NYC Resistor

Nick Bilton surveys the horizon from his high perch in Brooklyn

A few of the Resistors were on the rooftop discussing life, the universe, and everything.  Nick went a little higher to find the answers.  I know who’s going to install the repeater antenna when NYCR’s radio station goes live.

I’m learning QCAD and there is a bit of a learning curve. Got any tips or tricks? Leave ‘em in the comments!

More tutorials - Link

Make:NYC was once again hosted at NYC Resistor. This event is a free event open to all… with one requirement. People who show up are expected to get their hands dirty and make things. At the last meeting we had a windmill energy challenge. 4 teams created windmills in an attempt to generate the most energy. We had some exceptional results. You can find out more about Make:NYC at www.makenyc.org.

Craft night is now Hacks and Crafts night and it’s back! Working on an autonomous glowing frisbee that tells time in six languages? Making a new dress that will solve all of Humanity’s problems? Knitting something the likes of which has never been knitted before? Robofrog? Bring a crafting or hacking project over to NYCR and hang with other hackers and crafters. Craft night is back and it’s better than ever! This week we will also have a book binding project to work on.

Thursday August 28th from 6-9 PM, right here at NYCR, 397 Bridge street , Brooklyn

Suggested donation of $5 (if you can’t afford it, come on over anyway. Free cookies!)

Confirmed: Moleskine notebooks contain PVC or other chlorinated plastics. Do not laser cut them for your safety and the safety of your laser cutter.

Adam brought his laptop in to etch today. As we all know, laser cutting PVC is bad and releases chlorine gas (which is corrosive and bad for you and your machine.) Adam’s laptop was made of an unknown polymer, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t damage our new lazzzor. Luckily, there is an easy way to determine if a plastic is okay to etch. Watch the video below, and check out this guide to polymer identification for full details. There is actually a suite of tests you use to determine the type of plastic, but the burning one is the most fun, as well as the one that detects chlorine. Enjoy!

Polymer Identification by Burnination from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

Girls Night @ NYCR!

Another brilliant success! Don’t worry ladies, we’ll have another in a few months! Here’s a link to my pictures if you want to see what all the hoopla is about.

I’d write more about it but we were all sworn to secrecy. Sorry boys.

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.

Britney Badger has posted a series of extraordinary images of disassembled household appliances on Flickr.

kitchen knife, (c) Britney Badger

this was my senior thesis project at the hartford art school this past year…i took apart used cooking/cleaning appliances, and arranged their interior parts very systematically on a white sheet of bristol board. my intention was to explore the hidden “brains” of these appliances; allowing us to view these everyday objects from a new perspective.

The entire set is full of eerie and lovely images! Have a look.

I love geometric art. I’d like to make my own designs, but to get started I put together a pattern from Bathsheba. I’m really pleased with this!