News

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skipfish studygroup anyone?

Hey hackers, I (Far) have wanted to play with Skipfish for a while, but I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t know where to start. Skipfish is a web security scanner from lcamtuf . It allows it’s user/installer to scan domains for issues, and creates interactive crawl results, highlighting flaws, and more.

This is an outgoing call to see if anyone wants to have a ‘skipfish’ studygroup night in April to get together, and play with this awesome web-security tool. If you want to mess with skipfish for an evening, then pick a date you can join us. When we get 5 people for a specific date, I’ll let our Events Coordinator know, and we will have a studygroup for that night!

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Details for Linux Install Class 3/28/2010

Tuxcakes!

On Sunday, March 28 from 10am-3pm we’re holding a basic Linux install class. This class is perfect for total Linux beginners and people who want to take the plunge and install Linux on their computer. We’ll talk about what an operating system is, what free and open source software mean, implications of using proprietary software, and differences among distributions of Linux. Then we’ll install Ubuntu on computers that people bring, or for people who aren’t quite ready, we can install free software programs like Firefox and Open Office. This class is open to everyone, and woman- and trans-friendly. The class is sliding scale/pay what you can $0-$30. A donation will make it easier for Hive76 to provide snacks and keep hosting affordable classes.
More detail and some caveats after the jump.

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Mary Shelley

As long as we are talking about great women in science, I just want to give big ups to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  To say she was precocious is an understatement.  At age 19, she wrote a dark and thrilling novel that questioned the blind optimism of the Enlightenment, and forsaw what fearful implications the new “natural philosphy”  would come to have.  We still look to Frankenstein to frame our debates about genetic experimentation, nuclear energy, and pretty much everything related to scary, cutting edge science.

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Grace Hopper

A day late for Womans History day, here is a post about another great female geek, Grace Hopper. With a PhD in mathematics from Yale, she became a Naval officer, pushed for Machine Independent programming languages, and became a Rear Admiral in the US Navy.

Wikipedia has a better entry on her than I could ever write, so I’d suggest reading that for a full Bio. Or better, watch her take on The Late Night Show and ham it up. I especially love the “I didn’t know [about computers] Since it was the first one.’ There is also a biography about her out on the shelves.

I first heard about her from her ‘nanosecond’ wire gifts she would give out. After she retired Rear Admiral Hopper became a speaker for DEC, and traveled around and spoke about the history of computers. She was known to give out 11.8 inch long sections of telephone cable, to give people a hands on fee for how far electricity traveled in a nanosecond.

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Happy International Women’s Day!

March is Women’s History Month and today is International Women’s Day, woohoo! Over at Geek Feminism there’s an open thread for Women’s Day events. From the blog: “If your geek group is doing anything for IWD, let us know in this thread, particularly if it’s online and open to participants around the world. (If it’s a meatspace event, please remember to be clear about which area!)”

Who are your favorite women in science and tech? Maybe Hypatia, the Egyptian mathematician and astronomer? Are you in luv with Ada Lovelace, considered the great grandmama of modern programming? Can I get a hell yeah for brilliant evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis? How about the team of women who programmed ENIAC? Myself, I’m partial to one Voltairine DeCleyre, an anarchist, feminist, BFF of Emma Goldman, and the namesake of Philadelphia’s own Radio Volta.

Dr. Clelia Mosher debunked Victorian myths about womens’ frailty and out-Kinseyed Kinsey by about 50 years

Is there a professor, colleague, friend, kin, internet celeb, garage inventor, or other brilliant lady in science and tech, ancient or modern, living or dead, local or halfway around the world, who you just have to shout out? Let us know! If you want to write or record a snip about someone you <3 during Women's History Month, get in touch and we'll make it easy to get your thoughts to our blog. In the meantime, here's a laundry list of inventive women that will keep you Wikipedia-ing into next week.

