The Dublin Hackerspace
This week we finished up first welding course with a project to weld up a bracket for back of truck to allow connection of trailer hitch. Check out our gallery and leave a comment below if you would like to join next welding class and sign up to mailing list for next dates. Gallery
I’m sure you’ve come across mailing lists before; a service to which you subscribe, and when someone posts to the list you get the email. TOG has a public mailing list, that strictly speaking operates as a discussion list. Anyone subscribed can post to the list, on-topic discussion is encouraged, and you will get more than just anouncements.
To join our mailing list simply go to http://lists.tog.ie/mailman/listinfo/tog, enter your email address, and press the “Subscribe” button. A confirmation email will be sent to the address you entered, to which you can either reply, or click the link included. You will then receive a Welcome email, with info like links for subscription info, passwords, etc. It’s a good idea to keep this email around.
Perhaps the only real choice you need to make is whether or not you would like to receive list mail in daily digest format.
Pro; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, therefore you will have less emails in your inbox.
Con; seperate emails will be bundled together and sent as one mail, meaning you might not see the discussion until after it’s over, and you will have difficulty replying to individual emails (quite a bit copy-pasting is involved).
If you plan to lurk and only ever read, and don’t mind being a bit behind the times, then digest-mode might be for you. For everyone else we recommend selecting “No” when asked if you’d like to receive the daily digest. It will make your life a lot easier, promise.
There are other tricks and techniques to making surviving a mailing-list easier, but many come down to your actual mail-client itself. For instance, if offered, use labels, filters, folders, anything to sort the mail automatically without you having to do anything. That way you can leave the mail sitting in your inbox (or other folder) until you’re ready to deal with it.
And remember, the tog public mailing list is archived. To browse the archives go to http://lists.tog.ie/pipermail/tog/, and browse month-by-month, sorted by Thread, Subject, Author, or Date. If browsing isn’t for you and you’d like to search the archives, it’s time to employ some google-fu;
Go to www.google.ie and enter;
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ WHATYOUWANTTOSEARCHFORHERE
e.g. to search for “open social”, then do a google search for
site:lists.tog.ie inurl:/pipermail/tog/ open social
There you go, that should be enough to get you started! Just one other thing; don’t forget your manners, and try to follow good netiquette.
Welcome to the mailing list.
(And remember, you can always unsubscribe! Bottom of page here. A few simple clicks can take the pain away 🙂
In Nov 2011 we left a pinhole camera taped to the drain pipe in TOG’s yard looking south. So its been up for 4 months. It’s just a beer can with a 1mm hole and a piece of b+w photo paper inside. We took it down today and scanned it in. The raw image is upside down and back to front. The “colours” are also inverted. You can see the track of the sun and how it gets higher in the sky, as the days get longer. The gaps are days where there was no sun. After a bit of trickery in GIMP, its right way around and inverted. We have lots of photo paper in TOG if you want to come in and make one. You can leave it in place from days to months and still get a good image. Click on the images for a closer view.
We had blast of a day at this event . We had 100s of people try out our 2 buzzer games with one guy having completed it with no beeps.
Which is a huge feat.
I think it gave us a good idea of what maker faire will be like . Our other craft projects on display were a hit.
We made our submission to the open call during the week .
I have taken a role on the organization team of the faire . I hope to see it ad a great chance to show case what Irish makers are making .
Finally a big thank you to the people who gave up their Sunday to help out today. We had to listen to 6 hours of beeping .
One of the primary ways tog members (and non-members) interact when not in the space is over irc. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and is an old text-based way to chat online.
TOG has a channel (#tog) on freenode.net, which is free to use. To connect you can download a client (like Pidgin), or just use the webchat interface from your browser. But we like to make things easy for people, so on our Contact page you’ll find the webchat interface, but pre-filled in to connect to the #tog channel. All you have to do is fill in the reCaptcha and hit connect.
You’ll see that we have generated a nickname for you, but you are welcome to change it to any nickname (that isn’t currently in use or registered to someone else). If you do try to use a nickname that’s in use you’ll get this message;
== Nickname is already in use: popularNickName
And it will be changed, perhaps by appending an underscore to the end, e.g. popularNickName_
If the name is already registered (aka claimed) by someone else, you will get a message like this;
== This nickname is registered. Please choose a different nickname, or identify via /msg NickServ identify password.
(If it is your nickname, then you can ‘sign in’ by typing /msg nickserv identify yourpassword)
Once in the room, you can still change your nickname with /nick newNickName
You will notice two tabs at the top of the webchat window, one called ‘Status’ and one called ‘tog’. Any additional rooms you enter, or private chats you start, will open in new tabs. Under ‘tog’ you will see the message;
== TOGvisitor1 [1a2b3c4e@gateway/web/freenode/ip.x.x.x.x] has joined #tog
From here it’s very simple. You type into the text-entry-box at the bottom of the tog tab, and press enter to send it to the room. If you type someones name, your message will be highlighted (usually in red) for them. Some clients also send notifications, but not all. You will see this in action when someone writes your nickname.
If you click on someones nickname from the list on the right, you will get two options; whois and query. whois brings up info like ip-address, servers, name, etc, most of which is rarely accurate. query will start a private chat with that person.
If you can’t quite find the words, but could like to describe an action there is /me, for example, /me waves hello becomes;
* TOGvisitor1 waves hello
Then, when you tire of all this chatting, you can leave the room with /part, and disconnect from IRC with /quit. Then just close the browser.
There are many irc guides and commands around that a search engine can help you find, or you can use this helpful guide.
TOG is delighted to be taking part in this year’s St Patrick’s Festival. The St Patrick’s Festival is a 4 day event with different activities taking part all over Dublin. We will be taking part in the Big Day Out.
The Big Day Out takes place on the 18th of March. One of the flag ship events of the festival, it aims to amaze you with street performances, theatrics, Irish language events, workshops, fun zones, music, open air shows and more.
The event takes place in Merrion Square, 12:00 until 18:00. The event is free and open to all ages.
TOG will be making a home for itsself in the Discover Science & Engineering area. We will be helping to promote the upcoming Dublin Mini Maker Faire.(Open call ends this week) TOG along with NUIM Makers Club and robots.ie will be putting together a fun and interactive stand. On the day we will have sumo fighting robots, arduino powered instruments , 3D printing and our freshly made buzzer game.
