Send saintmeh@gmail.com a message if you're missing these emails:

HHEEEEEYYYYY YOOOOUUUU GUYYYYYYYYYYSSSSS!

The power we defected is electrically connected,

So use it as elected and expect to be respected!

YO!

CHECK IT! (http://www.meetup.com/mthackers/events/42295002/)

Imma gonna greet- to the beat- of the leet retreat-

I said I neva speak easy in the way of deceit!

So if- you're here Thursday then you're in for a treat,

We got the Droid, Interwebs, and some luncheon meat!

(Ya know what's really fun is I'm sending this out to hundreds of Helenans)
^_^  LOL.  Blarg!

'Cause if I'm not already spam,

then there's food for all.

If you're a hacker, slacker, HAM,

or a noob-- jus' call. *

We meet each week to talk and to tink.

Some Mehmbers meet more--

Fridays to interlink.

(CCNA/Network study)

Also here is a shout-out: 

4 DC406--

OX First Friday redoubt,

@ Five, in the @las.

(Computer Security)

Second shout-out's Sunday

When John teaches F.I.R.S.T.

CHS at one. A 

Way to replete thirst.

(Robotics, he also accepts random adult-ish people)

On Tuesday: it's the Board

they're on top o' the ball!

At two they're in the Ford

and they're off to G Falls!

(Fed required board meet--We plan next month/week while we donate plasma at GFalls to pay for our trip to GFalls)

Saturday's a breakdown-

and a time to unwind:

give ideas a shakedown

and you just speak your mind!

(Game/Banter night)

Did I simply pretermit--

Fancy way to say:

intentionally forget

that I missed a day?

Thursday! 

A day 

to meet and learn for free!

Your stay's

a way 

to build humanity!

dot dot dot

Return 

on investments in your time and energy.

Descern 

fair assessments with mental acuity.

*huff*  *puff**

okay.

Thursday is the night

and we meet at seven.

you've got your invite

with nerd rap to leaven.

(open hack night)

Saintmon uses cheesy rap!
It's super exhaustive!

*Saintmon faints*  

PS:  Since my emails are already cryptic, I thought there's no reason they can't be poetic as well.

*PPS:  406-204-4226

PPPS:  If you know of any smarty-pants people that might not know of the awesome nerd community in Helena, forward them this email.  They'll thank you for it... or at least enjoy a good laugh.

PPPPS:  The webcam had an affair with the newly networked projector...  it ended in tragedy and now the webcam is broken.  Sorry.  Send good thoughts the way of webcam VX30002sxew33113.  We're all hoping for the best.

BBQ was a Great Success!

Lots of fun, Fantastic food and not that much sunlight! We met, we nerded out, we had a lot of fun! MEH BBQ FTW!

We Raised $130 profit and had a very good time. We'll do this again next year!

Big props to the Bozeman Makerspace for coming out and having a good time!

If you're interested in being part of a growing makerspace in Bozeman- Check them out at

BozemanMakers.com or http://meetup.bozemanmakers.com/

We had a lot of fun making this important first step in getting a consistent set of fund raisers to help promote a hackerspace in Helena.

We're growing and growing!

Thank you to the following LOCAL sponsors:

Free Alternate Venue in case of Bad Weather

Meal for two! Wow!

Coney Island for $25 gift certificate and five hotdogs!

Wayne Miller for 7 Prize Collectibles!

Power Townsend for $36 of electronics! Including Solar panels and LEDs!

For advertising the event on Fox and ABC!

Other excellent sponsors who weren't featured in this event(but they will be in future ones):
MT Book and Toy Co

Big Dipper Ice Cream

Party Plus

KMart

McDonalds

Wendy's

Pizza Hut

Rock on.

Our Sponsors Achieved For Day #1! :D

Benefit BBQ for MEH






So here are the gifts Saint was able to get from local businesses for our event after one day of hoofing it around town looking for sponsors. Included are gifts from Coney Island ($25 gift certificate, and five free hotdog tickets), Wayne Miller Coins (two $5 commemorative coins -- first men on the moon, 2 bicentennial commemorative medals, US coin set from 1999 "Last U.S. Coins of the Second Millennium", National Collectors Commemorative Silver Dollar Duplicate), and No Sweat Cafe (Dinner for Two -- assumed $35 value). More will be coming as our sponsors increase :D !

