Josh Flynn’s Blog

I was recently turned on to the genre of music called “dubstep” by a friend of mine, and was skeptical at first. Is this just another branch of techno or electronica? It has “dub” in the name, so are its roots in the reggae genre? Dubstep hit the scene in the early 2000’s, coming out of the UK garage scene. The main characteristic of a dubstep is the underlying drum patterns with syncopated rhythms.

Of course this varies between different artists and DJs, and everything in the electronic music realm is up for interpretation, but regardless the genre is gaining popularity worldwide, and Baltimore is part of the party.

A major player in the Baltimore dubstep scene is local company Steez Promo. Their most recent show was a huge event called “And Here It Is – The Return of the Fall Massive“, and it was held at Bourbon Street in Baltimore. This was my first experience at one of these type of shows, and it was insane. There were thousands in attendance, varying greatly in their styles; but all having a blast dancing to the electronic barrage of sound.

The event was exceptionally long, opening its doors at 4 p.m. and not ending till after 2 a.m. There were different acts on all three stages consistently throughout the night. Part of the event was the Dub Nation One Year Anniversary, which featured two dubstep artists from the UK, where the genre got its start; 16-bit and Emalkay. Also in attendance from overseas was Noisia, who headlined the Dub Nation stage.

Smash Gordon and Marm0set both from the Baltimore area rocked the stage and got the crowd pumped for their European counterparts.  The crowd was enthusiastic throughout the entire show, and Bourbon Street had plenty of room for all the concert goers. The complex is huge with multiple floors, couches lining the walls, flashing lights everywhere, smoke, and the feeling of bass pumping from all directions. A pretty interesting atmosphere for a newcomer, but the energy can’t be denied. It would be near impossible for somebody to come into one of these shows and not at least tap their toe.

I know I kind of fell off the blogging train after the project was over, but it was just pretty intense and afterward I was turned off to web design and blogging for a while. THEN school started and yadda, yadda, yadda – I’m working on some stuff now and hope to get this blog up and running again. Stay tuned.

I have finished the project for the most part, there are still a few minor things I want to touch up and add some audio of the interviews. Check it out and let me know what you think!

http://www.flynnfinity.com/greaterlauraville

While I had done a lot of the smaller seperate components included in this project, overall it was a valuable learning experience and really challenged me in a lot of ways. The obvious things that I am sure everybody feels is that we all needed to manage our time better, and that getting going in the beginning and finding interesting stories were the hardest things.

Mosaic on the side of Chameleon Cafe

Being that I set up my own domain for the project, there were some obstacles in the initial stages of that, but once I got everything set up and installed Wordpress, it was very easy for me to make changes and update everything. I really like the blogs actually, it forces you to stay engaged in the project and gives people who are interested something to read while the final project is still being assembled.

One of the obstacles that I feel is unavoidable is being ignored due to lack of credentials. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people that were happy to talk to me and take time out of their day to help me out with this project. I just find it a bit hard to feel confident in asking people to give up valuable time to help with something for a class. One thing that was good about this though is it actually is published online for people to see. I have been connecting with a lot of people in the Lauraville community as well as other Baltimoreans that really seem to like what I have put together.

Overall, I think the package turned out really good. I am glad I decided to go with the Lauraville stories rather than the hiking trails, and especially since I live in Lauraville, I have learned a lot about my neighborhood and the small business that connect us and keep the area growing. It has been an interesting ride and I am happy with the outcome; but I am so happy that I get a break before school starts again!!

Thanks for everything Dr. Lieb; the semester was a success! See you in the fall!

This week one of the people I follow on Twitter posted a link to this blog that has recently been writing about Lauraville and Baltimore events. It is the accompanying blog of a website for Salamander Points, a Baltimore based website that has formulated a points system for a huge variety of things you eat and use and then at the end of the day you calculate your “salamander points”.

It is actually a pretty interesting idea, and they go pretty in depth into each category to where most things that you use in an average day would be able to be converted to points. They had some good blog posts about the Tuesday Market Connection, including their most recent post entitled “Tuesday: The New Friday”. They had some nice photos from the market in one of their older posts and got some reaction from people attending the market.

