[Noisebridge-discuss] draft of Signal to Noise, a NB newsletter

[Sean Cusack]

I also find this entire situation fantabulous. Sweet newsletter. I think it
should stay newslettery form - if you want a weeeeblog (or similar thing),
just subscribe to the list! Maybe to ease the burden, do it once a month
(like 5MoF!)? That'll give personal projects awhile to mature as well - the
Tron suit easily took a month, Meredith's scarfage will take exactly 1
month. People can probably finish faster, but then they are likely ancient
wizards or sorcerers or something.

Sean

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Jonathan Foote <jtfoote at ieee.org> wrote:

> OMG yes.
>
> Certain graybeards of an Anglophone bent might remember NTK, which was
> possibly the best bloody email newsletter on the planet. It was funny,
> subversive, informative, and co-written by none other than Dany. (For
> a flavour sample, see ntk.net.)
>
> I miss it terribly.
>
> So anything even remotely similar from the pen of Mr. O'Brien has my
> vote. I'd even volunteer to write/edit. Make it so.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:
> > Briefly, my sense talking and polling people right now is that there's
> > a huge amount of activity going on in and around Noisebridge that
> > people (and the public) don't know about and is not easily
> > discoverable. (Also that the NB community is now far larger and more
> > diverse than it used to be, which means the time and resources need to
> > maintain one-to-one conversations with everyone to maintain social
> > coherence and spread news and mutually groom one another's silverback
> > pelts and  prevent [or at least adequately publicise] HUGE FIST FIGHTS
> > is growing steadily greater. If this was a TED talk I'd start
> > bullshitting about Dunbar numbers, but this is nb-discuss so you would
> > start throwing PBR cans at my head, so I won't.)
> >
> > Anyway, at last week's meeting I mused that one way to help fix this
> > would be to have a regular Noisebridge newsletter, which would pull in
> > some of the threads of this larger social group, and have a simple way
> > for everyone to keep in touch with what's going on, and feel a warm
> > glow of self-regard at being in with all the in shit, and thing.
> >
> > Below is my first stab at this. I went around the mailing lists,
> > talked to people, interviewed one Noisebridger at length, and then
> > through it all into an old ASCII email newslettter format I happen to
> > have around (some of you may know I co-wrote http://www.ntk.net/ a
> > decade ago. Yeah, I dusted that off. Kill me)
> >
> > The content is pretty much what I could imagine writing every
> > fortnight with some help. It certainly wasn't hard to find cool stuff
> > that noisebridgers do; it was harder to decide what not to put in. I
> > didn't spend much time on formatting nor tone or voice (ie this is the
> > special No Actual Jokes edition), because that takes a while to get
> > right and for this first go I wanted to concentrate on purest content.
> > It's very rough though.
> >
> > I'm sending this one out only to noisebridge-discuss for your comments
> > and criticisms. In the real world, it would go out to nb-announce. I
> > want whatever finally goes out there to that to be sustainable long
> > term however. Realise that if you're a regular nb-discuss reader you
> > probably know much of this, but there are plenty of people who do not
> > (most NBers I've spoken to don't know that the financial mess is not
> > so dreadful these days, for instance.)
> >
> > My acute self-criticism is at the bottom of it, under the ASCII <HR>
> > tag. I welcome comments, yeah even from you.
> >
> >
> > ============
> >
> >
> >   .-'`-.     Signal
> >   z    !/|   To Noise
> >   z    !\|   V11.010000000(Beta)-rc7
> >   `-'`-      2011-01-04
> >
> > In this issue:
> >> NOISEBRIDGE SAVED FROM REPO BOTS
> >> THEY CAME FOR OUR TEA ROOM
> >> HEART SPARKS AND TRON GUYS
> >> DISTILLING NEURAL NETWORKS INTO BRAIN BROTH
> >> HUMAN OF NOISEBRIDGE OF THE MONTH:
> >> Meredith Scheff-King is ALL SCARF, ALL THE TIME
> >
> >>>> NEWS: NB NO LONGER DIVIDING BY ZERO
> >
> > This February, Noisebridge will not disappear in a white hole of
> > debt, anguish and sheet rock dust. You all stepped up, and in a few
> > weeks we went from having little cartoon flies buzzing out of the
> > cartoon wallet, to touching the rim of our canonical hackerspace
> > float of three months costs in advance ($15K).
> >
> > Noisebridge has historically paid its bills with about 2/3rds from
> > membership dues, and the rest from casual donations. We're mostly
> > fixed the overdue dues problem thanks to Kelly's excellent financial
> > forensics, but Noisebridge is still prone to economic boom-bust on
> > the rand()*(donations) front.
> >
> > A lot of you drop a few bucks in the box when you come by, and thank
