Wow, sounds like an awesome team here making an awesome sculpture!

Zillij by Chris K Palmer, (modified from a traditional design by his student Elizabeth Ager), 2009, 12″ diameter. Cut on the Craft ROBO Pro and assembled by Jeffrey Rutzky.

Creating forms using the box slot connection began with work by Akio Hizume, who wrote custom software to calculate patterns, as well as scale and life-sized towers.

Ryan made an awesome video about his hacked washing machine!

I just hacked my washing machine last week so that it’s now network accessible and tells me when my laundry has finished or is still in use. It notifies me via a BetaBrite sign in the house, and also Twitter. The point was to prevent forgetting the wash in the washing machine and thus prevent that mildew smell (yuk).

I was on a really great panel today at 25c3 about the hackerspaces that are emerging around the world. Each one of us covered a little bit about the experience of starting a hackerspace.

Today I had a bit of an urban adventure holiday with my friend Martin. We visited Teufelsberg. Teufelsberg is a hilltop place in Berlin where the USA listened to the communications of the Eastern block as best they could. They had these high tech radar towers that were in the weather protected safety of the domes.

For a time there was talk of turning them into luxury condos, but that didn’t pan out.

The entire hill is made of the rubble from WW2. It’s rather difficult and dangerous to be there. The fence is always being repaired.

19 hacker spaces from around the world have submitted a 500 word piece about their beginning, 5 photos, and their logo. AWESOME! With only three days, hackerspaces from around the world rallied and scheduled extra meetings, im conversations, and writing sessions to meet the deadline.

We’ve also had interest in making it actually be an actual, touch the pages book. Exciting!

We are now looking for supplemental materials to put in the appendix. Is there a piece of writing, blogpost, warning sign text, or artwork that inspires you and the people you hack with? If so, shoot an email to us at book@hackerspaces.org and if it makes sense, we’ll put it in the appendix of the hackerspaces book.

Here are the hackerspaces that have submitted so far in order of submission:

1. net.culture club MAMA
2. Computer Club Itzehoe e.V.
3. Entropia
4. C3D2 HQ
5. /tmp/lab
6. RealRaum
7. CCCKC
8. VHS
9. voidpointer / hackerspace bxl
10. Metalab
11. Hacktory
12. syn2cat
13. Das Labor
14. c-base
15. The Datengarten
16. C4
17. Hacker Consortium
18. Chaos Mainz
19. Makers Local 256

There are a few hackerspaces missing from the list. If you notice that a glaring oversight, send them a note and tell them to submit. We’re also interested in hearing beginning stories from hackerspaces that no longer exist! The design will be finalized on Monday, so there is still time to submit for those who have been busy wrapping presents and drinking hot mulled wine… or just haven’t heard about it yet!

I’m not sure how it slipped through my internet scanners and spies, but I’ve just discovered liquidware, a place to buy and discover open source electronics.

There are some really awesome projects here including a really cool open source gamepack!

Invader is a french artist who creates pixelated invader-shaped art everywhere in the world. There is a heavy concentration in Vienna, as he did an installation here. When I lived in Manhattan there was an invader on my street that I didn’t notice for months when I lived there.

And even though I sound like a broken record everyday, here’s an HD file and an iPhone sized file. If you want to peruse all my videos you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

Here’s an interview with invader.

Steve Reeder is a cool guy. He and Anna Breitenberger run the wonderful Motmot shop in Vienna and make awesome designs, t-shirts, posters, and buttons!

I’ve made buttons for years by borrowing button machines like this. Steve does a great job of breaking it down. It’s a very satisfying process.

And even though I sound like a broken record everyday, here’s an HD file and an iPhone sized file. If you want to peruse all my videos you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

I am currently obsessed with taking pictures of small models. Here’s an aquatic scene.

Here are some tiny creatures that i photographed through a microscope! they were squirming around!

I’m not exactly sure what these are, but they look like they are made out pop bottles and are maybe models of micro-organisms.

Check out all my pictures from this visit in this slideshow!

Honzo was a chimpanzee taken from the wild in 1952 by Ernst Zwilling (a colonial revisionist and member of the Nazi party). In captivity Honzo became violent an grumpy and was put on a heavy diet of alcohol and cigarettes. When he died, he was immortalized in the Natural History Museum in Vienna where he continues to look sad.

