The Dublin Hackerspace
Our cupcake arrived in The Perth Artifactory, here’s the video of the results.
The scores were very generous thanks, even though the postal system didn’t result in the cupcake arriving in the best condition.
They also have blog post about it here.
Update.
The cupcake from Alpha One Labs arrived and here is the opening video. We’ve also added some photos to the gallery.
The Cupcake Challenge – The flour dust has settled in TOG and the result is one cupcake winging it’s way to Australia.
After trying a recommend cupcake recipe with mediocre results we tried a recipe using the chiffon method and we were very happy. In the end for the cake we went with a chocolate flavouring using cocoa powder and a lot of melted chocolate. The frosting was an Italian style buttercream flavoured with melted chocolate. The buttercream was then piped onto the top of the cupcake. The decoration was a mint flavoured fondant icing which we shaped into a shamrock.
Weighing up the options for the packaging we decided to go all out and protect the frosting. We suspend the cupcake through the cake base using wooden skewers. The skewers were in a crossed shape with a piece of cardboard used to keep the shape stable. The cupcake and skewers were wedged firmly into a plastic container used for pre-made soups. Using some bubble-wrap to fill the remaining space. The plastic container was then wrapped in more bubble-wrap and packed into large box.
The resulting package was 28x20x18 cm and weight less then 500g. We found that the international courier service from An Post the national postal service and DHL was the cheapest at only €50, where the other international providers were more then €100. One issue with this service was that due to recent terrorist activity with printer cartridges, package contents need to be inspected before they can be sent. So the postal lady undid some of the careful work we did to package our cupcake.
Now the main concern which we could do nothing about is that its southern hemisphere summer in Australia and the buttercream frosting is unlikely to survive the high temperatures.
Some more photos of the cupcake and packaging are available on the gallery.
Baking and eating your own cupcakes is the best. But giving a cupcake to someone else can be just as rewarding for the giver and really great for the receiver
With this in mind the global community of hackerspaces have come up with the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge. The challenge is to bake, doctorate, package and send a cupcake to another hackerspace and for it to arrive in good condition.
At this moment the destination for our cupcake is The Perth Artifactory hackerspace in Perth, Australia. We should be recieving a cupcake from Alpha One Labs hackerspace in New York, USA.
So members of TOG will be participating in the challenge this weekend the 15th and 16th of January and you’re invited to help. We’re very luck to have a full kitchen in our space. On Saturday from about 1pm we’ll do a lot of baking and experimenting with different cupcake recipes and decoration techniques. Later in the day we’ll bake other things and cook some dinner. On Sunday we’ll work on the packaging of the final cupcake.
If your a disaster in the kitchen, this is also the a Synchronous Hackathon weekend so feel free to come along and use the rest of the space to work on your programming, electronics, craft or constructions projects or just hang out for awhile.
The Synchronous Hackathon is free and open to visitors like most of our events. We’ll have a donation cup to help cover the costs of shipping (approximatly €100), any equipment and ingredients.
This workshop is for the creative ones among you!
The use of scissors, glue and a soldering iron should not scare you, and the eagerness to try new things should be your second nature.
We will be working with paper, glitter pens, LED lights, resistors, wires and plastic spheres.
The fun will last the whole afternoon, and 15€ will cover all your material costs.
During this day-long workshop, you will be walked through the process of designing an interactive electronic device: from an initial idea right through to the working device.
We will start off with a presentation covering the whole design process. Next we will demonstrate the necessary steps and tools in more detail. And last but not least you will assemble the finished device.
The device we will be building will be a Mini Mood Light. Consisting of two multicoloured LED’s, a small micro controller and a number of buttons which will allow the user to selected a suitable colour which reflects their mood. We’ll be demonstrating each of the steps including schematic capture, PCB layout, PCB fabrication and programming the micro controller.
You should have a basic understanding of electronics and the C programming language. The workshop is targeted at makers and amateur inventors who want to use open source tools to create open hardware devices.
The workshop will be run three times over the period of Science Week and Innovation Dublin Festival. Each workshop will run from 11:00 through to approximately 17:00, with a break for lunch. Food will not be provided, but we have a full kitchen and there are shops/takeaways nearby.
The cost of the workshop will be 40€ waged, 30€ unwaged and 20€ tog members.
The numbers are going to be limited to eight adult/older teen participants per workshop, but we also hope to video stream and record some of the last workshop.
We’ll be hosting a Dublin 27C3 Peace Mission for those unable to make it to the 27C3 conference in Berlin during the 27th to 30th of December.
The space will be open to visitors from 11.30 am until mindnight as per the conference schedule:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/
We will be streaming video from the conference in Berlin 27th to 30th of December. Also the workshop and common areas will be open to visitors who want to work on projects or socialise like during the hackathons. There is full kitchen facilities so bring food if you like.
