Friends, Makers, Quelab Supporters!
Come celebrate the new year and our impending new space! We will be holding the first general meeting of the new year on 6th of January at 4:30pm. Please take a look at the agenda of the items we will be discussing, and if you have any suggestions for the agenda, please leave a comment here, or speak with a board member.
Howdy Quelabites,
First, your work on the strategic planning activities was AWESOME! ¡Gracias grande! (A big thank you) to everyone who participated. I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve finished updating the minutes from the last Quelab planning meeting. Additionally, if you think of anything else that was forgotten during the meeting, or that you’d just like to add, it’s not too late. In January we will be working with this list again, and we can add more items at that time. Make sure to write them down so you don’t forget between now and then, or just email them to: board{at}quelab_dot_net.
Please keep in mind that we’re only halfway through the “Strategic Planning” for 2013. In January we will review this “ALL the Things!?” list and organize it into categories that make sense. Then we’ll figure out which items are the highest priority to Quelab membership (Yes, that’s you!). We can’t do it without your help, so we’ll see everyone after the holidays (6 Jan 2013 at 4:30pm) to kick off the new year.
Again, thank you for all your input, and for your help at the upcoming January planning meeting. I can’t wait for everyone to get these ideas rolling in 2013!
Respect,
-greg
Quelab prez
This year, we will be continuing our annual ‘Techmas’ theme for December’s hack-nights. What is Techmas? They’re open craft nights; you can come and make decorations from old hardware, fabricate hand-made gifts, or plan out the schematic for your incredible light-display.
So, here’s the unofficial and rather free-form schedule of Techmas Events:
- 4 December (Tuesday) will feature making wreaths from old PCBs, curated by our member Geoff.
- 16 December (Sunday) will feature beaded LED snowflake ornaments, curated by our member Terri.
- 19 December (Wednesday) will feature making wreaths from old PCBs, curated by our member bandit.
If you don’t see a particular craft you’re interested in doing, come on down during our hack-nights on Tuesday and Sunday evenings from 7-10pm, and utilize our workshop space to craft your own project. All we ask is that non-members pay a $5 donation to keep the lights on.
We wish you a happy techmas, and a hackish new year!
Lastnight during hacknight we played a little bit with the small (5×5) vaccumformer (DentiFormer) i picked up off of craigslist. Its heater coil is burned out, and we didn’t have any of the proper thermoplastic sheets for it, but hunting around the lab we were able to find some various disposable meal containers, and water bottles and milk jugs to try. we used the heat gun in loo of the heater working, it was all just trial and error, but by the end of the evening Morgan had done 2 pretty good vaccuforms (they didn’t get photographed). but here is some of our playing with it.
These and more photos Here!
Im going to work on replacing the heater, and look for better blanks. so it may be a few months, but what would you like to try vacuforming? I think there is great potential for vaccuforming things off of 3d printed moulds! Sometime soon I’m going to try to make a steampunk pendant that holds my bluetooth headset. If threes enough interest we could always build a bigger one!
Beer. Mead. Cider. Each of these beverages have a number of things in common, but first and foremost: Yeast. This little microbe has so many tasty uses, we will gladly consume it’s products.
The other thing these libations have in common is the time-consuming process… and the delicious results. This mostly-lecture class will discuss the history of beer, and then the finisher will be showing you the process on how YOU can make your own libations, and how you can use the insatiable appetite of yeast to your own purposes.
We will start a batch of a kit Hefeweisen, and talk about the history and process of making beer.
Hooray Beer!
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This class is 18+; NM Statute only restricts the manufacture of alcohol for sale, and the sale of alcohol to minors (21-). This generally is considered to mean that all adults can make alcohol in quantities suitable for personal consumption (aka ‘culinary purposes’); YMMV.
Photos from the event are now up in our Flickr pool, check them out here!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/quelab/pool/tags/brewing/
and email planning@quelab.net if you missed it and would like to take another one!
(Photo from Joshk@wikipedia cc-by-sa)
Quelab is YOUR hackerspace.
What are your goals and ideas for the year ahead? Please join us for the annual planning meeting on Sunday, 2 December at 4PM. At this meeting we will come up with the priorities for the upcoming year. This work may spill over into the January meeting so please add that to your calendar too. We are conducting this planning during our public business meetings because your opinion matters. Here’s a sneak peak at the agenda so you’ll know what to expect:
- (45 min) Year in review: What was the best thing at Quelab in the past year? What would you like to do again? What was our biggest accomplishment?
