Rescuing a 1960s ESSO Pump

When you have somewhere like Nottingham Hackspace with it's tools and TARDIS like workshop and you see something like a 1960's ESSO diesel pump about to be thrown into a skip as scrap it's nearly impossible not to entertain the idea of acquiring it.

This pump made by the Wayne company had been ripped from it's fixings and was still leaking a slippery mix of diesel and rainwater when I arranged to move it to the Hackspace.

Friends Martin and David helped move the pump on a hand cart from a former lock gate works on the River Trent the half mile or so to Hackspace HQ in Sneinton.

Unfortunately the back panel had been smashed off and lost and the front panel was bent and detached. In an aborted attempt to remove all the innards to clear space inside I removed a huge electric motor.

I can confirm that every nut and bolt inside the pump appears to be it's own bastard size and in spite of Hackspace's extensive collection of spanners, sockets both metric and imperial, removing the innards would allow the placement of a beer barrel or shelves or something... truth is that in Hackspace everyone wants to know what you are going to do with anything that looks remotely interesting. This is usually follow by the

words "You should...(then insert any number of ideas here)" spouting RULE 3 always seems somewhat futile in these cases. If you've gone to the amount of effort to bring a heavy, diesel shedding, lump of pump into the space you must be planning something! Right?

Somehow and I don't know how this has happened, I seem to be the Hacker who makes lamps. I've now made four since I started going to the Hackspace, two for our station street neighbour Venus Pole Dancing Academy, one out of a street bollard in the comfy area at Hackspace.

Because the pump already had lamps inside it, it seemed the obvious thing to do. All of the internal electronics is shielded inside copper pipes packed with Magnesium Oxide. Having ripped out the junction box from the unit already and struggling to pop open any of the compression fittings, I decided to rewire the insides choosing to earth the body of the pump at the same time. At least if anyone asked what I was going to do with it I could say "Make it into a lamp."

In truth the next step is to continue to work on removing the guts of the pumping mechanism I've played with the idea of putting a TFT monitor inside the front of it and having it as a sort of digital photo frame. A very ambitious project that has been suggested is to put a barrel in it and run a bear pump through the original hose. What I imagine will happen is that I will leave it just as it is for at least the next few months.

Besides I now have my eyes on something else I want to bring back to the space...

Hackerspaces in the Midlands!

Spring is clearly in the air with a lot of activity in the Midland's Hackerspace scene.

Nottingham just become the largest UK Hackerspace at 4300 sq Ft (in terms of floor space - 4300 sq Ft) celebrated at the very successful open day on Sunday 29th May. There were at least 100 visitors with Hackers from Birmingham, Leeds and London as well as friends from all over the region. We were pleased to see so many new faces who are interested in becoming members of the space. It look like we may have at least 8 new members joining up soon!

We are, almost certainly, having another Open Day later in the year. There are lots of events planned too for the coming months including Solder On, BarCamp Nottingham, Beading Workshop, Sew-Much-Fun, Sunrise Pinhole Camera and more check the calendar!

I've been following the Potteries Hackspace Google Group for a while and saw an article about a physical space they are taking in Tunstall to the North of Stoke-On-Trent. They are going to share some room with the The Ethical Computer Trust who recycle old computers. I'm sure we'll take the opportunity to pop over and visit them when they get things up and running.

FizzPop also known as Birmingham Hackspace looks to have reawakened too with several meetups happing in the last few days and talk of a proposed Hackerspace in the centre of Birmingham. I can't wait to be able to visit them as a Birmingham based Hackerspace is something I consider to be long overdue.

Thanks to Amr Behkit and the Leeds Hackspace for the photograph.

T-Shirt Printing on the Cheap!

So I've been experimenting with GIMP on my Ubuntu laptop as I no longer have access to any Photoshop software. I'm getting used to it and have made the following t-shirt designs that I intend to print and sell at the Hackspace (should anyone wish to buy them).

One is based on a t-shirt I see Adam Savage wearing on Mythbusters that reads

"Hacking is not a crime"

which seems appropriate for Hackspace. I've

shoved a load of noun-project symbols above the text. I like the symbols but the t-shirt would work just as well with fewer or non-at-all.

