Bit of an impromptu 80s night tonight.
Shinaku, deciding to get the BBC Micro working but lacking a monitor cable spent a little while playing with fedora 5.5 and a tv capture card before bodging a BNC test lead into service.
Not properly used in years, the BBC sprang to life and apart from a couple of dodgy keys, seemed to be working absolutely fine. There was an amount of the obligatory `10 PRINT LEEDS HACKSPACE; 20 GOTO 10` and was just moving onto some far more interesting colour (proper spelling) manipulation when things obviously got far too exiting and in retaliation the Micro set itself on fire and started belching an upsetting amount of constant magic smoke. Interestingly, the program kept running, so whatever component committed Seppuku obviously wasn’t that integral. Time to build an operating table so we can see what’s going on.
In other news, we adopted an old 80′s cabaret arcade table which needs some TLC (and insides) and I spent some more time hitting hte floor with a hammer. Progress, I tells you.
Tomorrow we have a contingent heading to The Harrogate Show, specifically for the Model Engineering and Modelling… should be a fab day out.
It’s been a somewhat crazy weekend, but with the massive help of a number of members (and non-members alike) we’ve finally gotten (nearly) all of our stuff out of storage and into the space.
Saturday and Sunday were spent moving car-loads of stuff and on Monday (and again Wednesday) Yorkshire Van Man went out of his way to help us move the larger stuff.
Photo’s of the space are here; we apologise for the mess, though rest assured it’s all coming together rather nicely -though if you happen to have a spare sofa or desk, then please get in contact ;)
We got possession of the keys to the new space yesterday (LHS 2.0 – or is it 2.3? We don’t really care, we’re just happy to be in there!), and a few celebratory drinks were had. Today we’ve spent the day cleaning up and acquiring stock for the tuck shop – essential as the thirsty work of moving all our stuff begins tomorrow.
More updates to follow…
The Harrogate Model Engineering Exhibition runs 11th-13th of May at the Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate. It’ll be full of amazing projects, tools from spanners to CNC machines and laser cutters, and a whole host of incredibly enthusiastic people wanting to show off what they’re working on.
It’s looking like we’re going to be going on Saturday the 12th, drop us a line if you’re interested in tagging along – it’ll be an inspiring day out!
So here’s a somewhat verbose update on where we are with regards to actually getting HackSpace into a space. It’s getting cross-posted on both the website and mailing list. And its tl;dr’d at the bottom -badly. As I can’t come up with a funny logo for the post, I link to today XKCD as it struck me as somewhat relevant (in a “get on with it” sort of way)…
But First
A quick apology. As a few of you are aware (mostly the ones who idle on IRC or made it to the last meeting) there’s been quite a bit of behinds the scenes activity recently regarding moving forward. I should have done a better job of keeping everyone up to date than I have been; I’m sorry bits have been coming out in dribs and drabs. The only excuse I can give is that I didn’t want to start making bold public announcements before we knew anything concrete; I really don’t want to get peoples hopes up if there’s a chance of them being crashed again.
Continue reading for exciting updates (there’s a graph and everything) !
Continue reading →
Our first trip of the year is one not to be missed for anyone with an interest in woodwork, engineering or those of us who thrive on workshop envy.
The Stanley Ferry Workshops build lock gates for canals all over the country, the workshops are open from 9am-3pm on Saturday 11th Feb and you’ll get to see woodworking on a gigantic scale.
More details can be found here.
Posted in Events, Visits
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The current funds raised total is £2735/£3000 (which is wonderful!) and talk on the mailing list is now turning to the practicalities of getting a lease signed for LHS2 and doing it up as soon as possible. If you’re a member or potential member head over and join the conversation.
Meanwhile, JP (Squirrel) and I (Alex) are stepping down as Finance Director and Promo/Organising Director. It’s been a hard slog for the last four months and we’re both ready to stand aside and watch from the sidelines. Taking over an existing group with problems and a backlog of debt is never easy but we’re delighted that the debt has been cleared and the membership and visibility of the group increased. LHS2 promises to be a great opportunity for the current members, future recruits and Leeds itself. We look forward to seeing what happens next!
After postponing the meeting on 03JAN due to scary weather (high winds, lashing rain etc) we’re delighted to kick off the New Year with our first 2012 meet tomorrow night (10JAN).
We’ll be at Old Broadcasting House talking about new toys and plans for 2012 from about 18:30. If you’ve not been to OBH before the map and details of parking etc are here. Hope to see you there!
Donations
Subscriptions
Being honest about how small our group of subscription paying members was has paid off, we have three old members tempted back into subscribing over the last couple of weeks. It’s also great to start seeing people we’ve missed over the summer coming back to the Tuesday night meetings. Knowing how close LHS2 is to being created and being able to see how we’re doing via regular updates and the thermometer hopefully will help others make the decision to join us!
Current Financial Position
We’re currently at £2103/£3000 raised. We said we’d start talking contracts on LHS2 anywhere north of £2700.
We’re *this* close to getting LHS2!
If you can fling a bit more in the pot, please, please do. We get £300-£350 in member contributions a month but if people can dig deep and spread a bit of Christmas cheer we can get the space right after the new year.
Wouldn’t you like to start 2012 *knowing* there was a hackspace waiting for you…?
One of the best thing about the hacker/hackspace community is the willingness to share mistakes. And one the best examples is the The Art Of 3D Print Failure group on Flickr. A small group of people sharing what they’ve learnt from their 3D printing experiments by getting it very, very wrong.
It all stemmed from a blog post by RichRap. RichRap normally makes fabulous things but he decided to take time to diagnose why some of his attempts at printing had gone horribly wrong (and in some cases looked like ectoplasm). From that post, the group was born.
Here in Leeds we’re all keen to get a 3D printer right after getting the new space and some of our members are already using their own and learning how to avoid the pitfalls. Check out this piece Craig brought along to our Tuesday meeting this week:
Craig’s Printing
It’s part of one his current projects and is a fair bigger than most badges and trinkets we’ve seen as starter projects. In fact it took 3 hours to print due to the size/thickness of it. We were all impressed by the solidity of it and the fineness of the weave which is really visible close up.
Craig’s promised to run a 3D printing day for us next year so we can start plotting crazy designs of our own, can’t wait! Even if we get it wrong, we’ll have somewhere supportive to share the photos…
Bit of an impromptu 80s night tonight.
