HacDC

HacDC will hold the first Gentle Hackers' Literary Salon at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 March 2010. We will be discussing Cory Doctorow's 2009 Creative Commons-licensed science fiction novel Makers. You can read the dead-tree version or download it for free. The salon will be a casual, minimally-structured discussion of the book. Light refreshments will be available. Steampunk attire optional. :)

This event is free and open to the public.

Photo by Alex Barlow

Join us for Tea Night at 7:30pm on Tuesday, 19 January 2010 in our space. There will be demonstrations of gongfu tea ceremony and Japanese tea ceremony, and if you'd like you're welcome to bring an interesting or favorite tea of your own to share. This event is free and open to the public, no RSVP needed.

Last week, the phone application start-up Twilio obtained a nice little bundle of press for its announcement that it had obtained $3.7M in funding from Union Square Ventures.

To a couple of us at HacDC who have been playing with their product for a few months, this was not so surprising. They have built a clean and intuitive API for rapidly building phone applications using web services.

On Thursday, January 14, at 7:00PM at HacDC, Todd Fine and Darius Roberts will introduce the Twilio API (HTTP requests to dynamic XML), demonstrate two applications built using Python and Ruby, and finally lead a brainstorming session about other creative and artistic possibilities using the Twilio platform.

The first application is a distributed microphone for group-created ambient soundscapes (tentatively titled "Spacerad"). Twilio's platform can record audio over the phone and offer a callback URL for the saved WAV file. Using XMPP (the instant messaging technology used, for example, in Google Talk), this URL is immediately sent to a Python script running on a local machine which can interact with a number of audio environments Todd likes to use (Pure Data, Supercollider, and, hopefully, Ableton Live). Hence, even a large audience, with the ubiquitous cellphone, can provide the samples for an open-ended and cooperative musical experience.

The second application is based on a classic phone application of the tape answering machine era. The creative band They Might Be Giants once had a Brooklyn local phone number, popular in the eighties and nineties, that would play some of their songs off an answering machine. While this service was "always busy, often broken," with Twilio's API, we can create a service serving TMBG songs that far surpasses the original Dial-a-Song in functionality, hopefully without losing its charm. Darius will present his Ruby-based version of Dial-a-Song.

This event is free and open to the public, and we encourage anyone interested in Twilio, Python/Ruby, Soundscapes, or even They Might Be Giants to attend!

When: 7:00PM-8:30, Thursday, January 14
Where: HacDC Space, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010
Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

We packed the house with smiling hackers at the first monthly HacDC Lightning Talks. The talks were awesome and so were the cookies. Thanks to everyone who participated and made this event such a success! Next month will be even better organized with more space, better arrangement, more advance scheduling, video recording, and publishing of slides and speaker content.


If you're interested in giving a talk at the next Lightning Talks (November) please send me a proposal with a title and description. Slides are optional - and you get to talk about whatever interests YOU. Date and time TBA. See http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=LightningTalks for details.

Join HacDC for a workshop series covering the fundamentals of digital logic design, from boolean gates to state machines, Verilog coding and eventually work with Field Programable Gate Arrays! This workshop will be taught through the Fall, covering a variety of topics and exercises each week. Be sure to check the course wiki page [1] for upcoming topics, past workshops and workshop requirements. This workshop is free and open to the public but may require additional resources as listed on the wiki page.

[1] http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=FPGA_Workshop

You may register for this workshop by sending an email to <teach me FPGA @ gmail> with the following information:

- Digital Logic Background (truth tables, logic gates, Flip Flops etc)

- C/C++ Background

- Time you're willing to commit (outside of the class) every week

We had a fantastic turnout at Tuesday's LED Cuff workshop, the first in what may be a series of soft circuit workshops. We're thrilled that so many people—many of whom were new to HacDC—came.

For those of you interested in conductive thread, Syuzi Pakhchyan (author of the tutorial we followed) wrote up a nice conductive thread overview; in this workshop we used the conductive thread from Lamé Lifesaver profiled there. I bought the conductive velcro from LessEMF, where you can also buy all sorts of conductive fabrics.

There are a few things I would do differently with this workshop in the future, so I started a Lessons Learned wiki page. Please feel free to contribute your thoughts to it. Much thanks to Ash (see photo) for the impromptu help explaining how the circuit works as well as assisting workshop participants.

What soft circuit would you like to build next? Personally I'd love to transform a WMATA SmarTrip card into a wearable cuff—I've already extracted the RFID chip from one—so figuring out how a suitable antenna could be constructed is the next step.

When: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM (ET)
Where: HacDC, 1525 Newton St. NW, Washington, DC 20010

Join HacDC for a workshop in which we'll construct a simple soft circuit -- in this case, a unisex fabric cuff with an LED that lights up when you're wearing it. We're charging a $10 fee to cover the cost of the materials, including the fabric, conductive thread and velcro, LEDs, batteries, and resistor. To participate in this workshop, you do not need to have any prior experience with electronics; this workshop is suitable for all ages (small children should be accompanied by an adult, though). We'll be using a tutorial by SparkLab's Syuzi Pakhchyan, a media designer and tinkerer who weaves electronic circuitry with craft.

Register at http://hacdc-ledcuff.eventbrite.com/ or below:

HacDC is running a build-a-simple-noisemaker-synth workshop at Electronica Fest (http://www.nem-electronicafest.com/).

Come help test-run the kits and/or work on embellishments. The kit is a fun and easy blank-slate for your electro-acoustic creativity. Let's see where we can take it.

Thursday night, Aug 27, starting around 7:30 pm -- going until we're out of brain-juice (or whenever).

This Thursday at 7pm MappingDC will be meeting at HacDC for its first event.

MappingDC is a new group dedicated to creating an accurate, up to date, free map of Washington, DC and the surrounding areas. We'll be using OpenStreetMap as a platform and trying to forge partnerships with community groups in order to achieve our goal.

On July 7 at 7:00PM, HacDC and DorkbotDC will together sponsor an event with a very innovative and interesting local musician, Keith Sinzinger.

Sinzinger goes under the performance name Fast Forty. He calls his genre of music Intense Ambient: "found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate." His music is anchored by homemade tubular bells which he plays and routes through various audio effect processors.

He is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and his music reflects the industrial sounds of the Ford plant and the railroads of his early surroundings.

At HacDC and Dorkbot, he will explain how he conceived of, researched and constructed the tubular bells, and will then offer a demonstration of their sounds. The audience will also be able to play them afterwards.

Below one can listen to a full set of his from a recent Sonic Circuits performance, posted by District of Noise. Also see his MySpace site for more information.

Where: HacDC (1525 Newton St NW, Washington, D.C.)
Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Time: 7:00PM