All Hands Active

3D Printing Workshop with PocketFactory!

Josh Williams — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:07:32 +0000

There will be a DIY mashup and 3D Printing workshop, ie: http://pocketfactory.org/?p=387

Tonight (Wednesday), 7pm @ Workantile ($20) - http://workantile.com/

Tomorrow (Thursday), 7pm @ AHA / All Hands Active ($20) - http://www.allhandsactive.com/

After the Thursday workshop there will be a meet and greet, and general Build Night going on at AHA. As always – for free!

Censorship is bad, mmkay?

LogiK — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:14:21 +0000

Here’s a friendly reminder to stay aware of the precarious position we always seem to be in every few years with respect to censorship and the internet. The latest House bill — SOPA — seems to have lost steam for now, but there’s still the Senate bill — PIPA — and probably still some inevitable FutureBill that proposes the same thing (or worse) X months/years from now. With your vigilance, our elected officials might just get the message, and stop trying to fiddle with things they don’t understand.

Hokay, enough political ranting. There’s hacking to be done!

Space Race recap

LogiK — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:41:40 +0000

Thanks to all who spent Friday the 13th hurtling through the cosmos with All Hands Active and the Elks Lodge! There was an excellent showing indeed, and I personally witnessed folks dancing so hard that their slide rules fell out of their protected pockets. Thanks to your generosity, we raised $233 in donations to keep the lights on at the best place to hack in Ann Arbor. This event was but one small step for AHA, and it’s likely that we’ll hold other such events like these in the near future. Until then, safe travels to your destinations, wherever they may be… Photos! ->

Gyrate Wildly If You Want to Survive!

Xander — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:30:36 +0000

Last night at All Hands Active I taught a class on the basics of harmonic music theory. It turns out that understanding what all is going on in the music we like so much can not only help us to like it even more, but also to begin taking ownership of our aural consumption and make music for ourselves.

We began with physics. Sound is just energy being transmitted through the medium of air from the source to your ears, and the waves of that energy give sound all of its characteristics. Complex heaps of dueling harmonics result in different timbres and help you tell your mother’s voice from an alarm klaxon despite both having the same pitch and intonation. Furthermore, the frequencies of those sound waves are pretty neat. It turns out that any given note has a standard frequency, and that that same note, 1 octave higher, is double the frequency of the original note. And as if that wasn’t cool enough, the intervals (2 notes played at once) we’re used to hearing in popular music like perfect fifths reduce to perfect ratios of their respective notes’ frequencies, in this case 3/2. That may not mean anything to you at all, and that’s neat, too. It just means there are holes in your head that we have yet to fill.

Then we got into scales and chords. I could bore you with talking about the Circle of Fifths, but let’s sum it up with this: scales are collections of intervals out of which you can construct chords, chord progressions, and melodies. Harmony refers to how everything fits together.

By the end of the class, everyone had written a basic chord progression and a melody along with it. Given with satisfaction rate of what happened, I’ve already organized an Intermediate-level class to follow up in greater details on the chords and melodies on February 6th at 7PM. If what is mentioned above is all duh and derp for you, feel free to drop in and pick right up and even if you feel out of your depth I think we can learn you a thing or two regardless. Suggested donation: $5 and hugs.

Here is a clip of the class trying to make their arms follow the changes in the pitch and sonorance of the music:

And here is one of the songs we used to point out counterpoint:

Rapid Prototyping in the Field of Medicine

Josh Williams — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:33:53 +0000

A couple groups from the world of Medicine have recently been down to All Hands Active. Kaylesh Pandya, with the help of Matthew Oishi and @Ech0labs is utilizing the resources at hackerspaces such as AHA & i3Detroit to reconstruct data from CT scans in 3D – both virtually and physically. This enables doctors, students, and patients to have a better understanding of say, a traumatic injury to the skull. Check the slide & the video for more information!

Video: CT scan to 3d plastic model using open source software & hardware
Slide: 3D visualization of DICOM Datasets Using a Makerbot

January Events are live!

Josh Williams — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:49:17 +0000

Annarbor.com took a liking to us – thanks! Here are the upcoming events, – more to be added, so check back soon!

Date/Time	Event
Thursday, Feb. 23rd 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Feb. 25th 12:00pm -02:00pm	Learn to use a CNC! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Feb. 25th 02:00pm -04:00pm	Learn to Laser! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Feb. 28th 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Mar. 1st 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Mar. 3rd 02:00pm -04:00pm	3D Printer Class All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Mar. 6th 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Mar. 8th 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Mar. 10th 02:00pm -04:00pm	AHA - Learn to Arduino? All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Mar. 13th 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Mar. 15th 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Mar. 17th 02:00pm -04:00pm	Learn to Solder! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Mar. 20th 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Mar. 22nd 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Mar. 24th 12:00pm -02:00pm	Learn to use a CNC! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Mar. 27th 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Mar. 29th 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Saturday, Mar. 31st 02:00pm -04:00pm	Learn to Laser! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Tuesday, Apr. 3rd 06:30pm -08:00pm	Craftsman Guild - Programming Workshop All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI
Thursday, Apr. 5th 07:30pm -01:00am	Build Night! All Hands Active, Ann Arbor MI

Events!

