Hey laser cutting people: I have discovered excellent settings for laser cutting 1/8″ plywood. Regulate the current to just a pinch under 15mA and use the following settings:

3 Passes / 18.75% Speed / 100% power.

The reduced speed (25% to 18.75% – a 25% reduction) seems to account for the needed power, while the reduced number of passes (also a 25% and thus proportional reduction) reduces the excess char that is produced by the laser.

I’m going to be borrowing one of our Cupcake CNC’s over thanksgiving weekend to make a ton of prints. If all goes well, I’ll bring it back on Sunday with at least two sets of Prusa RPs printed, along with some spools and other goodies if time and materials permit. Awesomeness shall ensue.

Also, feast your eyes on two new Replicators to this world! one of them, currently just a concept/in early stages of design and development could be the successor to the Prusa Mendel, and the other could be the first real “RepRap for the rest of us” type thing.

Gobble Gobble! Go forth and replicate!

Let’s have a meetup where geeks can talk about depression and suicide. You are not alone. Share your story, if you like. Share a friend’s story. Or just hang out and listen. Let’s make it OK to talk about these things so that we don’t feel so alone with our feelings of being alone and depressed or suicidal.

This is not a support group — none of us are trained professionals, but we can get together in a safe, confidential space to talk about depression and suicide — an important part of life for so many of us geeks.

If others elsewhere in the world feel like creating their own meetups, please do.

Mitch.
#ilyaz

Ilya hung out at Noisebridge, and also led workshops and hackathons for Diaspora at our space.  Most people who met him were quickly taken in by his enthusiasm and do-ocratic charisma.  I became instant friends with him the first day he showed up at Noisebridge shortly after he moved to San Francisco last year.

Hardly anyone had even a clue that Ilya was depressed, let alone suicidal.  He was bubbly, cheerful, excited about all the way cool projects he was implementing, as well as the ones he had thought, and would think of.

Last night was his memorial in San Francisco, followed a party in his backyard in the Mission.  This party was typical of the epic parties Ilya threw in his backyard over the past many months, bringing together so many wonderful people — incredible opportunities to have fun meeting and connecting with each other.  The only thing atypical last night was that Ilya was not there.

Both the memorial and the party were full of people who knew and loved Ilya, and who Ilya knew and loved.  Ilya could have reached out to any one of us — any time of day or night.  He could have reached out.  But he didn’t.

For Ilya to have held in and hid his pain so well that all of these people, including myself, had no clue — Ilya must have felt *so* alone, *so* isolated, exacerbating his pain too greatly.  If he had reached out, maybe — maybe — he could have lived another day.  But he didn’t.

I lived the first half of my life in total and utter depression.  No joy, just shame, just self-loathing, dread and anxiety and fear of other people — total depression.  I know what it is like to be depressed.  I know what it is like to live for one’s whole life knowing and believing that the best life might have to offer is the ability for me to endure the pain till I eventually died.  That was the best possibility.  As with Ilya, I hid all of this from the world as best as I could.  And most people had no clue I was depressed.

Yet, I learned, through making choices for myself, and learning from the consequences of my choices, and with help and support of others, over a period of many years, making more choices, learning, growing, crashing, burning, making more choices, more support. . . — I eventually learned to live a life I love.  I love the life I live!  If I could learn to live a life I love, then, certainly, it is possible for anyone to do this!

It is more than possible — it is way worthwhile, way rewarding, way wonderful to go through the experiences of our life — through the ups and the downs, through the all-arounds, and all the pain and suffering and joy and love and excitement — and come to a place where you know that the pain, regardless of its intensity, is yet another (perhaps seemingly unendurable) experience, which gives way to more of what makes life even more worthwhile.

Depression is an important part of life.  Everyone experiences it to some extent.  But to those of us who know chronic depression, it is our own unique hell.

Unique as it is to each of us, we all share a lot.

And we all have a lot to share with each other. Through the ups, and the downs, the all-arounds.

