This Friday evening, BernieS, Far McKon and I will be at The Hacktory at 1524 Brandywine St. to share pictures, short videos, and stories from the absolutely awesome Chaos Communication Camp in Berlin last month. Come join us! It’s BYOB, The Hacktory will provide popcorn.
Announcement on The Hacktory blog
Write-up in Technically Philly
Open data slides, open data video
Thanks to my favorite Shiva for reminding me to include links to the slides and videos. :-)
This weekend, Maker Faire touched down in New York. Sponsored by O’Reilly publishing’s Make and Craft magazines, Maker Faire is a craft and tech expo that happens in several cities throughout the year. Exhibitioners included robot makers, tee shirt makers, garden makers, radio makers…seeing the trend?
It happened at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. It was definitely a welcome recharge, and by the end of the bus ride back to Philly I discovered that I’d filled nine pages of a notebook with new sketches and notes. Here are some of my favorite participants that are making me re-think my stance on working alone.
I had a blast talking to Brie and Michael about their Philadelphia area slow-fashion clothing company, Reboot. They make simple, beautiful sweaters and jackets from the ends of industrial bolts of wool that would otherwise be discarded by large clothing … Read the rest
Co-working and shared workspaces are all the rage, but every time I hear a hackerspace advocate talk about that sense of community and how it’s better than working alone in your dark basement, I shudder a little. It’s wonderful that people are finding ways to team up and have more than any of them could on their own, and I love hearing about the serendipitous moments of genius that arise because the right people were in the same room at the right time.
But to me, “sense of community” often means “lots of people I’m not that attached to but spend unjustifiable amounts of time with, and a social contract that I don’t necessarily agree with”. I feel like hackerspaces and co-working joints come with an expectation that you’re looking for new buddies, but I already struggle to find time to spend with the most important people in my life, … Read the rest
Updated with concise list of links, 10/12/2011.
I recently got home from 9 days in and around Berlin for the Chaos Communication Camp, organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The Camp happens every 4 years and on a lark I submitted 2 talk proposals. To my happy bewilderment, both were accepted. I gave “There’s Gold In Them Circuit Boards: Why E-Waste Recycling is Smart and How to Make it Smarter” based on my thesis work on e-waste, and “Data Mining Your City: Early Lessons in Open City Data from Philadelphia, USA”. On the train from Berlin to the airfield where the camp took place, I met Florian Stoller who helped me give the city data talk. Besides being on the board of his local Pirate Party in Fribourg, Switzerland, he also helps run Be-Cause , a company that makes e-gov forms. He filled in the European perspective, … Read the rest
Hoo boy, we live in “interesting” times. In thinking about what direction to point the laser beam of my shiny new education, I’ve started to compile mental lists of all the things that are totally, embarrassingly, inexcusably wrong with the city/state/nation/world we live in. I’ve avoided committing it to paper partly because I don’t want to get overwhelmed.
But I have an idea. What about building into one’s weekly routine contacting a legislator? Every week. There are plenty of issues to be passionate and active about, and this type of exercise could only help one become more literate about the political system.
Has anyone tried something like this? Do you think being a frequent caller would dilute the efficacy of your message, like when your state senator gets another email from you they’d just put it in the spambucket with a sigh about that one person who writes in every … Read the rest
If you didn’t have plans this Saturday, now you do. The Hacktory and the Prometheus Radio Project are offering a bilingual (English/Spanish) workshop to build your own radio transmitter, and Azavea is hosting an intro to Python for women and their friends.
At The Hacktory, staff and volunteers from the Prometheus Radio Project will be teaching a workshop on how to build a small radio transmitter that can reach across a room. It’s an easy way to get music or speech across a short expanse wirelessly and it’s a great intro to basic electronics and soldering. Here’s an interview that Tek Lado did with the instructors.
If that’s not your bag, you might like to try your hand at basic coding in Python, described as “incredibly intuitive.” Python tends to be known as a simple but very accurate language that’s great for prototyping because you can build things quickly, … Read the rest
Since I finished my capstone I’ve been kind of relaxing, for some definition of relaxing. I’ve done some sewing, some reading, some travelling, some work on the house, and some light organizing. But I haven’t jumped into any big projects or aggressive job-hunting, so I’ve been feeling a little guilty. I’ve also felt guilty for ignoring this space.
But this isn’t a “I’m sorry I haven’t posted, I’ve been so busy” post. Well, not exclusively. This morning I was feeling ready to tackle one of the projects that is piling up a little and went to the directory on my laptop where I keep notes on projects. It’s super low-tech but it works. I keep a different directory for each year, and another directory for each project, then whatever files are relevant in there, like this:
projects
2009
2010
2011
UN
techgirlz
hacktory
mastergardener
...
So I went to that … Read the rest
Just posted this at Hive76.
Dear Hive76 community,
With appreciation for the last year and a half with great people and projects, as of yesterday, I’ve resigned from Hive76’s Board of Directors. There are some amazing things in the works for the group, and I look forward to watching it grow and helping out from time to time. The organization has grown so much since I first heard about it, and there is a strong core of smart people making it run. I am confident that even more positive changes are on the way for Hive76 and the Philly science/tech community.
Recently, I’ve had a lot of demands placed on my time, and I feel that I can do more for DIY, science education, and technology for social change, from a different context. I’ve picked up some other tech/ed projects around the city (like Random Hacks of Kindness), … Read the rest
Do you like hacking? Do you fancy yourself a nice person overall? Are there things about this crazy world that just don’t sit well with you? If getting together with 50 people like you to split into teams and work on techy solutions to real world problems sounds like a blast, you should sign up for Random Hacks of Kindness.
My friend Mike Brennan is organizing Philly’s Random Hacks of Kindness, a one-day hackathon for social good and crisis response tools. Philly is one of only 15-20 cities participating. He’s lined up great facilities and food at Drexel. All you have to do is come and make stuff! Coders and non-coders are welcome. Here are some problem definitions that people have worked on in the past, to give an idea of basically what they’re going for. Participants can draw from a list of projects or come up with a new … Read the rest
Update 5/13: Print-ready! Updated the links below.
Update, Fri 5/6: The beast, she is slain. Needs tweaks and I’m still fixing references, but it’s a paper. A very long paper. My eyes are sore.
(Previously:Â Part 1) is as done as it’s going to get tonight, and ready for critique. Have at it, folks! Note that technically it’s not a thesis, it’s a capstone. But when I say that, 85% of the time I get a blank stare.
Part one the whole shebang of “Making A Vicious Cycle Virtuous: Rare Earths as an E-Waste Case Study” in pdf. Here’s the accompanying poster.… Read the rest