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On this week’s Hackerspace Digest, Matt, Tim, Tuttle and I talk about HackPGH’s Ping Pong Drop, Crash Space’s Disaster Readiness Meetup and Ratmandu’s ATMEGA128RFA1 breakout board. We spend quite a bit of time talking about our travels to Atlanta and our participation in the Mini Maker Faire. Tim’s dog house on wheels got into a little trouble, but also won an award.

As always, the notes are on the wiki.

Hackerspace_Digest_014.ogg [ 51:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This week Matt, Nathan, and Tim talk updates at Makers Local 256, Rasberry Pie, The Beginning book and more. They find some crazy wiki pages on other hackerspaces websites, learn what a LapMaster is, and how to make a LetterPress. All this in little over an hour.

As always, the notes are on the wiki.

Hackerspace Digest 013 [ 1:03:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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It’s that time of year again! Retro Game and Computing Night 2011 is upon us. We have raised the games and system limits up a bit this year. We are allowing all games and systems released pre-2000.  Though that isn’t entirely true, Duke Nukem Forever has been grandfathered in for obvious reasons.

There will be all kinds of systems and games, SNES, SEGA, NES, GameBoy, Atari, as well as Amigas and other computers.  We may even have a LAN setup for old school games like Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft.  We will also have the grill going and a keg chilling.  Feel free to bring your own systems and/or games and food to share.

Please come join us, play some games, meet new people and see our new space.  Also, remember your donations will help us continue to do events like these.

July 2, 2010 6pm-2am
414 Stevens Ave.
Huntsville, AL 35801

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One of the challenges of the cupcake was that it had to be done over the Synchronized Hackathon, what usually starts Friday night.   This however doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to start thinking about the cupcake.  Though for us, this is exactly what happen.  I casually asked Alice how much she would charge me to cook some cupcakes.  She then got excited and spend the rest of the evening baking and all day Saturday making the cupcake.

Our cupcake wasn’t a standard cupcake.  The idea was mentioned to put a cupcake inside a cupcake. Which in itself is awesome, but not as awesome as a cupcake inside a cupcake inside a cupcake.

To pull off something so awesome we needed to make one big cupcake.  To do this we bought some disposable circular roasting pans, and individual pie pans.  Alice then shaped them into a more cupcake looking pan.

In the end we had two giant cupcakes, a few smaller ones, and a few even smaller ones.  Alice stayed up all night Friday finishing the baking.

Saturday the construction began.  Alice magically turned one giant cake looking thing into a cupcake with two cupcakes inside it.  She also took time out to run to the store where she was able to talk to a baker and get some Italian Buttercream frosting.  This frosting is apparently special and cost her a bit, but was worth it.

So after many long hours of baking and construction here is what the cupcake should look like inside.

And here is the final cupcake.

Here it is boxed up and ready to go.  The cupcake is frosted to the bottom of the pan.  Then four pieces of cardboard are around the outside of the cupcake.  We then ran bamboo skewers through the cardboard, pan and cupcake.  This was to hold the cupcake down if it got tipped upside down.  Also we added bread to suck up the moisture and keep the cupcake fresh.

Here are more pictures if you would like to see them.

UPDATE: So it looks like someone can’t send a package through the mail.  This morning I went down to the post office and found our cupcake had been sent back.  🙁  As sad as I was about it, I was kind of excited to see how the cupcake looked after a week and a half in the mail.  This evening Alice and I opened it.  Here are the results.

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As you know we competed in the Global Hackerspace Cupcake Challenge recently. Last Friday we received the cupcake from Santa Barbara Hackerspace. Here is the video and some pictures taken during the unboxing. Hope you enjoy!

SBHX's wonderful suspension system