Monochrom has written about Honzo and asked for artistic submissions, so i whipped this drawing up in skitch which is my favorite way of creating graphics.

A book should exist that shares the beginning of hackerspaces. It would inspire folks who are in the daydream stages of starting a hacker space and it would be totally awesome.

This book idea was the topic of conversation I was having with Astera. It’s an insane project, editing and designing and organizing a book and publishing a pdf for the international hacker congress, 25C3. We have to do it.

We’ve already had confirmation that some awesome hacker spaces will be submitting their 500 words, 5 pictures and logo.

Astera, who’s been one of the driving forces behind hackerspaces.org is going to be designing it so it won’t be the word document converted into pdf that it would have been if I were to design it. Yay for collaborations! I’ll be editing the text.

We sent out emails to all the hacker contacts we could get our hands on and a lot of them bounced. We’re a little bit worried that some hackerspaces won’t get the message so feel free to spread the word and send this blogpost around to hackerspace people you know.

You can see the email I sent out after the jump.

Dear Hackerspace Person!

I’m emailing you because you are associated with a hackerspace on the hackerspaces.org wiki.

Astera and I have been tasked with putting together a short publication documenting the beginning period of hackerspaces around the world and we’ve only got 10 days to pull it together. We’re hoping you can take some time to answer some questions and send us some photos so that your hackerspace can be a part of this book. The working title of the book is “Hacker Spaces: The Beginning. More than 80 invitations are going out to hackerspaces around the world to be a part of this book. It’s a rather epic task and your participation is eagerly anticipated!

Deadline: December 18th I know that’s just a few days during a busy time of year, but any later will make it difficult to get your hackerspace into the pdf book for 25c3, the worldwide hacker conference happening near the end of this month. Any earlier will make us very happy. Please hit reply all so that I can get your text and Astera can get your photos and start slapping everything into indesign.

Text: This book is a collection of details surrounding the beginning of your hacker space. If you’d like to just tell the story in 500 words, that’s fine. We’ve put together the questions below and so if you like, you can just answer them as best you can and send them back and that should give the world a glimpse into the beginning of your hackerspace! Again, total word count should be around 500. Understand that we’re going to be editing these entries for content and length.

Photos: We need 5 or more photos of your space. At least 300dpi and 2″x3″ or larger in JPG or EPS format. If possible, it would be great to see a few photos of people working in your space. If you have photos of your hackerspace already, please send them ASAP so Astera can start color correcting them and getting them into indesign.

Logo Image: We need a logo from your hackerspace ideally in a vector format like .eps or .ai.

We know it’s a busy time of year and if for some reason, you don’t have the time to do this, please delegate the task to someone in your hackerspace that can! Here we go!

Here’s some info we need just to stay organized.

Hackerspace name:
Hackerspace tagline:
Hackerspace website:
Hackerspace contact email (this might be you):

Ok, without further ado, here are the questions!

Tell the story of the beginning of the hackerspace. How did you come up with the idea? How did you choose the name of your hackerspace? What was your original vision?

What are some obstacles that you had to overcome at the beginning of your hackerspace when you were just getting started?

Describe your hackerspace. What do visitors to the space notice that is special about the space? What kind of tools and resources do you have at the space?

How often do you meet? What happens at these meetings?

Describe a disaster that occurred in your hackerspace. (flood, lightning, accident or some such thing)

What are some things that have come out of your hackerspace that you are most proud of?

Was there anything that you did that was essential to the start of your hackerspace? Do you have any advice for people who might be thinking of starting a hackerspace?

BONUS POINTS

If you get this all done and feel like going an extra mile you could do one of the following. Don’t do these if they will put you over the deadline.

1. Get members to tell a story or recount an adventure associated with the beginning of your hackerspace.
2. Draw a floor diagram.
3. Include a manifesto.

We will be releasing the PDF of the book under a creative commons license and we may get this published as an actual paper book. By responding to this email you are giving us the right to publish your text and photos in any way in all possible universes and dimensions.

Ok, so hopefully you’ve read through this and responded to all the questions. Here’s a checklist to make sure you’ve submitted everything we need for this book.