The noun project is an intere

sting web page that got it's funding on Kick Starter. I'll do this t-shirt in any colour btw.

The other t-shirt is a little more simple and is based on our Hackspace rule zero (robbed off London Hackspace)

DO NOT BE ON FIRE

Man on fire is a running man symbol from noun project with a fire design of my own. again will be avilable in any colours wanted.

There will be a how to screen print t-shirts on the cheap workshop at Nottingham Hackspace this summer!

Move Day Hackspace 2.0

When I arrived at the Hackspace my fellow Hackers were already feeding their faces with bacon cobs and coke. We'd agreed to a gathering at the Hackspace at 10:00.

So many little bits of junk had to be tidied up, boxed and carried out to cars for transport onto the new Hackspace. We were fortunate to have a glorious sunny day.

As the van was not due until 12:00 we got loading smaller estate cars for several journey with small items. Tony S to command the away team at Hackspace 2.0 and coordinated the unloading.

We had bad news about 11:30. The van couldn't be started. No one knew what to do. We started making contingencies. James however dipped into his "little black book" and called up a friend who'd house mate has a big van. Apparently they could decide what to do with their holiday weekend...

The van came not a moment too soon. We'd managed to get all the smaller stuff off in the estate cars (thanks John & Russell) poor old Michael looked truly gutted about the other van we couldn't start, but James' friends Katey and Matt seemed more than happy to help us with their Transit High-Cube.

Once we'd finished moving things into the space we had to start the Mammoth task of sorting through all that stuff and thinking where to put things.

Many arguments were caused by me and my OCD and bossy ways. We finally got some concensus about where to put different things (well at least for now)!

Jason and I spent an hour or two building big racking. David learned to do a bit more Unicycling (as well as doing a whole lot more organising and shifting stuff).

Matt and James made a start on surveying the lighting. All in all it was a very busy day.

Can't wait for Wednesday night open hack!

So What IS a Hackspace?

More often these days I have to try and explain to interested and official people what a Hackspace is...

Our new landlords agent described a Hackspace back to me as "An allotment with power tools" not a bad try, in many ways a Hackspace is like an allotment but instead of flowers and veg we make physical or data based things grow...

Here is a very good piece from motherboard.tv about NYC Resistor in New York

Hackspace 2.0

Why is Nottingham Hackspace moving?

The news in late March that the Nottingham Hackspace was to be evicted to make way for development of the Old Police Station didn't come as a total surprise. Nottinghack's Station Street locational had always been a massive bonus.

That the Hackspace was just a NERF dart shot from the station was no idle boast (though I never got around to trying it out). There is a lot of money being spent on the area around Nottingham Station (branded as The Hub). In the next few years the NET Tram phase 2 to Beeston and Clifton will place Station Street at the heart of what I hope will be one of the best public transport systems in any provincial city in Europe.

Originally we'd looked at and discussed with The Art Organisation a move into their Hopkinson Gallery. The basement level was kindly offered to the Nottingham Hackspace. Initially we were interested but after reflection rejected the basement as too dark and damp and no doubt cold in winter. We'd have spent all the money we had just to get the place suitable. The lack of natural light as well as uncertainty about access, sharing and availability of ablutions made the decision to look elsewhere fairly easy.

On Wednesday 13th April Matt Little and I visited BizSpace at Roden House in Sneinton just 0.8 miles from our current Hackspace. On viewing a large former woodwork shop on the 1st floor at BizSpace it immediately became apparent that we'd found a potential new home for Nottinghack. The space is 4000sq ft which is huge. Matt and I decided that there must be some way to bridge the gap between the groups finances and it's ambitions.

It's surely a truism that Geeks are by nature a cautious bunch, though able an analysis a situation fairly and with a measured unemotional approach. I must admit that any other space within our price range would have been under-ambitious and left us stuck in a comfort zone whereby we didn't have the money to expand into a space we need, but we didn't have the space needed to get the money to expand.

I arranged a viewing of a much smaller room at BizSpace for the other members of the Board of Trustees. I couldn't resist the urge to have another look at the 4000sq ft space too. Seeing the reaction of the others to the large space, I knew we were going to have to find a way to raise £2k in 2 weeks....

