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!

Meet News Knitter. It’s described as: “… a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data.” The sweaters are all designed pulling in feeds from Google News and a few other local news sources and parsing them through Processing. Some really interesting images and approaches to data visualization end up in blue, black and red on these garments. The project was created by Mahir M. Yavuz, MFA and Ebru Kurbak, MSc, both PHd students at Kunstuniversität Linz (I have no idea what that word means or even how to say it, but I am assuming it’s a University).

I couldn’t find any details about whether it’s open source or if some of the Processing code is available? It would be nice to make a news t-shirt.

Hey folks, here’s the long of the short of it, Bre Pettis has a pilot of his very own TV show coming out!!  Whether his show will air for a whole season depends on the Neilsen ratings, which is the TV equivalent of a little black box watching what you’re watching!  His Neilsen ratings depend on you to watch the pilot.  Here’s the info:

History Channel

9/26

9pm

http://brepettis.com/blog/2008/09/04/history-hacker-history-channel/

If you’re not home, Tivo it. But ok, maybe you’re reading this saying, what’s in it for me?   Consider the gasps you’ve heard from people who are uneducated about hacking when you utter the word. The concept of hacking in this country is highly unfavorable due to the fact that most people don’t have a clue what hacking means and haven’t read about the ethics and manifestos behind it. Airing a show like this on national television brings an educational background and understanding for hacking and hackers to the masses. And besides, knowing Bre, you’ll probably see how to make some really cool stuff!

This decade is ours – 2000s belong to the geeks! Let’s take it all the way to the top!

A few weeks ago I taught a cupcake hacking class.  This class was primarily based on how to electrify your cake without poisoning your friends.  The first rule of thumb is to use lead-free solder.  We all know soldering with it is a bitch, but piece of mind that you won’t fill your friends with toxins is well worth it.  Lead free solder is mostly tin (approximately 95ish%).  Other elements in lead-free solder are not exactly healthy to consume, but we take other measures to ensure it doesn’t touch the cake anyhow.  The elements found in lead-free solder are as follows: tin, copper, bismuth, zinc, antimony, and indium. The Los Alamos Chemistry Laboratory gives a good overview of elements and their everyday uses. After you have your LEDs, motors, peizos, and other electronic parts soldered together, you’ll want to coat any exposed wires and solder with wax, regular parafin wax, because having wax touch your cake is safer than metal! I like to take extra measures with my cakes and also line the electronics with saran wrap and parchment paper.  The battery should always be outside the cake.  If you notice the battery leaking acid, for god sakes don’t eat the cake!! Niki, a student in my class made the LED pi cupcake shown above; a cupcake with an identity crisis.

Some resources to learn more about lead free solder and chemical properties of solder are:

hackaday

metallurgy

los alamos

More geek-filled electronic cakes can be found on my flickr!