Meetup.com FTW!

Check out http://meetup.com/mthackers for all our wacky activities!

Nagu Con is over! For this year.

Awesome Drawing by

Jacquie Reed

 

We'll be back as vendors next year though!  Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001720120454

Next year we are coming back as vendors of Pocky(and tastier clones), Ramen, Ramune, Light-up cat ears that "flick" to beats/loud noises, Costumes, LED necklaces/Glowsticks and more!

Look for our booth AUGUST 10-12, 2012--Tentatively at Performance Square in Helena.

Great Job everyone!  We'll be moving their domain over in a bit.

Today we are getting a specific sponsorship packet together with the Humane society to create some free fund-raisers!  Pepsi truck... you will be MINE!

Critical mass is easier when everyone is critically insane.

~ Saint out

The Tornado In a Box

BWAHahahahahaha! We're making SCIENCE!!!!

We got to play around with cutting glass for this. It's possible to cut tempered glass... But it's kinda tricky. Colt did all the important cuts because I lack the combination of dexterity and patience to get it right. I still like to think I helped with moral support ^_^. I nearly totalled a pain of mirrors.

The idea of a tornado box is simple: get air to come into the box from directions tangental to the desired vortex. In other words, make the air come into the box from angles that would encourage rotating air. Lemme draw a small diagram:

The Green lines represent air current.

Blue lines are glass(or mirrors). Notice how they're set up slightly off from each other?
Black is just the wooden box frame

In order to encourage air to want to enter the box: we put a lid on top of the glass and cut a large hole through the top. We then fit an old 12v projector fan on top of the hole and bolted the fan down.

The lid for the tornado box didn't get finished in our OHN night, but it is now done and shots will be posted of it in use during our next party. Unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures while we were still playing with the dry ice. DOH!

Actually, we got photos while we were "playing" with the dry ice. We made some "boo" bubbles with some bubble blowing solution, we super carbonated soda and just made fog with warm water. The photos aren't in our dropbox though :P

Meh.

ALSO: Super-mega-ultra props to Ferret for building that sweet glowing blue "meh" sign you see in the BG.

Meetup.com

Check out meetup.com for updates on upcoming and past events.

We have a month out on events at all times.

It also has more pics on some of our projects.

Night of Solder, Soda, Silicone and SCIENCE!!!

Someone actually had the presence of mind to videotape some of us when we began soldering. Normally doesn't happen and we forget!

Six hackers showed up to make the FTIR LED strands. This was supposed to be a daunting task, but many hands and mana pots made this fun work. Go GK or Go ~/!

Bishop learned a new soldering technique. The Doc, as usual, did a very nice job of soldering. Saint... well... he tried valiantly. ;-)

We made four compliant surface tiles(which will be glued together to prevent a seam) and created some talcum powder from burnt silicon gel(photos of the burning to eventually follow).

RARRRRRRRRRRR movie:^_^

A great night. We had Pizza, Pop, chicken wings, friends, gadgetry and(most importantly) SCIENCE!!!

Montana.Helena.Programmers.join('OMGWTFBBQ');

Barbecue weather is coming up! This is a great opportunity to hang out and meet some of your local computer programmers! Come enjoy a burger and meet some fun and friendly programmers in your neighbourhood!

Sign up @: http://www.meetup.com/Montana-Programmers/events/17176898/

We will have:

#A rousing game of Munchkin!

#plenty of chess!

#Nerd Quiz(Prize is a donut and an honourable mention on the Meh. Computer Club's website). Winner was a two-way tie between Chris Ching and Kyle Lonnes!

#More games to come!

#Chips, Watermelon, Pop, Beer, Burgers, Hot dogs,

We will be:

#Getting together a D&D 3.5 group.

#Finding more people seriously interested in learning to use Blender.

#Creating another team for this year's Montana battling robot competition.

#Having fun!

Battle Bots

We have a new entry from a UM-Missoula student! Will we see anything from MSU?