They look at things from a green perspective, trying to think about the carbon footprint and the effects that our actions have on the enviroment and community. I also liked their post and pictures from Artscape, I was there on a different day then whoever wrote the post so it was nice to see a different perspective

Baltimore Regional Green Map

Being that we have been making and looking at Google maps over the past few weeks, I thought this site, Baltimore Regional Green Map was an interesting illustration of how it can be used as a collaboration having multiple users post places. Obviously I didn’t view every icon, but it seems like for the most part most of the things that people post are relevant to the site’s three categories; sustainable living, culture and society, and nature. While the map looks overwhelming, when you zoom in a bit closer to a more specific area, the map becomes a lot easier to look at and navigate.

Biking to class but don't know where to park?

While it is close to what you can do with the basic Google map setup, I still really like the simple and functional design of the map and the small sidebar on the right. Somebody posted the Tuesday Market Connection, which is how I found out about this site. I am actually kind of surprised I never came across it before.

There is also a map made for Towson’s campus. Somebody actually took the time to map out all of the bike racks on campus! While this might be taking it a little bit too far, it is still a cool idea as the web and mapping becomes more interactive and collaborative.

To read my comments from this semester go here or click the “comments” tab at the top of the page.

I looked at the MSNBC interactive map called Islam in Europe which gives users a rundown of the history, population, and issues of the Muslim inhabitants of Europe. It is a pretty basic setup, users are presented with the map, the countries change color when moused-over, and when they are clicked on a space on the right of the screen displays the promised information.

As far as story telling capabilities, it is not a very effective presentation. Not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, in a map format like this, a self-guided nonlinear approach makes a lot more sense. Users can navigate to where they want and find out information however they see fit.

Islam in Europe

Each individual country has history and origin information, which can tell a story within themselves, but overall the map doesn’t tell the chronological story that most people have come to expect, especially when learning about history and anthropology.

It works well as an overview looking at Europe in its individual components, and is a good starting reference to get an idea of what the population is like and a brief history, and the current issues and conflicts.

Jeff Smith grew up in a family of 10, where cooking was always a big deal. Since he was a kid, he had always wanted to be a cook and owning a restaurant. After learning some basics of cooking from his mother, Smith got into the restaurant business as soon as he was able to work, and has been in it for a little over 20 years and has some diverse experiences.

The Chameleon Cafe

“So I’d say I’m mostly self-trained because I had probably been cooking for six years before I went into culinary school; and then that just kind of refined things for me a little bit. Yeah, I’m kinda from the old school, before everybody was going to culinary school. Back when I started, nobody went to culinary school; it’s kind of a new thing.”

Chameleon Cafe is about to hit its eight year anniversary, but Smith also cooked at many restaurants around Baltimore, as well as spending some time in New Orleans. His time in Louisiana inspired him to try to come up with some local dishes using local ingredients for his Maryland Menu. It is the only menu he repeats every year because people love it and call the restaurant asking when it is coming back.

Jeff Smith (left) and his kitchen staff

Smith was taken by how much pride the New Orleans community had for their cuisine, and how the local dishes were “revered”, so he went and did a lot of research to dig up some old recipes; one of which is called “Chicken Maryland” out of a 100-year-old cookbook by Auguste Escoffier. The dish called for an ingredient that wouldn’t normally be associated with Baltimore, so Smith dug deeper.

“The Chicken Maryland had bananas, so I thought it was really odd that it was called Maryland. I thought maybe it was named after somebody that had the last name Maryland. We found out that Baltimore was a big banana port town at one time, like the second or third biggest banana importer in the country; so he must have came right when that was happening and bananas just must have been everywhere in Baltimore at that point.”

Smith brings a lot of traditional methods and recipes to the table at Chameleon Cafe, which is a converted rowhome on the corner of Montebello Terrace and Harford Road. I am working on editing the audio to put up the whole interview so check back!