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Coastal Companion

Your ultimate guide to the coast

Restaurant Week in Jacksonville

August 7, 2011 by Susanne Talentino

One of our favorite things — or guilty pleasure — is to go out and eat.  We always enjoy trying a new type of cuisine or a new restaurant. Unfortunately, these days everyone has had to cut down to save money, and eating out is one of those things we don’t get to do as often as we would like.

That’s why I always keep my eyes open for Restaurant Weeks and other deals. Instead of Restaurant Week, Jacksonville, Florida, has its own variation called “Eat Up Downtown”.

In August every year the downtown area of Jacksonville participates in an event called Eat Up Downtown. It’s a great deal for foodies. You get a three course meal at participating restaurants for only 25 dollars per person.

So make plans to take advantage of this event. Maybe you can find your new favorite restaurant this way. For more information and the list of participating restaurants, visit our special events page for

Eat Up Downtown in Jacksonville

Interactive Musical Robot Featured at 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival

January 20, 2011 by Susanne Talentino

GEORGIA TECH INTERACTIVE MUSICAL ROBOT WILL BE FEATURED AT 2011 PULSE ART & TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL

SAVANNAH, GA. (January 20, 2011) – Georgia Tech Savannah is proud to be a sponsor of the 2011 PULSE: Art & Technology Festival created by the Telfair Museums and will host a series of lectures, performances and workshops during the nine-day event that starts today. Dr. Gil Weinberg, founder and director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, will conduct a lecture and performance at the Jepson Center on Friday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. The performance will feature an interactive marimba playing robot named Shimon that was recently featured in the nationally televised 2010 Georgia Tech PSA (see link below). Attendees will have the opportunity to interact and make music with Shimon after the performance.

Shimon is not an ordinary marimba-playing robot because it improvises and interacts with human musicians. Using melodic and harmonic perception and improvisation modules, Shimon creates musical responses in conjunction with social cues from its human counterparts. The result is not only novel and expressive human-robotic interaction, but also great new music.

Visualize a pianist playing a musical phrase followed by Shimon, who builds on this input with a new improvised sequence. A fellow guitar player can then enhance Shimon’s ideas, leading to new responses that could inspire humans to play in ways they have never played before. The robot’s head provides visual cues that represent social-musical elements, from beat detection through tonality, to attention and spatial interaction. Just imagine the head bob of a jazz drummer or a DJ spinning a hip hop record and you have a picture of Shimon’s personality.

Weinberg conceived the concept of robotic musicianship in 2006 with the development of Haile—the world’s first robotic musician capable of improvisation with human musicians. His research focuses on expanding musical expression, creativity and learning through innovative new technology including cell phones, toys and aquariums. Weinberg’s interactive systems have been presented in museums such as the Smithsonian Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Boston Children’s Museum. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and is currently an associate professor of Music and adjunct professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

“The goal of the project was to create real-time musical collaborations between human and robotic musicians that would capitalize on the combination of their unique strengths,” said Weinberg.
To learn more about Shimon visit: www.gatech.edu/music/shimon.html
The Public Service Announcement can be viewed at: www.gatech.edu/music/psa.html.
Georgia Tech Savannah will be hosting a number of additional workshops as part of PULSE taking place Jan. 20 – 29. These include:

Introduction to openFrameworks by Zachary Lieberman, Friday, Jan. 21 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Lieberman will provide a short introduction to openFrameworks a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. Participants must be 16 year old or older. Previous coding experience is helpful.

Youth Workshop: Introduction to Scratch on Saturday, Jan. 22 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Developed at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create individual interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art and share creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. Students between the ages of 9-18 are encouraged to attend.

Read more about 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival in Savannah, GA, on our special events page.

Book Sale in St. Augustine

January 20, 2011 by Susanne Talentino

Have you ever been to a book sale? If you love reading, this is a great event to visit. Take the opportunity to stock up on books to read at this event organized by FOLSE, Friends of the Library Southeast. Bring the whole family!
This super booksale takes place at the Southeast Branch Library in St. Augustine, Florida, starting on Friday, January 21 from 10:00 to 5:00 and continuing on Saturday, January 22 from 10:00 to 3:00. All types of books including fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, history and political books as well as childrens books will be available. There will also be other items such as CDs, DVDs, and books on tape. Most items are priced at $1.00 or less. Not only can you get great books at a great price, it’s all for a good cause. All proceeds benefit the Southeast Library.

Friday, January 21, 2011 to Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, Jan. 21: 10:00 – 5:00, Saturday, Jan. 22: 10:00 – 3:00

Tickets are $10 for a combo ticket (both nights) and $7 for a single night ticket. For more information or tickets call 912-729-7463.

FOLSE Booksale – Southeast Branch Library
6670 U.S. 1 South, St. Augustine, Phone: 904-827-6925
Event Pricing: Free

Talk Like a Pirate Day

September 17, 2010 by Susanne Talentino

It’s has to be one of the silliest ideas of the century. Who in their right mind would ever come up with the idea to start a holiday where you Talk Like a Pirate?