Info: The basics filled in above.
Text: About 500 words answering the questions above.
Photos: 5 or more photos of your hackerspace.
Logo: The logo of your hackerspace.

This project is going to be awesome! We really cannot wait for your reply!

While in Vienna, I met up with geeks every Sunday morning at WerkzeugH and while there I met Manfred, who explained his pay-what-you-want DIY Brunch experiment and a little bit of the philosophy and technology behind his restaurant space.

One of the things mentioned in this video is the Canon CHDK camera hack. It’s an awesome project that’s going on to upgrade canon camera’s firmware. You can learn more about it on the CHDK wiki.

Here’s an HD file and an iPhone sized file. If you want to peruse all my videos you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

In 2003 and 2004 I had an art studio and I would paint giant color field paintings using a knife with thick layers of oil paint. These would take days to dry and so I started making dolls to fill the time. I made the first one, a cute sad bunny, and took it to an art opening that night sticking out of my pocket. Over the course of the evening, four strangers tried to buy it off of me! I didn’t sell, but it got me started!

The sympathy doll idea is to make a doll that is so sad and pathetic that it inspires empathy and love from people. You really can’t feel too bad around these dolls because you just know that no matter what, you don’t have it that bad! I’ve made hundreds of these dolls, and here’s a small gallery of dolls that I’ve made for you to check out. - Link

Here’s a pdf and an HD file and iPhone sized file. If you want to peruse all my videos you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

Check out this demo software for creating stuffed animals! I’m looking forward to trying this out on a PC when I get a chance. If you try it out, leave your review in the comments. I’m curious what kind of files it outputs and I can’t wait until someone uploads a stuffed animal desing to thingiverse.

Via @deczka

Zoetropes are magic. They take the effect of strobing that you get on the subway and put it in a little turning cylinder. It’s a special form of animation that generally focuses on movements that repeat themselves like walking or a bird flying. I found this zoetrope at the Technischen Museum here in Vienna.

Interesting side note: The zoetrope was invented in 1834 in England by William Horner. He called it the ‘Daedalum’ (’the wheel of the devil). It didn’t become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by makers in both England and America. The American developer, William F. Lincoln, named his toy the ‘zoetrope’, which means ‘wheel of life’.

Here are video files in HD and for the iPhone.

I’m making a video every day! If you want to peruse them all you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

Peter is an awesome tinkerer. He makes really wonderful circuit bent instruments that not only sound interesting, but look cool too. Check this brand spanking new video about him and then check out his site, casperelecttronics.

I made this video on the fly at the Technisches Museum in Vienna. Here’s an iPhone file and HD file for you!

The harpsichord is a plucked zither. It’s got little plectrums/picks that actually pick each string as you push down on a key. Image via Wikipedia. Also Eddie was the camera operator on this one!

The cast of this video is pretty epic. See if you can recognize anyone here!

Here are video files in HD and for the iPhone.

I’m making a video every day! If you want to peruse them all you can do so on iTunes, Blip.tv, Youtube and Vimeo.

Some videos are made, i swear, to just make me happy. This is one of them.

Christopher Palmer, aka CTP, created this awesome robot for Roboexotica. It delivers punchlines and gives itself the budumpadumpcha of the rimshot by actually hitting a drum and cymbal!

Learn more about his robot and his adventures in Vienna through his awesome flickr set!

HD - iPhone - iTunes - Blip.tv - Youtube - Vimeo

A few years ago, I ran into hristopher Palmer, aka CTP at Robogames and made this video about his wonderful Arca Musarithmica, which gets it’s name from an autonomous musical instrument invented by Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit priest, in the 16th centurey. Kircher was a brilliant inventor, scientist, and creator, but isn’t very well known today.

MP4 Video - iTunes - Blip.tv - Youtube - Vimeo

Have you ever counted the ways to achieve death or extreme shock from electricity? Well here are 30 different ways to get you started. I found these at the Technisches museum here in Vienna. This is also where I took all the pictures of models!

Never pee on the electrical lines of mass transit!

I bet you didn’t know peeing could be so dangerous! Watch where your dog pees!

Not all practical jokes involving electricity are funny… well they might be funny, but they could be very dangerous!

Even rats are not free of the risk of electrocution. Don’t eat wires!

Christmas is dangerous, we should abolish it and save lives!

