Hive76 (your friendly neighborhood hackerspace) just moved into a new space, and has some great stuff going on this month. This is the first in a (hopefully monthly) update about what is going on at our space, and in the hackerspace movement in general.

Giant Version of REDACTEDfor Body World: Make:Philly and Hive76 are making a huge REDACTED game for an event with Body Worlds 2 and The Franklin. Saturday 11/ 28 we are painting, and doing some final build work. It’s an awesome project, and (I have to say this) were doing it for the children. Plus giant versions of regular stuff are just awesome!

New Space Party: Hive76 just moved to a bigger space, and we want to celebrate it. So on 12/5 we’re having a small shin-dig at our space. If you want an invite, drop a line to [email protected], and we will send one your way. We’ll have DJ’s, VJ’s, games, Food and Drink, and a bunch of geeky and great folks. We also emptied our account to move, so we’re going to ask for a couple of bucks $10 to cover food and drinks.

Guitar Effects Workshop: If you’d rather rock out on your guitar,on 12/7 we’re going to have a Guitar Effects workshop to build Tube Screamers. If you want to give a handmade gift to a music geek (including yourself) this would be an awesome place to do it. You’ll walk away with a finished Tube Screamer for $50, and all of the know-how to build more.

AVR Class: On 12/12 we’re going to be running a microcontroller class for hacking on AVR chips. Want a rubicks cube robot, and Programmable RFID chip, or a touchscreen picture frame, AVR is the way to go. Did I mention that it’s a fundraiser to help kickstart FUBAR hackerspace? Check it out, It’ll be awesome.

Merry Print-mas: Before Christmas (date TBD) we are going to be open for Merry Print-mas, where anyone can come and use our Makerbot 3d printer to print one free copy of anything at all on Thingiverse. It’s been a great year for our hackerspace, and you all deserve a present. Keep an eye on our weblog and calendar for the date when it gets announced.

Open Hive Wednesdays: And, as always every Wednesday except holidays is Hackerspace Open House at Hive76. 7:30 to 10:30. Come out and Make Things Awesome, and Make Awesome Things.

Next week is a rocking week for DIY geeks in Philadelphia. There’s not one, but TWO different 3D printing workshops happening right here in Philly. These machines are the little brothers of professional 3d printers, and using one you can print out, as 3d objects, pretty much anything you dream of. If you want a little 3D copy of your own WOW character on your desk, or a Stormtrooper helmet to keep pencils in (or anything) stop on by one of these workshops, and make something!

Fab@Home 3D printing workshops

Fab@Home creator, Evan Malone will give a workshop on 3D Printing and 3D Modeling for the Fab@Home Fabber. Attendees will be able to work hands-on with the Fab@Home machine. The workshop is Wednesday, June 17 from 6 to 8PM at Klein Art Gallery (3600 Marrket St. Philadelphia, PA). Please RSVP to the Klein Art Gallery (via facebook) as space is limited.

MakerBot 3D printing workshops

The MakerBot workshop is happening at Hive 76 and is starring MakerBot founder Zack Hoeken. The class is Saturday June 20th, from 1PM to 5PM at Hive 76 ( 915 Spring Garden, Suite 500, Philadelphia PA). You just need to show up on time, and with a laptop, and we do the rest. We’ll teach you everything you need to do a first design, and a first printing using the MakerBot. Tickets for the 4 hours class are $25 (or $5 for students).

8static June is this Saturday, at the usual place. This month Tonylight is in from Italy, and he’ll be wrapping up the night with his unique style (warning: link contains hipsters and geeks dancing). Of course, before you get that far, you’ll have heard A_Rival from LA, Chromix out of NYC, and our own Cheap Dinosaurs. And maybe (just maybe) you might find yourself dancing.

If just watching isn’t enough for you, show up at 7:00 for a free workshop on glitchNES (open source circuit bending software) with it’s creator, NO CARRIER (Don Miller) . The software causes NES graphical glitches similar to hardware circuit-bending. It can be abused to create really stunning patterns and effects.

8static just won’t stop. Philadelphia’s monthly chiptunes event rocks out again this weekend, with some seriously impressive artists. On deck for audio this month are minusbaby, Balún, and autoscroll. From the website, it looks like VBLANK is doing the heavy lifting for visuals all alone. I’m thinking we either have a surprise VJ on deck, or they managed to pull off cloning technology over at The Hacktory.

This is the worlds most awesome chiptunes show, and these guys have done a great thing by making it an all ages show. Come, and bring your Jr sized friends and family, and get those kids converted to geeks while they are still young. The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth, and they are going to have a sweet sweet soundtrack.

Saturday, April 11, 2009
7PM • chiptunes workshop (FREE)
(open mic/visuals before the show!)
8PM • show starts ($8 / $5 with flier • All Ages)

This Saturday is another wizard 8static show, and TheHacktory had lined up some keen acts once again.

For those living in a closet, or you parents basement, or a nosebleed high-rise in downtown, here’s the deal. 8static is Philadelphia’s own monthly chiptunes event. You don’t have to go to NYC or San Fran. to get some of the best 8bit music in the country. You only have to get as far as Studio 34 (at 4522 Baltimore Ave). 