I'll tell you the rest of the story once we've moved in!

How We Built A Rube Goldberg Machine

...and what we'll do differently if we had our time again!

It was JP's idea on the night of the first Nottinghack meetup. I don't know if he was inspired by OK Go's "This to will pass" Goldberg edition only or if it was just a prompt to wanting to build one?

You may have seen that Ok Go! video, but did you ever stop to thinks about how hard that machine was to get right?

Consider this:

1. this Rube Goldberg machine had to run in-time with the song... not appear to run in time, or run in the edit, actually run to a time plan, to fit the song.

2. Like all Rube Goldberg machines, it's only clever if you really do it, really make it work end to end. So Ok Go!'s video is shot in one take.

I rather wish I'd seen Adam Sadowsky's TED talk BEFORE the Big Rube Goldberg Weekender back in early June.

In the course of the talk Adam talks about Life Lessons... the Lessons they learned making their machine...

1. Small Stuff Stinks (...but is essential)

for example, say's Adam, a marble will get stuck and fall out of it's track and get stopped by dust or tiny changes in humidity, a balling-ball will pretty much do the same thing every time(because it's so much bigger and heavier). He then says you've still got to have smaller stuff, it's a place to start. We found the same thing, nothing we had was really heavy enough most of the time.

2. Planning is incredibly important

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy... I think our enemy was physics!" says Sadowsky. "...but while planning is important so is flexibility." Just like us they had a number of bit of the machine that just didn't work or look right. For us some where just fantasy!

3. Put Reliable Stuff Last

"You don't want to have to reset the whole machine..." because the stuff at the end didn't work.

4. Life is messy (and this too shall pass).

Here are the You Tube video's of our Rube Goldberg machine. We never did get a complete run through, but we came so close, it hurts to think back...

We'll call our Life Lessons "The Nottinghack Laws of Goldberg"

Morrow's 10 Commandments of Goldberg

1. Leave at least a whole day to run the machine

2. Have it all in one room

3. All builders should have a basic tool set on them at all times - Scissors, a few screws and nails, nylon cord, zip ties, screw driver, hammer, ideally a battery drill (We didn't have enough power or power tools) gaffer tape

4. Weights - gravity is very important and it's much easier to create momentum with more weighty props, balls etc.

5. Have one person coordinating distribution of tools and stuff.

6. Have a viewing area, this might ideally be a mezzanine floor above the machine (or similar).

7. You need to collect more stuff much earlier on.

8. Have a few set pieces and lots of small jobs set-up for people.

9. Have a coordinator for the whole machine.

10. Have a start and finish element in place before the event.

10.1 Nominate an official "sceptic" to temper the creative element in all of us....

10.2 Always take the time to make your trigger/stand/gizmo/widget properly and stoutly. This will save time in the setups later and is less likely to wear out.

10.3 Gaffer tape looses it's sticky, string stretches, blue tak is tactless, cardboard goes floppy... You get the idea stuff wearsout build to last wood/metal/screw

10.4 Always drill a pilot hole before screwing (up) wood!

10.5 If you DO have a hair trigger in your device make a safety to stop it goes off before time

Lloyd's First Law of Goldberg

"If an element causes the machine to fail 3 times in a row redesign it!"

Hayward's Laws of Goldberg

1. Use nylon cord rather than string. String stretches, and frays easily.

2. Nothing generates as much force as you think it will. Sometimes, a thing won't generate force consistently enough, and might be too gentle on some attempts.

David went on to say...

"Avoid hair triggers: They're easy to build but too erratic in use, especially as things will wear out through repeated use. Construct ones that work every time instead (e.g. the gate on the bottle for our second run worked every time).

Having the right amount of people is tricky. Too few, and the machine takes ages to set up for each run. Too many, people fill in for each other and things don't get set up correctly.

Have the same people set things up every time, and ideally they should be the people that built that section. There's a lot of room for failure in every mechanism of an RGM, for instance resetting with the large orange ball just 5mm out of place caused our best attempt to fail on Sunday."

I suppose the question is will we do another machine? oh yes...