The quintessential hacker movie, War Games, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a special 1-night only showing on the big screen. (Wired ran a feature article about the movie today, as well.)

There is a Planypus event page where you can sign up (to let me know to look for you/save you a seat in our section), with a link to buy tickets online.

If we get a big enough crowd, we can do a happy hour/dinner before or after the movie. Perhaps a WOPR at Burger King.

HacDC’s effort at the Last Hope was a roaring success! Thanks to all who participated in the Hackerspace Village and HackersMart! We’ll definitely be bringing those to a con near you very soon (as in, after we get some sleep!)

And congrats to Eliot for his CNet mention! Mail us your HOPE links and writeups, info@hacdc.org

To start, today I took the extra card and soaked it in acetone for about an hour and after that time I was able to rip off the initial plastic of the card. After that hour-long of soaking you’ll find the card becomes very flexible and if you attack the corners with tweezers you’ll eventually realize the 3 layers of the card. The face of each side should peel off rather easily, although a minute amount of force is required.

See the Flickr set here: http://tinyurl.com/6ck5q5

If you take a look at the images you’ll see that all of the electronics (controller, antenna) are now exposed and we can start to play. My girlfriend just handed me a Faraday flashlight with a GIANT coil of magnet wire inside of it, so now we’re working on extracting that wire to use as the antenna for the smarTrip’s microcontroller.

More to come…

Can you donate a prosumer video camera to HacDC so we can make our own promo videos and film our events? E-mail info@hacdc.org or Make A Donation!

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So, since we’ve been waiting a while to get around to it, why not make it a full blown week? Jens Ohlig from C4 and Johannes Grenzfurthner from Monochrom and the Metalab will be on hand to help us celebrate.

Here’s the list of events so far.:

• Tuesday, July 22: Weekly Member Meeting and Special Event Afterwards! (8:30 PM in the Sanctuary)
• Wednesday, July 23: monochrom presents LAW AND SECOND ORDER. (8:30 PM in the Sanctuary)
• Thursday, July 24: (Tentative) DC Dorks Into the Future:  A town hall meeting with members of DorkbotDC, MakeDC, and HacDC.
• Friday, July 25: HacDC invades The Brickskeller!  Come by and enjoy great beer with your favorite group of hacker space members! (The Brickskeller, 1523 22nd St NW, 8:30 PM - 2:00 AM)
• Saturday, July 26: Paying homage to Grace Hopper.  Come join us for Lunch in Columbia Heights and an afternoon outing to Arlington National Cemetry to pay tribute to “Amazing Grace”.  (Meet at HacDC at Noon).  Then join us back at HacDC as we prepare for our Sunday opening!
• Sunday, July 27: OUR OFFICIAL GRAND OPENING CEREMONY! Join us for our official grand opening ceremony!  At 8:00, join us as our members receive their Black Lab Coats.  Our “commencement” address will be given by Jens Ohlig, one of the key figures behind the Global Hackerspace Movement.  Lots of projects and other things shall be on display throughout the day.  (HacDC opens at 3:00 PM, Ceremony at 8:00 PM with reception to follow)

We’re still planning these events, and they’ll all get their own blog post soon!  E-mail info@hacdc.org if you can donate or have something to contribute to our grand opening!

What happens when Lightning fries the ethernet port on your Mac?  Better hope you have Phil Shapiro and Firewire on your side…

Last week a friend of mine called me to say her iMac G3 had been struck by lightning. It no longer worked on the Internet and she desperately needed to be back online.

Happily, I had picked up a donated iMac G3 computer a day before from a school that was no longer using it. I took a 6-pin to 6-pin Firewire cable with me when I headed over to her house….

Read Phil’s blog entry at the PC World Blog

Photo is Target Mode Mac, originally uploaded by psd, used under Creative Commons.

Our friends from the Italian Embassy* are putting on a great event in Pescara, Italy on August 21-24.

Metro Olografix Camp 2008.