For someone who has no experience reaching out, it can seem to be the scariest thing possible.  But it is possible.

It is very possible.  Ilya is dead.  But you — you are still alive.  If you are contemplating suicide, please know that you are not alone.  You are part of a community of others, many of whom know what it is like to be hopelessly depressed.  Many of whom are more than open for you to reach out to (if you only knew!).

You *can* choose to kill yourself.  But it will be your last choice.  If you are ready to kill yourself, why not try out one choice first?  What do you have to lose?  I know it is scary, and perhaps way shameful, and maybe too awful, and extremely difficult — but, really, what do you have to lose?  Please know that you *can* choose to reach out to someone.  Please, know that you can.  Please, pick someone and reach out.

Why wait till your pain is so unendurable?  You can reach out now.  (Really, you can.)

Thanks,
Mitch.

The Occupy Movement is an international protest movement which is primarily directed against social and economic inequality. Currently near by to us there are Occupy encampments in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.

Noisebridge as always is open to those looking for a space to work on projects, and resources to make those projects a reality. We've been seeing more and more groups coming through seeking aid for things related to the Occupancy. Together we've built out interesting ways to recharge car and cell phone batteries, provided internet at camp, had meetings about web presence, document GA minutes and more.

We want to let participants of the Occupy Movement know that we're here and open to them. We've also started a site called hackupy.org. Hackupy are open hack nights at hackerspaces for Occupy related projects, and the site gives a listing of spaces which provide such nights. So far hackupy has been happening at NYC: Resistor and almost 24/7 at Noisebridge, and we look forward to seeing more hackerspaces jump in and provide time to those wanting to hack for excellence!]]> http://blog.noisebridge.net/2011/11/12/hackupy-org-hack-nights-for-the-occupy-movement/feed/ 0 http://blog.noisebridge.net/2011/11/10/durp-goes-the-power-supply/ http://blog.noisebridge.net/2011/11/10/durp-goes-the-power-supply/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:14:02 +0000 elijah http://blog.noisebridge.net/?p=565 Fantastic day at Replicator Wednesday, although unproductive, for the power was reset while I was printing prusa parts, and I lost the print. However, this is why PLA is so wonderful. When I was done swearing, I could simply toss the PLA garbage in the Blue recycling bin as a category 7.

A word to the wise: If you wanna learn CAD, DO NOT START WITH GOOGLE SKETCHUP. I’m a recovering SketchUp user, and am now learning PTC Creo. At the very least, I can export to .stl (and all the other things as well)

I myself am helping to build George and Gracie. They are not from television from ages past, nor are they whales from Star Trek IV (Although if you do research about that movie you’ll see why they kind of are related to those whales). They are the names of the two new RepRap Prusa Mendels that I, Miloh, and Andrew are working on bringing into this world.

I’ll have updates thereof, as well as updates from our regularly scheduled event, Replicator Wednesday. By the way, y’all should all go to that. It runs on Wednesdays from 1700 to 2200. There, you can learn about and how to do 3D printing.

Say, why not an update now? As it stands, the frames of both Prusas are tightened up, and we are building up the Y-Stages. I’ll run along and buy some plywood and bring it in on Wednesday (2 November). We had some acrylic, but cutting it (with a jig-saw) didn’t go so well.

Miloh has our ten NEMA-17 stepper motors needed for the two machines. It’s getting exciting because we pretty much have everything we need to assemble the machines.

Anyway, that which does not get finished on Wednesdays, I try to finish on Sundays if I’m not already busy. Hopefully the machines will be done in a few weeks.

That’s all for now. I shall attempt to make an update at least one weekly, but I’m very busy at this time.

Cheers!

If you missed Hackmeet and you can make it to Mexico next week then you could go to Hackmitin, another free unconference! Hackmeet sponsored a representative from Hacklab Autónomo and his talk on their activities was very interesting.

