Gian Pablo, maker of this sweet algorithmic synth forces Wall-E to rock out. Gian Pablo has been known to teach synth making classes at NYCR so keep your eyes on the upcoming classes page if you’re interested.
Wall•E and the Rhythmic Synth from Gian Pablo Villamil on Vimeo.
And they are having a graffiti art show!
Come check it out! My friend Michael Zeltner from Austria is going to be there showing off his insanely cool “drip sessions” project where he documents via video and programming the way that graffiti artists draw. Really totally rad. Be there or be aware that you are missing a vital event. – Link
Why not learn something awesome from the friendly nerds at NYCR? This weekend we have three beginner classes: PHP, Printed Circuit Board Etching and Wind Micropower Workshop.
PHP is a powerful but amazingly simple language for dynamic generation of web pages. You can learn what you need to get a good foothold in just an hour and we can make that happen.
In the circuit board etching class you will design, transfer and etch copper clad circuit boards. Some drawings, a tiny bit of chemistry, and presto! Functional circuit boards!
Due to popular demand, Wind Micropower workshop is back! We’ll be making a tiny little generator that runs on wind and also cover some of the simpler techniques for power conditioning and battery charging. This class is open to ages 8 and up!
Click here for the classes page to learn more and to sign up!
Photo of my pinhole lens for my digital SLR.
Today I stopped in to NYCResistor and I made a lensless lens for my digital camera. I had a lens cap left over from when I had my camera stolen and so I drilled a hole in the cap and then cut a piece of aluminum from a pop can that would cover the hole. I sanded the aluminum down with fine sandpaper so it was really thin. (Don’t breathe the dust!) Then I poked it with a pin and then sanded the hole down. I checked that it was round by holding it right up to my eye and looking towards a light. Then I taped it onto the backside of the cap and made a little cover using tape for the frontside of the cap. The cool thing about pinhole photography is everything is a little blurry, but it’s all blurry in the same way, there is no focusing!
Photo of the pop can taken with the pinhole lens. You can see the size of material I cut from the can to make the lens.
A while back I made a video and pdf about how to make pinhole cameras. Check them out if you want to learn more.
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!
NYCResistor will be hosting an art show the weekend of July 26th and we’re opening submissions for artwork. The theme of the show is Art of the Game, so any electronic type artwork that involves games is, well… game! If you are interested in showing your work, please send submissions to [email protected]. Please include a photo of your work, the dimensions, and your contact information. Please have your submission in by July 18th. Thanks!
*Real laser graffiti by Nick Bilton
1Aeon is my favorite tshirt designer and so when I realized I wasn’t going to have time to make up NYCResistor t-shirts to take to a hacker conference this summer, I hired him to design and produce some t-shirts. Luckily he made time from his awesome work to come up with three designs. (I’ll take a picture of the third one soon. It’s a skeleton with soldering irons coming out of the ribs.) If you need a badass design and custom handmade t-shirts, 1Aeon is your man.
This design reminds me of a city of electrical parts.
This design has so much awesomeness, it’s hard to wrap it up in a sentence. There are elements of danger, community, electronics (the bird is holding a giant LED), and mirrored text.
There are only 85 of them and 7 are already gone and out the door. I’m no good at mail, so if you want one, you’ve gotta come find me at the hackerspace village during the last hope conference. If there are any left over I will attempt to face the demons of the post office and take orders at that time for those around the world.
Club Mate is the best beverage in the universe and we are getting a pallet of it (800 1/2 liter bottles) imported. It is now on this boat. It still has to clear customs, but we are crossing our fingers wishing it was here now!
We had a dandy ol’ time at the Surface Mount Soldering class this weekend! We made adorable microcontroller based blinky red hearts. Yes, we’ll do anything to take the percieved threat out of SMT and bring YOU the power of the teeny tiny! There will be another session soon, so keep an eye on the calendar.
