If you ever find yourself on the street with a bottle of wine and you don’t have a corkscrew, this simple instructional video will help show you how to remove the cork using just your shoe and the wall of a building.

via The Daily What

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photo by Adam

Adam, who used to work for us at Laughing Squid, recently proposed to his girlfriend Christina using an engagement ring that he designed and his friend Adam created using a MakerBot 3D Printer at the Hive76 hackerspace in Philadelphia.

MakerBot even sent the couple an engagement gift.

Congratulations Adam & Christina!

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photos by Scott Beale

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by the one year anniversary and open house for Noisebridge, a marvelous hackerspace in San Francisco that recently moved into a huge new space on Mission Street in San Francisco.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world.

Photo Gallery: Noisebridge

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Sean Bonner has decided to take on the challenge of creating a Hackerspace in Los Angeles which he is calling Crash Space. He’s setup a mailing list, as well as a wiki and is looking others interested in working on the project.

Check out Hackerspaces for more info about Hackerspaces around the world. Who knows, maybe you’ll be inspired to set one up in your city as well.

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guest post by Burstein!

The hackerspace Noisebridge is one of San Francisco’s cultural and artistic gems. Its members have contributed a wide variety of art, hacks and local culture.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. We help people build neat and awesome things.

On Friday, October 2nd, these über-makers and geeks are having an open house for their one year anniversary that will show off what they have done and can do. This alone is worth the price of admission, which is free. Things to see include:

The Brain Machine (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Compass Vibro-Anklet (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Makerbot Robot (which can be used at noisebridge)

Also at the event will be the Reverse Engineering Bar with only the geekiest of drinks and music by DIY-band Corpus Callosum and Cally McMorrow, circuit bender of legend.

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guest post by Violet Blue

We’re absolutely sure that with the aid of super-futuristic technology that we know is being invented right now, sex in the future will be more amazing than our Cylon-Cylon (plus Replicant, plus Cameron/T9) fantasies could imagine. I mean, I just get stuck thinking of two Summer Glau’s kissing. But until then, and barring Chinese manufacturing of a cheap entry-level priced Peep Show Holodeck (patent pending), we have the annual international sex and technology festival Arse Elektronika.

This year’s theme “Of Intercourse and Intracourse” promises to be a buffet of futuristic and fantastic sexual innovations, artistic explorations, and virtual hallucinations of the sci-fi-meets-pr0n kind. The thing is, it’s in just two weeks and with poeple flying in from all over the world to participate, there are a lot of talks and happenings to choose from. Starting October 1 to the 4th, events will be at various San Francisco locations including Roxie Theater, Center for Sex and Culture, Noisebridge, Femina Potens Gallery, and PariSoMa.

Tickets to each of the three-day events are here at Brown Paper Tickets. The main site with the full schedule is here.

Don’t have time to sift the schedule to find out where to see the hot robot sex action? Here are recommended highlights:

* Thursday, October 1 is the opening night, and we’re excited to see that Annalee Newitz will be speaking at the opening gala. It officially starts at 6pm with an explicit film festival at the Roxie Theater in the Mission, and is followed by in-theater opening presentations that, if you’ve seen the Arse opening (and award ceremony) before, you’ll know they’re anything but dry. Also, not on the schedule is a hardware-hacked Atari Joydick showdown: male vs. female gaming parts. We’re sure this will be pretty outrageous.

* Friday, October 2 talks start at the Center for Sex and Culture at 8pm, but the one we won’t be missing is Johannes Grenzfurthner’s “Dating Yog-Sothoth and Fucking a Zombie.” If you’ve seen his presentations, you know he’s — rather unpredictable. The talk’s description is only, “Bizarre Sci-Fi and Fantasy in Graphic Novels. No spoilers.” Enough said.

* Saturday, October 3 is the Big Fat Future Sex Day, with talks going from 11:30am to 9pm at ParisSoMa, then a not-to-be-missed (though limited capacity) evening gala at frisky erotic art gallery Femina Potens, starting at 10pm. Daytime talk highlights include “Sex Without Meat: How Singularitarians View Sex” by R.U. Sirius, “Will You Still Love Me Like This In The Year 2300?” by Annalee Newitz, and “Biometrics in the Bedroom” by Kyle Machulis (AKA qDot). The nighttime future sex fiesta includes a bizarre installation of DIY porn tools, plus a six-piece musical act that fits the theme while putting the flesh into all this hypothetical sex. This is the party, replicants.

