HacDC

Tonight (May 13) at HacDC's Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence Group (NARG), Todd Fine gave a talk about a 1991 paper by Karl Sims called "Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics." It elaborated how genetic algorithms using the human aesthetic as a fitness function could generate beautiful, pleasant 2D textures and animations. Sims' program created LISP S-expression trees which contained simple mathematical operations and graphical functions along with randomized scalar and vector constants. After the intervening selection of the most pleasing images, the expression trees would evolve in simple ways and create new generations.

Todd implemented a basic version of this approach using Pyevolve and the Python Imaging Library. He showcased some of his results (slides are available here), and the group discussed future elaboration that could involve cloud computing, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and web applications. NARG meets on every Thursday, and we encourage interested parties to join us.

On March 3 at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, Chief Information Officer of the Army, announced the launching of Apps for the Army, a broad web and mobile application challenge (explicitly not "contest") for active duty Army, National Guard members, and civilians working for the Army.

This follows other popular development challenges: the D.C. government's Apps for Democracy project and Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest. These exercises have established that even moderate financial rewards will encourage both professional and casual developers to experiment creatively and share their code. The total prize money is $30,000 and will be split between entries in categories under the labels of Data-Driven; Warfighting; Mission-Specific; Local-Aware Mobile; Training & Education; Morale, Welfare, and Education; and Personnel & Career Management. One hundred teams and individuals can enter the challenge, and the competition will run until May 15.

The motivation began from an awareness of the power of the maker/hacker mentality; in fact, Lt. Gen. Sorenson began by stating strongly that the project attempts to change "how the Army functions." Sorenson cited the example of two overseas deployed soldiers who had pressed for access to a Linux server to write web applications to share and collaborate on mission data. Unfortunately, however, due to a variety of barriers, it took six months for them to gain access to a server. Yet, once access was granted (near the end of their tour of duty), the soldiers were able to get an app online in two weeks, and before long the platform was expanded to serve around 14 or 15 different applications.

The Army has discovered that a young generation of "digital native" soldiers, as Sorenson put it, often have some software development experience, and that new tools, inexpensive open source software in particular, are enabling even "non-professional" programmers to write useful applications, often in rapid time. Hence, the Defense Information Systems Agency has adapted the military's cloud computing environment, the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), to serve the challenge as a development platform and as a demonstration environment. Of particular interest, Linux server environments and development toolkits for Android, IPhone, and Blackberry will be provided.

The source code for the applications will be hosted at forge.mil, the military's code repository. Lt. Gen. Sorenson stated the Army is interested in exploring how they can collaborate with open source communities and local technology organizations in this and future endeavors. Also, DARPA has expressed interest in the Army's project, according to Lt. Gen. Sorenson, and in general collaboration with hackerspaces.

HacDC, a D.C. technology collaborative, would welcome all Army soldiers and personnel in the National Capital Region to stop by to talk about mobile application and web development. The challenge explicitly encourages the creative use of new languages and mobile environments that many HacDC members have significant experience with.

What's new:

Inside HacDC has been updated such that if @insidehacdc is following you and you direct message @insidehacdc then your message will appear on the web portal.

In case you don't already know, "Inside HacDC" is a location-based (of sorts) web application portal to Twitter that answers the question: "What are you doing at the HacDC space right now?"

The web portal, located at http://inside.hacdc.org , is accessible from anyone that is connected to the HacDC space LAN. Therefore anyone with a laptop, connected to the HacDC LAN, can post to this Twitter account without using their Twitter client. What you post, will appear on http://twitter.com/insidehacdc

We created the web portal you can follow http://twitter.com/insidehacdc and get status tweets from people at HacDC space. Also if you're at the HacDC space you can tell people know how long you will be at the space and/or what exactly you plan to be working on. The idea is to attract people to drop by the space and increase our space usage.

Next time you are at the HacDC space and you're connected to our HacDC LAN, please access http://inside.hacdc.org and post what you are working on or what ever is on your mind.

Be sure to tell your friends to follow @insidehacdc so they can follow what is going on at the HacDC space.

If you are interested in extending the functionality or capabilities of this Twitter gateway, please join the Software Projects forums on our Projects Server located at http://projects.hacdc.org and feel free to post to this software project forum "Project InsideHacDC"

The Wall Street Journal had a fantastic article on November 13 ("Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis") about physical computing, hackerspaces and the national return to "tinkering." It stresses the maker movement's creativity and its potential for national renewal.

This mainstream investigation of a difficult-to-summarize trend is very exciting for us at HacDC. Please also see Mike Musgrove's April article in the Washington Post entitled "Where Tinkerers Take Control of Technology."

We welcome you to attend our gatherings and events in order to see what all the buzz is about!

If you recently learned about HacDC from this article in The Washington Post, we are very pleased to welcome you to our website, and we encourage you to visit our space if you live in the DC-metro area.

We also welcome you to join our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, or join our Software-Multimedia Project forums.

All of our activities and events are open to the public. One of the best time to join us to see what HacDC is all about is Monday evening at our Microcontroller Mondays. See our Events Calendar.

Here at HacDC, we have our own Twitter bot that announces (or tweets) the occupancy status of the space.  If you participate with Twitter, you can easily follow HacDCDoorman and receive tweets about the status of the HacDC space.  If someone is at the space, you'll get a tweet that HacDC is open. 

Worried about getting too many tweets at once? Well don't be worried, be happy. HacDCDoorman has enough smarts to only tweet once, when occupancy is first determined.

So what are you waiting for? Follow HacDCDoorman now!

When: Thursday,  March 5, 2009  @ 8:00 pm
Where: HacDC Auditorium (1525 Newton St NW, 20010)
Why: Because he's Dan M.F. Kaminsky. That's why.
Cost: FREE - OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - EVERYONE IS INVITED!

The man responsible for breaking DNS like it's never been broken before (then quietly gathering the world's network operators to fix it because he's a superhero) will be talking about his experiences with DNS and (if we're nice to him) previewing some of his latest research at HacDC tonight at 8:00 PM.

When: Tuesday,  January 13, 2009  @ 8:30 pm
Where: HacDC Auditorium (1525 Newton St NW, 20010)
Cost: FREE [youtube l5R3XNxIjeY]

Dave Monachello will demo and describe the design and implementation of his 2008 Burningman art festival project - 'I have a dream' - an animated electroluminescent wire portrait with synchronized sound of Dr. Martin Luther King jr. 

Project topics to be covered:

Project inspiration and design

 

What's el-wire and how do you use it?

Parallax propeller processor overview

Programming the propeller

Creating customized PCBs

Interfacing devices with an I2C bus

Using SD cards

Synchronized sound track creation

Future enhancements

There should be time for an extended Q & A.  Check out the project blog at http://sidnancy.posterous.com

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.

When: Tuesday, 09 December 2008 @ 8:30 PM Where: HacDC (St.