Author: Simon Clark

  • The Bird House

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    Simon Clark
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    The BirdHouse Four years ago, I built a little cedar cabin in a forest.  I have a solar panel on the roof, its near a river & is a short drive from the city. I was inspired to return to my rural roots but knew I needed to also be living and working in the city.…

  • Diyode CodeShield V1.1

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    Simon Clark
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    Last weekend was SoOnCon, Southern Ontario’s annual hackerspace / makerspace / community workshop. This years was hosted by Diyode, and as is tradition, we were tasked with coming up with an interesting badge. We took this as an opportunity to throw our resources into the codeshield, get some proper circuit boards made, and get a…

  • Here comes the lasers!

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    Simon Clark
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    Thanks to the the tireless efforts of the laser acquisition committee, and all those members who donated to the fund, our G Weike LG900 laser cutter is on its way. We should have it in our possession sometime around April 30th. Look for a laser party soon after that!

  • The Diyode CodeShield

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    Simon Clark
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    Like many other hackerspaces, Diyode has been running arduino workshops as part of our community outreach. Typically, we’ve started with an intro to the concept, built a simple button/led circuit on a breadboard, then coded it up. People with a natural aptitude for this kind of stuff do okay with that, but we’ve seen a…

  • Simple Kid’s Drawing Table

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    Simon Clark
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    Bashed this table together quickly over the weekend for our youngest daughter. There’s nothing terribly groundbreaking here.  A simple plywood top, rounded and routered to make nice edges.  My wife, older daughter and I painted after the young one’s bedtime over the weekend, then some simple legs and a lot of varnish. The legs are…

  • Tools of the Zombie Apocalypse

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    Simon Clark
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    Sitting around over beers a while back, we were talking about ways that we can be evangelizing DIY, what we can do to highlight the importance of not letting these skills fade away in our society. Someone made the offhanded comment that if we don’t succeed, then when the Zombie Apocolypse comes, we’ll all be…

  • The Pathology of DIY

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    Simon Clark
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    I think it was Carl Sagan who first said “If you are going to make a patio from scratch, first you must invent the universe”. I’m not sure if Carl was pro or anti DIY (I’d like to think ‘pro’) but it strikes a nerve, nonetheless. You see, it would seem that I am incapable…

  • Rebuilding Computers

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    Simon Clark
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    Over the last year or so, we’ve had many computers donated to us in various states of non-function.  We have rebuilt many of these into functional systems, installed the latest Ubuntu Desktop linux on them, and are hoping to find homes for them where they can be of use. If you are having trouble affording…

  • Rocket Piñata

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    Simon Clark
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    For the last year or so, we’ve been using rocket launchers, based loosely on the Make Magazine design, as a community outreach tool, taking them around to various community events and letting kids build and fire their rockets. Recently though, I wanted to up the ante a bit, and give the kids a reason to…

  • Musagetes and 1 Mile Squared

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    Simon Clark
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    Over the last week, Mary Mattingly, a New York based artist has been in Guelph for the Musagetes Sponsored 1Mile2 event. She and a number of volunteers have been inhabiting the Diyode workshop over the week, secretly toiling away on a ‘wearable architecture’ project. We don’t know yet what their final piece will look like,…