Actually two friends, John Baur and Mark Summers, did just that. The idea was born in Albany, Oregon, which as far as we know is not nationally known for its relationship to pirates. This is what happened.

Mark Summers ("Cap'n Slappy") and John Baur ("Ol' Chumbucket"), founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

John and Mark were playing racquetball when, for reasons that aren’t clear to either of them now, they started insulting each other in pirate lingo. They realized it was a lot of fun and one of them said: “We should have a Talk Like a Pirate Day”. They decided to start Talk Like a Pirate Day, and picked September 19th because it is Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday. And the story could have ended there, if it hadn’t been for Dave Barry, who mentioned it in his nationally syndicated newspaper column and then Talk Like a Pirate Day took off.

All around the world and even hundreds of miles above it, people celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day every September 19. It’s been celebrated by millions of people on all seven continents – yes, even at the South Pole – and on the International Space Station!

The two friends – now go by the pirate personas of Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy have swashed their buckles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Puget Sound, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Philadelphia. They’ve performed at a glamorous Las Vegas
resort, at libraries, bookstores, schools and at several seedy bars.

This year the guys will celebrate the holiday more than 5,000 miles apart. Cap’n Slappy will be in Alaska as guest of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Ol’ Chumbucket moved in 2008 to a sunny island in the Caribbean and can’t think of a reason to leave. www.talklikeapirate.com

There are a number of events around the coast celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day. Many pubs and bars have special celebrations. 

 

The Pirate Museum in St. Augustine, Florida

September 19, 2011

Starting at 5 p.m. on September 19, The Pirate Museum courtyard overlooking the Castillo de San Marcos–built because of devastating pirate raids–will be transformed into a lively pirate stronghold with:

*    Pirate Soul face painting
*    Sword fighting demonstrations
*    Live pirate music
*    Storytelling and magic by Captain William Mayhem, the Pirate Magician of St. Augustine
*    Talk Like A Pirate contest 
*    Don’t Walk The Plank Trivia Game

Attendees also receive 25 percent off of museum admission during the event, which runs until 8 p.m. 

Regular admission for adults is $11.99 and for kids 5 to 12 years old is $6.99.

St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum

12 S Castillo Drive
St. Augustine, FL 32084

(877) GO-PLUNDER (877.467.5863)

 

These pirates walk and talk. Fernandina Pirate Club.

 

Talking Like a Pirate – The Beginner’s Course

(Excerpt from “Pirattitude!” So You Wanna Be a Pirate? Here’s How!” by John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur and Mark “Cap’n Slappy” Summers, published in 2005 by New American Library. All rights reserved.)


“Aarr!” is one of what we call “the Five As.” We call them this because that’s the letter they begin with, and our crack mathematics team assures us that there are five of them.
These exclamations are the glue that binds together pirate lingo. Even if you don’t know a bunghole from a broadside or a mizzenmast from a maidenhead, you can still give your conversation a little pirate panache by injecting these exclamations into yer landlubber lexicon.
Avast – Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, “Whoa! Get a load of that!” when a beautiful woman walks into the room. “Avast! Check out the bowsprit on that fine beauty!” you might say.
Ahoy – “Hello!” Any inference beyond “Hello!” is simply vocal inflection and has nothing to do with the real meaning of the word.
Aye – “Why, yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did.”
Aye aye – “I’ll get right on that, sir, as soon as my break is over.” We’ve never heard any similarly colorful expressions for “no,” perhaps because pirates were the type you didn’t want to say no to.
Arr – This one is often confused with arrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. “Arr!” can mean, variously, “yes,” “I agree,” “I’m happy,” “I’m enjoying this beer,” “My team is winning,” “My team is losing,” “I saw that television show, it sucked,” “I am here and alive” and “That was a clever remark you or I just made.” And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of “Arrr!” It’s a little bit like the pirate version of “Oy,” that indispensable Yiddish word that has almost as many meanings as there are ways to pronounce it.

Upcoming Pirate Events on the Coast

Tybee Island Pirate Fest, takes place October 6 – 9, 2011. The party has grown this year with multiple concerts, fireworks, “Buccaneer Ball”, Thieves market, Pirate Victory Parade and Kid’s Zone.

St. Augustine Pirate Gathering
St Augustine Pirate Gathering takes place October 28 – 30, 2011 at St Francis Field in St. Augustine, Florida.


Tybee Island Pirate Fest

Art & WineFest in Jacksonville,Florida, August 2010

August 5, 2010 by Susanne Talentino

At the Art & Wine Festival in Jacksonville you get to sample wines from around the globe, and taste food from the area’s finest restaurants as well as explore amazing desserts while you mingle. You also get to look at the works from of over twenty five of the area’s most exciting artists.

In addition, there are silent auctions for wonderful surprises in art, travel, entertainment and lots more.

Proceeds from the Art & Winefest will benefit Wolfson Children’s Hospital. The Art & Winefest, is presented by The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 177.
Tickets:$35 (plus a Service Charge of $1.50)
Thursday, August 12 from 6pm-9pm at Hyatt Regency Riverfront

Click here to buy your tickets now

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