The clock is ticking! Get to work on those bots! Check out the "Compete!" link in the upper right-hand corner to observe all the rules for safety.

We're going to have to move the Robotic Competition back to July 2nd

This will, over all, ensure a better competition. We will have higher turnout, more goodies and better entries.

Ice to Fire!

"Even when our eyes are closed, there's a whole world out there that lives outside our selves and our dreams."~ Edward Elric

Fooosh!

Two transformers, Three attempts and One transmutation circle later we have ignition!

Ice to fire! I just wish I hadn't burnt my thumb doing it.

Ah, good old O2 in a bottle.

This week was planned to be a bit... more fundamental than most weeks. A lot of improvements going on here!

Next Thursday, we're either working on Adamo, mounting a projector to make a D&D screen or a freeform build-your-own-thing lab. VOTE NOW

Thursday Meeting in Review

Adamo(the first pizza bot) now has a functioning actuator. We put the pizza plate on the motor and hooked it up to a mouse. We also have a bunch of pictures. We will have a welcome video to the hackerspace soon, right now we have someone editing it. We have a film student. I like artists ^_^

The hackerspace is in the process of getting a paint job. We used low VOC and we have a HEPA filter on top of it all.

Ferret completed a WICKED display sign for the front window. It's an old optiplex that's been better re purposed as a lamp. It runs on 4.5 Watts of LEDs!

Saint has built a high-definition projector from a magazine magnifier, LCD and a construction light(yes, he already has the McGyver nickname). We're mounting it in the ceiling so we can project down onto a table.

If you contact us via phone, please leave a phone #. We don't devote the extra time to tracking your unknown #s down.

The Battle Robots competition may be able to get a couple acres by Canyon Ferry. We would do this on private property, so I am trying to get a sliver of pro-bono help from a lawyer. We need to have attendees/competitors sign waivers so our potential sponsor doesn't have to worry about liability.

What else happened in the past 13 days... Ah! Yeah! Congratulations to Saint for getting hired on as an instructor at the local U of M! He's also been delegating a bit more so I(Ferret)'m chatting you up instead.

We have a very organized and impressive newsletter this go around. Sign up for it on the website( http://mthackers.com/Contact.html). The membership goal for September 30th is 45 members. This means less than 3 members every other week We are on track to have $60k for the hackerspace by the end of December.


That's all folks!

Most of the Competition Rules by 4AM!

Sorry, I haven't posted the competition rules. I(Saint) am doing that now. Oh! We are also trying out a new Events Coordinator! She has a history of excellent event planning and consistent communications. The battle bots will be a challenging task to manage. I hope to do what I can to help, but I'm doing so many other super cool things. We've ratified our by-laws and we're positioning ourselves for 501(c)3 status with the feds. We have(officially) a Treas, Sec, Pres, VP and Committee Manager as of Jan 6th. I've also been spending some time getting a good chunk of funding, getting materials for a pizza-cutting robot, setting up our year's accounting and training key members so I can soon delegate some opportunities.

I will have the full rules posted to the site by ten this morning. Check back then!


http://mthackers.com/Compete

Redecorating and minor setup

So we need to redecorate. No problem, we have the people to do that now. We also should set up our computers so we can have a better chance to maybe get DC406 to guest appear at MEH for one of their monthly meetings.

We finally got on Google Maps and we've also got a call button(as you may have noticed).


There are now 12 mehmbers in Meh and we'll only get more. We've gotten some great funding ideas and a couple small programming contracts.

Next Thursday will be on Ormandy's Java exploit. Often times people will make their computer *too* paranoid: Denying update access through a firewall is a sure way to open holes. Check out DC406 for more advanced hacking. We will go through setting up, installing and using Virt-ICE.

I wanted to have a "build your own projector" tutorial, but... I uh... I melted the Fresnel lens(Sorry T_T).

Oh! I also built another logo on a whim. I'm working on a Holiday Robot Gladiator flier. I want to have it done before the rules are hashed out.

Holiday Robot Gladiator competition rules are going to closely follow the original battle bots. We hope to have the rules reviewed and posted by noon on the 8th.