March Madness coming soon!

So to try and rally the troops at the hackerspace, I suggested a contest - March Madness. The idea? You have to write one unique program every single day. It doesn't have to be the next Microsoft Office - it just has to be an actual program with a unique goal in mind. You're allowed to use any language and platform you like - I plan on switching between my laptop computer, my new Android phone, and embedded platforms.

I'll be blogging about each program, everyday here - hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things for posting on my work. Especially now I'm starting to catch a bit of the social media frenzy.

AVR class and a Robocode Challenge

I've been quite busy. I've been volunteering BETA testing the new FIRST robotics controller and teaching high school students how to program their robots in Java. I've also been working heavily with people at FUBARlabs to help turn it into self sufficient hackerspace (easier said than done). I've also been helping FUBAR design some classes...

Happenings at FUBARlabs

As I've mentioned before, I have been helping start up a new hackerspace in central New Jersey - FUBAR Labs. We're still filing for a non-profit corporation status, but we're beginning to move ahead with a number of plans, some of which I came up with or have been put in charge of. Here's some of the cool events I'll be working on for them.

The future lies in hackerspaces

Not even two weeks prior to this post, the last I read of hackerspaces was one of two things. It was either the ideal description of a place that seemed to have goals too lofty to believe, or a random place where a cool, 15-minutes of internet fame project was hosted - usually a major hackerspace like NYC Resistor. For some reason I had been set in the belief that the major hackerspaces were few, rare, and far between, capable of surviving only in special circumstances and large cities. Still more I had the pessimistic belief that the lofty goals and ideals of a hackerspace - existing solely to push the education and application of technology for common people of all skillsets - to be useless. While my own interests cause me to greatly anticipate any way to further educate myself on technical matters, rarely did I see the same diligent spirit in others.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that I was completely wrong.