My favorite beers from the Great American Beer Festival

The Great American Beer Festival on Saturday was a blur. A delicious, beery, happy, blur. (See photo.) But! I did manage to scribble down my favorite beers in my beer diary (yes, I have one). The notes are probably not that useful ("yum! tasty! I want to drink it forever!" -- you get the idea...), but something about each of these beers made me fall in love. Oh, and I'm shamelessly biased toward Oregon beers, sour beers, and Belgian-style beers.

The buttons read: "I <3 Oregon beers" and "Oregon gives me wood" (from the Laurelwood Brewery in Portland)

Ching Ching by Bend Brewing, Bend, Oregon
Style: Sour with hibiscus and pomegranate
Notes: Pinky/orange color...simply amazing!
ABV: 9.5% (watch out)

Flemish Kiss by The Commons Brewery, Portland, Oregon
Style: "Bread" ale/pale ale
Notes: Slightly sour (just a hint!), lemony, fresh
ABV: 5.7%

The Stoic by Deschutes, Bend, Oregon
Style: Belgian quadruppel
Notes: Smells like a sour but finishes like a sweet Trappist
ABV: 11% (monastic strength)

Urkontinent by Dogfish Head, Milton, Delaware
Style: Belgian dubbel
Notes: Smells like coffee; brewed with rooibos tea
ABV: 8%

Red and White by Dogfish Head, Milton, Delaware
Style: Belgian wit
Notes: Sour and light, wine-y (aged in Pinot Noir barrels), really drinkable
ABV:10%

Abbey's Ale by Seven Brides, Silverton, Oregon
Style: Belgian quadruppel
Notes: A sour quad! Super drinkable, not puckering -- my favorite of the night! I had seconds (and I wasn't the only one...)
ABV: ??

Cockeye Cooper by Uinta, Salt Lake City, Utah
Style: ??
Notes: Light, cherry. Strong flavor but really unique. Delicious.
ABV: 11%

Diamond Kings by Brugge Brasserie, Indianapolis, IN
Style: Belgian quadruppel
Notes: Ages in Cabernet barrels -- tastes heavenly!
ABV: ??

Also of note...
Everything crazy and experimental by Short's, all the tart and tangy fruit beers by Rocky Mountain Brewing in Colorado Springs (think New Glarus' Raspberry Tart, but better), and Laughing Dog's  Anubis imperial coffee porter.

How the Knight-Mozilla Hackfest in Berlin changed the way I think about programming

#Hacktoberfest left me feeling mushier than this plate of potatoes and mystery green goo. I want to give a group hug to the world! (Image credit: Flickr user russeljsmith shared with a Creative Commons license)

At least week’s hackfest, I saw so many people celebrating the simple act of creating something that actually worked. It’s a marvel. But the coolest part about this -- and bear with me as I get all mushy here -- was how the act of making something brought people together.

People are makers. We can’t help it. But why? Why do people write, bake, program or paint? 

Here's my best guess: Our minds are lonely places where our thoughts languish. Until, that is, we can turn them into essays, pies, code, pictures -- something another human being can interact with. Making -- whatever it is you make -- is a way of connecting.

Once we know how to make something, we understand it better. We understand the person who made it better. And we understand ourselves better. By learning new ways to make things, we expand what we are able to imagine. The world of possibilities explodes.

Let me defer to my favorite episode of Radiolab to explain. Words. Go listen to it. Right now. Please.

For those of you disregarding my advice...shame on you! But here’s a quick summary: Words aren’t just words -- they are ideas. Before we have the words for a concept, we don’t have the ability to understand it. This has been shown with spatial concepts, time, empathy, all kinds of things. Our ability to think is inseparably bound to language.

What does this have to do with programming? At last week’s hackfest, I realized that programming is the same as writing. Or rather, I was able to map the programming process -- which, previously, I'd found daunting and unwelcoming -- onto a process of making that I find intuitive: writing.

Writing is thinking. And so is programming.
 
Language expands our capacity to understand and interact with the world as beings who can write and speak. And new skills -- for example, programming -- expands our capacity to understand and interact with the world as beings who can make and create. Last week, by getting better acquainted with some of the basic building blocks of a program -- code, logic, how different elements interact -- I was able to imagine possibilities that I couldn’t before.

And that’s why I want to learn more. Now I’m hooked.

I’m inspired to continue to expand my skills as a programmer -- which is really just expanding my skills as a thinker and a maker. So what are my next steps?

1. I’ve been working through Nathan Yau’s new book, Visualize This. I’m about halfway through, and my feet are appropriately wet with some Python, JavaScript and R. I want to keep going. Then go further.
2. I started an intro to computer science class from MIT’s open courseware. I really enjoyed the first problem set. A lot a lot. But then I stopped. So I’m going to finish it.
3. I want to apply what I’m learning through real projects. For me, that probably means data visualization.

Any other suggestions?

I’m amazed the diverse backgrounds of the #hacktoberfest participants. As Nicola mentioned in her blog, many people who are verifiable coding ninjas don’t have any formal background in CS or don’t work as programmers. So, it’d be interesting to, as a way of motivating others to take the plunge, collect stories about how people got into programming.

Here comes the audience participation part:

• How did you first learn to code?
• What was the first piece of code you wrote that you were really, truly proud of?

Maybe if more people heard those stories from seasoned (and enthusiastic) programmers, they might understand why it's a skill everyone can benefit from learning.

Keeping the MoJo Flowing: Blog posts I want to write about #hacktoberfest

While I was flying home from Berlin (through a very circuitous route: Berlin --> Warsaw --> London Heathrow --> Denver --> Boulder), I had nearly 24-hours of offline, device-free time to process some of the idea-explosion that happened in my head at the Berlin #hacktoberfest.  I'm back in Colorado now, doing Colorado things like getting an introduction to canyoneering and going to the Great American Beer Festival. But while I still have #hacktoberfest Berlin goodness flooding my brain, here are some discussions I want to continue:

1.  What does it mean to have a "mosh pit of the minds?" Creative innovation happens when you mash disparate people, ideas and fields together and watch the sparks fly. What are some other mind-moshes we could try (technology + gastronomy, journalism + adventure sports)?
2. The two functions of data visualization. Data visualization can be used to explore large and unwieldy datasets for patterns and meaning. They can also be used to communicate information quickly and simply. Are the tools that you need for exploratory and communicatory data visualization the same, or are they distinct?
3. Building the best "tool box." At #hacktoberfest, I kept hearing the concept of a tool box (for journalists, for developers, for storytellers, for data visualization creators) being discussed. (Note: I prefer "bag of tricks" to tool box, because it includes the tools and the skills you need to use them.) What are the different "tool boxes" we should be making, and how can we make them in an open, extensible way?
4. Instead of creating a "GitHub  for storytelling," what if we just started using GitHub as a reporting tool? I want to do a test case where, as I'm reporting and writing a story, I put all of my materials (notes, audio recordings of interviews, pictures, etc.) up on a GitHub repository. After the story is done (or during, if it isn't a sensitive story), make the repository public. Insta-open-reporters'-notebook!
5. What is a story to you? In Berlin, we talked over and over about the importance of stories. Data visualizations are meaningless if they don't tell a story. Information needs context and narrative. But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about stories? I'd like to crowd-source this by putting a call out on Twitter asking people to answer the question: "What is a story?" in 140 characters. Then it would be fun to make some visualizations of the responses.

I hope to turn each of these into a blog post in the near future. I have lots of ideas (seven more, at the moment) that I'll add to the list when I get a chance, but first -- to Denver, to drink delicious craft beers!