Category: Hackerspaces

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Open Social Saturday

balloonsHey all, just a quick post to let you know about our regular Open Social tomorrow June 20th. The open social is a great way to see the space, hang out, and meet other members & visitors. If you’ve never been to the social, you’ll find it a great alternative Saturday evening in town. If you have some project or idea in mind, its a great opportunity to talk to other makers, hackers and do’ers. Or you can simply just hang out and chat 🙂

Hopefully, there’ll be all the usual madness of an open social. Weather permitting, there’ll be pizza. There may also be beer samples, courtesy of Capital Brewers at TOG. You might even get to pick some locks if our friendly lock pickers will show you some tricks. The space stays open until the last member is left…. usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The open social is free to attend. Our doors will be open from 7pm.

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The Two Shelves

Like many hackerspaces, TOG accepts a lot of materials, donations, parts, and junk that Might Come In Useful™… sometimes so much that there’s no room for actual hacking. The problem is so common, there’s even a Hackerspace Design Pattern for it: the Old Hardware Pattern.

For the last year, we’ve been running a version of the two-shelf system, in which items left around the space are put on the shelves for collection or eventual disposal.

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Need some 5 1/4″ disk drives? Or a laser-cut ball bearing race?
SWAG. Very important.
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Lost and found.

Does it work? Kind of. Lost items are reunited with their owners. Unused items inspire new projects. Semi-regular photos let members check the shelves from afar, workspaces are cleared with impunity, and there’s a slow but steady flow of junk out of the space.

And yet, the space is still full of stuff… 😀