DW's blog

Hey, don't just watch the video tour of kwartzlab's new home, come on over to my kwartzlab blog and check out stills from our cleanup-meetup.  Oh yeah, and join us!  Time's a wastin' for getting in on a founding membership which comes with a leap-of-faith key right out of the gate and a warm fuzzing feeling inside when you discover you've found your people.

DW

a few pics over at the new blog on kwartzlab...

I've moved my blog to KWartzlab's newly launched site.  C'mon over and check out the thing I wrote about running your own meetup.

DW

In talking with people about KWartzLab, I'm increasingly getting questions on the difference between KWartzLab and Make:KW.  Here's a crack at an explanation...

It's official: KWartzLab is incorporated!  Just got the papers back from the gov on Wednesday.  This lets us move forward on all fronts: bank accounts, insurance, leases, ...

We wasted no time in calling the first official board meeting.  Click through for deets...

Alexandra is making a most beautiful dress with this sort of detail.  Quite amazing.  She has a digital sewing machine that can accept vector images and reproduce them in thread.  This and more at the social meetup last night at Zeke's (thanks for organizing it, Ben!)  Click through for deets...

It just so happens that 9 out of the 23 KWartzLab founders work at RIM, so I thought it would be fun to get some lunch together.  And it was!  Gus, Natalie, Katrina, Andrew, James, and I went to Mikey's today.  Cheryl, Matt, and Pawel had other commitments, but we'll catch them next time.  Katrina's pick for our next lunch was Kismet (who feed me twice a week on a regular basis --addictive naan).

James Taylor sang "I've seen fire and I've seen rain" and we sure saw lots of both on Sunday during our metal casting meetup at Gus' place.  In true Maker spirit we all just figured out how to make it work and it was a blast.  It was my first metal cast and it provided many "wow" moments.  (video shot by Natalie --thanks Nat!)

We're going to carve up these cuttlefish bones and pour molten metal into them to Make interesting things.  Come join us on Sunday.

Make: mine a double.
DW

A bunch of us went back to our leading candidate space for KWartzLab at Boehmer Box on Duke St. Friday night to go through with a fine-toothed comb in preparation for negotiating the lease and figure out requirements for cleaning/buildout/reno.  Click through for deets...

Andrew and Jose & Company were rocking the bike generator in front of MC at lunch today at UW.  They're with the Sustainable Technology Education Project (STEP).  DC motor/generator is hooked to the bike stand, spinning off the rim, hooked to an overvolt circuit, hooked to an inverter, which is powering the small amp, which is loudly rocking some iPod tunes.  Click through for deets...

Yes, these are two full-sized arcade games tossed in the dumpster in front of the Barley Works on King St.  Spotted at 10pm Thursday night.  Somebody do the right thing and rescue them.  And bring a few friends 'cause this dumpster is 6 feet high, though it does have a convenient ladder on the side.  This will take 2 divers in the dumpster and 2 on the outside to recover.  Plus a van or pickup.

Much fun was had today in uptown Waterloo.  KWartzLab and MakeKW were invited to join in the DIY and DJ's event in Waterloo's new public square (thanks Tracy!).  We talked to dozens of people about our hacker space start up and made lots of friends.  If this looks like fun, please join us.  If you have questions about the hacker space, you can contact me.  Click through for deets...

• is concise
• is easy to pronounce/spell/understand verbally
• offers a balanced symmetry of hard consonant "k" sounds in both syllables that is both strong and memorable
• is descriptive, employing "make": the primary purpose of the space and "box": the fundamental shape of any room in which we'll work
• suggests simple and powerful graphics for logos and other materials representing our identity.  Easily rendered at a variety of resolutions and colours
• links conceptually to our home workspaces, full of boxes that are full of parts to fuel the making
   

 A story...

It was a banner afternoon for talking about hacker spaces.

Made five new friends from five different hacker spaces:

1. Brett Stephens - Houston - Technology Collective of Houston - along with his wife Asha (sp? from Guelph!) this is a new group just getting off the ground. It's amazing how we all have very similar challenges. They held early meetings in a coffee shop/bar which garnered lots of incidental walk by traffic and interest thanks to all the blinking LEDs.
2. Paul Mantz - Chicago - Pumping Station:One - Paul's group includes an awesome variety of skilled makers including an architect and a carpenter. That really helps when you're refitting you space. Collecting monthly dues before actually getting the space seems pretty common. Paul thought we were perhaps overestimating our monthly operating costs by estimating them at our rent rate.
3. Bre Pettis - NYC - NYC Resistor - talked about the importance of vetting new members. Also talked about the need to delegate work. I could watch Bre's company's MakerBot extrude ABS plastic all day.
4. Rob Flickenger - Seattle - Hackerbot Labs - another new-member-vetting conversation and he mentioned a cool idea (from a 3rd party) of creating a hackerspace visa which could be stamped with unique stamps each time you visit a foreign hackerspace. Rob had good questions around the motivation for starting our group and the importance of defining that vision.
5. Leigh Honeywell - Toronto - hacklab - intros to Rob's group, talk about incorporation, the benefit of natural light in your space, invite to hacklab whenever we're in the city, offer of some help if we're putting in rfid access control. Leigh will be doing a how-to-sew meetup by popular demand at hacklab. She also suggested the hackerspaces DL which some of you are probably on, saying signal-to-noise is pretty good despite some recent flamewars.

Having an AMAZING time at the Faire. Wish you were here.

It kinda sorta actually worked.   Read on for deets...

The bulb has been found.  After calling Henry's, Bent's, and Home Depot, and putting out a maker-materials APB, I finally tracked down a BBA No. 1 250W Photoflood at BJ Photo.  $8.  4 hours of life.  Sort of ironic that I find the bulb within a kilometer of my desk at work.  Bikeable.  Nice.

Apparently I need this bulb to do the exposure of the photo-sensitive emulsion on the screen...

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We (14!)

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