Watch them all in this slideshow!

This photo by Eddie Codel, aka, Ekai is really awesome. No post processing! Can you tell how he did it?

This lego shotbot uses pneumatics to pump air into a bottles of juice and vodka which then pushes the liquid out a tube and into a cup. Mmm, lego induced drunkenness! Anthony Fudd showcased this robot at Roboexotica!

HD - iPhone - iTunes - Blip.tv - Youtube - Vimeo

Anthony Fudd is a lego obsessive. He came to Roboexotica and rocked it with his awesome drunk-inducing lego robots!

HD - iPhone - iTunes - Blip.tv - Youtube - Vimeo

Matt Joyce is a creative hacker who seeks to twist things just a little bit and make life more interesting in the process! In this instance, he’s put an mp3 player inside a pineapple grenade which will provide great opportunities to have interesting talks when traveling by air, subway, or bus.

Mike Gee designed and prototyped an awesome lock that you can see right into because it’s made out of clear acrylic. When you turn the key you get a happy surprise!

You can find the plans on thingiverse if you’d like to make one!

You can watch in HD and here’s a file for the iPhone. You can subscribe in iTunes. Watch them all on Blip.tv, Vimeo, or Youtube.

Sidenote: I’ll have more videos from Europe soon, I have a lot to edit right now!

AHAB Tether Test from binarymillenium on Vimeo.

We went out to Eastern Washington and attempted to launch it but the weather was horrible. Recently this video popped up on Vimeo which is the footage from the three cameras stitched together.

DIY Space Preparation from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

High Altitude Balloon Launched… and Lost!!!! from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

Later we sent it up to 109k feet but lost power on the way down and never recovered it. Somewhere there are some SD cards in a field that I really want to get my hands on and see the pictures!

A Zeppelin flying through the air!

A train in the country!

A building from above!

Lately I’ve been wanting to play with Tilt-Shift photography and make real life look like tiny models. To start off though, I took lots of photos of tiny models! I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with my friend Eddie at the Technisches Museum in Vienna and there were a ton of beautiful models! I turned the f stop on my canon 50mm to f/1.4 to make the depth of field very thin and then shot all these wonderful models. Here’s the whole set of teeny tiny world photos on flickr.

It’s marketing for a product, but I like this video. It reminds me of the kinds of work that GRL did with their laser graffiti project.

Laser Graffiti with GRL Vienna from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

I made this video with my Austrian friends when we visited Berlin together for 24c3. 25c3 is right around the corner and I can’t wait! HD Video file here.

I went to FM4 to be interviewed about Roboexotica and DIY culture. Afterwards, I had a chance to interview Gerald about the setup he uses in the studio.

You can listen to this radio streaming as it streams online!

Gerald had the robot arm of the cherrytron2000 use the sliders of his panel.

You can watch in HD and for the iPhone. You can subscribe in iTunes. Watch them all on Blip.tv, Vimeo, or Youtube.

Interestingly enough, Gerald is also the vocal talent behind the wonderful Kiki and Bobo song, Killing Christmas! I love this video

Last night was the opening party of Roboexotica, the worldwide gathering of cocktail robots. It was a blast! Pictured above is Robovox, a 40 foot high robot that you can text message to and it will say what you text to it!

I ran my robot arms and they lasted for a few hours until I ran out of Vodka, cherries, the batteries died, and the hot glue failed… all within about a minute of each other. I really enjoyed having people play with the cherrytron2000!

The Reprap that we made last year that failed was revived and cranked out shot glasses all night!

Here are my photos and a slideshow!

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto via @johnbaichtal and @lukewestra

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. I like them. This manifesto is something I can really relate to. Here are some of my favorite parts.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Which statements resonate with you? Which one’s don’t?

I’ve been thinking about manifestos as visions of the future and I asked the people who follow me on twitter for manifesto suggestions. I decided to do a bit of research on them and present them here! For this first one, I present…

The Hedonistic Imperative Via Enkido

This first manifesto featured paints a picture of engineered happiness. Here are some quotes from the essay-like manifesto.

“This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.”

