We had about 20 people show up, with about 5 RepRaps. Socrates from the Singularity Weblog (who previously did a post on Hacklab) kindly filmed our talks and took pictures!

We had a few short talks by Lance, Adam, Chris, Matt, and Andre which you can watch online (part 1, part 2, part 3). The speakers and topics were:

• Lance: Using and sourcing glass build platforms for your RepRap
• Adam: Building a giant RepRap, his new extruder design, coatings for the build platform.
• Chris: Follow up on producing lenses with 3D printers.
• Matt: Questions for the community.
• Andre: Printing his parents house (watch it print! And another one!).
• Chris: A new programmatic CAD tool, ImplicitCAD (including some never before publicly seen features!)

Thanks again to hacklab for hosting us! Our next meetup will be on March 26th, again the last Monday of the month (can we make this a consistent thing? Maybe!). Since things were starting to get a bit cramped at hacklab, between all of us and the printers, Site 3 will generously be hosting the next meetup.

Finally, I wanted to remind everyone that you too can be a speaker at the next meeting of the Toronto RepRap User Group! It’s nothing formal: just get up and talk for five-ish minutes. No need to contact me in advance, just turn up and tell me before we start the talks! I will be very grateful for more speakers!

(Also, there is now a mailing list for organizing our meetings and discussing Toronto-RepRaping issues.)

This will be the first one. I’m really looking forward to meeting other Haskellers in person!

Haskell Users of Toronto, unite!

You may optionally sign up for this meetup on eventbrite.

Meet your fellow RepRap enthusiasts! Share knowledge, learn about the awesome things people are doing, and have a great time!

Everyone interested in 3D Printing is welcome. People who are being driven insane by their obsession with the awesomeness of 3D printing are strongly encouraged so that they can benefit from contact with the similarly afflicted.

I’m super excited to have this happen and am really looking forward to seeing you there!

You can read a post about the second TRUG meetup on digital crusader. You can optionally sign up at eventbrite (this will make it easier for people to get in touch with you after the event).

Python is a popular programming language, known for its simplicity, ease of use, and elegance. An excellent language to start programming in.

We’ll cover some basic programming concepts. What that will include will depend on how fast we go :)

Please RSVP — we have limited space!

• Cardinals and Ordinals
• Cantor’s Diagonalization Argument
• The Continuum Hypothesis
• Transfinite Induction

Transfinite numbers are really cool, since, well they deal with infinity, don’t match your intuition’s about infinity, and have a tendency to drive people insane!

Unlike previous math workshops, there is no prerequisite knowledge for this workshop. It should be lots of fun! I hope to see you there.

This is the first in a series of one-day language boot camps facilitated by Sonja. Future ones will include Esperanto, Toki Pona, French, Latin, Mandarin, etc. or whatever else people request.

Location: Toronto HackLab, 170A Baldwin St in Kensington Market
Date: January 9, 2010
Time: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with lunch break (show up on time! we have a lot to cover)
Cost: Free, but you’re welcome to bring food for the teacher or fellow students

Join the HackLab-Lang Google group to be updated about future language boot camps!

-Leigh

Tuesday Dec. 9th I’ll be making duct tape wallets and would love for others to participate too!  I’ll have some tape available, and instructions, but please bring tape too if you want to make your own.

I’ll have enough heavy duty tin foil for a zillion wallets, so don’t worry about that.

It’s on our google calendar, of course:

-Leigh

So, I’m going to try to start a bi-weekly go night at the HackLab. Starting next Monday, from 6-9(ish) PM, I’ll be trying to get back into playing this awesome game, and you should join me. I’ll do my best to bring extra boards so everyone who shows up can play, but if you have one, please bring it!

If you don’t know how to play, that’s ok too, as I’m more than happy to teach people.

I hope to see people there next week!

Stereoscope

After a long break, Project Blinkenlights is coming back big time in Toronto, Canada this year. Targeting the landmark building of Toronto City Hall, the group is participating in this year’s Nuit Blanche all-night art event on October 4th, 2008. The installation’s name “Stereoscope” reflects the special nature of the building with its two curved, opposing facades effectively creating a three-dimensional appearance.

Not having rested in the recent years, Project Blinkenlights has developed new technology to wirelessly control the lights placed behind the 960 windows of City Hall allowing for a large scale visual concert during the night in downtown Toronto.

Public Participation

As usual, Project Blinkenlights invites the public to be a part of the installation by opening up a variety of ways to interact with and provide content for Stereoscope.

Among the more traditional features, everybody can play classic computer games on the facade simply by using a mobile phone. The two upper parts of each tower serve as dedicated playgrounds each offering separate telephone numbers for individual gameplay. These numbers will be published on-site beginning the week before Nuit Blanche so that people can get the information where they need it – at Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall in Toronto.

A simple animation tool and open animation data formats enable you to to create simple movies for Stereoscope – addressing one of four parts of the whole facade. Focusing on simple, low-resolution imagery, Project Blinkenlights wants to revive the spirit of the original Blinkenlights installation in Berlin that obtained its charme from the down-to-earth, barebones design of low-res imagery.

For advanced graphic artists, the group provides a set of tools running on Macintosh computers to design complex animation design that serves as the background imagery and core appearance of the Stereoscope installation.