killbox

Fairly simple writeup about the grand opening I slapped together for work,

Please if you have a few minutes to drop in and see the place, Talk with us a little about how this might be useful for you. And or please tell your friends, and people you think might be interested!

Grand opening Quelab Co-Working/Hackerspace
08/07/2010 7:00pm-11pm
1112 2nd Street NW (3 blocks)North of Lomas
Punch, Pie, Art and Geekery.

http://quelab.net (yah its .net)

Quelab Albuquerque's First Hackerspace and CoWorking Cooperative, What is a Hackerspace? Simply put a hackerspace is a workshop, For a members, it offers shared tools, available workbenches, and communal parts. And other people with ideas and contributions. In the footprint of Make Magazine A great number of national and world wide hackerspaces have sprung up Like Nyc Resisor, CCCC, Noisebridge, and many others, of which many great inventions and product improvements have been showcased in countless websites and Make Magazine issues.
On the flipside, Quelab (or sometimes pronounced Collab, short for Collaboration) is also a co-working space. It has tables, chairs, meeting space and WiFi. Quelab, Albuquerque’s newest co-working space, for a small rental fee it offers a new perspective on the idea of an office for those who home office or road-warriors whom often use their local coffee shops or living rooms to do business.

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Also currently we are sharing calendar space with NM Tech Calendar, so to keep up with events at Quelab, and other tech/web related stuff check here.

http://nmtechcal.com/

Tags: events, grandopening, hackerspace, projects, quelab

So on woot I got 2 Identical Jabra Bluetooth headsets(it was a smoking deal) I got one setup and paired it with my phone, and found it had enough volume to be usable!

It had a fairly Meh but not totally un-attractive smoky blue mirrored plastic panel, which has a nifty fingernail pry-up point. Unfortunately its glued to the backing of the mirror so it screwed up the mirror finish.

I then decided to use Toothpaste to polish the silver backing off, and then I got one of my Moo Cards and cut it to the right shape, glued it to the plastic window, and glued it all in place.

It is brighter in these photos due to the flash, with the smokey blue its not very noticeable, but i like it, its like a nicely skinned application now.

Before .......... After

Well i built and tested the Power Over Ethernet (POE) boxes/system i think it will all work.. tomorrow to put it in the metal box, and think about positioning the antenna, and then maybe tuesday if im not too busy packing we can do some range testing.. and see if the external antenna is working,

i took some camera phone pictures of the build. i may do a write up on how to do a DIY POE like i did, sometime in the future..

heres as link to my flickr of the photos.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/sets/1412065/

over the last month or 2 my flatmate's alarm has changed from a syncopated high pitch scream and a more standard klaxon to just the pulsed highpitch pulses of pink-noise.. i dont think its an improvement.. and he apparently still does not respond to it any better.. *shrug* I dont think i will even understand that level of deadness to the world..

Anyway I met a very nice/pretty German art student today, As a favor to my dad(she's in one of his art classes) I agreed to do a simple weekend Wifi install for her, she mentioned having picked up an accesspoint and trying to get it setup, but since she has a mac the install cd would not work so she gave up and returned it.. so, i hit the store and picked up a fairly cheap mini accesspoint/router which it turns out i didnt need (she had an actiontech dsl modem with NAT and with Wifi), so I just configured it(turned on wep), and tested coverage... ).. she was very impressed! Now I have to decide where I/if draw the line about fraternizing with customers. Since this was my private consulting I don't have any company rules or guidelines on this. and theres a good chance she wont be a return customer, so its more a matter of trying not to be a creepy stalker and make non-business contact with her.. perhaps i will use my dad for that.

She lives in a sort of artist shop/living space with some very cool glass and steel artwork in the works!

My other project currently is, playing with Ubutnu linux on my old pc.. looks like it still does not support my wifi card. but will play some more..

also working on making a point to point Wifi link of about a block to A.'s house, im going to setup another router, with an antenna, (i have a yagi, and a patch panel, i hacked an adapter cable, and now i want to try and make a power-over-ethernet adapter so i can just put it all in a weatherproof box, and run just one cat5 cable to it) the other end will be a accesspoint with some sort of directional antenna in repeater mode..