Hackmitin will be held just north of Mexico City, at Cereza in Ojo de Agua, October 28-30. Here’s a link directly to their call for participation. The focus will be on software libre – privacidad – hacktivismo – resistencia y desobediencia digital: free software, privacy, hacktivism, resistance and digital civil disobedience.

Here’s some photos of the Hackmitin taken by Mitch Altman.

People sitting in a big circle for a group discussion of technology and privilege:

Morgan Mayhem (@headhntr) speaking on anti-forensics, i.e. ways to help secure data or delete it from a hard drive so it can’t be stolen, intercepted, recovered and read. Standing room only for this talk!

A medium-sized audience for a talk in Noisebridge’s main room:

And some of the intrepid cooks who fed everyone for two days:

Hackmeet organizers suggested that we might work with them in coming months to make some modifications to Noisebridge that make it easier to use for events. The main improvement, one many people have suggested in the past, is sound insulation for the different rooms. We could build up the walls between the shop and the classrooms, or put up sound baffles of some kind, or perhaps set up thick theatrical curtains to muffle noise.

3-Day Hackerspace at Maker Faire Africa

I’m in Cairo.  The main reason for this trip was to set up a 3-day hackerspace at Maker Faire Africa, which is in Cairo this year.  Exciting time to be here!  Lots of high hopes since the “Freedom Revolution”.  Plus lots of attempts by the still-ruling-military at divide-and-rule.

Our trip was funded by generous donations from 186 people, who collectively gave us $8,169 so that we could spread the joy and hope provided by the international hackerspace movement.  <http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/3-day-egyptian-maker-space-expanding-the-maker-mov/>

The 3-day hackerspace at Maker Faire Africa was incredible!  The main idea of setting this up was to show people how incredibly cool it is to be part of a supportive community where people explore and do what they love.  And the energy was high.  I taught about 300 people to solder (on my own) at an ongoing, 3-day-long workshop, with kits and soldering irons bought with money donated through our Kickstarter campaign.  The brand new Cairo Hackerspace put together the MakerBot, donated by MakerBot Industries, and also put together the Egg-Bot, donated by Evil Mad Scientist — and they gave 3-D printing workshops.  Minal gave fabric painting workshops.  Bilal gave several Arduino workshops with Arduinos donated by a new local electronics store named Future-Electronics.  Lots of fun for all!  I gave away lots of Noisebridge keys to people who will be visiting us someday in San Francisco.  And Cairo Hackerspace now has a large number of enthusiastic people who will help contribute to Egypt’s first hackerspace.

Before Maker Faire Africa we organized two Hackerspace Meetups, to get people psyched about starting and joining hackerspaces.  The first was hosted by a co-working space in Cairo named Rasheed22.  The second was hosted by a startup incubator in Alexandria named Tahrir2 [the 2 is actually a superscript, and pronounced "squared" -- a reference to the "Freedom Revolution" much of which took place in Tahrir Square in Cairo].

Mitch in Giza

We will have two more Hackerspace meetups before we leave on the 14th.

Photos of all of the above are at my Flickr: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/maltman23/sets/>

Mitch.

There is a powerful, small minority of ultra-right-wing Islamic theocrats called the Salafiyun, with ties to the supreme military council running the country. They want to rid the country of Coptic Christians (and, of course, Jews), and want to force Islamic law on Egypt.

Coptic Christians are angry at many violent and deadly attacks on them over recent days and months, and were demonstrating today in Cairo, when thugs of unknown association(s) attacked them. The Copts attacked back with weapons (perhaps ones taken from police or military).

There has been hatred exacerbated and promulgated by many religious groups: Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, Coptic Christian (with everyone hating the Jews). This is accelerating and getting worse. If this hatred and violence continues the “Freedom Revolution” is under threat of becoming a big win for the Salafiyun. (And many believe that it is being purposely spurred on by provocateurs from the previous Mubarak government and the Salfiyun.)

Let us hope that the majority of people here, who want to live in peace, and enjoy the freedom to be themselves, continue to prevail without violence (since, in my view, any apparent gains by violence will be of little long-term value).