- (1 hr) “ALL the Things?”: Develop a list of to do items using various techniques: What are the big picture tasks? What are the implementation details? Everything goes on the list now.
- Categorize the laundry list of “ALL the Things?”: Now that we have everything, let’s try and organize it. Are there obvious categories for groups of tasks? Can like items be combined?
- Within each category, add priorities.
To see the results of the 2011 strategic planning meeting go to the Quelab wiki: 6 Nov 2011 Minutes. If you have any questions about what to expect, please ask. I’d be happy to answer any questions about what’s on tap for the planning session. -Greg Moran, Quelab Prez (board at quelab dot net)
Link to Agenda Wiki Page Which now has the meeting notes in the bottom of it.
Help us support Quelab when you buy stuff from Amazon. Click on any of the following links when you start shopping and a portion of your purchase price will go to Quelab and enable us to buy cool things for the lab, no matter what you purchase! You just have to start on one of the items below.
So, while you’re going through your wish list, or your ‘gimme’ list, consider Quelab:
Consider purchasing a Lab Coat
If you’re thinking more outside the box, you can see what they’ve got for Electronic Components
And if you’re interested in that Black Friday, or Cyber Monday thing…try Amazon’s official Black Friday Deals Week
.. wait. there’s such a thing as an Inflatable Beard
Coming Soon (this Thursday, 15 November), Make: Magazine will be releasing their special “Make: Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing
If you’re interested in 3D-printing, if you have a 3D-Printer, or if you have no idea what I’m talking about, come on out and see what this whole thing is all about. Whether you’re a designer, inventor, hacker, tinkerer, or weekend DIYer–anyone interested in finding out more about 3D printing and design is welcome! Bring your laptops, tablets, smartphones to access the Internet and G+ Hangout On Air.
A while back, We got a ChipKIT box in the mail. Hmm, I thought: What could I do with such an interesting little device? I was mentally gone the entire month of november, due to working a major local event. So, after coming back to my senses I asked “What’s the catch?”
The catch was “Do something awesome.” I was always fascinated by the old Amgia/C64 Demoscene and have always wanted to nudge something cool out of myself. Well, I did, and its kinda cool; I just finished it to a nice, polished place this morning and got a video up on youtube this morning. There’s some neat things in here: the “starfield” is really a moving graph that uses some fancy trigonometry to make pretty pictures.
A touch of afterthought: The audio was overlayed by myself. I currently have some small plans to play audio on the board though.
If you’ve seen any spy films from the 60s, or any heist films from the turn of the century, you’ve seen people pick a lock. If you’ve been to the Maker Faire (any of the Mini-Faires, or the larger coastal events), if you’ve read 2600, or if you’ve been in any group of people interested in security (Physical or Digital) you may have heard people talking about lock-picking . Some people have even turned the physical skill of picking a lock into game (locksport), seeing who can open a lock fastest… without using a key.
One of our members, Adric, is an amateur locksmith, and while he has never been a practicing professional locksmith he has honed his skills at various HOPE/DEFCON events. And keeps honing his skills/knowledge of the arts of “nondestrictive entry” and “locksport”, and occasionally taking that 3am call from a locked out friend. Starting with flea-market finds at age 7, by age 12 he had picked his first locks, modified a key to fit family car, and figured out a master key(pick) for a type of common padlocks. He continued his love of locks and locksmithing by making dozens of his own picks by hand-filing all sorts of household materials.
**We are currently sold out on this class, but feel free to watch the eventbright for any tickets opening up due to cancelation** or watch our twitter feed, @QuelabNM **
This coming Wednesday, he will be sharing his knowledge with you, at our Personal Locksmithing class, part of our Weekday Workshop series.
Come Learn about locks and locksmithing, how locksmithing is more than just breaking into things (although that is the fun part). The Locksmithing/Picking workshop will touch on the following topics:
* Laws and legality (Adric is not a lawyer, do not take this as legal counseling)
* History of locks and lock types
* Basics of lockpicking
* What is locksport/nonddestructive entry
* Basics of lock construction & why lockpicking works
* Basics of home locksmithing/rekeying/installing/fixing
* Q&A
We hope you can join us! PS yes you will get to try picking! (not a babble only lecture!)