Many hoped, few believed, the rumors conflicting, the souls aflame, cats and dogs sleeping together, but in the end we made it!

Four years after the celebration of the 10th birthday of Metro Olografix, at fans’ request, the summer camp will come back to let us spend a few hot August days together again, among arrosticini and glasses of wine and swims and talks - oh my! - in neat little Pescara.

“Ardetec li cannilicchie!”

* - We’re not actually talking about the Italian Embassy il vero, which happens to be on 3000 Whitehaven St NW.  We’re talking about the guys who always have really great Grappa at all the events they attend (and put on!)

The second edition of the Metro Olografix Camp will take place August 21st to 24th 2008, at the “ex Caserma Di Cocco” Park. MOCA is a hacker camp in north-European style, free admittance, open to all, to meet and have fun sharing information and knowledge.

Just like four years ago, it will be a chance to meet old and new friends, all those who populated the computer underground so far since that infamous 1994, ready to live it in the coming years, together with those who have only just begun peeking into a telematic world made increasingly more worrisome by technologic and legal implications.

See you in Pescara, you, your tent, your computer: to hack, experiment, play, chat, do whatever will ultimately send us thinking “once again, it was really worth it!” all the way back home.

The Call For Papers deadline is August 1st 2008: propose your thematic area, your activity, your talk. We’ll be happy to help you do something for the event and, especially, for all who’ll spend together four - we hope - unforgettable days of their lives.

Everyone’s invited, see you in Pescara, to share experiences and knowledge in the spirit of pure hacker ethics.

Information wants to be free!

For info: http://camp.olografix.org/home.php?lng=en
Submit your proposals to: moca-cfp@olografix.org
Mailing list for attendees: camp-user@olografix.org

+++ monochrom
+++ LAW AND SECOND ORDER
+++ An evening in Washington DC
=== Wednesday, July 23 at 8:30 PM
=== 1525 Newton St NW (Enter on Newton, Church Sanctuary)

This is the first publicly announced event for HacDC’s “Grand Opening Week” July 21-27

monochrom from Vienna is a worldwide operating collective dealing with technology, art, context hacking and philosophy and was founded in 1993. So to sum up, monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. Their mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment.

monochrom released a leftist retro-gaming project, established a 1 baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, started an illegal space race through Los Angeles, buried people alive in Vancouver, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with The Thomann Project. In Austria they ate blood sausages made from their own blood in order to criticize the grotesque neoliberal formation of the world economy.

Sometimes they compose melancholic pop songs about dying media and host the first annual and inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics. At the moment they’re planning a conference about pornography as one of the the driving forces of technological innovation. Also they do international soul trade, propaganda camps, epic puppet theatre, aesthetic pregnancy counselling, food catering and — sorry to mention — modern dance.

monochrom’s medley is a little tour-de-farce about their projects and political motivation. A joyful bucket full of good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair, condensed into the well known cultural technique of a gala show.

Powernapping highly welcome.

Weather permitting, Curt Westergard of AirPhotosLive will be at the HacDC space around 3:00 pm today (Saturday, July 5th) to demonstrate his aerostat photography rig. Come learn how it works, visit the space, and hang out! We’ll have a fridge full of cold drinks.

Whether you’re curious about wifi antenna building, or just not clear on the difference between AM and FM, bring your questions and don’t be shy! Gain a more complete understanding of how your cellphone and GPS work. Learn about signal and noise, gain and loss, and the factors that make or break a radio system.

If you’ve ever considered becoming an amateur radio operator (ham), this talk should teach you everything you need to know to pass the Technician (entry-level) license exam. Take a few practice tests right now, and write down the stuff you’d like clarification on.

If you’re planning to participate in the Columbia Heights wireless project, but have never deployed an RF link before, please try to attend.

The membership meeting will end promptly at 8:30pm, so the radio hubbub can commence. Location: 1525 Newton Ave NW, in the St. Stephen’s sanctuary.