<_stillinbeta_>how do you function as a person without the page-up key?

<_stillinbeta_>I am not an IRL to IRC gateway!

Geordie: “Write documentation like a homicidal axe-wielding person is reading your code… Who knows where you live and is easily frustrated.”

Jammies: It [gnome 3] grows on you.
Byron: Yeah, but so does cancer.

Sen: If you need me, just wave. I need to listen to circuit instead of audio…

< colah> Also, most companies probably wouldn’t let me work in Haskell.
I think I’d go into withdrawl if I was forced to use somethng else now a days.

Chris: Box them all and let the compiler sort them out!

[at court, during recess]
Chris: So, what you’re saying is that Byron’s trial would have been more exciting if it had been trial by jury?

Geordie: “Whenever I’m afraid, I just tell my mokey brain that canabilism is not the most likely outcome of this.”

11:07 < digimer> WWDC?
11:08 < frysteev_> WWDC = what would digimer cluster
11:08 < digimer> ALL THE THINGS!

Eric: 10 Airwires Mua-a-a
Geordie: You are not the count, Eric.
Eric: I am when I’m designing boards

Chris: Have you catamorphized today?

Fumon: It only catches a little on fire.

Nick: Don’t worry I’m not heating it beyond its ignition point.

Monday April 9th 6-9pm: Stitch and Bitch
Sen and Jammies are planning on holding a Stitch ‘n Bitch on April 9th @ 6PM. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means we will be having a ‘fabric hacking’ meet-up for sewers, stitchers, fabric-spinners, knitters and all other forms of fabric hacking. Sewing is one of the oldest forms of making and hacking in all of human-kind, so we figured it’d be a great idea to introduce it to Hacklab in a more official way.
Bring your gear or ask someone to share theirs with you! This is a general event and not a tutorial. We’re hoping a good number of people can show up to just talk about and exchange tips on fabric hacking.
This is an open event for Hacklab members and anyone who is interested. :)

Monday April 16: no workshop, members meeting!

Monday April 23 7-9pm: Sculpting Workshop. You must RSVP to attend:
http://hacklab-sculpting.eventbrite.com/
Come learn sculpting from Avinash Hedge, Sculptor. See his work at http://aysculpture.deviantart.com/. He makes amazing superhero sculptures for comic book companies and private clients, and he’s promised to show a small group of hacklabbers his techniques! Workshop will consist of: 20-30 minutes of explanation and demo by Avinash, followed by at least an hour of hands-on work with clay. You will make your own sculpture! Avinash will also answer any and all questions about sculpting!

Monday April 30th 7-9pm: Arduino Total Beginners Workshop
Arduino Beginners Workshop. For total beginners. All are welcome, no RSVP required. Eric will show you how to get started with Arduino, the super-friendly microcontroller platform that even artists love. We’ll cover getting the software installed and going, hooking up the Arduino, and a little bit of basic programming, via explanation of the Examples. You too can cut and paste your way to a working project! You’ll need to bring your own Arduino (any kind will do) and a laptop on which you can install software. Also please bring any cables required to attach your Arduino to your laptop – typically this means an A to B USB cable. If you do not have an Arduino, you can purchase one at Creatron, only a few blocks away from hacklab at 255 College Street.

Monday May 7th 7-9pm: Soldering Workshop #8. You must RSVP to attend:
http://hacklab-soldering8.eventbrite.com/
Want to learn how circuits are assembled? We’ll show you how to solder, the process of using a hot iron to place parts permanently unto circuit boards. Many easy to assemble and cool kits to choose from:
- Stefan’s hacklab blinky ($5)
- TV-be-Gone remote control kit ($20)
- Drawdio ($20)
- MiniPOV Kit ($20)
- Solder: Time watch kit ($30)
Instruction is free, though donation to hacklab is encouraged, of course! If you have your own project or kit, feel free to bring that instead! The instructor is knowledgeable about circuit design, layout and troubleshooting as well, so bring your questions :-)

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.

We (Sen and Chris) were really excited about this and have done some initial analysis. Hacklab (like, we think, most hackerspaces) had a lot of sources of data laying around, waiting to be analyzed:

• doorbot (in my opinion, our gold mine)
• Google Calendar
• IRC Traffic
• Twitter Traffic
• Mailing List Traffic
• Blog Hits
• Hacklab Public Computer Activity?

So far, we have only worked with the doorbot data.

Activity Levels

Unless the door has been unlocked, entering Hacklab requires one to use a small fob, unique to each member. The program responsible for processing these, doorbot, will unlock the door if it detects a member. It also logs the entry in a database. This is a valuable source of data about activity at the lab, but there are a number of ways in which it can be flawed. If a member works on a project on the side walk outside, they may enter and leave a number of times in a matter of minutes, but this doesn’t actually mean there was more activity. On the other hand, a member may enter along with another or on when the door is unlocked, making them invisible. Furthermore, Fob’s may be reassigned over time, and we have no way to know who the former owner was. The first concern is mitigated in the following data by considering only the number of entries by unique members each day.

Since the data is really noisy, let’s take a 7 day average to smooth it out a bit:

Looking at this, you may be inclined to suspect seasonal trends, but let’s overlap the years to draw them out.

Again, this is really noisy. Let’s do a 5 day sum to smooth it out.

Interesting observations:

• consistent slump in activity at the end of December (shopping/celebrations keep people away?)
• consistent bump in November
• 2009/2010 have slumps around the Summer but 2011 doesn’t

Another thing to look at is the derivative of Hacklab activity:

Gender Distribution

Another subject of interest is Hacklab’s gender distribution.

To avoid making oppresive assumptions, members were given the opportunity to self-identify their gender. We ended up with the gender categories male, female and other. There were very few responses, so most of this data is based on our understanding of how members identify.

The line for male is blue, the line for female red, and the line for other green. Please ignore any sex-stereotyping in this color scheme.

Again, the data is very rough. Let’s smooth it out with a 5 day sum.

I think that percents may be more useful as a mode of analysis.

Hacklab seems to have been getting better in terms of gender diversity lately, though not as good as we were in mid 2009.

More Graphs!

Some more graphs relating to gender and year comparisons are available. Many more will be coming as we move on with Quantified Hacklab! Also prettier ones, since this was fairly quickly hacked together!

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).

This event repeats every two weeks, so we’ll also be playing on Feb 5th, Feb 19th, March 4th, etc. Check our calendar to confirm dates beyond that.