* Sunday October 4 is the hackfest: at hacker space Noisebridge, sex hackers will demo how to create a Joydick (and other sex/gaming hybrids), you can learn how to make your own ’steampunk’ vibrator from the expert, the Thrillhammer’s Allen Stein will show you genital-based haptic devices and much more.

We’ll see you there. Just don’t get your dangly bits too close to the moving parts. Unless that’s your fetish.

photos by Scott Beale

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Repurpose is a great doucmentary short by Jack Oatmon about hardware hacking and hackerspaces. The video focuses on the Montreal hardware hacking community, including Foulab.

Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?

via Bre Pettis

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Make and Craft present Maker Faire 2009, the world’s largest DIY festival, which is returns to the San Mateo County Expo Center for its 4th year next weekend, Saturday, May 30th and Sunday, May 31st.

Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America”, Maker Faire 2009 will be organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 30-31, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.” The fourth annual Maker Faire will showcase individual creativity and grassroots innovation in the largest festival devoted to DIY culture and technology in the country.

Here are my photos from Maker Faire Bay Area 2008.

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guest post by Burstein!

Ghostmatrix is the latest project by Johnathan Foote, is a light printer that it creates ghostly letters that glow in the dark and then fade away. Eerie.

Well, this was supposed to be a weekend hack. Only it took a few months. In any case, it’s kind of working now! What is it? It’s a light printer that uses an array of UV LEDs mechanically scanned across phosphorescent paper, leaving a matrix of glowing dots that slowly fade. Hence “ghostmatrix.” I scavenged the linear motor from SRL discard pile, and used an Adafruit Mini POV3 with custom software as the light engine.

photo by Johnathan Foote

Johnathan provides all the gory techy details on his blog, which also has a number of other interesting pieces.

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photo by Tony Campanale

“Doing Da Vinci” is a new show airing Monday nights at 10pm on the Discovery Channel. Our good friend Flash Hopkins, who has been involved in the San Francisco art community for years and Burning Man from the beginning, is part of the team on the show, a group of experts who’s goal is to build some Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions that have never before been constructed. Here are some video clips from the show.

Leonardo da Vinci was the original Renaissance Man — master of science, master of the arts, master of war. His revolutionary designs were the most advanced weapons of their day and were capable of unparalleled destruction. Yet no proof exists that they were ever constructed.
In Doing DaVinci a team of expert builders will try to construct these unique inventions using only materials available in da Vinci’s own time. It’s a modern twist on the classics, but will these outrageous machines work? Or were Leonardo’s genius ideas better left in the history books?

The series premieres tonight, April 13th on at 10pm ET/PT with an episode on building DaVinci’s “Armored Tank”. In San Francisco you can catch the show in HD on channel 750 at 7:00pm or the regular broadcast on channel 15 at 10:00pm.

On a sad note, Saturday I received an email from Tom Kennedy, the day before he unexpectedly passed away. He was helping to promote Flash’s new show. Tom has collaborated with Flash on numerous projects over the years including “The Whale” at Burning Man and the “Topsy-Turvy Bus”. Here’s the email Tom sent out to his friends:

The intention of this email is to let you
know that Flash has a Discovery Channel
TV show premiering Monday evening,
called Doing Da Vinci. I believe that
it is scheduled to air at both 7 & 10 PM.

Flash does not have a publicity
department back here, but I thought
it was important to let his friends know that
his show is about to air. If I was to help
him spread the word, I would send out
a few emails. Tell your friends of course.

And for you tech savy Flash fans, go to
Discovery.com and search for the show called
Doing Da Vinci and you can view over ten clips
that show the team of builders, including Flash,
build some amazing machines out of the
sketchbooks of Leonardo DaVinci. Building
mostly war machines, the crew sometimes
encounter disagreements on how to get
the job done…and Flash will be Flash….

…Your mission, if you decide to accept it, is
to watch (or record) TV on Monday night.
This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds….

Over and Out,
Major Tom

Doing DaVinci
Discovery Channel
Monday, April 13th
7 & 10 PM

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

On Wired’s Gadget Lab blog, Dylan Tweeny has written an excellent article on the burgeoning global DIY hackerspace movement.

“There are zillions of people around the world doing this,” says Altman, referring to the swell of interest in do-it-yourself projects and hacking. “It’s a worldwide community.”

At the center of this community are hacker spaces like Noisebridge, where like-minded geeks gather to work on personal projects, learn from each other and hang out in a nerd-friendly atmosphere. Like artist collectives in the ’60s and ’70s, hacker spaces are springing up all over.

NoiseBridge - a collectively operated hackerspace located in San Francisco’s Mission District – is extensively profiled, as is Brooklyn’s NYC Resistor.

