Dyne.org, Freaknet.org and the Poetry Hacklab present:

2nd, 3rd, 4th (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) October 2009, Palazzolo Acreide, at the misterious center “Lisbeth Salander” in the Palazzolo Acreide countryside

It’s Poetry! It’s Art, IT’S DELIRIUM!
IT’S ALL AND NOTHING, YIN AND YANG,
GOPHER and ARCHIE!

http://dyne.org/tcpc
http://poetry.freaknet.org/static/tcpc9

Now at the 9th edition, the “Troppo Caffe’ Poco Cervello” (too much coffee, too little brain) it’s a cultural and scientific happening that lasts three days where people from all over the world (and beyond) are meeting in Palazzolo Acreide and via the internet to share experiences, research, culture, poetry, art and science with the intention to create new and beautiful things to donate to the community.

This edition will have people from all Sicily and also foreign guests committed in advanced programming sessions, dissertations for beginners, scientific experiments, sumptuous lunches, enormous dinners and sleepless nights dedicated to the passion for computer science.

Poems will be read, poems will be written, everything and nothing will be discussed, weeds will be weeded, new weeds will be planted, debates will happen, decisions will be taken, all and nothing will be done!

Everyone can join, the important thing is to leave the brain at home and bring a lot of coffee!

For further details check the link above!

So hopefully some of you remember that epic adventure that was HoaP in 2007 which in turned spun up and inspired many a hacker/maker/knitter/chemical mix masters into what is now known as the hackerspace movement threading itself into the North American and now Earth culture.

A lot of people including me were disappointed that we were not able to make it on what is know known as a auspicous trip. Now with a turn of events and where fortune favors the bold, it seems that HoaP is now reborn!

As a phoenix from the ashes, Nick Farr and a few individuals have pulled some strings, made calls, kicked down doors, and overall kicked ass in pulling together HoaP 2 or as I like to call it.

“Hackers On A Plane: Deuce – Euro/Merican Boogaloo”

So here’s the skinny.

Read more…

Our friends in Luxembourg from syn2cat are having a little get together that is open to the public (as long as you RSVP for the 10 spots), to put together a number of Arduino units for your hacking pleasure.

From syn2cat’s wiki post:

What is it about?

On the 15th of March we are going to solder an Serial Arduino Board and a few Velleman Kits to afterwards.
Hack them and make them behave in a different way than originally conceived. (Limited to 10 People! Deadline: 8th of March)

We will provide

There will be approximately 6 full soldering stations
with all the necessary gear (Multimeter, Wirecutter tools, etc…)

These sets will be available FOR SALE. So in case you like what you did
and want to become a REAL Pirate make a future proof investment.

Most of the Kits will be in 3 exemplars, if you are really keen on one, reserve it please.

• A Room (kindly provided by emQue)
• 6 30W Soldering Irons with an adequate Tip and stand (but please bring your own should you have one)
• 6 Third-hands
• 6 Multimeter (again, you have one bring it please)
• 6 Ubuntu Laptops with the Arduino IDE
• Power supplies (some regulated some not, Voltage varies)
• 500g (yeah) of 1mm and 0.7mm Solder
• De-soldering stuff
• Maybe an Oscilloscope (Who can bring one please?)

More details can be found on their wiki.

This event is also a wonderful way to meet the members of syn2cat and possibly even become a member yourself!

Cheers,
/E.

I’m not one for posting press releases but this just puts the point across perfectly.

###

Note – This is the press release which we issued to a number of media outlets. You can watch the schedule of events become more refined by subscribing to our calendar or checking the events page. – jur1st

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Cowtown Computer Congress Opens Their Underground Lab

February 26th, 2009. Kansas City, MO – The Cowtown Computer Congress (CCCKC) is happy to announce the opening of their Underground Lab to the public with a full week of events Beginning on March 2nd, the grand opening showcase the rich and vibrant community of creative minds in the Kansas City area. CCCKC, the first organization of its kind in the midwest, will serve the community by providing technology classes, donating unique projects to local organizations and technology assistance to those in need.

The week will kick off on Monday, March 2nd with an open house for individuals and organizations who are interested in learning more about the organization and how they can take advantage the Underground Lab for meetings, classes and other activities.

The creative talents of CCCKC members will be showcased on Wednesday March, 4th. The member project showcase will be followed by a screening of Make:TV, a public television series which will be shown for the first time in the Kansas City area that night. If you’re curious about what CCCKC and the maker culture are all about, this is the night to come be inspired. Projects to be showcased range from alternative methods of energy generation to a labyrinth game which is controlled with the balance board from a Nintendo Wii Fit.

Thursday, March 5th is the regular member meeting where members come together to discuss group projects being developed for donation to local organizations and plan future community service projects like our monthly free computer repair opportunities.

Friday evening will feature a slate of speakers covering topics ranging from improving home security and information management to protecting data from theft while using public wireless internet.

On Saturday the public is invited to take part in a range of free workshops on basic electronics and soldering, e-textiles and Nintendo Wii hacking. All day members will be available to assist members of the public choose, install and configure computers using the free and open source Linux operating system.

About The Cowtown Computer Congress

The Cowtown Computer Congress (CCCKC) is a not for profit technology cooperative founded to advance technology of all kinds. They are a member supported organization providing technology classes, workshops and services to the public free of charge. CCCKC brings together some of the finest minds in midwest to collaborate on research and projects for other local groups. Through their affiliate program, CCCKC gives assistance to specialized technology user groups by providing them with a facility to hold meetings and work on projects of their own.

