maradydd | Entries tagged with noisebridge

Last night,

enochsmiles and I threw off some of the lethargy that has been plaguing us for the last several months and made it out to Hackerspace Brussels for their regular Tech Tuesday night. The space has been built out quite a bit more since I was last there, and there were a good few dozen people present -- some of whom I'd met before, many I hadn't, all interesting.

Actually getting there was a challenge, as there is a train strike on; the direct train that goes through Schaarbeek was cancelled, so we caught a train to Brussels North, intending to catch a connecting train, but when we got there we found that all the connecting trains were cancelled too. *facepalm* Fortunately, Schaarbeek turns out to be about a 7-euro cab ride from Brussel-Noord, so that makes things easy (especially for those of you who want to visit but are intimidated by our enormous rail network).

I was also excited to find out that Hackerspace Ghent is well underway and that Hackerspace Antwerp now has a space! I haven't spent much time in either city, but hopefully this will induce me to do some more traveling in the nearish future.

Dear LJ Genie,

Here is a picture of an audio cable:

I know that I can go to Radio Shack and buy a screw-together or snap-together end for an audio cable, but the friend on whose behalf I am asking doesn't need an audio cable; he needs to provide more mechanical stability for a join, and layered heat-shrink tubing doesn't look nice. Is there a name for the thick plastic part of the cable that one holds onto while inserting the male end into a socket, such that I could search for it on digi-key?

ETA: It's a strain relief boot. Thanks,

grepmaster and

tikiking!

By way of

mycroftxxx, please welcome the newest US hackerspace, situated in Houston: Tx/Rx, pronounced "TexWrecks". Regular lockpicking, woodworking and Python workshops, as well as plans for a Defcon contingent, to be found therein.

Hey Tx/Rx -- you gonna send anyone to Hacking at Random? They didn't schedule it against Blackhat/Defcon this year, so you can make it to both! Houston represent!

(/me needs

digitalusrex's "Fuck Y'all I'm From Texas" icon for this post.)

Today's cool link comes from Billings Middle School in Seattle, Washington. Their Digital Arts students came to San Francisco for a class trip focused around Maker Faire, with side trips to the Exploratorium, the operations booth at Giants Stadium, and my old home away from home, Noisebridge.

Their beta school website is quite well-produced (if sized a bit large -- I have to side-scroll on my EeePC), and there are touches that make me wonder if the kids are the ones designing and maintaining it. If so, that owns. I wonder if there will soon come a day when "markup" replaces "writing" in the Three R's. I'd really like to see that -- not so much the notion of presentation (which is how it would mostly likely be taught, sigh), but the notion of encapsulating levels of detail in a hierarchial schema. The notion of being able to "zoom in" and "zoom out" on how much information you want about a particular topic.

This is what English teachers were trying to teach, rudimentarily, as the "five-paragraph essay" when I was in high school, but the notion generalises -- to an academic paper, to a book, to a series of volumes, to interconnected documents. I want uniquely addressable resources at any level of detail, I want to live in Roy Fielding's future. I want to be reading a paper in a PLoS journal, and when I see a citation, not have to jump to the endnotes to see what the citation is about -- I want to be able to jump to the exact table, the exact paragraph, the exact equation that makes the context clear for me. With a minimum of hassle: if you have pop-up balloons that show me a preview, I want to be able to turn them off easily (I'm looking at you, Snap.com) and I want to be able to open the resource in another tab easily (I'm still looking at you, Snap.com).

Oh, hey, and let's make it so I don't have to use my hands, that would be pretty cool too.

Well, okay, it's technically All Saints Day now, but I haven't slept yet, so I consider it still Halloween.

I had a fun and relaxing night, though it seems that much of San Francisco did not. Noisebridge held a Halloween open-house, and although I hadn't planned on going in costume, around 2pm, inspiration struck. I went down to the corner store and the hardware store to scrounge some supplies, spent the next few hours futzing with cardboard, duct tape, spraypaint, aluminum foil and oil pastels, and came up with this:
( Geekiest. Costume. Evar. )

There were some pretty cool hacks at the party. Mitch Altman (yep, the TV-B-Gone guy) brought dozens of little RGB LED gadgets which cycle through several colours and reset themselves when they detect motion, so that a wave of one's hand causes a ripple of colour (like this). There was also a webcam taking time-lapse video of the party and projecting the previous hour's recording on the wall throughout the evening. And, of course, there were lots of geeky costumes (including one girl dressed as a nudibranch!) and even people soldering in the electronics room all night.

Around 1 am,

ephermata and a friend of his and I decided to check out another party hosted by one of

ephermata's friends from high school, but that didn't work out too well, so we wandered down to the Elbo Room, but by the time we got there, they were closing. We decided to head home, and started back down Valencia Street toward the car, but noticed a large number of police cars converging on the intersection of 16th and Valencia and several policemen running toward the intersection with their batons out. As we had no interest in being anywhere near a riot, we turned right around and took a more circuitous but much quieter route back to the car. The guys dropped me off at home, and now it's time for bed.

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Radio Free Meredith

science keeps me warm at night

The Belgian hackerspace ecology

[LJ Genie] What is this called?

I for one welcome our new robotic barbecue overlords

If you teach them, they will learn. Also, my representational state-transfer future.

Happy Halloween!

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September 2010

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