On September 1st, I sent an email to the HackLab discussion list asking for folks to commit. Less than 24 hours later, members and non-members alike stepped up and pledged $700 in addition to my initial commitment of $200. Our MakerBot Batch 7 CupCake CNC will ship in early October, hopefully in time for MiniSoOnCon!

3D printing is so amazing. This is the MITS Altair of a DIY revolution whose shape I’m not at all certain of. I couldn’t be more exited to see what the hacklabbers make and how we improve the machine, too.

In alphabetical order, the donors were:

3ric Johanson
Alex Leitch
Byron Sonne
Chad Mounteny
Cheryl Mok
Chris Pilkington
Dale Babiy
Dan Kaminsky
Eric from NYC Resistor
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Sergio Martns
Seth Hardy

Welcome to the future, folks.

-Leigh

As of July 1, HackLab.TO has been around for a year! You know what that means: it’s time for a party!

On Saturday, July 18th, we’d like to invite all of our members, our friends, our supporters, and our community to come join us to celebrate starting our second year. Let’s look back on everything we’ve done this past year, and think about what we can do to make the lab even better over the next year. Oh yeah, and let’s also just hang out, listen to some good music, have some cake*, and drink some beer**. That’d be pretty cool too.

In summary:
WHO : You!
WHAT : HackLab one year party!
WHEN : July 18th, 7pm
WHERE : …at the HackLab, of course.

* There may or may not actually be cake***. Want to bring some?
** Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages are both ok, we don’t judge here!
*** The first person to make a Portal reference is fired.
**** Why are you reading this? There is no reference to it!

Yes, you read that right.

Let’s all welcome a new user to Twitter: hacklabTOilet, the (you guessed it) hacklab toilet.

Here’s the full writeup!

It’s the HackLab logo only 33.4 micrometers tall!  The logo was milled onto a gold bond wire from an Atmel chip using a 50 picoamp focused ion beam (FIB).

The two images show the logo at 1000 and 6500 times magnification.  Many thanks and much respect to Flylogic Engineering for doing this at their lab!

lazzor music! from hypatia on Vimeo.

One of the HackLab members, Jed, wrote some code to turn music into lazzor motions. The result is this brilliant interpretation of the Super Mario theme :)

After a few hours or hacking the old Red Roomba, and failing to fix or workaround the cliff hanger sensor it was time to get some success.

Elmood went out and got me a ULN2803AP chip, which I could use to glue together the Arduino and the tri colour LED bar. I then used some of the arduino examples to pulse and colour and mess around a bit.

The next step, perhaps using I2C to control individual bars (I have 10) and line them up on the stairway!

There’s a new JUG in town!

Jonathan, Andrew and I are starting a new Java Users Group in Toronto. Our group is meant to
hold better appeal for geeks/hackers, to actually hold a meeting every month, and to put a bigger emphasis on socialization with and contributions from all group members. Through 5-minute lightning talks (impromptu and prepared are always welcome), we hope everyone will have a chance to participate.

Vital stats:

Meeting night: 3rd Thursday of each month
Start time: 7:15
Location: the hacklab
Web Site: http://tjug.ca

The monthly agenda will include:

* group discussion of recent Java-related headlines
* lightning talks from anyone who has something to show&tell
* a robocode battle
* at most one longer-format prepared talk (30-45 minutes max)
* a visit to a nearby pub!

We hope you’ll join us for a fun evening of Java!

I got some strange IM from someone. Halfway through  I figure out we’ve
been setup somehow with a relay in the middle and both of us see the
other as some other identity. When the person says he is using adium, I
thought it was a perfect chance to fire up OTR to see what would happen
with this MITM scenario….  Funny enough, it revealed the identity of
the other user to me :)

(My AIM identity is letoams)

(06:17:38 PM) SensitiveCoho: Hey.
(06:18:16 PM) letoams: bot?
(06:18:36 PM) SensitiveCoho: are you a bot?
(06:18:53 PM) letoams: are you are you are you a bot?
(06:19:14 PM) SensitiveCoho: no
(06:19:17 PM) SensitiveCoho: i’m human
(06:19:28 PM) letoams: ok then
(06:19:57 PM) SensitiveCoho: who are you?
(06:20:13 PM) letoams: if you dont know why are you talking to me?
(06:20:26 PM) SensitiveCoho: i want to know why you’re talking to me
(06:20:48 PM) letoams: you started?
(06:20:52 PM) letoams: (06:17:38 PM) SensitiveCoho: Hey.
(06:21:12 PM) SensitiveCoho: i’m not SensitiveCoho
(06:21:30 PM) letoams: that’s what i see
(06:21:31 PM) SensitiveCoho: embarrassedcoho
6:17