“As an exercise, the reader may care briefly to summon up the most delightful fantasy (s)he can personally conceive. Agreeable as this may be, states of divine happiness orders of magnitude more beautiful than anything the contemporary mind can access will pervade the very fabric of reality in generations to come. Even the most virile of imaginations can apprehend in only the barest and formal sense the ravishing splendour that lies ahead.”

So what would life be like if you could just be happy?

For me I’m happy when I achieve something I set out to do. In fact, I’m basically addicted to projects because I love the rush of working, collaborating, and completing them. This version of happiness, while interacting with the psychological and pharmaceutical biology of my brain, is rooted in my drive to make things happen and I don’t think I could get the happiness and satisfaction that I get from making things from biotechnological or pharmaceutical enhancement.

While I can’t pretend to be an expert on all the layers presented in this manifesto, I think we’re actually on track to making  this dream of evolving humanity to be dependent on engineering for happiness into a reality.

The hedonistic imperative is a rather complicated manifesto with a lot of loft conceptual words that are long. I wish it was simpler! If you dig into this, I’d love to hear about what attracts you to this manifesto and what your opinion of it is!

Last year I had an ambitious plan. I arrived in Vienna with 4 days to make a Repstrap self-replicating, rapid prototyping robot from a bunch of parts I’d bought on McMaster Carr. Marius Kintel, Wizard23, and I rallied most of the friendly and smart people at Metalab to help make it happen. We got all the hardware done, and had started working on the software when our electronics started producing the magic smoke of death and the project went dark. We had made a swizel stick, but had not met our goal of printing shot glasses for people to drink out of at Roboexotica.

But that was not the end of the reprap project at Metalab. I left my sad Repstrap robot with them to my great joy, after a few months, they began bringing it back to life.

Today I arrived to find Marius, Wizard23, and Red running the RepRap and printing out shotglasses. The wonderful music of the stepper motors filled the air of the whateverlab, the hardware and prototyping room in the metalab complex.

This video makes me happy because I made a video of how to make the electronics, and a video about the hardware, but I never made a video of a RepRap working and now the trifecta of my RepRap videos is complete.

Recently the Whateverlab got community funding to continue RepRap development and they’ve got great plans. Stay tuned to the Metalab’s RepRap Soup where they’ve got lots of pictures and videos of the project and it’s continueing development. I have one more video coming soon about their continued research that the Marius and Philipp are working on.

You can watch in HD and for the iPhone. You can subscribe in iTunes. Watch them all on Blip.tv, Vimeo, or Youtube.

Now let’s dial the clock backwards a year. Here is my first video I made about the electronics of the reprap last year.

Making a RepRap (Repstrap) Part 1 from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

Take the first step towards making your own self-replicating rapid-prototyping robot! You can order up your boards, from the Reprap foundation or make your own since the whole project is open source. Get your parts and solder these up and test them! Huge thanks goes out to Zach Hoeken, who inspired this project. Marius Kintel, Philipp Tiefenbacher, Benko, Red, and other folks at Metalab along with Michael Zeltner and Flo of the GRL Vienna crew pulled a lot of all nighters this week getting this robot together to present at Roboexotica. The best ways to make excellent new friends is to ask for help on an ambitious project!

Here’s the second video I made about pulling together the hardware.

Making a RepRap (Repstrap) Part 2 from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

I’ll walk you through the different parts of the hardware on the reprap. You’ll want to take a look at the pdf for parts lists and more detailed info to get started on the hardware for this project. The software is still in development and until then you should be able to get your reprap working as a McWire Mill until the code gets done. Remember this is an experimental research community project! I really like this design. It’s solid, easy to take apart and put together. It’s also relatively transportable.

I am so excited and proud of the team here in Vienna. They are on the front line pushing code and hardware forward into a future where everyone has a 3D printer on their desk!

In this second part of this series about the RepRap/Repstrap that I created a year ago, you can see how the hardware goes together! Here’s a video file for those who subscribe in iTunes!

Last year I came to Vienna with a box of parts and put together a RepRap. It’s actually a Repstrap since it’s a bootstrapping robot to make robots that print out parts for other robots!

In this video you can see some footage of Zach from a really old NYCResistor Microcontroller Study Group meeting! Here’s a video file for those who subscribe in iTunes!