> > you, you're awesome. But just as you don't have to a member of
> > Noisebridge to use the space for whatever, you don't have to be a
> > full member to make a pre-programme regular donation. Turn those few
> > bucks into a monthly electronci payment of just $10 or $20, and
> > you'll always have a Gentlemen And Ladies Space Within Which To Hack.
> > Plus less of this irregular NPR-style pledge-drive spazzing. Go on!
> > Do it! IT'S JUST MONEY. YOU'D ONLY WASTE IT ON OIL.
> >
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Donate_or_Pay_Dues
> > - We'll give you Ira Glass's perineum in a totebag if you give us a fifty
> > http://cha-ching.noisebridge.net/
> >         - mfb broke into our PayPal account and wrote a script at it
> > http://j.mp/tenbridge
> > - $10 dude! You pay more than that in dropbox or Ritual or watercress
> > or something!
> >
> >>>> STUFF THAT GOT DONE
> >
> > ULTRASTRUCTURE
> >
> >         Noisebridge's Scanning Electron Microscope is getting better
> >         every day: Mike and Andy got it working up to 20,000x.
> >         Schematics and pics uploaded to:
> >         http://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/SEM
> >
> >         THE TEA ROOM is no more! Zed and Shannon went on a
> >         stairs-constructing rampage and constructed a space you can
> >         walk up to, on your legs. It still works for tea drinking.
> >
> >         That BUILD-OUT MESS by the touch-panel was magicked away
> >         into the Even Darker Room (aka the Scott Memorial Storage
> >         Room). The ADA BATHROOM got grab-bars c/o Miloh!
> >         https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Noisebridge_map.png
> >
> > ELLIPTICALLY ORBITING PROJECTS
> >
> >         Eric and Chung-Hay of Sensebridge launched their HEART SPARK
> >         heatbeat-sensitive necklace to universal Internets acclaim!
> >         Eric's in Toronto now, hanging out with our hacklab.to
> >         sisters, but C-H is still about, and working on new
> >         projects, including a heartbeat scarf. Scarfs are cool.
> >         http://sensebridge.net/projects/heart-spark/
> >         http://bunnymeetsbean.blogspot.com/
> >
> >         MC Hawking, the wheelchair robot, now has an embedded PC for
> >         a brain, and is possibly conspiring with our IRC noisebot.
> >         He is actually deadly.
> >         https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noise-Bot
> >
> >         Sean made a Tron suit out of 190 proper LEDs and not boring
> >         EL wire like you thought. He's like Tron Guy : Legacy!
> >         http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-lit-Tron-v20-suit/
> >         (From the Cyborg list:
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/cyborg )
> >
> >>>> INCOMING
> >
> > All the usual events at https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Eventsplus:
> >
> >> Sean's Distillation Class
> > Wednesday, January 5th @ 7PM
> >
> > "I'll teach you how a still works, go over some options for 'rolling
> > your own', and the best part of the whole thing? We'll actually
> > distill something, and try the results! Plan on the class lasting
> > about 2 hours."
> >
> >> Neural Net Workshop!
> > Wednesday, January 26, 2011
> >
> > Mike Schachter says: the Machine Learning group at Noisebridge wants
> > to teach you! We're holding a workshop on constructing and using
> > neural networks, to raise Neural Network Awareness (NNA) and money
> > for Noisebridge. Bring laptops!
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Neural_Network_Workshop
> >
> >> Noisebridge Book Club!
> >
> > Miah implies without explicitly stating: "I'm starting a NB book club
> > on Goodreads. We can be virtual or have actual meetings":
> > http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/41745.Noisebridge_Book_Club
> >
> >>>> HUMAN OF NOISEBRIDGE OF THE FORTNIGHT
> >
> > MEREDITH SCHEFF-KING won the Awesome Foundation's monthly $1000 award
> > for her proposal to make 30 scarves in January. Signal to Noise
> > caught her attacking her third scarf in the space, and plagued her
> > with dumb questions:
> >
> >> So is this three scarfs of the day or one you're making right now?
> >
> > It's one; the scarf of today is reconfigurable with one or two or three
> > free-floating sections.
> >
> >
> >> Are you planning out the whole month beforehand, or are you taking
> >  it one scarf at a time?
> >
> > Well, I went into it with more than thirty scarf ideas, but
> > ultimately I'm making them one at a time. I don't want to plan too
> > far ahead. I work better spontaneously.
> >
> >> How much your time are you setting aside for this?
> >
> > All of it. I'm not doing much else but making scarves this month. At some
> > point I'm going to have to get groceries, I guess.
> >
> >> Okay, I have to ask. Why scarves?
> >
> > I love warm, fuzzy things. I'm sort of a chilly person. I grew up in
