Today is Ben Franklin's Birthday, and (if he were still alive) he'd be 302 by now. That would be one old hacker. Ben is in a lot of ways the prototype of the modern hacker/maker, and it's worth the time to read up on him bit, and think "wow. That dude did a LOT of stuff."

He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America

Or, if you want to take it one step further, you should come on down to Nat'l Mech. bar at 9PM tonight to join Philly's geek in celebrating Ben Franklin's Birthday party.

Phew. I just finished setting up and executing a Hackerspaces.org call-in.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone at HackME about what TheHacktory is doing, and how we can get hackerspaces working together. We agreed to call each other on Nov 30th (today) to catch up and talk about what our spaces were doing. In a stroke of genius, we decided to invite other hacker spaces, expected that either HacDC or NYC Resistor would want to get in our our call. It was a matters of hours before Nick Farr had told everyone he could get his hands on about it, and then Astria setup a page for it on Hackerspaces.org, and we made it an official hackerspaces.org event.

Despite all of that, when the call time came I was still expecting 10-12 people from 3-6 spaces. Instead we had 35 different calls into the party line, with a max of 26 people on the call at one time. We had 16! (that is 16*wh00t* not 16-factorial) hackerspaces give a 5 minute intro and update about their space. That is 80 minutes of hackers ranting about what they love, and what they make. It was seriously impressive. It was intense, and awesome, and I can't wait to have the next one at the end of December.

This weekend is packed for Philly geekdom!

Saturday during the day is Arduino for Artists and Makers our favorite Intro class covering the Arduino, and basic electronics.

Unwind Saturday night at 8static at Studio34. From 7:30 to 11:00 the place will be packed with the best chiptunes and 8bit vjay's around. Or you can show up early, and at 6:00 watch a screening of Reformat the Planet.

If you're still up and kicking (or if you bail our early) youn can find your way across town and join in the official Art Buggy Derby Pub Crawl. It is going to take a lot of work Saturday night to make sure the Art Buggy participants are in top form for Sunday, and we will need all the help we can to do it.

Then on Sunday is Art Buggy Derby! What can I say? Just get youself to Washington Square park before 2PM, to race, or just watch. I have it on good authority that last second entries are fan favorites. If you just heard of it and want to make a buggy, you can still register, and there is plenty of time to make a buggy if you have some inspiration!

Our October classes are almost on top of us! Sign up now if you want to get in before we run out of spaces.

Intro to Arduino for Artists and Makers (Sat, 10/18/2008 - 09:00 - 5:00PM) still has has 3 (no, make that 2, one just filled) spaces left in it.

Designing Circuit Boards ( Sat, 10/25/2008 - 10:00 - 15:00) - still has 7 spaces left. This class is a one of a kind jump-start into designing your own Printed Circuit Boards (PCB). An awesome class for the Alpha geeks out there. If you want to take your projects off of the Breadboard, and get them into real hardware, this is the class for you!

Building Mechanical Marvels and Desktop Gadgets ( Sat, 11/08/2008 - 09:00 - 17:00). Steampunk fan? Or just a father-son team wanting to build something cool? This class teaches the basics of simple machines, and starts the participants down the road to building awesome mechanical machines. Who knows, you might take this and someday become the next Theo Jansen!

We are proud to announce another one-of-a-kind class from TheHacktory! On October 25th we are running a one of a kind class, teaching Makers,Hackers, and DIY geeks the basics of designing their own Circuit Boards.

This class will teach you how to use the Eagle PCB Design software to create your own printed circuit boards (PCB) designs. The designs the can be sent to a fabrication shop in China (or Chester, PA) to have printed out for you. This one of a kind class is being taught by Zach Smith, the designer of the Danger Shield Arduino board which has been featured on Make Blog and our own Danger Shield for Arduino class.

This class has only 10 spaces in it, and will sell out! If you want to get in on it, head over and sign for it over at the class page.

Ruckingenur II is the Reverse Engineer game! From the same people that brought you Silicon Foundry.

I've always had a hard time explaining how much fun it is to tear something apart, and figure out how it works. It's a weird type of entertainment and engagement to try to get across to non-technical people. This game is BY FAR the most fun game in the category, and it really gets the idea across. It takes a little bit of technical know-how to get into, but anyone who has programmed anything should be able to pick it up, and play with it a bit.

Now, if only they had an iPhone version of the game....