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Raymond, Tim, Justin, and I decided to go to St. Louis for the grand opening of Arch Reactor the local Hackerspace up there. They had made a post to the hackerspaces.org mail list inviting everyone out to there space. I asked a few members if they would like to go, and we made a weekend trip out of it.

I had spoken with a few of the Arch Reactor members beforehand and made arrangements to crash at a members apartment. We left Friday night in the middle of a snow storm. Lucky Tim is from upside down Vermont and thus knows how to drive in bad weather. A 6 hour drive took us 10.5, but thanks to my Droid we never missed a beat with Pandora.

Once in St. Louis we found a McDonald’s to get food and then napped in the parking lot. Then we traveled over to the Arch and did the touristy things. We walked around the museum and rode up in the Arch. Being about lunchtime we headed over to Arch Reactor were we hung out for the rest of the night.

The open house was tons of fun. They probably had 50 or more people show up. They had a Maker Bot and a CNC, along with a bunch of old and new computers. There was some cool art, and a few talks. Tim and I even showed off the photobooth and gave a short talk about it. OH! and they had life sized Jenga!

As expected after only a few hours of sleep and parting all day with only caffeine to keep us awake, we crashed hard Saturday night. Sunday morning we had lunch with a member of their space and headed home. The drive home way way easier than the one going up. On the way through Illinois we saw a sign for Metropolis, IL aka Superman’s Home. Naturally we stopped and saw a giant Superman at the courthouse.

Here are the picture I took, I’ll update it later if anyone else has posted their pictures.


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Yuri’s Night was a couple weekends ago and a bunch of us went to it.  For those that don’t know Yuri’s Night is an international celebration held on April 12 every year to commemorate space exploration.  It was rather fun.  Saw a ton of space related costumes and met some new people.  Oh! Also it was held at the Davidson Center at the Space and Rocket Center.  So we partied under a Saturn V.  Here are some pics including costumes made by Makers Local 256 members.


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I was listening to Twit this morning while they were discussing Apple Stores and why people go into them.  All of the speakers on Twit said people go to Apples Stores because they get to play with the computers and talk to knowledgeable people.   While this is true, but I think the main reason is that Apple computers are different from what most people are used to.  They get to break away from Windows and try something new.  Then if they like it, they can purchase it right there.  I don’t think its the fact that the computers are there to use, but more the fact that the computers are different.

This also got me thinking, what if there was a Linux Shop.  A place with computers set up running different kinds of distributions, showing off Open Office, InkSkape, The Gimp, and many other open source programs.  It would be just like an Apple Store, but for open source.  Computers could be sold at a cheap price because of the free operating systems.  The employees could answer Linux questions, and help new comers.  I think this sounds like a good idea, but not a good business idea.  Maybe something Makers Local could do.

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