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Teardown and Take Apart Workshop (March 28th)

Image thanks to drewzhrodague (CC licensed)
Teardown and Take Apart is your chance to take something apart, to see how it works. Bring in your old electronics, typewriters, or other stuff, and we will (carefully) help you take it apart to see how it works. Do you have an old printer, computer, or fax machine at home you want to try to take apart? Want to look inside a printer and see what makes it work? This is your chance to mess with it, and check out what is inside.

Please come with gloves, goggles (if you have them) and your curiosity. This is a carry-in carry-out workshop, so be prepared to take home whatever you bring with you. We also reserve the right to stop folks from taking apart dangerous things, or to stop teardowns that can be health or safety issues.

This event is free, but a $5 to $10 donation is appreciated, depending on how much help we provided you in your quest for take-apart-fu.

This event is organized by Far McKon ( FarMcKon@gmail.com ) of Hive76. If you have questions, email him.

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Hive76 Store – Open For Business!

Good news, kids! We have a store! It’s on the internet!!! That means you can now pay for things like donations, classes, membership dues, and the somewhat delayed but still awesome 2010 Men of Hive76 Calender, all online! We’ve got some really awesome plans in the works for Hive76-designed products, so keep an eye out in the next few months. We also have this rad custom ticketing system, so if you pay for your event before it happens, you’ll get a genuine Hive76 event ticket. They have QR code, people! Worth it!

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Right now we’re accepting PayPal and oldschool cash/checks, but we might add Google Checkout if enough people want it. Feel free to poke around, buy some stuff, send us money, go wild! Most importantly, let us know if there’s something you would like to see or a way we could make the whole experience better. You can leave a comment here or send an email to [orders at hive76 dot org]. kbye!
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March Madness!

Today March Madness kicked off.

No, it wasn’t a retail store sale or anything like that. March Madness is a programming challenge issued to all hackerspaces by our favorite New Jersey hackerspace, FUBARLabs. The challenge is to write a complete, working program, everyday throughout March.

More info can be found about March Madness at the FUBARLabs website: http://fubarlabs.com/2010/02/march-madness-challenge/

Let the madness begin!

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Class Costs and Planning

Part of running a hackerspace is doing classes, events and workshops. Classes generally involved a teacher (and TA) and slides or a presentation. Workshops and Events are different from classes, and aren’t covered here. It’s sometimes hard to set rates and costs for classes, and it’s a tricky thing to make classes easy and affordable, but to make enough to support the space, and give people giving the class satisfaction of doing something worth the scratch.

I’ve heard some advice from different spaces on how to plan classes and costs, and (for me) one of the toughest parts was coming up with a decent cost for classes. My personal guidelines for the ‘don’t-expect-to-make-money’ classes (take it or leave it) is below. I use this for my own classes and events, and find it useful. If you also do classes or events, feel free to give us feedback on how you price yours, either by leaving a comment on the weblog, or updating the page on our wiki with your guidelines.
Continue reading “Class Costs and Planning”

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Teh Art of Electronics (sic,TM)

To paraphrase the course description for MIT’s Practical Electronics Open Course Ware:

“You can build most any damn thing if you understand a few basic electronics concepts and follow a few basic rules”

“Teh Art of Electronics” (sic,TM) is about teaching you those concepts and rules.  Each class will present basic electronics material and conclude with a lab period where you’ll build actual, working devices in order to learn practical fabrication and debugging skills, while reinforcing your intuitive understanding of the course material.

The course will be based loosely on MIT’s “Practical Electronics” course.  By the end, you should be able to design and build your own circuits (up to a surprising level of complexity) and the world of electronic design will be substantially demystified.

We recommend that you purchase a copy of “The Art of Electronics”, by Horowitz and Hill, but it’s not mandatory.  We’ll furnish all components, reading materials, tutelage etc. that you need to perform the coursework and the corresponding labs.

We are currently planning five Sunday sessions, 1 PM to 4 PM, starting April 4.   See “Intro to Electronics” in the Hive 76 Calendar for preliminary, session-by-session details on course content.

Tickets here