Freeside Atlanta

We made a group order of surprise boxes from Electronic Goldmine to have some fun and jump-start our stock of interesting components. The boxes arrived yesterday, and after the meeting today we opened and sorted them, finding some interesting stuff along the way. The choice bits consisted of: 4x 10x2 character 14-segment VFDs 7x 96x64 1" monochrome LCDs 4x motors with high resolution encoders 2x passive infrared motion detectors 2x window/door security sensors 2x small R/C cars 5x GSM cell phones 4x security keypads The small component haul was mostly capacitors, with some resistors, potentiometers (dual log!), and fuses in reasonable quantity as well. I think the outcome, in parts and fun, was well worth the ~$70 we spent in total. We already have a small contribution towards the next order, which I tentatively put 3 weeks away.

Our space continues to fill with donations, and open floor space for actual projects is getting scarce. Enter another set of shelves. Before: After: Look at all that wonderful floor space! Now we just need another set to hold all the stuff against the wall.

It is becoming increasingly evident that one component of a successful hacker space is good storage. The problem is that most shelf systems out there are pretty expensive. After a recent meeting we started brain storming different shelf designs and finally settled on one. Convinced that we could save money by building our own shelves we set out to the local hardware store with a materials list. After rounding up all the needed materials and renting a truck we headed back to Freeside. We quickly refined a procedure and started building our shelves. We were only able to complete the first four sections of shelves by the end of the day, but we were very proud of our work and we still have enough material to make 8 more shelf units. Many thanks to everyone who helped build shelves and I hope you are able to make it to the next work day! Here is an album of the build and some pictures of the completed shelves: http://picasaweb.google.com/freesideatlanta/ShelfBuilding

A notable quote from a Freeside member: If you haven't had the chance to just go to the space and hang out a bit, do it! the place will get your creative juices flowing, I can't explain it but it just a great feeling.. Thanks to all that have put so much hard work into the space.. I think this sentiment sums up the hacker space phenomenon rather well. It is well worth the effort.

Last night we held our first Python night , where I gave an introductory course into Python . We had a strong showing of both members and non-members who were eager to learn, and we were able to hammer through the basics in about an hour. Next week we'll be doing a quick re-cap of the basics, and continue diving into the depths of the language. Current agenda includes object-oriented programming and handling exceptions. I'm also going to cook up some exercises for attendees to work on so we can flex our editors and interpreters. If you missed this week's class and are new to the language, the course is essentially a modified version of the (free! online!) book Dive into Python . We covered the first four chapters last night. Feel free to read up, and if you get stuck--bring your questions next week!

[Reposted from Dan's email] Just sending out a little update about the Circuit Bending Workshop/Class. We had 9 people attend, 4 non-members, 5 members. We killed 2 toys but managed to salvage parts and useful bits from them. I'm going to make the workshop every other week. So 2 weeks from today (August 26th) we will meet from 7(ish) to 9(ish) to hack and bend circuits. I'm going to order up more kits and parts for the next class as well as hunt for more toys. Please drop me an email if you would like to Sign up for the class and reserve/prepay for a kit. If you happen to have spare toys sitting around your house that you would like to donate please let me know, I'll be happy to come pick them up. I also want to thank everyone for coming out. I hope you all had a blast.

I stopped by the space to drop off some equipment yesterday, and took a minute to do another walk-through video.