> > the Central Valley, where it's over 100 degrees a lot of the time, so
> > it's always cold by comparison. And I like making art that I wear.
> > With a lot of my work, like the cartooning or the construction you
> > don't know if anyone sees the end result. It might be that noone sees
> > it.
> >
> >> But if you're wearing, you get to see the reaction?
> >
> > Yes! Also, people know what they're seeing. It's not like an artwork
> > where you have to explain to the audience what they're seeing first.
> > They already know it's a scarf. They know what it's supposed to do.
> >
> >> I saw that you were agonising on your Twitter stream about keeping two
> craft
> >  centers, one at your home and one at Noisebridge. Where do you think
> you're
> >  going to spend most of your time this month?
> >
> > Well, this is scarf three, and the first one I'm making at NB. It
> > gets lonely making stuff at home. I'm very distractable, but it's
> > easier to avoid that here, strangely. Like, I can choose not to bring
> > my computer here, but I can't *not* have it at my apartment.
> >
> >> Does it help you finish a project when you have a clear goal like this?
> >
> > A bit. Mainly, though, it's the publicity that encourages you to keep
> > going. When the Awesome Foundation mailed me I'd won the award for
> > January, I'd actually almost forgotten I'd applied.  And then they
> > told me all the blogs and people that they'd already told. I was like
> > "uh-oh, I guess I'd better actually do this". Then of course, the
> > economics of taking a month off for $1K doesn't work out, so I
> > started a Kickstarter project to get the rest of the money, and I
> > thought "Whoa, now I really *really* have to do this."
> >
> > I guess it sounds kind of bad, but I do like it when my projects do
> > the rounds on the Internet. Like the Northskirt -- that was such a
> > lot of work, and so is this. It makes me happy to know people see it.
> >
> >> Do you know where you're going to show all the scarves yet?
> >
> > Actually, no -- I haven't had a moment of time away from scarves to
> > call around galleries.
> >
> > (Miloh shouts from the kitchen that Meredith's rice is boiling.
> > Finally distracted, she runs off to grab five precious minutes of
> > non-scarf scarfing.)
> >
> > Meredith's Kickstarter project is here:
> >
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/668017121/scarf-a-day-a-scarf-everyday-in-january/
> >
> >
> > ============
> >
> > Okay, that's that. My self-criticisms/thinking aloud:
> >
> > I finished this last night, and when I read the nb-discuss this
> > morning, there were already a bunch of worthy new stories (vending
> > machine! tardis!) that I hadn't included. The newsletter is already
> > slightly too long, I fear that once I actually get stuff sent in, it's
> > just going to grow even more. I don't think I could stand to write
> > this weekly or even a shorter time-period though.
> >
> > Would a what you young people call a "weeb-log" or "b'log" work
> > better? Maybe: certainly if we ramped up the NB weblog, I bet we'd get
> > a lot of coverage and relinking from Maker blog, etc. What isn't so
> > great is ownership and ritual with blogs. The advantage of a regular
> > periodic mailout is that people look forward to it, and if you write
> > it well (this draft isn't written well) people will sit through and
> > take it all in, and feel like they're an exclusive subscriber. Also we
> > can print it out and put it in the space somewhere. Blogs are less
> > easy to attach ritual to, and the level of control that you can exact
> > on a broadcast-only news format often feels inappropriate for blog --
> > ie saying "We" all the time, not having comments, etc. It might just
> > be a style thing. I will talk to people about this.
> >
> > My actual sese right now is that what we have here is a bunch of nice
> > potentially aggregatable mini-features: Noisebridge Human of The Time
> > Period, Project Updates, Infrastructure Diffs, General News, that need
> > to be in one place, and quickly digestible, rather than scattered over
> > dozens of mailing lists, inside people's heads, and as wikisplatter. I
> > think one output of all of those mini-features is potentially a blog,
> > one is an email newsletter to nb-announce, and one is a printed
> > pamphlet that can be on the wall entering Noisebridge. But just
> > writing and collating this text is hard work -- piping it into
> > different media needs either an automatic process, or a bunch of
> > people working together consistently. Wait, would people be interested
> > in a Noisebridge press club?
> >
> > I WUV YOU
> >
> > d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> > Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> >
> _______________________________________________
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