In Pursuit of Mysteries

Noisebridge Hacking Collective Has A Space

I’ve blogged before about Noisebridge, the hacker collective in San Francisco (or the Bay Area as a whole, really) of which I am a member. The group has been meeting once a week for coffee for most of a year now and has been looking for an affordable space for most of that time.

The vision of the group is:

“We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art - with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects. “

As of today, we finally have our own space, keys in hand and lease signed. It is just off of 16th and Mission in San Francisco (at 83C Wiese St between Mission and Valencia just off 16th). We signed papers today after collecting promised funds from people over the last week once it became clear that the space would work and that the will of the collective was that we should get it.

Right now, there is literally nothing in the space and it needs to be cleaned. We’re going to hold our first meeting in it tomorrow, Tuesday the 30th, at 8:00 PM. Jacob Appelbaum seems attached to calling the space, “Noisebridge Meadows.” It consists of a 20′ by 30′ room with a kitchen and bathroom, a small “board room” with doors, and a 15′ by 30′ loft area above overlooking the main room. You can see shots of it from the initial showing last week on endenizen’s flickr set for it. It doesn’t look like much yet but it is ours!

Priorities now will be to get it cleaned up, networking and wiring set up or improved, and connectivity added. We should be meeting in the space every Tuesday evening, at minimum, and probably doing some other events or classes there in the short term (my wife suggests a “cock fighting” night as a monthly rent party).

We’re still in the middle of the process of incorporating as a non-profit but this is almost done and will make fund raising and contributions a lot easier.

This has been a long time in coming, especially for some of the much earlier members than me. I’m really looking forward to watching the space and group develop.

Egyptophilia

Or is it “Aeqyptophilia” in better faux Latin?

On Friday, R and I leave for Egypt for something like 11 days of travel there. On the advice of some good friends of ours, Denny and Sophia, who have been there, we’re going to travel through a local, Egyptian-based, tour company that they used. It’s one of these fly by night, cash exchanged from cars, kind of outfits but they had a great time with the outfit and they seem fairly reliable. They actually are picking us up at the airport in Cairo even though we don’t start the tour with them for two days after that.

We’ll have to figure out what to do in those two days (or probably day and change with jetlag and such). Since we’re already going to the big Egyptian museum and seeing the pyramids with the tour guys (aka “the Egyptian Mafia”), we probably won’t do things like that. We’re open to suggestions though.

Our itinerary right now is:

Oct 04: Arrival to Cairo airport (near midnight), then transfer to the hotel, overnight in Cairo.
Oct 05: Free day, overnight in Cairo.
Oct 06: Free day, overnight in Cairo.
Oct 07: Desert Tour to visit Memphis, Sakkara, Giza Pyramids & Sphinx, include lunch, at Evening transfer to Train station, overnight on Sleeper train to Aswan.
Oct 08: Arrival to Aswan, Embark the Nile Cruiser, Boat orientation, tour by Felucca ride to visit Botanical Gardens & Elephantine Islands, afternoon visit to the High Dam and Philae Temple, Sail to Kom Ombo, overnight on board.
Oct 09: Visit Kom Ombo city & temple, sail to visit Edfu city & Temple, then sailing to Luxor, overnight on board.
Oct 10: Tour to visit Luxor & Karnak Temples, overnight on board.
Oct 11: Visit Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens, Queen Hatshipsut temple, and two Colossi of Memnon, checkout cruise, transfer to train station, overnight on Sleeper train to Cairo.
Oct 12: Arrival to Cairo in the morning, transfer to the Hotel, City Tour to explore Egyptian Museum, Saladin Citadel, Coptic old Cairo, old Churches, Jewish Synagogue & Bazaar, include lunch, overnight in Cairo.
Oct 13: Desert Safari, drive to Baharya oasis, then drive through the desert to visit black desert, crystal mountain, Salt lake in the Bedouin village, stop at Heiz oasis for lunch, then to Agapat the flower stone area, hot spring, Mushroom mountain, Black mountain, continue to the old white desert & the New White desert, overnight Camping in the white desert.
Oct 14: Drive back to oasis, then Tour to visit Hot spring, Sandy hills & British castle, Drive back to Cairo, overnight in Cairo.
Oct 15: Transfer to airport for your departure flight.

If anyone has any tips for Egyptian travel, it isn’t too late to tell us. I’ve been told to be financially wary of the camel drivers, especially, in Cairo. I’m told that you should expect to give small amounts of money to people pretty much constantly for things.

On the way home, we’re stopping by London for three days of high speed tourism, including a long visit to the British Museum.

GRE Mood Swings

I just got out of taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) an hour ago. For those that never paid attention or simply didn’t care, this is, effectively, the graduate school equivalent of the SAT for most people (leaving aside GMAT and other things). It is divided into three sections: verbal, quantitative, and analytical.

I originally took this back in 1993, in preparation for graduate school then. I had originally planned to get an Anthropology PhD back in the day. Instead of doing that, I got married and a job. As I’ve said before, I don’t think it would have worked out well then anyway. I had no real focus and was pretty much a spaz when I graduated from my undergraduate years anyway.

When I took the GRE then, it was the first year it was computerized and there were no essay questions. Starting in 2002, they made the analytical section into a two part writing test, one of which is arguing for a point of view of your own on a question you are given, and the other where you analyze the potential problems with another argument which is presented to you. This is graded by humans (on a sale from 1 to 6), so you don’t get instant results anymore.

In 1993, I received the following scores:

Verbal: 660 (90^th percentile)
Quantitative: 620 (62^nd percentile)
Analytical: 780 (97^th percentile)

Today, I received:

Verbal: 680
Quantitative: 560

I’ll know the analytical score in roughly two weeks or so.

According to a guide that the GRE people publish, my verbal score is roughly at the 96^th percentile and my quantitative is at the 40^th percentile. (It’s a good thing that I work professionally within engineering, isn’t it!!) Having not cracked a math related book in, oh, 18 years or so, I’m not surprised by the latter score and don’t care since I’m looking at a Humanities doctoral program.

I was hoping to break 700 with my verbal score, so I am a little annoyed. They actually give you that section twice (or is it just broken in half) and I know I made a few mistakes in the second that I shouldn’t have. The whole test took me about three hours and the first hour and 15 minutes are for the writing portion.

At least this is done with before I leave for Egypt in a week.