CCCKC’s Underground Lab is located 85 feet below the surface of the earth at 31st Street and Southwest Trafficway in Kansas City, Missouri.

http://www.cowtowncomputercongress.org

Further inquires should be made to:
press at cowtowncomputercongress.org or to
John Benson – President and Co-Founder
816-332-6389

###

/E.

That is but one of the questions I get whenever I go out and the topic of what I do in my free time comes up.

So recently I had that same question asked but this time, Dave Hoffman of Davemakes.com had brought a video camera.

From Daves’ site
The time has finally come to unveil my secret project. HELLO is a new series of videos about interesting people. This first episode features Eric Michaud, President of Pumping Station: One, a hackerspace opening up in Chicago. I asked him all about what a hackerspace is, and why you should join one.

If you don’t have 15 minutes to spare, check out this quick 90 second preview of the interview.

This is the preview.

Preview of HELLO – Eric Michaud, President of Pumping Station: One from Dave Jacob Hoffman on Vimeo.

I hope everyone enjoys this as much as I do, by doing this blog and building hackerspaces.

Cheers,

/E

For those that can make it to Paris for this battle of wits and protocols, it sure seems to be a rousing good time.

Here are some of the details.

******

“We are pleased to announce that the /tmp/lab  will be organizing a Spring Wireless OpenWRT Mesh Contest called “Wireless Battle Mesh” during 2 days (April 11-12th) with the goal of building 3 wireless mesh networks based on embedded hardware running OpenWRT and different concurrent mesh routing protocols.

The targeted architecture will be 3 networks of 25nodes + 1 wireless managment networks (10-20 nodes) to achieve realistic size of nodes number, data traffic, configuration problems. The architecture will be set-up indoor and outdoor around the building of the /tmp/lab.

OpenWRT will be the selected for the BoardSupportPackage running on the different hardware nodes and a core network configuration will be built on Linux servers with user-friendly features such as :
*VLANs
*Captive portal
*Authentication
*Admin portal

Concerning the mesh-protocols, selected targeted protocols are :

*OLSR : IP-based mesh routing platform (http://olsr.org and openWRT package available)

*BATMAN : Layer2-based mesh protocol (http://open-mesh.org) and available as a kernel module for Linux and packaged in OpenWRT

*BABEL : Layer-3 mesh protocol developed by University Paris 6, available for Linux and soon to be packaged for OpenWRT (http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/babel/)

Concerning the hardware node, we are looking for hardware sponsors that could enjoy this “real-case” contest by providing 50-100 nodes……….. More after the jump.

******

Looks to be quite a good time for packet heads and people with a lot of time with Yagi’s.

-E.

Those of you that were on the conference call last Sunday were the first to be made aware that I’ve been working incognito for the last two months scheming, planning, plotting with fellow members of HacDC to pull off a really cool event.

For those that were not made aware, ShmooCon is an annual computer security hacker conference in DC that covers many topics, including 0-day exploits, Hack the Genome! The Age of Bimolecular Cryptology, or The Gentlemen’s Agreement: Pwning Friends Legally for Fun, ????, and Profit, how the Ohio voting machines were able to be compromised (a ‘08 favorite talk of mine), and – if you have an itchy trigger finger – Hack or Halo.

So how does HacDC play into this? Well, some short background:
HacDC didn’t exist when ShmooCon was around last year, it was only spoken about in hushed tones till after the conference. Now we’ve been around for almost a full year with lots of stories to speak of.

Now at this ShmooCon we’re very loud and very proud of how far we have come and we’d like to say thanks to everyone by hosting the official ShmooCon Friday night party.

The details are forth coming but the basics are:

Location: HacDC Sanctuary (4 meters from the Altar)

1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010 USA
(near corner of 16th and Newton NW)
Google Map

Time: 10pm till past 3ish.

How/Who: If you’re a member of a hackerspace or an attendee of ShmooCon, just show up for the festivities.

Venue:

This is where the action happens.

What to expect:

Three DJ’s:
DJ HSO
DJ Just Joshin
DJ Keith Myers

Plus a number of fun projects that hackers from other hackerspaces are bringing in to show off.

Party Mode On!
-E.

*****

UPDATE: Bring your laser pointers!  Shuuush.

Due to our worries about missing a lot of hackerspace updates by doing the conference call on Thu, Feb. 05th as planned (since quite a couple of you hackers might be trapped on a plane on your way to ShmooCon), we decided to reschedule the next call-in to

Sunday, Feb. 01st at 02 pm PST / 05 pm EST / 10 pm UTC / 11 pm CET

Please RSVP by adding your hackerspaces name + handle to the schedule if you are planning to call in & give an update!

As usual, all technical information can be found here.

***

However, our dinner plans on the night before ShmooCon – Thu, Feb 05th, that is – remain unchanged;
please make sure to RSVP via over9000(at)hackerspaces.org or add your name to the referring wikipage, so we save a hackerspaces dinner seat for you.

We hope to be able to update the wiki with more info about events happening at and around ShmooCon shortly – stay tuned ^^

***

Hope to see you there,
/astera

Photo by Nicholas Zambetti

Our friends over at HacDC are at it again with flaunting themselves for the public good. They are hosting their public Microcontroller Mondays, open to the public to anyone who can make it. The first day of the new sessions starts today at 6:30 till 12am on the 12th and each monday until Marche 30th.

What can you expect from such a meetup? Well let me tell you!

*What are microcrontollers.

*What they can do for you and your projects.

*How to code for them. and realize you don’t need much more than cheap readily available hobby kits.

*Plus much much more!

Even if your a seasoned hardware head in using microcontrollers it definitely doesn’t hurt to stop and check it out even if you haven’t been there before. Plus you could inspre a few new people!

Photo by tcbitdennet

-E.