The title says it all. CCCKC now has an operational, home built, Joe’s CNC (2006 Model). The below video is the maiden cut.

At our Thursday meeting this week our resident CNC guru, Craig B., gave a primer for members and guests alike. That overview video can be viewed here (50 mins). Members will have to be trained and certified before being allowed to operate the machine. Stay tuned for information about future training opportunities.

We’ll be building the kits on Saturday February 19th Starting @ ~2:00 PM.

Only 20 kits are available so make sure you’ve contacted atomicc@ccckc.org to reserve yours. Kits are $4. If you have a soldering iron you can bring please do, we only have a limited number in the space.

The kit’s are based on this instructable.

Click here to see our ustream of February’s turbo talks.

CCCKC will be participating in the first Kansas City MAKER FAIRE.  It will be held at Union Station.

More details to be released soon!

Mean while at CCCKC, Tom Collins and company has begun work on the CCCKC MAME cabinet.

While doing so Joel hacked a drink bottle into a shotglass for the espresso machine.

The Fabricators group has been very busy at CCCKC advancing the capabilities of the maker bot and RepRap Mendel’s.

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

• A SILC plugin for irssi, a popular IRC client, which works best on Linux
• Native SILC support in Pidgin IM, which works on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. Pidgin plugins for Off-The-Record exist for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows as well.
  

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

We are proud members of the Security Bloggers Network.

This content originally posted on HiR Information Report. Copyright © 1997-2010, HiR

The RepRap Mendel I have been building at the hackerspace has just had its belts on motors attached. By hotswapping the stepper motor plugs onto the CCCKC Makerbot, I was able make the robot move for the first time! Here’s proof:

“There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.”
— Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography

Drop by CCCKC on Saturday, November 13th 2010 to learn a bit about encryption and how to use it in every day life to keep your private life private.

Email asmodianx [at] cowtowncomputercongress.org for details.

More information at GNUPG.ORG

I’m excited to announce that we have released the second application in the LandSketch Series.  This application is called LandSketch for Highways and is targeted at making the preliminary design process for corridors much more efficient.  With this new product you can quickly layout many alternatives for your possible corridor and immediately check your environmental impacts.  For more information and to watch an online demonstration click on the following link: http://www.eaglepoint.com/solutions/workflow/office/landsketch/landsketchforhighways.asp

Around middle of last month, I got fired from my job as a web applications developer at this company that does web stuff for the state — the job I moved to Des Moines for in the first place. In the midst of a long time-wasting build-up to breaking the news to me, they gave me a lot of what sounded like out-of-their-ass rationalization about their reasons, but I think it really comes down to a couple specific incidents and I'm not going to talk about them here.

It's fine though, I guess. I'm taking on some freelance stuff. It's not enough yet, I need more. I'm really strapped for money, enough that it worries me, and yet I'm happier. At the end of the day, I'm not all wiped out with that "tired from doing nothing" feeling where I can't get up the wherewithal to do anything but veg out in front of the TV. Maybe the illusion of security makes me lazy and I need to be out hustling to really feel alive. I do know that I don't like being expected to hang around an office certain hours when I don't have a whole lot to do there. I like working when I have something to do and am ready to do it. That might be a few hours in the morning and a few in the middle of the night — if that's the case, don't make me sit around an office all afternoon trying to look busy. It's a sure way to turn me into one of The Working Dead. I had assumed if I was in someone's employ, that the management above me would see to it that I was assigned as much work as they believed I should be getting done. I thought that was their job. Just because I can always come up with piddly little bugs to tinker around fixing doesn't mean I'm not bored out of my mind waiting for someone to assign me something I can sink my teeth into. I guess most programmers watch YouTube videos or something, instead of tinkering with those piddly bugs.

Whatever. I was thinking today how great it would be to make my living in music, because then I would always have time to work on music, and if I was working on music all the time, I would get really, really good at it — and being really good at music is more satisfying than being really good at programming because when you're good at music, people can tell. Even people who generally listen to Top 40 crap can tell, if you put them in a venue and let them watch a gig, the difference between the performer who has become very skilled at writing songs, or singing, or playing their instrument, versus the one that's just dicking around on the side and thinks he can get by with that. In music, quality is conspicuous.

Programming is a different deal. I realized this from a freelance maintenance project I'm involved in, where the code constitutes a "web application" in roughly the same sense that a beaver dam is a "structure." Every little task I'm assigned takes twice as long, and is twice as frustrating, as it could be, because I have to root around in the code to find the relevant bits, which never seem to be anywhere sensible. The client doesn't have the budget to pay me to put a lot of time into restructuring it, so I make do. With customers of my programming work, be they my clients, my employers, or the clients of my employers, basically if the graphic design looks pretty and the app appears outwardly to do most of what they asked for, the code underneath can be complete shit. I might take pride in the quality and maintainability of my code — and I do — but hardly anybody else can tell the difference, even if they care. People will even put up with features that don't work, and will devise workarounds, because they honestly don't seem to know they could have it better. So why have I put all this time and energy into being good at programming? We can see how it's paying off: I can't hold down a full-time job doing it.

Another consequence of my move to Des Moines has been that I ended up playing in a band that's light-years better than any I've been in before. I'm playing gigs in other towns for a change. We have an album out that's actually on CDs, not on CD-Rs I burned on my computer. And the music, the songs we're doing and the performances of them we've been pulling off, are the real deal. And people can tell. You can tell that they can tell, because they love it, and they say so. And with every bit of time we put into it, we get even better. We aren't making anything approaching a living at it, but it has the best chance by far of becoming a paying proposition of any band or music project I've been involved with. It also makes me very happy, instead of frustrated. I really ought to be taking it seriously, refusing to compromise or let anything interfere with it.

As Bob Lefsetz reminded me in yesterday's letter, "an artist creates because he has to." And that's me. I could quit just about anything else I do, other than music and my family. I could give up programming if I had to. I could give up coffee, or meat, or beer, or writing bitchy blog posts. But I don't think I could give up music. Besides, "in this economy," and perhaps in any really, it's a fallacy to treat any job as permanent.

In light of this, I now consider my primary profession to be musician. I'm done pretending that something else is the case. I sling code for money. I'll even write good code for money, because I personally find it easier and more satisfying than writing crap. But that's "satisfying" in a very relative sense. I'll write as much code as I need to, to make whatever part of a living music doesn't cover, up to and including all of it. I still love programming, and would probably love it with more conviction given the right company or project, but so far that company or project either isn't out there, or doesn't return my e-mails. But music lovers are right here in front of me.