You! Over there bangin’ yer pots and pans, glitching toy circuits, playing that weird looking pipe thing! No, don’t stop! We want you to join us this Saturday, July 23rd for an open jam session. It’ll be at Nothin’ Less Cafe, located at 2642 N. Milwaukee Avenue (right next to the Logan Theatre), from 11 am to 7 pm. We’ll have some instruments set up, but feel free to bring your own mutant trombones or circuit-bent toys (or that thing from the picture above). If you want to bring a traditional instrument, that’s okay too. You don’t have to be a “musician,” just be ready to make noise. It’s free and open to the public, so come out and invite your friends. It’s part of the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival going on all weekend, so there’ll be plenty of things to see and do in the area.

(Picture licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, by SWARM Sounds on Flickr.)

Heat up them skillets and put on your eating face, Pumping Station: One is once again ringing it’s funny little metal triangles and yelling “Cooooome ‘n get it!” That’s right faithful onlookers, stop your bacon, get eggcited, and stop by PS:One for a pun-themed potluck.

Bring a dish to share and parcake in everyone else’s. While as the saying goes, becoming a vegetarian is a missed steak, it’s inevitable that there will be vegan and vegetarian options. If you feel like bringing some drinks, feel free, but don’t drink beyond the pint of no return or we may require you take a leave of absinthe. More than anything, come relish time to ketchup with friends!

Seriously though, food & puns, Tuesday the 29^th at 8:00 pm, we’ve got a microwave for reheating, but the cutlery may well be up to you. Bring your galores through the red doors! See you there!

Come to the space with all of your loud things. We’d love to see your circuit bent toys, electronic contraptions, loud computer programs, microcontroller gadgets, MIDI controllers, absolutely anything–whether it was intended to make noises or not. If you’d like to be a little offbeat and bring your “usual” musical instruments, those are welcome, too.

It’s free and open to members and nonmembers alike, so bring your friends. See you there this Friday night!

(Picture licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, by MrAtrocity on Flickr.)

The Foreman Dog - by Jeff Kantarek

In case you thought otherwise, it turns out nerds aren’t exempt from proving their survival skills by cooking meat on an open flame from time to time.  To keep with tradition this Saturday, May 1st @ 3:00 we will be cooking out in one form or another, (The weather looks good as of this writing, so expect full force) and you are all invited to join us.

If you want to eat as well, we ask that you please bring something to share too.  We’re all excited to come out of our caves and kick off Spring/Summer this year with food, drink & good conversation so come on out, we need to attract the fire department like we did last year!

Hugs from the VP will be available too.

Ripple is a conference that explores the role of creativity in urban education, as well as other topics related to teaching practice and education policy.

Here is a partial list of the speakers.  And here is where to sign up.

PS1 Members will be providing the following content:

• Opening Panel (Christina Pei)
• Midday Panel 1: What is Education (Christina Pei and Robert E. Lee)
• Rogue Engineering Skills: lockpicking 101 (Christina Pei and Eric Michaud)
• Mine’s Smaller Than Yours: Nanotechnology and Chemistry in a DIY Environment (Sacha De’Angeli)

UPDATE: last day to purchase tickets is April 28 – one extra day to buy tickets!

Vermiculture or vermicomposting is a compact, smell-free way urbanites and apartment dwellers can compost their kitchen waste.  Join us and learn how to reduce your household waste while creating free organic fertilizer!

Date: May 6, 8-9pm
Ticket sales close on April 28 (after this date, there are NO refunds, we are purchasing live worms)

The full ticket price (Workshop + Materials) will include a 10 gallon bin and a half pound of red wriggler worms from our supplier in Wisconsin.  Those who purchase the information only tickets will only attend the lecture and receive no materials (worms, bin, etc..).
Notice to Attendees: if you have any available, please bring black and white printed paper, or a Tribune or a Red Eye (both are printed with soy-based inks). If you don’t have any, we will bring some too.

About the instructor:
Mary Pawlak has been educating people about the environment since 2004 and she has been vermicomposting since 2008.

Purchase Tickets Here

Photo by Anne Petersen

300 Seconds of Fame this Tuesday:
You have 300 seconds. Make it count.

Last month we had an action-packed 300 Seconds of Fame, featuring two!–count ‘em–two! related talks about pimping your work and raising funds; two!–count ‘em–two! musical performances that rocked our little house; anecdotes and ideas via the balloon factory and video surveillance; a first look at a new way to use an arduino; how YOU could go watch a robot competition; and some facts about why we use our brains the way we do. How meta.

This month, we’ll have wasps (but not in-house, I hope), a sure-to-be-controversial look at password hacking, some noises out of Tomer, and more! But that “more” might require YOU. Yes, YOU.

Want to get in front of the microphone and live up to your 300 seconds of fame? Drop us a note.

If not, come along for the ride! Sure to be entertaining. Come on in at 6 or later, and we’ll start these up around 8.

p.m., that is. Since I’m sure not going to come out at 6 a.m.

And if you can’t make it, we’ll try to be sure the ustream’s up and running for you to enjoy from the comfort of your laptop. Or desktop, I suppose, if you’re all old-school. But if you’re trying it from an iPad, you’ll be SOL. Just FYI.

Be there or have less fun. I swear at least one of the 300Seconders will have better jokes than this post. Seriously.

This Friday, April 9, at 7:00pm, is the next Unusual Musical Instrument Jam! It is free and open to the public. Anything is welcome–electronic musical instruments, toys, computers, common household items, and anything else (even usual musical instruments). As always, we will be doing this concurrently with our friends at i3Detroit.

We are looking forward to seeing [and hearing!] you this Friday night!

(Photograph by Maurits Burgers on flickr.)

Photo by Anne Petersen

Last month we had our inaugural 300 Seconds of Fame, featuring a wild and wooly tour through Peoplehacking (Four Formulae For The Reduction Of Operational Mass or The Engineers’ Guide to Weight Loss), Maker Faire, photographers rights, a RepRap update, and the NEW and IMPROVED solution for HACKERSPACE maintenance: BRAWNDO! (which evidently makes you good at yelling).

Tomorrow we have more great (but short!) performances to enjoy, including some EXTREMELY AWESOME facts about neuroanatomy, fiddling around, an anonymous committee, some digeridooing, arduino radio, and how to renounce your legal rights to your creations.

Read the full monty about 300 Seconds of Fame and what else the night is about via our wiki.

But to really experience the night you have to be there! Or, if you can’t, you get demoted to watching the ustream. SO BE THERE!

I should really lay off the BRAWNDO.

This Friday, March 12, at 7pm, Pumping Station: One is hosting its monthly Unusual Musical Instrument Jam! We’ll be running it synchronously with i3Detroit again this month. As always, we welcome anything that makes noise…bring your electronics, your toys, your common household items, even your musical instruments if that’s your bag. If it’s loud, we’d love to see and hear it!

The event is open to the public, and free.

[Image by buhny on Flickr, licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.]