In this meetup, we'll run a Small Skills Workshop - those who have mastery (or at least middling amateur skill) in some minor but potentially-useful-or-amusing talent can teach the basics of it to others at the meetup, and those who are interested in becoming a slightly more competent person can come to learn said skills!
At a minimum, we’ll have the following options:
• I can get people started on juggling, to the point where you’ll at least know where to go from your current state and certainly enough to see a noticeable improvement from “struggling to catch a single ball”.
• Gray knows lots of useful knots, and can bring rope with which to demonstrate them and let you practice.
• I have two laser distance measurers - you point them at an object and they instantly tell you how far away it is. By pointing them at an object, guessing the distance, and then checking your accuracy and updating, you can quickly get much better at estimating distances to various objects. I’ll bring them along for anyone who wants to train their calibration!
• I have a basic set of lockpicking tools and a cheap lock which I have successfully picked with said tools. I only obtained the picks on Friday, so doing this will be a bit of a learning process for everyone involved.
• I have good-quality Rubik's Cubes and can teach you how to solve them.
• We will have a Real Artist™ who can teach some basic competency in drawing human faces well.
Other things people might happen to know and want to share include: mnemonic techniques, basic programming, origami, advanced whistling techniques, how to improve your posture, speed reading, how to play the harmonica, etc. Feel free to come up with especially crazy ideas here - the more weird things around to learn at the meetup, the better!
We're meeting in room 204 of Rapson Hall, on the UMN campus's East Bank. (When you enter the library on the second floor, turn left.) The plan is to run from 1-3PM, but if folks are enjoying things we can easily stick around later.
In this meetup, we'll run a Small Skills Workshop - those who have mastery (or at least middling amateur skill) in some minor but potentially-useful-or-amusing talent can teach the basics of it to others at the meetup, and those who are interested in becoming a slightly more competent person can come to learn said skills!
At a minimum, we’ll have the following options:
• I can get people started on juggling, to the point where you’ll at least know where to go from your current state and certainly enough to see a noticeable improvement from “struggling to catch a single ball”.
• Gray knows lots of useful knots, and can bring rope with which to demonstrate them and let you practice.
• I have two laser distance measurers - you point them at an object and they instantly tell you how far away it is. By pointing them at an object, guessing the distance, and then checking your accuracy and updating, you can quickly get much better at estimating distances to various objects. I’ll bring them along for anyone who wants to train their calibration!
• I have a basic set of lockpicking tools and a cheap lock which I have successfully picked with said tools. I only obtained the picks on Friday, so doing this will be a bit of a learning process for everyone involved.
• I have good-quality Rubik's Cubes and can teach you how to solve them.
• We will have a Real Artist™ who can teach some basic competency in drawing human faces well.
Other things people might happen to know and want to share include: mnemonic techniques, basic programming, origami, advanced whistling techniques, how to improve your posture, speed reading, how to play the harmonica, etc. Feel free to come up with especially crazy ideas here - the more weird things around to learn at the meetup, the better!
We're meeting in room 204 of Rapson Hall, on the UMN campus's East Bank. (When you enter the library on the second floor, turn left.) The plan is to run from 1-3PM, but if folks are enjoying things we can easily stick around later.
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