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Make Philly BBQ is this Sunday!

Get outside this Sunday, and spend some time with other makers, crafters, hackers, designers, and a lot of other ‘-er’s at Make:Philly’s summer BBQ. As usual there will be food (bring some of your own), frisbee, people hanging out, and Water Rockets. Bring your or, or make on on the spot using whatever happens to be lying around, and prepare to get soaked when you take your turn at the launcher.

If you were around last year, you got to play with The Wondergy team’s “Solar Smores” machine, a parabolic mirror perfect for toasting some mallow. They are bringing it back for this years BBQ, along with some new toys, like a trash-can launcher, that will send a trash can on a 20-50 foot flight.

In Short:
Sunday, August 8th, 1-3PM
Lemon Hill, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia
Kid Friendly: Yes
Food: Potluck – please bring something to share with 3-4 other people.
Water Rocket: Build yours at home and bring with you, along with a bottle of water

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Intro to Reversing

Hive76 is hosting an Intro to Reverse Engineering class on August 28th. Reverse Engineering is the art and science of taking a program apart, and understanding how it works. Reverse Engineering a program may seem like a bit of black magic, but it’s not. All of the instructions for a program are right there on your hard drive, and with some tools and tricks, you can figure out what the program’s doing and how it works.

This class is an introduction on how to take a piece of software apart, see what it is doing, and maybe even change how it behaves. To take this class you should be familiar with programming basics in *any* programming language, have a laptop, and be willing to sit still for a couple of hours. The class is 5 hours long with a 1 hour lunch break with food included in the price. We will be giving students a VMWare image of tools to use and examples for the duration of the class. If needed we can help you get VMWare installed and working. After this class you’ll have all the knowledge you’ll need to start reverse engineering.

Requirements: A laptop, curiosity, and experience in some programming language.

Aug 28th 11AM to 5PM
General Admission Tickets: $75 (suggested donation)
Hive76 Members and Students Tickets: $55 (suggested donation)

(Photo is CC by our very own PaintJob)

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Member’s Day Saturday the 24th

Saturday July 24th is a big day for Hive Members. We have two events going on that day for members and their friends/guests. Every member is strongly encouraged to attend, both of these, but we aren’t going to break legs if you are out of town, or can’t make it.

Biannual Members Meeting ( 12 Noon to 2:30PM, Saturday July 24th)
This is a twice yearly meeting of all members, in order to track/check how Hive76 is working out for everyone. Every member is encouraged to attend, and a full schedule of topics is in the calendar event.

Picknic at Lemon Hill at Fairmount Park ( 4PM until ?? Saturday July 24th)
Biagio is organizing a Hive76 BBQ in Fairmount park on (With a rain date tentatively set for Sunday July 25th.) It is Pot Luck, so for every 2 people Please bring something to eat and something to drink for 2-4 People. Bring squirt guns, frisbees, and tons of sun tan lotion This is a chance to relax, meet new and old members, and relax outdoors with geeks. Non members are welcome to join us, of course. (Bouncy Castle Not Included, photo by Zumix)

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Next HOPE is Next Weekend

The Next HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference is next weekend in NYC. Along with Hive76 helping with the Hackerspace Village and the OpenAMD project, there are a bunch of Hive related folks at the conference giving talks or on panels. Below is the quick list of some people you might have run into around Hive or in Philly who are presenting at HOPE and how they are related to our space.

Stephanie Alarcon (board member), Mitch Altman (workshop), Maggie Avener (workshop), Scott Beibin (local vj), Matt Blaze (UPenn professor), cpfr (project), Travis Goodspeed (philly local), Joey Mariano (local musician), Far McKon (officer), Don Miller(local musican), Christina “fabulous” Pei (visitor) , Tiffany Rad(visitor) , Pete Tridish (frequent visitor). And more!

Come to HOPE! Help with the Hackerspace Village! Meet interesting people, and hear about their project! See the RFID awesomesauce. There are still some tickets left, and it’s a train ride + two block from 30th Street Philly to Hotel Penn in NYC.

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Happy Birthday Alan Turing

On this day in 1912 Alan Mathison Turing was born. Through feats of Math and Engineering he helped save the western world and help found the discipline of Computer Science. He defined Definable Real Numbers, and had several key insights into breaking the Enigma Cipher in World War II. After being convicted for indecency for being a homosexual, and likely because of it, he committed suicide in 1954. And of course the Turing Award is named after him.

