NYC Resistor

Calling all Processing peeps! It’s time for another meeting. This time it’ll be on Wednesday, October 22nd at 7PM @ NYC Resistor HQ. Everyone bring your projects to share.

I’ll be showing off the state of the Spooky Box, walking through how it works, and encouraging you all to get involved. It may be your last chance to get in on the spooky action before the big Halloween Party.

Hope to see you there!

The Spooky Box is a simple interface for Processing that consists of 3 knobs and 4 buttons. There are two versions, an Arduino based hardware one which doesn’t exist yet, and a software emulator which I just finished. There’s also an accompanying Processing library that works for both which is ridiculously easy to use.

If you’re looking for a simple, generic UI for your Processing apps, consider trying this out. I’ll be releasing more info as the hardware gets put together.

PS. The skull image in the background there is CC licensed, and can be found here.

We’ll be hosting the first Processing Study Group meeting on Wednesday, September 24th at 7:00PM at NYC Resistor HQ. If you’re interested in Processing, from novice to expert, join the mailing list and come check it out! I’m looking for someone to give a 5-minute ‘Why you should use Processing’ talk at the meeting, if you’re interested please let me know. See you there!

Look at that, it’s a perl obfu etched on to the back of my phone. This was done at 1200 dpi, 40% power and 100% speed. The code takes “[new york city resistor]” and transforms it into “just another perl hacker”. The hardest part was the formatting into ascii art using vi. You may be able to see that I had to pad the code a bit at the end.

Here’s my game from the recent art party. One of my co-workers has the all-time high score of 9600. Go download it and use your favorite emulator and break 10000!

Don’t have an emulator? Go download one here. Install that and use it to open the .gba file. Post your scores in the comments!

Here’s the game
Here’s the source

It’s contagious. Matt’s Fail jacket. Picture and make-up by Bre Pettis.

In 1984, one of the frustrations that German computer users had was that the German telecom had a monopoly on telecommunications and charged an arm and a leg for a modem. The members of the CCC daydreamed of importing the ultra fast 1200 bps modems from America. It became a crime to connect anything besides a telephone to the telephone network. If caught, you could go to prison for 5 years for hooking up a modem without an official seal. It was felt that having a computer answer a phone was illegal.

The CCC confronted this by asking, “Would it be ok to have a cat answer the phone?” When they got a confused, but positive answer, they built a contraption made of Lego and a Fischer-Technique model sets that would lift the phone and place it on an acoustic coupler. They called it “The Cat.” The general feeling in the air was of free love, free modems, and free information transfers. Because of it’s monopoly, popular opinion stood against the telecom industry.

Image Via Wikipedia

Without imported modems, members of CCC started engineering a modem you could make yourself and publishing instructions. There were raids when neighbors would turn people in for having a modem. The earmuffs on the home-made acoustic coupler were made out of plumbing materials, thus earning them the name of “dataloos.” Today this term lives on at CCC camp where an impressive wireless network is spread across the camp in networked porta-potties!

In 1984 you could get a BTX machine that combined your telephone with a tv and keyboard to create a basic networked computer. In France these were very popular since for a small fee, you could opt out of getting a telephone directory and get on one of the futuristic BTX machines. Instantly, sex chats were the most popular use of these machines.

The CCC felt that they had to be part of this system and were one of the first to display pages on this telephone/television/computer directory. Quickly, they also experienced the first case of net censorship. They would put zany news stories as public service announcements on their page. One that they put up was a consumer warning against masturbating with a certain brand of vacuum due to spinning blades. The vacuum company heard about it and asked the telecom company to take it off, but after some investigation, it was found that the research was legitimate, based on authentic research and the first case of network censorship was resolved.

One of the features of the BTX machines was that you could transfer micropayments. You could pay for simple games or make donations up to 9.99 Deutsche Mark. There was a donation page for the CCC and members of the CCC deduced that the passwords for other company users could be acquired and they discovered a Hamburg bank’s password. Using the banks password, they had the bank call the donation page for the CCC donating 9.99 at a time. In the morning, following the transfer, the CCC announced the first electronic bank robbery. They gave all the money back to the bank and with this event, the word hacker came into use in Germany. There weren’t any negative connotations to the word since the public knew that CCC was exposing a vulnerability in the system without harmful intent. The press heralded them as “Electronic Robin Hoods.”

As 1984 came to a close, the first Chaos Communications Congress convened. It was the first hacker conference and it had less than 100 in attendance.

This winter, the 25th Congress will commence and it will be awesome! The CCC has just released the call for papers for the next Congress, check it out and submit a talk!

This is part two in a series of blogposts about the history of the Chaos Computer Club that I am putting together from notes from a conversation I had last year with Jens Ohlig at Chaos Computer Camp. Make sure to read the first one!

Since when were hackers the best thing happening in Avant-garde music? SINCE ALWAYS DUMMY!

This event is curated by Speaker Synth artist Lesley Flanigan.

excerpt:
This Wednesday night at the Tank, a group of amazing people come together for a night of performances based on amplification. It will be AWESOME! A really special opportunity to see such a great, eclectic group of performers all in one night. For my part, I will perform both my latest speaker feedback instruments and Bioluminescence with Luke DuBois. So please come out and join us all for drinks, fun, and sound!

~Lesley

now come check out this awesome show at the tank in NYC at 7:00 pm

Map:

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Some of you may have seen my presentation on evolving virtual machines using genetic algorithms at BarCampNYC3. For those who didn’t, Cobosoda is an open-source 2D rigid physics simulator with a set of genetic algorithm tools. The idea is these little creatures evolve into walking machines. Talking with a close friend and Csound expert Jake Joaquin the next step has become clear, add sound and turn Cobosoda into an art project for the resistor space.

This has been around for a while but I’m just getting around to posting about it. The Resistor iPhone App is good for on the go Hardware Hacking. The typography is annoying and unnecessary (comic sans?!) but it’s useful and easy to use.