Zadi and Steve honored me with the golden finger this week on their web show, Epic Fu. On their show they explore pop culture, what’s hot on the net and all sorts of really interesting things. They are pushing web video farther than anyone else I know so it’s an honor to be featured on their show! Thanks Epic Fu!

I’m in Vienna, so I can’t tune in on the television at 11PM, but I’ll be on the lookout for the internet upload so i can watch it. Tim is an ambitious guy… in my opinion he’ll either succeed or hurt himself badly trying!

Read more about it on his blog and watch the preview to get a feel for it. Tivo it if you can. I want him to succeed! If it goes to season, I want to see him try and pass the astronaut space tests or something equally ambitious with just one week of training!

Zach Smith, fellow NYCResistor and Founder of The RepRap Research Foundation decided that for Lazzzorbattle 2008, he wanted to do something cool. In QCAD, he mocked up a peristaltic pump and after about 5 versions, he had it working and the entire design is cut out of 12″ x 12″ x 1/4″ of acrylic!

Peristaltic pumps are used to pump liquids that you don’t want touching any mechanical parts. By squishing a tube, the pump can keep the liquid sterile. These pumps are used in medical situations for pumping blood.

You can go check it out the design on Thingiverse and make your own!

You can watch in HD and for the iPhone. You can subscribe in iTunes. Watch them all on Blip.tv, Vimeo, or Youtube.

History Hacker will not be a show on the History Channel. They were clear that they really enjoyed working with me but that it wasn’t a good fit for their older audience. I had a really great time working with the History Channel and they are good people, so I’m not really angry, just a bit sad. I really believed in History Hacker as a show that would inspire parents and their children to take apart every VHS machine within reach and learn about the creativity and innovation that inventors have brought the world. I still stand proudly by the pilot as a super fresh, cutting edge TV show with excellent design work full of awesome producing, directing, camera operation and quality. History Hacker is a kick ass piece of television.

Life is full of changes and I actually thrive on change. The life I had planned for the next 3-4 years filming History Hacker won’t happen and so I’m left with a luscious anticipation of awesome things. I’m a big fan of unknown possibilities, so I’m pretty excited. I’m not done with TV. I had so much fun collaborating with the creative talent on the set of History Hacker that I’m on the prowl for other TV opportunities in the new year.

Some might criticize me for leaving my job at Etsy without knowing if History Hacker would fly or not, but I have absolutely no regrets. In this last month of November, I’ve done so much and been so productive that I don’t mind that I’m eating through some savings until the next awesome thing happens.

In the last month I’ve launched Thingiverse.com with Zach Smith. It’s an awesome site that is a platform for sharing digital designs. There are seeds in thingiverse that will change the face of cottage industry prototyping and lay the foundation for a new way of manufacturing in our world that may provide an alternative to the limited corporate design experience. It is wonderfully entertaining to see what folks are designing in their heads and turning into real objects!

Also in November, my video series, Things, has been a success. The stats are really satisfying to watch. Lots of people are watching it and I hope they are getting inspired to make things. Things could never have happened if I was working full time. Creating the Things video series and shining the spotlight on creative folks who make things has been one of the top highlights of 2008. I get a rush every time I film someone sharing their thing, another rush when I finish editing the video and a third rush when I push the publish button and make it live here on this blog. I truly love publishing video content that spotlights talented and wonderfully crafty folks!

NYCResistor continues to be a magical place in my life. I founded it with the goal of having a clubhouse gathering creative hackers. I feel so lucky to have become friends with the playful, giving, sharing and considerate folks who make up the community at NYCResistor.

So I’m going to be making some changes to the site in the next week or so. I’m going to be setting up ads and even though I love the image at the top of this blog, I may change it to something that isn’t a History Hacker image.

There are enough people reading this blog that I think it may be impossible to get to know you all, but I appreciate all of you. You’re comments are gold to me and I check stats regularly to see which videos you like, pass on to your friends, post on your blogs and twitter.

In December I’m going to keep making videos every day and this month will be wonderful starting with the cocktail robotics of Roboexotica here in Vienna. Later in the month, I’ll be speaking at the worldwide hacker conference called the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin and I am looking forward to seeing old friends there and making new connections.

So there’s my personal update! I’m glad you’re along for the ride and I hope I can share this adventure in a way that is at least a little entertaining as I go on making my way in the world.