Movie Night next Friday: Sita Sings the Blues

Join us for another HacDC movie night!

When: 8 p.m. on Friday, 26 June 2009

Where: 1525 Newton St. NW, Washington, DC 20010

As always, this event is free and open to the public, but we’re asking you to RSVP via Eventbrite. Your RSVP will help us determine whether to hold this screening in our smaller space or in the church’s large sanctuary area, so please let us know if you plan to come; we’ll publicize the exact location by the morning of the 26th. Everyone is welcome!

 

Sita Sings the Blues

Directed, written, produced, designed and animated by Nina Paley; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License; 82 minutes; Animation; Color, stereo; 2008

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."

Categories: UncategorizedAuthor katie

Making Tubular Bells with Keith Sinzinger (HacDC and DorkbotDC)

On July 7 at 7:00PM, HacDC and DorkbotDC will together sponsor an event with a very innovative and interesting local musician, Keith Sinzinger.

Sinzinger goes under the performance name Fast Forty. He calls his genre of music Intense Ambient: “found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate.” His music is anchored by homemade tubular bells which he plays and routes through various audio effect processors.

He is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and his music reflects the industrial sounds of the Ford plant and the railroads of his early surroundings.

At HacDC and Dorkbot, he will explain how he conceived of, researched and constructed the tubular bells, and will then offer a demonstration of their sounds. The audience will also be able to play them afterwards.

Below one can listen to a full set of his from a recent Sonic Circuits performance, posted by District of Noise. Also see his MySpace site for more information.

Where: HacDC (1525 Newton St NW, Washington, D.C.)
Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Time: 7:00PM

HacDC starts funding for USRP2 – Bringing RF / software radio research to DC!

Do you wish you had truly universal communication device? A device that is a cell phone and can connect using GPRS, 802.11 Wi-Fi, 802.16 WiMax, a satellite hookup or any emerging standard, as well as GPS, GLONASS or both?

The HacDC has started a fundraising campaign to acquire a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRPv2) from Ettus Research.

Some projects that the USRP can be used for:

  • RFID reader
  • RF Test Equipment
  • Cellular base station
  • GPS receiver
  • FM radio receiver
  • FM radio transmitter
  • Digital television decoder
  • Passive radar
  • An amateur radio

HacDC will use the USRPv2 to research Radio Frequency (RF) / Software Radio! / Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and open up classes and teach these subjects to the DC community. As always our classes and study groups our free and open to the public, so donate, join (www.hacdc.org) and help build a new RF / software radio group in DC!

DONATE HERE: https://pledgie.com/campaigns/4801

Below are the details of the USRPv2 from Ettus’ website:

The Universal Software Radio Peripheral product family allows you to create a software radio using any computer with a USB2 or Gigagbit ethernet port. Various plug-on daughterboards allow the USRP and USRP2 to be used on different radio frequency bands. Daughterboards are available from DC to 5.9 GHz at this time. The entire design of the USRP family is open source.

The USRP and USRP2 work with GNU Radio, a free-software (open source) framework for the creation of software defined radios. GNU Radio works on all of the following operating systems:

* Linux
* Windows
* Max OS X, PPC and Intel processors
* FreeBSD and NetBSD

Picture below available via carrierdetect under Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution license: