Pictures from the shenanigans that occur weekly at the Hack Factory of Minnesota, including but not limited to, robot, welding, (unfortunately not pictures of a robot welding) pumpkin carving, paracord watches, crystal oscillator testers, people talking in a hallway, archery, and a smiley face drawn in Hack Factory dust.
Every Wednesday Twin Cities Maker opens it’s doors to the public, stop by and meet the makers of Minnesota. Congrats to the new members that signed up as well! We are still in need of about ~15 to 20 members to make this work into the future, so if you are interested is seeing Twin Cities Maker exist in the future it’s worth becoming a member.
I love playing with words and I think I’ve come up with a new, original wordplay idea: HACKRONYMS. I’ve Googled this and not found an instance, so maybe my claim of originality is legit.
Here’s the idea.
Definition of HACKRONYM: a hacked acronym (e.g., butchered, baked, maked) from a commonly known acronym, for its appeal to the hacker and maker communities.
Especially good HACKRONYMS would bear a definition (or definitions) related to the acronym from which it originated, strike immediate accord with the hacker/maker experience, lingo, and ethic, and embrace irony or humor. They would also not be generated from special acronyms already well established in the communities, lest they cause confusion in use.
Examples:
FBI – Fixed, But Inscrutable
NASA – Needs A Space Assessment
IRS – Is Really Sucky
PBJ – Pretty Badly Jammed
UFO – Unidentified “Fixed” Object
BTW – Better This Way
AM – Ante Make
PM – Post Make
TBA – To Be Attacked
TGIF – Thank God It’s Finished
Pictures and video from 10/19/2011′s Open Hack night at the one an only Hack Factory in Minneapolis. Lots of interesting and weird stuff going on. Enjoy.
Come out to the hack factory to enjoy an evening of tabletop gaming. Please bring a game, a snack to share and a couple dollars if you would like pizza. Event itself is free and open to all ages. Bring friends and family and enjoy some great social time.
Mike Hord previous president of Twin Cities Maker and former member (he moved to Colorado) is one of the featured engineers on EEWeb.
Michael Hord
Michael Hord – Electrical Engineer, SparkFun Electronics
How did you get into electronics/engineering and when did you start?
I came to electronics fairly late in the game. It was my senior year of high school before it occurred to me that I could make a career out of it. My high school physics teacher told us some stories about the fun stuff the electrical engineering students he knew in college had made, and that sealed the deal. That is not to say I didn’t have interest in it in the past—as a child I took apart a ridiculous number of electronic gadgets, some of which my parents would rather I hadn’t.
After high school I went on to study engineering at North Dakota State University. For me it was a great decision because of its engineering program, which is very well-respected especially in the Upper Midwest region.
What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?
My senses. I start out every troubleshooting session with four of my senses: does anything look wrong (size, shape, color), does anything feel wrong (hotter or colder than expected), does anything sound wrong (clicking, buzzing, whining), and what about smell (burning, unnatural odors)?
The best part is that setup and calibration time for these tools is zero. I always know where they are, and they’re pretty easy to use.
Mike was one of the members who worked on the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge that we entered and recently received our soldering irons from, thanks elemment 14!
Here is a video explaining the entry into the Hackerspace challenge
In another note if you look in the bottom left hand section of the photo above from the eeweb site you will a stack of plastic corrugated boxes, Mike is the one who was so kind as to donate hundreds of them to TC Maker when we first got our space, thanks Mike!
Twin Cities Maker shall be appearing at the illustrious King’s Fair in Minneapolis this coming Saturday!
At the behest of the King, His Court, and a Jester’s mirthful bidding, we beseech thee to join us for fun, food, and game, at the Park of Matthews.
The merriment commences at 12 noon and shall persist until 5 PM. For the goodness and sake of our beloved Sewardship, we plead thee also to partake of the historical makings of our fair affair.
Hey got any stuff that you’d like to put in a garage sale, but dont want to bother with actually having a garage sale?
Well, your in luck! we will take care of that for you.
First Annual TC MAKERS Garage Sale at the Hack Factory
We need to raise some funds for a couple of infrastructure projects that benefit all the members.
Hows this sound?
- shop-wide dust collection
- refurbished bathrooms and member locker space
- air-conditioning more of the shop
- air power for the entire space
Now that we have your attention. we need all that stuff sitting in your garage and basement that you could donate to a fundraiser garage sale for the Hack Factory “Make the Hack Factory Nicer For All” Fund.
Tentative Sale date Sept 17-18st
Tentative Setup and pack in Sept 14th
Note- date changed to allow more collection time and announce at wen meeting.
Last Wen open house we announced that we would like to start a large prestige build. After going to Detroit Makers Faire and seeing some really awesome stuff. The idea of a large project to get TC Makers on the map was a worthy goal.
So lets start brain storming, nothing is set in stone, but here are a few basic requirements.
- pedal powered (mpls/stp is a biking community after all)
- light weight but large
- able to take down/apart for travel to events
- fire and/or smoke
- some form of illuminated fabric or e-fabric with arduino control.
- sound system with interactive inputs
Some of these seemingly random requirements are in place to make sure everyone in the hack fac can participate in some way.
Let the ideas flow….
Any and all ideas are welcome, just submit a post on the forum in the Group Build – Brainstorm Phase thread. In a couple of weeks, we can go through them together at the wen open house.
Pictures and videos from the 7/6/11 Open Hack at the Hack Factory.
Twin Cities Maker operates an open house every Wednesday from 7:00pm till late, and it’s open to the public! If you are interested in getting to know what TCMaker is about, or just want something to do on a Wednesday night stop by and say hello. Bring a project if you’re working one, or a problem if you need something fixed, we might be able to help.
If you’re on the blog you can see that we exceeded our member goal for June by 13 members! That is really great news for Twin Cities Maker! Thanks to all the members that have decided Twin Cities Maker is worth their time an effort.
We are currently at 83 members including the three that joined up on the 29th. Because some members get the $25 dollar rate for being a student or unemployed and the associated fees from paypal, the funds from membership are not as simple as 83×50, but we are getting really close to being in the black. We need about 85 to 90 members each month to be there, and it seems we are well on our way.
So again, welcome new members, we are glad you’re here.
The weather did not cooperate, so we were inside for Make Day 2011. It was still a great time, I took a few pictures, but the hall was a bit dark for my phone camera, hopefully someones got more and better shots, here a quick visual recap, with pre-work on the t-shirts and treb-Foshay tossed in.
Thanks for stopping by, and if you know a Maker type, please tell them about our Member Drive.
Just over a month ago we launched our first big polling of our members to sort out how folks are using our facility and what they want out of their makerspace. The possibilities for change in the new lease means that it’s all the more important that we know what you think, and we don’t want to exclude the half of our members who haven’t yet answered . To try to gain as much insight into our membership as possible, we’re going to keep the polls open through Saturday of this week. This will provide enough time to have detailed analysis to the membership in time to work on the space planning as we expand.
These polls aren’t compulsory, but we’re hoping that you’ll fill them out so that we have better tools to help make our community space more of what each of you need it to be.
We’ve got (3) polls, (2) for members, and (1) for non-members. The polls will be close Saturday May 14th at midnight, and we won’t ever release any personally identifiable information. (e.g. We will show “x% of our members use $tool weekly”, but not “1 member from $town wants $tool”)
The Non-Members Poll is for folks who are not current members of Twin Cities Maker. This is mostly targeted at folks located in and around the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area, but if you’re farther afield we’re still interested in your answers.
Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your interests.
The event went well, lots a people, great weather, and a great concert at the end of the night by Mr. Tim Kaiser and JAZARI. If you missed Tim’s music he will be releasing a version of the set on vinyl in the future, see his site for more information. Also if you liked JAZARI’s robot like sounds he was singing with, you can make your own because he built it into a android app called VOLOCO.
The people who displayed were as expected showing off really neat stuff, check Flickr stream to get an idea of what was there.
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the Faire. A huge thanks to all of the various sponsors who helped with things ranging from beer to door prizes. Next year’s Faire is set to be around the same time next year, hope to see you there.
Twin Cities Maker (TC Maker) is a community group based in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Our mission is to make, share, and learn.
We have opened a maker space/hackerspace for members to build projects using various media and technologies, from wood and metal working to electronics to fabrics and beyond.