Josh Williams — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:03:27 +0000

There’s a LOT going on this coming month! For more details, check out the events page!

12/01	6:30pm - 8:00pm		Intro to Programming w/Python #1/4
	8:00pm - Late 		Build Night: Bring a project!
12/03	2:00pm - 4:00pm		Intro to 3D Printing Class
12/05	6:30pm - 8:00pm		Intro to Programming #2/4
12/06	6:30pm - 8:30pm		Craftsman Guild (Coding Workshop)
12/07	7:00pm - 10:00pm	How to Make Computers See (Simple CV)
12/08	8:00pm - Late		Build Night: Bring a project!
12/08	6:30pm - 8:00pm		Intro to Programming #3/4
12/10	2:00pm - 4:00pm		Intro to Arduino
12/12	6:30pm - 8:00pm		Intro to Programming #4/4
12/13	6:30pm - 8:30pm		Craftsman Guild (Coding Workshop)
12/15	8:00pm - Late		Build Night
12/17	2:00pm - 4:00pm		Intro to Soldering
	1:00pm - 6:00pm		League  of Legends Tournament
12/18	12:00pm - 4:00pm	Case Modding!
12/20	6:30pm - 8:30pm		Craftsman Guild (Coding Workshop)
12/22	8:00pm - Late		Build Night
12/27	6:30pm - 8:30pm		Craftsman Guild (Coding Workshop)
12/29	8:00pm - Late		Build Night
12/31	12:00pm - 2:00pm	CNC Class Class
	2:00pm - 4:00pm 	LASER Class
	10:00pm - 8:00am	New Year’s Lock-in

Call for Laptops!

Josh Williams — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:42:31 +0000

Got an old Laptop? All Hands Active is looking to bring more low cost education to the masses! We have spent the past year working with Bright Futures, Brain Monkeys, and various other organizations to teach everything from Programming to Bleach Dying Bandannas. Currently, AHA members are involved in nearly 30 classes every week. However, when teaching classes that involve computers, we often have to contend with school computers, ie:
- Not being able to install software
- Not having access to the same computers from one week to the next, if at all
- Machines that are wiped every day

We would love to offer more technology based classes, help facilitate other organizations, and keep costs low. Perhaps you can help! Do you have an old (or not so old) laptop sitting around gathering dust?

Here are some minimum requirements:
- Working!
- 1GB of RAM
- 40GB Hard Drive
- 13” LCD @ 1024×768
- Pentium M Processor

Dell Inspiron 6000s and IBM Thinkpad T43s are good examples.

Here are examples of a few classes we plan on offering:
- Programming with Arduino, Python, Scratch, and more
- 3D Modeling & Printing with Blender, Sketchup, Replicator G
- Data Logging & Analysis via Open Office, Google Docs

It’s important to note that these Laptops will be made available to more organizations than just AHA. If you have a laptop that you would be interested in donating, please contact us today! It can even be a tax deductible donation.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Kimberly Frey
AHA Board of Directors

New Board & New Events!

Josh Williams — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:52:29 +0000

We had board elections, it was wonderful! The new board:
Xander Honkala
Kimberly Frey
Nate Dotz
Nate Yost
Michael Senkow

As always, you can reach them via: board@allhandsactive.com

We have new events:
11/01/2011 | 9:00pm – 12:00am | Good People Doing Bad Things: NMap Class

11/05/2011 | 1:00pm – 3:00pm | 3D Printing – Maker Bot!
- Repeats on the first Saturday of each month!

11/12/2011 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm | Intro to Arduino
- Repeats on the second Saturday of each month!

11/12/2011 | 4:00pm – 7:00pm | Sewing – Apron Creation

11/19/2011 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm | Intro to Soldering
- Repeats on the third Saturday of each month!

11/26/2011 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm | Laser Cutter / Engraver
- Repeats on the fourth Saturday of each month!

12/01/2011 | 6:30pm – 8:00pm | Intro to Python
- Four session class, other dates: 12/1, 12/5, 12/8, 12/12.

More information on these events shortly!

New features!

LogiK — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:37:24 +0000

In the interest of enhancing and encouraging educational events, the new Member Skill Search has gone live. If you haven’t created a user yet, do eet! Once you have a user on the site, you can access the skills list in your Profile page. You’ll also want to make yourself pretty for the updated Makers page, so go to Gravatar and associate a picture with the email address you used to sign up on the site.

All profile info beyond skills selected, username and avatar is accessible only to users who have already logged in to the site. You may also want to just lurk around, so you are able to hide your profile with the “Private profile” option in your Profile page. If you wish to show your email address, you will need to check the “Email shown in profile” option (on by default), found in the same location.

Sound off if you have some suggestions, or there are some really critical skills I overlooked that you think should have made the list. I plan on expanding the list as soon as I can figure out a good way to organize it better.