Saturday night’s lineup includes  Nullsleep,  some  Cheap Dinosaurs, NYC’s Starscream and Peter Swimm. And that’s just on audio. For visuals  Paris Treantafeles and outpt will be creating visuals together along with Dan Winckler. 

Saturday grab your gear, turn off the PS3 and get out to 8static. It starts at 8, so you can still get to the next party (or get home to sleep) when it’s done.

2009! A new year,  A New Hope, and a new set of 8static chiptune shows.   Philadelphia 8bit/chiptune/demo scene is stepping it up a notch, and is now running 8static shows monthly.

The first show is going to be this very Saturday (Jan 10th) at Studio34. The show starts around 7:30, but if you show up at 6:30 you can catch a talk by Animalstyle on how to get started in the scene.

Or just show up at 7:30 to rock out with 8GB, Anamanaguchi, Animalstyle and Rhinostrich. Visuals (of course) will be generated live on-the-spot by VBLANK and NO CARRIER during the show.

It’s $5 if you pay ahead at the 8static site or bring a flyer with you (hint: try printing one out yourself, but don’t tell anyone I told you) or $8 at the door. Every penny goes straight to the artists.

The chiptunes scene has been rocking Europe (and some of the US) with 8Bit music, and awesome low-fi demo’s for years. And even though some of the best East Coast 8bit hackers are right here in Philly (NO CARRIER, Animal Style, Cheap Dinosaurs, VBlank just to name a few) there’s been near zero gig’s here in our little frontier town. Chiptunes geeks have to treck to events like Pulsewave in NYC for their fix.That is, until this weekend.

NO CARRIER, and his friends at TheHacktory have busted their butts to put together an event here in Philly, 8static!

8static is this Saturday night at Studio 34 in West Philly. Drop in at 6PM to 7:30, for Reformat The Planet, a sweet documentary about geeks and their chiptunes. 7:30PM to 11PM is an all ages live show, with a huge array of the best chiptunes and 8bit vjays from up and down the East Coast, and our own back yard. After 11, you can bet the crowd will end up at some kind of after-geeking.

This is an all ages show, and tickets are $5 if you get them now , or $8 at the door. Or if you can’t wait that long, you can check out the 8static preview from IgnitePhilly.

Ignite Philly (2) is up next Tuesday (the 23rd) at Johnny Brendas. Let me tell you a little secret. Our Ignite is more awesomer than all of the other ignites. Sure, Ignite NYC gets covered by The New York Times. Ye old Ignite Seattle on their 5th event, and they get acts like Dan Savage. And even Baltimore is getting into the act. So what do we have that they don’t?

Those other Ignites don’t have US, the completely awesome and slightly rabid Philadelphia audience. Throngs of geeks, techies, and artists who crave crazy and new ideas like Lumas craves star-bits.

Yeah, it’s Dorky. 2006 ‘Person of the Year’ (the one with a mirror) dorky, and totally true. Philly’s geek/teckies/maker crowd PACKED 300+ people into J.B. upstairs. So packed that we had to turn people away (don’t worry, we have that all fixed now). We give the speakers 5 minutes, 20 slides, and maybe a few beers. And they give us back some sweet sweet mind-candy! If you too need a fix of awesome and new ideas, you know where to go (J.B.’s) and when (Tuesday, 6ish).

BTW, IgnitePhilly is brought to you by P’unk Ave, TheHacktory, Philadelphia Startup Leaders and the letters S.M.R and T.  And the awesome photo above is from the Roz. Just, you know, if you want someone to blame. Or something.

So I’m sure you’ve been watching the Sara Conner Chronicles. No? Or maybe watched The Terminator. Never heard of it? OK, OK. How about the Matrix? No?? Geez, what are you doing on the internet?! Anyway, that isn’t the point.

I’m sure you’ve heard somewhere that machines will rise up, and take over. It’s 100% true. In 50 years when we are living in the rubble of post-apocolypse Philadelphia,  don’t you want some good stories to tell?  Some tales of the olden days when men were in control, and the robots were the slaves?

If so drop by Make:Philly on Sunday, and see Mark Yim talk about his robots that re-assemble themselves. The talk starts at 3PM on-the-nose, so get there a bit early.  His robots can be kicked apart, pulled apart, and spread across a room, and they still pull themselves back together, and continue on their way.  The Maker Challenge, where you build stuff on the spot to beat a crazy and weird challenge, starts at 4 PM.

If you don’t go and see Mark’s talk on re-assembling robots, those long nights around a burning tire in the rubble just won’t be as much fun.

A lot of us geeks spent hours and hour (and hours) drawing things using an Etch-A-Sketch back in ye-old days of yore. Back when life was simpler, candy sweeter, and 16 bits was high tech. These days life is complicated (Wii? PS3? or both?) candy rots your teeth, and ‘millions of colors’ still doesn’t look as good as it should. But being a grown-up does come with some advantages. Advantages like being able to do City-sized Etch-A-Sketch.

Take advantage of being a grown up, and drive (or bike, or walk) around Philly for a couple of days and make the biggest god-dammed drawing of your life.