This Sunday (April 11) at Noon a there is a Wikipedia scavenger hunt and photo shoot that is happening in and around Philadelphia. There is a huge list of places that need Wikipedia Photos around our city. The goal is to get as many of them photographed and into Wikipedia in a weekend, and get a better set of city photos up.
If you have a camera and want to run/walk/bike around and get some photos of the city. Sunday’s event would be a great time to do that.
Tonight I’m going to switch the website calendar over to run off of our domain (Hive76@Hive76.org) instead of having it on Hive76@gmail.com. Please email Contact@Hive76.org if/when you notice any missing or problematic calendar events in the next week or so!
Make things awesome, Make Awesome Things,
– Instigator
It’s almost time for robots again!
Come join us for the April Philadelphia Robotics Group Meetup. We’ll be having our normal robotics discussion/showing, and member Nelson Brown will demo an AVR-based video game.
Info: April 8th, starting at 7:30.
Next Saturday at Hive76 we will be hosting an international 3 hour game jam with gamedev.net. Contestants have 3 hours to complete a small game based on a secret theme, to be revealed at the beginning of the contest. This contest has a secondary requirement that all of the games have to be puzzle games.
Any programming language and API is acceptable, as long as it will run in some way (app or web app) on the judges 64-bit Windows Vista machine or their Mac Mini.
Third and second places are premium memberships (3 months and one year, respectively) to gamedev.net First prize is a $75 gift card for Amazon.com!
Organizer: Sean McBeth (Philip Fominykh at the assist)
More Information at : http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=566163
Saturday, April 10th, contest starts at 5:00PM
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