Happy Birthday to the late Alan Turing ‘Founder of Computer Science’ (‘IEKYF ROMSI ADXUO KVKZC GUBJ’ in Enigma cypher).

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The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL) visits Hive

The Open Organization Of Lockpickers (TOOOL) is a non-profit, public advocacy group that encourages people to learn about and play with locks. By understanding lockpicking, people can experience the thrill of an exciting and fun hobby and also be better consumers in the marketplace, basing purchasing decisions on hard fact as opposed to marketing promises.

This month’s meeting of the Mid-Atlantic chapter will take place at Hive76 on Tuesday the 22nd, 18:30. It’s open to all who wish to play and learn in an atmosphere of open disclosure and honest discourse.

Locks, picks, and other tools will be made available. Event open to all with a non-criminal interest in locks. Folks asking nefarious questions or hiding behind childish online nicknames will be asked to leave. 🙂

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Summer Project Day (Hackaton) on June 12

Everyone has cool projects they’ve not finished, or ones they’ve not made time to start yet. A Project Day (aka Hackaton) is a day to get together with friends, and finally get some of that stuff done. Have art to finish? A kit you want to build? Some software you need help on? Hive76 will be open 10AM to 10PM, so come by and get some quite, some help, and some comradeship as you work on whatever project you’ve wanted to finish. Little known facts about Hackatons:

  • People being too loud or just socializing will be politely asked to go hang out in the lobby.
  • Desk-sized whiteboards and some markers will be available to help in brainstorming.
  • We will have ‘quite please’ signs. Feel free to take one if you don’t want to be interrupted while you work.
  • If you just want to drop in and help, Hive76 will find something that fits your talents that can help the community.
  • A white board will be reserved for anyone to write what they are stuck on, to help people find tutors or helpers.
  • Lunch will be outside, at about 1PM, for about an hour. Get some sun!
  • People working on open source projects get free lunch!

(Photo CC and by Opacity of PS:One)

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Open Beacon or was that Open Bacon?

We have an Open Beacon install currently running at Hive for the next month or so. We are doing some testing and research on what the platform can offer just for the fun of it.

As part of this, we are trying to do some tracking. It turns out that our test setup is compatible with badges from The Last HOPE. If you are in the Philly area and want to play with OpenBeacon, or if you have a badge from The Last HOPE you can lend us, we’d appreciate the help!

(Photo is Creative Commons from Pedro Moura Pinheiro)

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Trenton Ave Arts Festival

2009 Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby (51)
With all of the excitement and planning taking place in preparation for the Trenton Ave Arts Festival, we forgot to post about it…

Our bad!

So, without further delay, I’d like to announce that Hive76 is going to be representin’ at our first all-day event, this Saturday, May 22nd!

“But what can I expect to see at booth #73?”

For starters, we’ll be teaching folks a little bit about electronic circuits and how to solder, so they can walk away with their very own, custom made in Philly, bike odometer/safety light!

“Seriously? Can it get any better?”

We’re Hive76. Of course it can! If the bike odometer isn’t your thing, how about a not-so-plain safety light? We’ll have an assortment of LED colors on hand to choose from to make a light that blinks at a rate related to how fast your riding!

“Cool! But I don’t like soldering irons, or batteries. What can I do?”

We’re going to have the amazing, vinyl-cutting Craft Robo! Custom cut vinyl stickers to make your sweet ride even sweeter?? Sweet! You’ll even have an assortment of colors to choose from!

“You all must really like bikes. Are you going to buy a 6 person bike with all our loot?”

We do like bikes! So much so, that all of the proceeds from this event are going to fund tech-centric bike classes for kids! This June, Hive76 and Neighborhood Bike Works are going to team up to offer cheap or free classes to kids where they will be making their own bike lights.

“Oh yeah? What else is going on?”

Well, there is a little something called the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby that will be right around the corner…

So be sure to come and check out the Hive76 booth this Saturday, May 22nd, at the Trenton Ave Arts Festival! Do it for the kids!

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Top S33kert RFID Project

Hey,
A top s33kret RFID project is going on at Hive76, starting next week.
An RFID tag
What I can tell (in a google search-able place) is that It’s a RFID system based on Open Beacon for an event this summer. We could use some hardware hackers, UI/Web/Software folks, and a server wrangler or two. We are meeting next week (Tuesday Night) at an undisclosed location to do some planning for this, and get started. If you think you can spend some time working on this project, email FarMcKon@gmail.com to get the details and get involved.