It's Sunday in February. Are you at home and bored? Well that just won't do! Jump in your car, or on you bike and get down to The Hacktory between 2PM and 6PM. There you can help redesign, rebuild, and reinvent the lowly Pinball Machine with the artists makers and hackers of Make:Philly.

The Hacktory opens at 2PM and will be open until 6PM for people that want to help rebuild these wizard machines, as well as for anyone who just wants to stop by and gawk at the people doing the work.

There is parking on site, and we're located right near the Spring Garden stop on the Broad Street line. ( and here is the Google Map to 1524 Brandywine St if you need it).

Make things and learn things this Sunday with Make:Philly!

Notacon is a Hackers & Art con that happens in Cleveland in the spring. It's an awesome event for digital art, tinkering, and general hackery.

This year Notacon is running from April 16th to April 19th. And since The Hacktory bridges the same gap of art & technology, a pretty decent crew of people are planning to head out to Cleveland for it.

Which brings us to the 'Cheap' part. Notacon offers bulk tickets (6 or more) at a discount rate. That means tickers for $50 per person instead of $75. We already have more than 6 people signed up, but to help flood the Con with Philadelphians, we are opening up registration to all of Philadelphia. We are also renting a van to go out and back, to help make travel cheaper, and working on some bulk rates on places to stay.

If you've never been to a con, and are curious, this is one of the best conventions for new makers/DIY-ers/Hackers to attend. Check out the events I'm sure you'll find something to dig.

Make:Philly made use of our space last weekend to work on Pinball hacking, as part of their special 2-part "Rebuild Pinball Machines" project/challenge/design/project thing.

It worked out pretty well, and a bunch of people dropped in to help refit these machines for a new life.

It worked out so well, Make:Philly is moving their meeting This Sunday over to our space! Feel free to stop in this Sunday between 2P.M. and 6 P.M. to catch all of the makers from Make:Philly, to build stuff, design stuff, or just to sit back and watch!

Thanks again to TNT Amusements for the awesome generously donated surplus, and (as always) to NTR for hosting us, and all the trouble we make.

I just wanted to share that a little article on us popped up in thirtyfourthstreetmagazine. And the Valentines Make was awesome, thanks to everyone that came out, I hope your presents rocked.

This past weekend was Shmoocon in D.C. It's sometimes called "Defcon for Adults", since it's considered one of the harder hacker con's to get talks into. And due to a limited number of tickets, it can be a but tough to get in as an attendee too.

That is, unless you make your own badge (Disclaimer: That was a joke. All of the badges we made we gave to trustworthy individuals who already had tickets). A coordinated effort between TheHacktory, NYCResistor, Pumping Station One, and HackDC resulted in a batch of joke-badges generated within 12 hours of the official badges getting into the hands of attendees. The most awesome (and biggest) badge was a giant pink Flavor-flav badge that ended up being raffled off at the end of the event.

There were some great talks this year, including Genomic Hacking (why hackers need to work on the human genome system) the release of The Middler (the ultimate man-in-the-middle proxy toolkit) and some great RFID demos. Phily's own Matt Blaze and Sandy Clark both had talks, and new spread that the Travis Goodspeed is moving to Philly this fall!

Thanks to everyone that made Shmoocon happen, and hopefully we can drag a few more folks from Philly down there for the next one. And thanks to Nick Farr of HAC DC for his hard work accommodating a lot of visitors to his city.

The Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby (KKSD) is a design competition and parade celebrating art and human powered transit. For the third year running, this is your chance to build some outrageous and awesome human-powered contraption, and parade it around the streets of Kensington.

This year the derby will be held May 16th starting at 12 noon. It will run along side the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival.

If you want to enter the competition, go check out their website and sign up!