Every week for as many as I can I hope to post a collection of Images that depict what the space is all about. It may not be 10 photos each week it maybe more it may be less, but each photo is part of hack labs story.

Here is HackLab as I have glimpsed it this week.

       

1 - Community Service: The growing pile of E-Waste that community members have brought in for others to pick threw before being picked up by E-Waste disposal.

2 - Exploration: In a basement of a building in the market is a treasure trove of discovery to be found.

3 - Collaboration: Hard work and dedication to a project, can create wonderful things. The two individuals in this photo are working on a Quadrocopter .

4 - Craftsmanship: Taking time to ensure everything is correct.

5 - Creativity: Measuring carefully to realize an idea.

6 - Solutions: Problem solving is something I encounter often in the space, people come in with ideas and collaboration happens. It is not often I get to witness a solution executed so quickly. This instants part of the Ultimaker needed trouble shooting and a custom part was fabricated and installed.

7 - Lasers: Always a cool thing, and in this case a laser cutter hard at work cutting out a Façade for a project.

8 - Curiosity: Getting ready to examine a EPROM with a USB Microscope.

9 - Fascination: Exploring the depths of a EPROM with the USB Microscope.

10 - Easter Eggs: Looking for those little surprises or unexpected discovery's. In this case we found the company's logo amongst the circuitry.

I care to introduce myself, my name is Adam Evenden. Over the last few weeks I have slowly been moving into my new role as the Photo Journalist in Residence, at the HackLab.

Tuesday have been a magical time at the HackLab for me over the last 2 years that I have spent visiting the Lab. Having met many interesting individuals, heard many great ideas, seen many grand projects, and have always been excited to come back. I foresee meeting many new members in the future who I have not had the previous pleasure of meeting, and the enjoyment I have experienced in the lab so far extending into my new role as the Photo Journalist in Residence.

Over the recent years the lab I have had the opportunity to witness many entertaining moments at the hack lab, as well as triumphant progress within projects. I would like to share within my first post some of the moments I have captured at the hack lab over the last few weeks as the Photo Journalist in Residence, as well as some moments that I have captured while visiting Iceland’s hacker space Hakkavélin.

Hacklab has an internal collection of quotes. I obtained permission from a number of people quoted so that I could publish some of the more awesome ones.

<_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.”

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About a month ago, hacklab purchased a new USB Microscope: 2 megapixel, 200x magnification, 8 LEDs. The idea is to be able to use it to inspect circuit boards, to see how awesome our solder jobs are, etc. But of course in practice we quickly turned the device on anything and everything in the space! It’s super fun to project the live magnification video on our projector and just rove around the room. I took a set of pictures from one of the first play sessions with the device, and it shows how cool the device is. I think my favorite discovery was how organic the eink screens on the Nook are, I didn’t expect anything like what we found!

Hacklab will be having an open house party tomorrow night, Saturday April 13th, 2012, from 7pm onward.  If you’ve always wanted to check out the space but can’t make our Tuesday open house nights, this is your big chance!  Open to the public, come one come all!  Direction to the space are on our <a href=”http://hacklab.to/location/”>location</a> page, look for the black door!  BYOB.

We’ve booked another fun month of workshops:

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 :-)

Apparently I forgot to post this up when I made it, which probably explains why there are still five tickets left! If you want to learn how to solder and you’re still available tomorrow, Monday March 12th, here’s your chance!

The third meetup of the Toronto RepRap User Group was a massive success!

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.)

There’s going to be a Toronto Haskell Users Meetup at hacklab on March 7th starting at 7pm. Come by and meet your fellow Haskellers!

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.

Quantified Self is a really cool movement of people doing self tracking using technology — for example, one might use a device to monitor their heart data or when they’re at home, and then analyze it. One idea several people around the lab have been toying with is applying these ideas to organizations one is a part of. Just like individuals can benefit from Quantified Self by gaining objective information about themselves, organizations may be able to similarly benefit. (We admit, our motivations mostly boil down to: data  is cool and graphs are pretty.) The natural place to begin, of course, was with hacklab!

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.

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