When: Saturday, January 3, 2009 @ 1:00 PM
Where: HacDC (St. Stephen & The Incarnation Church) Auditorium
Cost: FREE

The recently-organized DC Clojure Study Group will be holding its second meeting at HacDC. With fifteen members attending the last meeting, the group is an energetic community of software developers, math and science professionals, and general programming enthusiasts with varying levels of experience. Everyone is warmly invited to join. Homework and general agenda for the meeting is posted on the group’s wiki.

You are also encouraged to join the group’s mailing list to take part in conversations and follow the group’s blog for news and updates.

Read more…

The interior of the Enormous Room (CC) davidesign

As promised, yet another entry on cool places for hackers to hang out in Cambridge.  This time, the incomparable “Enormous Room” in Central Square, on Massachusetts Avenue about halfway between Harvard and MIT.  Given the location, it is not surprising that a wide range of folks can be found at this cool and friendly place.  You have to be clever to find it- it is on the second floor, and reached through a door marked only by an etched glass elephant.  The low tables, and upholstered, “bleacher-style” seats make it a very comfortable place to chat with your friends, and later on, becomes home to live and DJ music.  Once again, a place where you can overhear anything from MIT Media Lab conversations to discussions about quantitative finance…

Next stop, San Francisco!

When: Friday, 19 December 2008 @ 8:30 PM
Where: HacDC (St. Stephen & The Incarnation Church) Sanctuary 
Cost: FREE

If being a hacker is a mixture of engineering and art, James Cawley and the team at New Voyages are an inspiring model of hackerdom. They’ve taken their love of the classic 60s sci-fi television show and turned it into an Internet phenonomenon.

The show has done so well that original cast members such as Walter Koenig (Checkov) and George Takei (Sulu) as well as Majel Barrett (Nurse Chappel) as well as writers from the show and even Larry Niven of Ringworld fame have contributed to the project.

Come see World Enough in Time, staring George Takei playing Sulu once more at HaDC!

Afterwards, if there’s interest, we’ll be showing another episode from the series and we’ll possibly have a phone appearance from a special guest!

When: Tuesday, 16 December 2008 @ 8:30 PM
Where: HacDC (St. Stephen & The Incarnation Church) Auditorium (Enter through entrance facing 16th Street)
Cost: FREE

Tuesday’s seminar will feature Jon Singer, the Resident Researcher of the Joss Research Institute. Jon often works with (and sometimes builds) lasers. He will discuss laser basics:  what lasers are, what they aren’t and how they work.  He’ll also briefly talk about various types of lasers, and will cover some aspects of DIY nitrogen lasers and organic dye laser design and construction. The talk will be very shiny, with at least two demos. Hope he can help me (timball) debug my dead violet diode.

In laser related news, check out the awesome Blu-Ray laser that  CCCKC member hevnsnt put together out of old parts!  So cool, it got featured on i-hacked.

Picture by fatllama

NOW HEAR THIS: ALL HACDC EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Some of you at our first TSS event (which was full of WIN) were confused about the concept of membership.  HacDC does not exist to serve its members, its membership exists to serve YOU.

HacDC members have certain rights and responsibilities. Their biggest “right” is unfettered access to the space.  However, that right comes with the very large responsibilities of:

• Planning, organizing and hosting FREE events for EVERYONE.
• Building and maintaing a space where ALL DC’S dorks/geeks/hackers/makers/crafters/etc. have a place to go to collaborate, innovate, learn and teach.
• Financially supporting the physical infrastructure to make this all possible.  

If you hear about an event on our blog, or on our blabber list, it’s free and open to you.

You may even want to follow @hacdcdoorman to see when we’re around, we love having visitors!

Of course, if you can handle these awesome responsibilities, we encourage you to become a member and become a steward of our rapidly growing community!

Hope to see you at tonight’s awesome movie night at 8:30 PM.

A "Darwin" RepRap built from laser-cut acrylic

Join the HacDC and and the Baltimore/Maryland RepRap User’s Group (RUG) for a weekend of RepRap fun!  Save the weekend of January 24/25 for our RepRap Build-a-Thon.  Initial plans include a range of activities, including hands-on group construction a RepRap Darwin from the ground up starting with laser-cut acrylic parts.  We are also planning on having several local RepRap builders on hand with their machines, and hopefully able to demonstrate them in operation, making stuff!

We would also like to invite some of the local technology media/blogosphere folks, and take the opportunity to not only demonstrate what these machines can do, but also to talk in general about the implications of readily-available (and self-replicating) rapid prototyping machines. Certainly a great opportunity to chat with some RepRap pioneers, have a chance to participate in a hands-on build, and to generally have a good time with some local hackers.

More information coming as the plans develop- watch this space!  If you are interested in helping out, please let us know via the mailing list.  If you have contacts in the local technology media, or know someone in the trade who would be interested in this kind of event, please let us know!  See the movie post below for a time-compressed version of RepRap construction by one of the original designers- the time represented by the video is about four hours.  Given enough participants, we should be able to do something similar in our two days!

Timelapse of Adrian assembling the first RepRap “Darwin” from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

Interesting article over at the New Scientist about the possibility of using supersonic jet fighters to neutralize hurricanes.  The concept depends on our understanding of hurricanes as delicately-balanced dynamic systems that depend on that balance for self-reinforcement and building strength.  Apparently, the math supports the concept of interfering with this delicate balance using the sonic booms created by a pair of jet fighters weaving in and out of the storm.  There are challenges, of course, such as the demands of long cruising at supersonic speeds, but overall the article posits a very interesting (and probably verifiable) theory that would be very interesting to test.

Fighter Jets Battle Hurricane

Therein lies the rub, however.  The article is all about a patent. Yes, kids, a patent.  I take this to mean that if someone wanted to try and stop a hurricane from ravaging the coastline of some hapless country, they would run the risk of getting sued by the patent holder unless the licensing fees were paid.  This seems kind of crazy, especially since lives are potentially involved- are they really going to stop someone from saving lives with this approach?  Sheesh.

HacDC needs a video camera.  The Metalab,  our fellow hackerspace in Vienna,  keeps us amazed with projects like this:

We cannot let this go unanswered!  Donate to HacDC and help us score our own video camera!   Just think about all the video blogging possibilities!

Even if you can’t support this particular effort, you can help us choose the right camera.   So far, we’ve been very drawn to the Canon Vixia HF10, but you should comment with your own experiences and suggestions!  Even if it’s just posting links to other “what camera should I buy?” posts, that’s helpful! We’ll keep you updated on what we find.

P.S. Don’t be like Timball and suggest a really awesome $17,500 camera unless you’re prepared to donate one.  

Photo by mike_1630 via Flickr

Writing interactive fiction is a fun way to create a simulated environment that includes creating a game world with items, characters, and puzzles. The best part is that you don’t need to learn complex graphics application programming interfaces (API).

Using Inform 7, it is easy to write your own interactive fiction without knowing how to program.  That’s right, you can create your own game world by writing natural language descriptions, that the Inform 7 compiler can use to build your game world.

Inform 7 is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The Inform 7 IDE is an all-in-one editor, compiler, and game interpreter.  Inform 7 runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows.

We’ve created a simple exploration simulation, that you can play:

Using your favorite Secure Shell client, open a SSH session to:

• Host: elitefrontier.org
• User Name: hacdc
• Password:  same as the user name

Interested in learning more?

HacDC will be hosting an introductory class at the end of January.  The class will show you how to create a simple game world with items, characters, and puzzles. To sign up, send an e-mail to: rdegraci _at_ gmail.com with the subject line “Interactive Fiction: Sign me up”. The deadline to sign up is January 21, 2009.