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I mentioned in a previous post how I wanted to get more people doing social things that related to hacking, like going to the Micromouse event last Saturday. I thought it’d be a great opportunity for people to see what else is available to the community and to link different micro communities that would eventually encourage more discussion and collaboration between the groups. Well, it looks like I’m not the only one with that idea. Several members of the group have been rather vocal on making the meetings more than fortnightly. My only concern with a move like that is that there’s a risk of exhaustion and people may feel under too much pressure to come. This is why I liked the suggestion of one member to have social meets in between the hacking sessions. In this way discussion can still continue and it may be a great way for new members to get better acquainted to other members.

Now the next task is to seek out of technical events in the West Midlands that we could go to and also to just chill over brew! If people interested in attending a social next week have a preference over day vote here

On Thursday 11th June I gave a presentation about Open Source Software and its relationship to open source software. You can download my slides. There’s lots of information in the notes so be sure to check.

In general I covered the usual things including what programs there are availble to facilitate creativity. One thing I wanted to emphasise was the need for more collaboration between coders and artists/non-coders.

What makes many of the open source creative programs so powerful is their extensibility. In many of the programs have a scripting environment where plugins can be written, often in Python, that can do many things, such as batch processing, modifying an image in real time or just about anything that the programmer can imagine. A problem that we (the open source community) face is that not everyone is a coder. So, they may see the scripting environment as a drawback instead of a feature.

So, I think there needs to be more education about the capabilities of the software and demonstrating of what can be achieved by learning programming and understanding more about your tools.

Since February I have been running a hackerspace network called fizzPOP. The aim of this is to eventually acquire a permanent space for people to come and share ideas and collaborate on their projects. THe benefits of having a space include actually getting out of the house and, having a space with materials that you may not have .e.g. a lazer-cutter and just generally being in a friendly environment to bounce around ideas with other people.

Aside from the obvious issue of acquiring a space, which we recently (kind of) rectified, one of the problems we’ve had is in defining ourselves.

I think the UK is generally new to the idea of a hackerspace. They’ve been around Europe and America since modern computing came about. It has its roots in the DIY movement and the activities at a hackerspace can be anything from learning a programming language to learning how to construct and use a sewing machine. The key element is the sharing of skills and exploration of technology.

Back to the problem, how can you define something that covers such a broad range of topics? Many of our members, upon coming to a meeting have asked, “So, what do we do?” The answer to that is usually to do whatever you want, but perhaps some boundaries or instruction might be needed. People may respond better if there is a set task for them to focus on. The danger in doing this is that you may then alienate those who do not want to take part in the task.

Overall, what I would like for fizzPOP is for there to be tutorials/workshops on a particular subject that run alongside the usual ‘anything goes’ activities. For this, however, you need people who want to run workshops. How do you encourage this?

Last Saturday I went down to London to attend OpenLab 5:

Openlab are providing a day of workshops & presentations about opensource software, and performances in the evening at Cafe OTO, Dalston. There is a venerable lineup of OpenLab members providing some in depth knowledge during the day and some great performances at night.

The workshops I were looking forward to most were the ones that involved Pure:Data and Processing. I’ve messed around with both of those programs before but I’ve only ever just edited the example files. That is until after some of the workshops: That was a snippet of work by Daniel Jones. It combined Supercollider and Processing and a camera to convert images into sound, which is something I’ve wanted to accomplish for a long time.

In another of the workshops I was introduced to the basics of Processing, which reminds me a lot of my days coding in ActionScript. Once I’ve studied the Processing book (thanks Charlie!) and learnt how to manipulate SVG’s I’ll be back on track with my coding artworks! You can see what I did that day below if you’re curious about Processing yourself.

void setup() {

  size(510, 510);
  background(0);
  colorMode(HSB);
  
}



void draw() {
  noStroke();
  fill(0,255,80,20);
  rect(102,0, 102,150);
  rect(206,0, 102,150);
  
  
  if (mousePressed)
  {  
  noStroke();
  fill(mouseX / random(5),mouseY,80,random(50));
  rect(mouseX - 50, mouseY - 75, 100,150);
  }
  
  
  strokeWeight(4);
  stroke(100, 50, 60);
  line(10,10,500,500);  
  line(500,1,10,500); 

}

Whilst Nikki and Pete have been hacking their toys and gadgets to make all manner of noises I’ve gone the soldering-free option by making sweet noise on my laptop in Pure:Data. This originally started in the hack session at the Linux Emporium as an attempt to make a sort of theme tune for the hack space. By the end of the day I’d accomplished making fart-like noises that mess up your head a bit. At the next hack session I’d progressed a little bit further and made my farty noises a little bit more controllable with the use of sliders and buttons.

I want to progress my little fart-machine and make the random noises keyboard controllable and eventually have a sort of ambient fart-noise generator that actually sounds tuneful. As long as you have Pure Data installed you can download what I did and try it for yourself.

Clicky here to download

Whilst you’re at it join the mailing list ;-)