“It’s almost a Fight Club for nerds,” says Nick Bilton of his hacker space, NYC Resistor.

See Previously:

- NoiseBridge, An Open Project Space for Hackers In San Francisco

- NYC Resistor, An Electronics & Hardware Hacker Space In Brooklyn

- Hacker Spaces, Community Operated Project Work Spaces

photos by Dylan Tweeny / Wired.com & Rubin Abdi, image by Suzanne R Forbes

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Our friends at NYC Resistor built an awesome Sudo Make Me a Sandwich Robot, bringing a classic xkcd comic to life. Bre Pettis has more background on the project.

comic by xkcd

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Recently ADDCO electronic road construction signs in Austin were altered to warn rush hour drivers of an impending zombie invasion. No Fear of the Future has the full story.

Dustin Coates shot video of an altered sign showing the zombie warnings it displayed.

I-Hacked shows how easy it is to alter a ADDCO portable sign.

Move Coverage:

- Austinist

- The Austin American-Statesman

- KXAN

Thanks to Lori Dorn for the tip!

photos by Chris Nakashima-Brown & I-Hacked

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The cover of Make Magazine #16, “Spy Tech”, was created by MAD Magazine art director Sam Viviano and features the most notorious spies of all time, Spy vs. Spy.

via Boing Boing

image via Make

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Cockeyed has a great guide to Kids Halloween Candy Code, a way of marking homes in chalk with Hobo-style code to indicate what kind of treat they are offering.

Thanks to RICK! for the tip!

image via Cockeyed

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories show you how to make the Scariest Jack-o’-Lantern of 2008, a Stock Ticker Mini Pumpkin.

Jack-o’-Lanterns are supposed to be scary, right? So here is our new one: it’s a mini pumpkin with a (tiny) scrolling LED stock ticker. Reprogrammable so you can update it every day with gloomy news from Wall Street.

See Previously: Robotic Snap-O-Lantern & Other Pumpkin Robots

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Make Magazine and Craft Magazine present the 2nd annual Maker Faire Austin which takes place October 18 & 19 at the Travis County Exposition Center in Austin, TX.

Here’s are my photos from Maker Faire Austin 2007.

photos by Scott Beale

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NoiseBridge, a new open project space for hackers, just opened San Francisco’s Mission District. See Hacker Spaces for similar spaces around the world.

We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art – with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.

UPDATE: Here’s more on NoiseBridge from co-founder Jacob Appelbaum.

See Also:

- NYC Resistor, An Electronics & Hardware Hacker Space In Brooklyn

- Hacker Spaces, Community Operated Project Work Spaces

via NYC Resistor

photo by Jacob Appelbaum

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Joey Daoud, a student at Florida State University, is working on “You 2.0″, a documentary about Life Hacking, a process of using productivity tips and hacks to help deal with information overload and stay organized.

Here’s the teaser trailer, which features Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Workweek), Merlin Mann (43 Folders), Gina Trapani (Lifehacker), Leo Laporte (TWiT), Danny O’Brien (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and David Allen (GTD – Getting Things Done).

via Merlin Mann

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Our good friend Bre Pettis who produces new media for Etsy, has created a television pilot for “History Hacker” airing tonight on The History Channel. On the show, which Bre produced and hosts, he explores history’s great inventors, taking a hands-on look at their inventions and new ways to hack them. The pilot episode, which is all about Nikola Tesla and his pioneering work with electricity, airs tonight, Friday, September 26th at 8pm and midnight. Here’s the History Hacker teaser video.

Meet Nikola Tesla, the unsung genius behind the most miraculous advances of the Age of Electricity, and Hacker-extraordinaire Bre Pettis who will break the history of electricity down to its nuts and bolts. Bre will show you how to build your own versions of Tesla’s greatest inventions and takes you on a journey from New York City’s ultra modern power plants, to one of the world’s most advanced satellite research labs, and then onward into the future of energy…unlimited wireless power.

If all goes well Bre’s “History Hacker” pilot will be turned into a full series on The History Channel, so please help make this a reality by spreading the word about the show. If you can’t watch it live, be sure to set your Tivo or DVR to record it. Here’s the show listing on The History Channel.

You can give feedback and discuss the show in the History Channel Forums and History Hacker Facebook group and for the latest updates, follow Bre on Twitter.

UPDATE 1: If you have Comcast in San Francisco, there are 4 air times: 5pm & 9pm on HISTHD (Channel 758) and 8pm & 12m on HISTW (Channel 62).

UPDATE 2: The BitTorrent for History Hacker is now available on Mininova.

photo by Bre Pettis

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