Chicago’s coolest hackerspace, Pumping Station:One is having a 4-year birthday party / open house thingie on Saturday.
In case you’re not familiar, hackerspaces are, well–pretty self explanatory. You sign up for a membership, like a gym, and then you get to play with all the neat toys–oscilloscopes, 3D printers, drill presses, sewing machines, and a scanning electron microscope (duh!). It’s $40-$70 per month for a membership, for all that access to awesome future-creation. Also, they really do have a Tardis on the roof, just like that photo up there shows–not shopped.
7PM – Demos and reception
10PM – Live music
@ Pumping Station: One, 3519 N. Elston, Chicago IL (near Addison and Kedzie)
They also have a THUNDER SLINKY (I don’t know what that is, but it sounds awesome):
Souped-up Power Wheels Racers
DIY Quadcopter
Check out our new scanning electron microscope
Brain-based Jacob’s Ladder
WindowFarm
THUNDER SLINKY!
Other cool things!
Also, interactivity is completely smiled upon and encouraged:
Make art with lasers!
Silkscreen your own art poster!
Learn to solder and walk away with your very own blinkie badge!
Print your first object using one of our 3D printers
Liquid and light snacks will be on hand, as will music and an LED birthday cake.
There’s a $10 donation for non-members, which will go towards building a new kitchen.RSVP here.
Fractalspin just added some hilarious gifts in time for Valentine’s Day–plush venereal diseases by Giant Microbes. Choose from chlamydia, herpes, and syphilis.
If you don’t feel like sharing a disease, there’s also sperm and egg plushies for a more traditional gift.
Here’s a hilarious book explaining how computers work, referencing meat needed as fuel, puppies, and a washing machine as integral parts.
In a classic internet video, Bjork explains how television works, comparing the electrical components to buildings in a city, and the wires are “elevators.” It bothers me that people find her “adorable” when she is acting like a child simplistically justifying the “magic” of electronics. What’s also sad is she is an electronic musician who should have technical knowledge of her tools (however, she relies heavily on producers, which could explain why she thinks electronics is a magical process). She is a grown woman and it is sad that this is considered cute.
Here’s a nice article over at Memeshift with a lot of resources from all over the intertrons for getting started making electronic music. Even though it’s a bit old (2008), it focuses on basic principles and components, like oscillators, filters, synthesizer programming, and sampling. A nice resource for people just getting started.
A coalition of African-American activists and scholars released a strongly worded statement Monday citing the “urgent need” for popular media to depict a new black nerd archetype that more accurately reflects the full spectrum of 21st-century American dorkdom.
“Outdated representations of African-American nerds are simply not cutting it anymore,” the statement read in part. “Perhaps in the ’80s and ’90s it was possible for young people to identify with Steve Urkel’s hiked-up pants, nasal voice, and lovable catchphrase of ‘Did I do that?’ But today’s black nerds are different.”
“They may not carry slide rules and calculators, but they do carry smartphones to make posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare,” the statement continued. “Yet where are the modern-day nerds of color in our films and television programs?”
Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry died at the age of 85 this week. Fractals are a visual representation of an equation that is self-similar and based on recursion, and just so happen to mimic an incredible array of natural processes and formations, from mountain ranges to coral reefs, and interestingly, as the above video explains, explains not only the way branches of a tree are differentiated but how trees in a forest differentiate themselves. Pretty hot.
Mandelbrot Set featuring the song “Mandelbrot Set” by Jonathan Coulton
Here is a zoomed Mandelbrot fractal set to a song aptly entitled “Mandelbrot Set.”
Mr. Mandelbrot also did a lovely TED talk, which you can watch above.
For the geek boutique I run, Fractalspin (namesake obvious), I designed a paper toy called “Mandelbot” named after the man himself. You can download the PDF, print it out and assemble it for free.
RIP Benoit, and thank you for adding to our collective understanding.
Gifts $25 and underThese cool necklaces made from the hub of a floppy disk will surprise the geek on your gift list. There is the version shown as well as another with a ball chain instead.
Were you one of those kids who had a next door neighbor who had that sweet corvette PowerWheel and were too woefully poor to have one yourself? We were those kids, and we decided to do something about it….20 years later.
We decided to modify and race PowerWheels, We do it for the glory, for the daring dreamy dream of that tasty elixir known as childhood that we’ll never have again cause we have day jobs and don’t weigh 70 pounds anymore. (Fatty)
We also want to play Mario Kart in real life without all those pesky pixels.
The PowerWheel Racing Series (PPPWRS) presents to the world an event for the ages.
On August 15th 6 teams will gather to win the prized PowerWheel Cup an award so prestigious I just decided to make it up five minutes ago to sound impressive.
Four Events will take place:
1. Off Road Race
2. Mario Kart Round
3. PowerWheel Polo
4. The Endurance Demolition Derby
FREE ADMISSION
11:30am Gates Open
DJs: Liz Revision,
Bands:
Sacremento Park (next to it)
3506 N Sacrement
Chicago, IL
This Event brought to you by: Pumping Station: One (Chicago’s Only Hackerspace), Best Express Messenger Service, and Chief O’Neils Pub
This is a pretty amazing video. Granular Synthesis I can wrap my head around (imagine a more complex version of additive synthesis, but on a micro-scale), but what really amazes me is Curtis Roads was doing it in 1975 on a mainframe with punchcards. You heard me. How much more nerdcred does this guy need? Ok, lemme back up for a minute. I am, actually, old enough to know what punchcards are (but, keep in mind I was like 5 years old and hanging out at my mom’s company to learn about them). Back in the day (and my intro to computer science teacher in college was amazing because he explained this to us and made us basically write out our algorythms before we came to class to program them), a programmer would have to write out a program in its entirety and then wait for days sometimes, to get the program to execute. This is totally the opposite of people can work today, where they can see the results of a coding change realtime, or, on the web, with a simple page refresh. Pretty leet, I gotta say.
Check out this video–even an Autechre song makes a cameo (but, I would add to the video’s description that what made Autechre and similar IDM artists’ work so mindblowing wasn’t simply due to complex rhythms, it was that plus the unheard-of-before combination of electronically-generated revolutionary sounds while still maintaining a “more accessible” composition in terms of melody and so forth. At some point Roads says he considers his music “point, line, cloud” because a grain, or sound particle is a point, a series of points on either or both the x or y axis, and a cloud,–IMHO–is actually “a left-to-right series of chords”) BECAUSE CURTIS ROADS OPENED FOR THEM in the early 00s. Uh-huh.
He also recommends a book for sound-design inspiration. It’s called Education of a Gardener. Really. Just go watch this thing, ok? {READ MORE}
