providence area, and eat food, you’d be perfect for the lunch hour meetup event happening downtown today (Thursday, Nov. 9) at noon. I’ll be filling in for the regular organizer.

For more information and to RSVP, please visit the event’s Meetup page.

There was a snowstorm in Providence last December 9. Most people left work early and traffic was backed up for hours, so I took the scenic route, with a camera pointed out the window.

I’m co-leading a kayak trip in Providence this Sunday, June 26, with the AMC Narragansett Young Members. If you’d like to sign up, we have available spots and a few kayaks for cheap rental. Since it isn’t a purely flatwater trip, you should be comfortable with sitting in a kayak, but don’t need a lot of experience in order to enjoy it.

You can sign up online.

Trip description:

We’ll spend time enjoying downtown Providence from the river, and also paddle outside the Hurricane Barrier to get a taste of Narragansett Bay. Not literally. L Bev Thomas, CL Andrew Shearer. The route is similar to the one in these pictures.

Just to keep everyone current who’s playing along at home: I recently became chair of the Narragansett AMC Young Members, which until we get some more leaders to post is practically my other weblog.

Also, my application with the Boston AMC Young Members to become a 3-season dayhike leader was approved. And I’m now a co-webmaster of the Boston AMC Young Members site. Busy, busy.

Below a Providence street as it crossed over the water, I once came across a large wooden crate-like structure hanging by heavy cables, only easily visible or accessible by boat. Liana Araujo-Lane saw my picture of it and wrote in with an explanation—thanks, Liana!

“I believe that that cardboard wood thing was a project of a student at RISD for a while. She lived in it and commuted to school with a kayak every day. she had to co-ordinate her commuting times with the tides…it was pretty interesting.

I learned about this from a teacher I had over last summer at RISD who was friends with this girl.”

Random notes for Rhode Islanders:

• 90.3 FM (WRIU) makes a great change from 95.5 WBRU. Even after listening for more than a year, 90.3 still plays lots I haven’t heard before, and their unvarnished DJs are the polar opposites of the annoying ones that used to try way too hard at 99.7 “the edge” (now defunct). Unfortunately, being a small college station, they switch off completely during the summer.

  I can’t quite say that you won’t catch them repeating anything, because one evening last week, they left the same CD shuffling in the player for hours. I heard the exact same songs (Erin McKeown, Distillation) on three separate short car trips over a two-and-a-half-hour period, starting at 6:30 PM. When I was listening at home after 9, a DJ came on and apologized for being a little late.

• artinruins.com has lots of pictures and background info on the Providence buildings that will be torn down, or have already come down, as a result of the I-195 relocation project. I walk by Thurston Manufacturing (their link) and the former Providence Machine Company (their link, my photo) almost every weekday on the way to lunch.

The Providence Machine Company building, on Eddy St. in Providence. (The small words on the sign say “Inquire Within”.)