By:
On:
[INSERT COIN]

Makers local 256 is embarking on an epic journey: to participate in the Power Racing Series. Teams from various hackerspaces across the US will be modding the heck out of children’s ride-on-electric-toys, to carry adult weight at unreasonable speeds!

Makers Local 256 has formed the “8-Bit Racers” team and will be racing car #256 “The Bit Bucket” against many other seasoned teams. Can we run a new high score on the PPPRS circuit, or are we doomed to spend every quarter of our allowances, only to be defeated by that really hard boss at the end of world 5?

Here are some shots of work that is getting underway:

By:
On:

The Alabama state championship for the FIRST Lego League robotics was held at Grissom High School on Saturday, January 12, 2013.  A mother of one of the students from team ACRONYM used the general mailing list we have set up for the community to get some help with a little python scripting and GUI creation for an RFID sensor project.  Since a few of the members and other people from the mailing list were able to help by providing links to web sites on the topics she needed as well as some direct RFID tips and tricks they decided to put Makers Local 256 on their paperwork as official mentors!  Here are some photos from the event:

By:
On:

Members at TEDx

Members of Makers Local 256 attended Huntsville’s TEDx this past Sunday.  As part of running the TEDx Lab we laser engraved our logo as well as the TEDx log onto some fig newtons.

More pictures of the event are available on facebook.

 

By:
On:

 

A BIG congratulations are in order to David Reimer and Wayne Neumier (pictured above) for their award “Best TV/Sci-Fi/Humor” in the Dragon*Con Masquerade.  Every year dozens of entrants compete for this award.  Featured in the picture above is Grant Imahara (MythBusters), Wayne Neumier (2StoryProps, Makers Local 256), Doctor Dalek himself, and Jennifer Paulson (Makers Local 256) who assisted Wayne with the Doctor Dalek skit.  David and Wayne spent eight months slaving in the bowels of Makers Local creating this masterpiece, and we’re very happy for their accomplishment and recognition.

Having some fun of their own, Satyam Nayak, Jeff Cotten, and Scott Morales slaved for two inebriating hours building the breathtaking and speechless leaving “Blorgons” from the show “Community” which features a skit called “Inspector Spacetime,” the show that Doctor Who was originally based off of.

You can build your own blorgons out of three salad bowls, a trashcan, a bucket, two shower knobs, silver duct tape, screws and bolts.  Wiki page coming soon 😉

We’d also like to give a shoutout to Ethan Chew, a former member of Makers Local 256 who has gone on to work with the Mojave Makers group.  Ethan (bottom picture, rightmost person) along with Huntsville resident David Hewitt (top picture, leftmost person) presented a talk on commercial spaceflight.

There were some big names in commercial spaceflight at this talk.  Les Johnson (Marshall Spaceflight Center), Stephen Fleming (an XCOR Aerospace Investor and VP of GA Tech) (pictured sitting next to Ethan Chew), Michael Mealling (involved in Masten Space Systems, Founder and CEO of Astrogistix) (pictured sitting next to David Hewitt). Sitting to the left of David is Rain Glynn who is the space talk organizer for Dragon*Con, who helps make the space talks happen.

Also in attendance was space celebrity Lord British (Richard Garriott) who Jeff Cotten accidentally stepped on during the talk and feels really bad about.  So… if you ever read this, I’m sorry I stepped on your foot.

The slideset from the Dragon*Con presentation is availble here:  http://www.stephenfleming.net/files/Fleming_Commercial_Space_Update_v5.pdf

By:
On:

A couple of weeks ago some of us participated in an Expo at the local University. This is the second time we have been asked to come to this event. The Expo is to show off local organization on and off campus. We brought a couple 3D printers, laser cut items, soldering kits and a few other things. We met many people and received many compliments. I even heard “this is the coolest thing here”. Here are a few pictures of our table at the expo.

Big thanks to Thomas, Raymond, Jeff, Josh, and Tim for coming out and helping.

Thanks
Nathan