Hi!
(06:21:40 PM) SensitiveCoho: i see you as “embarrassedcoho”
(06:21:48 PM) letoams: that’s not my name :)
(06:22:00 PM) letoams: funny. must be some bot connecting two random im
identities
(06:22:06 PM) SensitiveCoho: maybe
(06:22:20 PM) SensitiveCoho: you on mac/pc?
(06:22:27 PM) letoams: linux
(06:22:32 PM) SensitiveCoho: i’m on mac
(06:22:33 PM) letoams: not infected here :P
(06:22:37 PM) SensitiveCoho: using adium
(06:22:57 PM) SensitiveCoho: adium’s been weird today … bugging me that yahoo
messenger network is down for mainenance
(06:23:00 PM) letoams: really? let’s try otr then. that would defeat a man in
the middle attack
(06:23:02 PM) SensitiveCoho: it just keeps telling me this over and over
(06:23:03 PM) Attempting to start a private conversation with SensitiveCoho…
(06:23:12 PM) SensitiveCoho: otr?
(06:23:14 PM) sensitivecoho has not been authenticated yet.  You should
authenticate this buddy.
[Image] (06:23:14 PM) Unverified conversation with SensitiveCoho started.
(06:23:26 PM) The following message received from sensitivecoho was not
encrypted: [error]
(06:23:29 PM) The following message received from sensitivecoho was not
encrypted: [hmm]
(06:23:30 PM) letoams: its privacy crypto built into adium and pidgin
(06:23:33 PM) OTR Error: You sent encrypted data to logicbus, who wasn’t
expecting it.
(06:23:45 PM) Successfully refreshed the unverified conversation with
SensitiveCoho.
(06:23:45 PM) The last message to sensitivecoho was resent.
(06:23:47 PM) letoams: haha
(06:23:47 PM) The following message received from sensitivecoho was not
encrypted: [could this be due to a compromised password?]
[Image] (06:23:53 PM) Private conversation with SensitiveCoho lost.
(06:23:56 PM) OTR Error: You sent encrypted data to logicbus, who wasn’t
expecting it.
(06:23:59 PM) SensitiveCoho: i can’t read what you’re saying
(06:24:02 PM) OTR Error: You sent encrypted data to logicbus, who wasn’t
expecting it.
(06:24:03 PM) letoams: awesome. the MITM does otr too
(06:24:20 PM) sensitivecoho is contacting you from an unrecognized computer.
You should authenticate this buddy.
[Image] (06:24:21 PM) Unverified conversation with SensitiveCoho started.
(06:24:23 PM) The following message received from sensitivecoho was not
encrypted: [i read that]
[Image] (06:24:29 PM) Private conversation with SensitiveCoho lost.
(06:24:38 PM) SensitiveCoho: very strange
(06:24:40 PM) letoams: i think we blew up the mitm thing.
(06:25:06 PM) letoams: you know anyone in Toronto?
(06:29:13 PM) The encrypted message received from sensitivecoho is unreadable,
as you are not currently communicating privately.
[Image] (06:29:34 PM) Unverified conversation with SensitiveCoho started.
[Image] (06:29:34 PM) Unverified conversation with SensitiveCoho started.
[Image] (06:32:21 PM) Private conversation with SensitiveCoho lost.
(06:32:27 PM) letoams: is your handle logicbus ?
(06:32:41 PM) The encrypted message received from sensitivecoho is unreadable,
as you are not currently communicating privately.
(06:33:02 PM) SensitiveCoho: how did you figure that out
(06:33:11 PM) letoams: (06:23:33 PM) OTR Error: You sent encrypted data to
logicbus, who wasn’t expecting it.
(06:33:15 PM) letoams: otr told me
(06:33:26 PM) SensitiveCoho: hmm
(06:33:34 PM) SensitiveCoho: i just see “embarrassedcoho” for those msgs
(06:33:44 PM) SensitiveCoho: i suppose that could be a client thing
(06:33:49 PM) SensitiveCoho: i guess you have an advantage over me
(06:34:08 PM) letoams: still curious what is going on here. (my AIM is letoams)
(06:34:16 PM) SensitiveCoho: yeah
(06:34:41 PM) SensitiveCoho: i googled embarrassedcoho
(06:34:48 PM) SensitiveCoho: didn’t come up with anything helpful
(06:35:42 PM) letoams: me neither
(06:36:22 PM) letoams: anyway. gotta go. have a nice life :)
(06:36:35 PM) SensitiveCoho: peace

Anyone what this double-blind bot MITM thing is? Someone’s research project?

Posting this well in advance so that people show up!

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