Nick Farr and his Hackers on a Plane project made a stop at Dallas Makerspace on Thursday. Nick has been called the Johnny Appleseed of Hackerspaces and is well known for his talk at HOPE two years ago called “Your excuses are invalid” that has led to a plethora of new hackerspaces. Dallas Makerspace was Nick’s only stop in Texas as he makes his away across the United States, bringing case-loads of Club Mate to hackerspaces everywhere. Dallas Makerspace members Alan Hatchett and Peter Smith bought three cases of the highly caffeinated tea. They will be selling the drinks to anyone who wants to try one out for $5. Be prepared to stay up late when drinking one, however! All proceeds from the sale of the drinks will go to Dallas Makerspace.
Nick drove in from Louisville, KY, hung out with us during our weekly meeting for about 3 hours and then headed out again bound for Phoenix, AZ. It was great to have him visit us, even for such a short time, and get a chance to connect with the larger hackerspace movement. While Nick was here, he got a tour of our new facility, chatted with the members, downloaded some audio books for the next leg of his journey, charged his phone, and did a quick safety check of his van. Check out Nick’s twitter feed for more details on his cross-country Club Mate delivery trip.
We noticed empty Club Mate bottles were quickly accumulating and asked Nick if there was a contest to see which hackerspace can come up with the most interesting use for the empties. There’s no contest yet but he thought it was a pretty cool idea so stay tuned.
We posted earlier about Dallas Makerspace submitting a clock to Art Conspiracy’s 2010 SEED auction. Now you can watch the highlights from the event and see how well our clock did!
Every Argus Day (or Argust Day as some fans refer to it), photographers dig out their ancient Argus cameras, load up some film, and shoot the old fashioned way. Any Argus camera will do but the most commonly used is the Argus C3, which was at one time the best-selling American-made camera in the world. Unlike other holidays that occur every year on the same date, Argus Day slides slowly across the calendar at the rate of one day per year. The first Argus Day was on August 1. The next year it was on August 2. To determine when Argus day falls on any given year, there’s a simple mathematical formula: Argus Day = July 31 + (current year – 2000). So in 2010, that gives August 10 – today.
Argus Day was dreamed up by James M. Surprenant, Marcy Merrill and other members of the Argus Collectors Group. The idea is once you’ve shot your Argus day photos, you submit your two best ones to ACG and they’ll display them on their flickr group.
Dallas Makerspace is celebrating Argus Day in two ways. First, I’m out shooting photos on my newly acquired 1947 postwar Argus C3 (I’m really into vintage cameras in case you weren’t aware). If all goes well, expect to see the photos posted soon. Second, we’ve created a handy new Camera Holidays Calendar in our wiki to remind you about Argus Day and all the similar days like Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, Polaroid Day, 127 Day, and more. We’ve also released as free software (GPL v3), a simple PHP script that generates an iCal feed of all those dates. You can subscribe directly to the iCal feed or download the source and do whatever you like with it. Our code relies on the iCalcreator free software library.
The Dallas Makerspace building has been inspected, and other than an errant water heater, should be open for occupancy next week!
Now is the time to sign up for the Dallas Makerspace. Sign up is easy online via PayPal. Set up a recurring contribution here.
Please also consider a one time donation (its tax-deductable!). This helps fund tools available to the members. Currently in the works: a Makerbot 3D printer, a CNC Laser Cutter, Sewing Machines, Darkroom Equipment and other great stuff. Donate!
We meet on Thursdays at 7PM, as you’ve seen come across by our handy reminder robot.
Stay tuned for the announcement of our Grand Opening in the coming weeks!
Find out about some of the great projects the Dallas Makerspace has already completed on our wiki.
On September 18 each year, people all over the world celebrate Software Freedom Day. It’s a day when free software developers and users raise awareness in their local community of the benefits software freedom brings. Some cities have huge events with music, talks, vendors, even cheerleaders, parades, and feasts. Dallas SFD events, on the other hand, have been small or non-existent the last few years. Dallas Makerspace intends to change that in 2010 by planning a bigger SFD event than Dallas has ever seen.
So far we’ve got swag on the way from the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat, and Canonical. We’ll be giving away Fedora and Ubuntu CDs, stickers, t-shirts and more. We also hope to have a series of short 10 minute talks on a variety of free software subjects. But there’s still a lot of planning to do and to pull it all off, we’ll need your help! See our Software Freedom Day project page to join in on the planning. We need speakers, volunteers, donations to help cover costs, and any ideas you’ve got to help make this the coolest Dallas SFD ever.
The city has completed its first round of inspections on the space, and while the “building” has passed, we still need to get some re-inspections on the water heater. This precludes ordering the electricity being hooked up. But it means we’ll be hooking it up soon, so lets decide what energy company to use at the meeting.
We’re still meeting at XMAX this Thursday (tomorrow) at 7:00pm. I’ve made a detailed measurement of the floor plan, so our activity for Thursday will be planning out how we’ll set things up there. Before it gets dark, we can travel to the space and tour around (there is no power, so we don’t want to be there after dark). Then we can head over to Fox and Hound for refreshing beverages.
Art conspiracy is a local 501(c)(3) non-profit that organizes a big fund raising event for a different North Texas charity each year. They’ve raised over $70,000 for local groups so far. To cover their annual operating expenses, they also hold an annual art auction called the Art Con SEED event. For SEED 2010, Art Conspiracy selected 30 local artists or groups to be given an identical clock movement. Each artist then builds an art clock to be auctioned off at a live event on July 16 at Sons of Hermann Hall in Deep Ellum. Dallas Makerspace was been selected as one of those 30 artists.
Steve, Ed, and Mike Dodson of the DPRG collaborated to produce a huge floor-standing art clock. The base of the clock was welded scrap metal with a sealed rust coat. The tower was a space frame design painted in glossy red enamel. The face was a polished, clear-coat, plasma cut design. Red and blue CCFL lighting was added for effect. For photos and more details on the constructed of our clock see our Art Con SEED Clock project page.
Our clock went for $230 at the auction! – We weren’t able to stay for the entire auction but when we left, the Dallas Makerspace clock had drawn the highest bid of any clock at the auction. Check out photos of all the amazing art clocks in Steve’s ArtCon SEED auction gallery
The TEDxSMU conference is coming up in October and they’ve issued a call for artists. They’re looking for individuals or groups to propose interactive art installations that relate to the theme of their upcoming conference, and which TED participants can interact with over the course of the event.
As usual, we’re late on the uptake – we only heard about the call shortly before the deadline. Steve immediately posted it to IRC and called Sarah Jane Semrad to get the full scoop. It sounded like a taylor-made project for a hackerspace, so we’ve put together a team led by Alan to come up with ideas and write a proposal. Steve and Ed are helping along with frequent collaborator Haley Moore.
And, of course, we’ve started a TEDxSMU project page. Expect to hear more on this once TEDxSMU makes their announcement.
