Today is the 5th Anniversary of the formal opening of Hitchin Hackspace in our own building on the 10th August 2019. It took us 7 years from the first meeting and the formation of Hitchin Hackspace to find and fit out a place of our own. 🧵1/3
#Hitchin #HitchinHackspace #Hackspace #Community

Somewhat embarrassing as the organiser, I won the racing and the event overall with the seven year old Rule Zero!
The extremely bumpy track did beat up the bodywork, so I need to get that fixed for our next event, Scrumpy Cup, at the end of September.

Success!

Getting the fire going by blowing with a metal straw:

We've been playing with Swedish Log fires:
(trying different methods: axe, chainsaw, log splitter, " log grenade" and natural rotten airways)

I'm not sure if it was damage from the last event, or if it failed on my practice lap, but I noticed that Rule Zero's front suspension was cracked. Luckily Chris had brought a welder. Hopefully it lasts the weekend.

I'm at #Footfest this weekend, near Sudbury, with Hacky Racers. @drfootleg.bsky.social has again mowed us a brilliant track into paddock.

In a field in Suffolk :-) #footfest

A giant thank you to @pimoroni.com for their support allowing me to create the Giant Unicorn Hat.

#GiganticUnicorn

It was great to have you, and I'm pleased the universe didn't explode when we aligned it to reflect off my WAVE 😂

A twitter post explaining how you can “save PNGs to birds” by converting a drawing of a bird into a spectrogram then playing it to a starling who sung it back, reproducing the PNG.

Can’t wait to introduce bird-based storage into my backup system

We are finally ready to announce that EMF 2026 will happen on July 16-19, 2026, at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire.

Expect more updates soon as we start spinning up the organisation again.

Getting ready for HackyRacing robot racing at FootFest. Having a swap around with my autonomous robot rig, @raspberrypi.com Pi 5, full frame shutter camera, LiDAR & GPS, driving the motors is @pimoroni.com Yukon.
Details here hackyracers.co.uk

Tesla coil striking a mesh target. Onlookers from a balcony and around the room, behind barriers.

More details about the Gaussfest in London on the 7th September 2025

www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/the-gaussfest/

High voltage, tesla coils, electrostatic machines and another Victorian/Edwardian pumping station to look around.

I can't think of a better day out :)

We joined in with the car show:

A few pics from yesterday, including the night parade. Big Tikes looks great with all the LEDs.

Great job Chris, that looks awesome!

WAVE (Webb-Inspired Actuated Visual Effects) in action earlier today at #LiverpoolMakefest

Qualifying is under way for the Hacky Racers at Veedub and Retro in Wales, here's Chris in CYBRTRK

A robot covered in graphics

A 3d printed rack and pinion lift mechanism

RGB LEDs on a robot!

A bright yellow robot with green LEDs, and two arm mechanisms, one on an elevator and another horizontally expanding.

Some pictures of robots from today

An arena with purple lighting, and five game fields, surrounded by sponsor hoarding and tiered seating. A jumbotron style screen hangs above the field.

An arena with purple lighting, and five game fields, surrounded by sponsor hoarding and tiered seating. A jumbotron style screen hangs above the field.

A close up of one of the game fields, showing the "submersible" structure in the centre of the playing field.

I'm at the First Tech Challenge UK nationals today and tomorrow, at the Copper Box Arena in London.
Looking forward to two days of robot competition!

Anyone in the #UK have experience of setting up a #RepairCafe ? There isn't one in my local town and I'm investigating setting one up. Especially with the #endof10 looming for #windows10 , I figure my experience with #linux and fixing stuff could be useful to others.

David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...

First fight of the veterans category, Dominion vs DiaWolf.
A pneumatic flipper!
The fight was stopped due to the arena door opening.

First fight, in the beginner category:

I'm at a new (to me) robot event this evening: The Cambridge Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Robot Club's second event, it was only this weekend I found out about them.

"May I have your name?" the faerie said.

"William," she said with a smile.

"Ah ah!" The faerie gave a wicked laugh. "I have your name! Now no-one will call you by it!"

"Thank you," she said.

"To win it back, you must- what?"

"I will find me a new one," she said, "one that suits me better."

Makefest logo

Running #LiverpoolMakefest for our 10th birthday. Book here it's free ⬇️ and it's my last one. After a decade I'm retiring! #Makers #Makerspaces #LMF2025

www.ticketsource.co.uk/liverpool-li...

Fine, I'll do it myself!

arturo182.github.io/pico-compati...

The back of Rule Zero, with a multi-colour 3D printed bronze medal.

Jan and Chris Shakespeare with their Hacky Racer medal haul. Jan has three firsts! She won moxie, racing and the overall event.

Rule Zero won another medal for moxie!
Also, the Shakespeare family cleaned up, earning most of the other medals

Hacky action from today's first race: