Games, Events, Performances and Workshops
Last Updated: 03/08/2010
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PaulDotCom
Mick Douglas
Smart Phones are a Smart Choice for PenTesting
Synopsis
Today's smart phones have enough processing power and the mobility to be on a pentester's short list of needful tools. This talk will show you what you need to do to join in on the fun!
Bio
Mick is a white hat hacker who hates the term white hat. He is a member of the
PaulDotCom podcast. While he will join in pentests, his passion is network and system defense.
Sai Emrys
Meditation for Hackers
Synopsis
At this workshop you'll learn and practice several classes of practical techniques for changing your mindstate both immediately and long-term - without any of the usual dogma, religious proselytization, or woo.
Bonus: you might know about Xenu, but do you know about TR-0 Bullbait and TR-8 Tone 40 on Object? Understanding Scientology's actual internal techniques is critical to understanding why they act the way they do - and to inoculating yourself against similar techniques.
Bring comfy clothes and a willingness to shut your electronics off for two hours.
Sai Emrys taught himself meditation in high school, and while at it, noticed how various traditions' techniques frequently shared common functionality and had idiosyncratic gaps. More recently, he's begun describing these techniques from a hacker's perspective - concentrating on what works why and discarding the religious dogma and woo that so often clouds more "traditional" approaches. An excerpt from an upcoming book, "Meditation for Hackers", was published in 2600 magazine, Summer '08.
Guybrush
Proce55ed Synaesthesia for fun and profit
Synopsis
Want to play with sound and light? Want to pick people up at parties with cool tech? Want to make tiny amounts of cash doing live visuals for your friends band? Don.t feel like spending months carving out C++ and HLSL code to do that? Using the OS agnostic Processing (processing.org) platform, this camp will get your hands dirty and your computer (Mac, *nix, or windows) dancing to the music. Guybrush will present short (20 minute) bursts of theory in between hands-on open hacking sessions, aimed at making YOU proficient at creative, real-time graphics. Bring your laptop, a usb mic or mp3 player and audio cable, an input device . joystick, korg midi-over-usb, or just your keyboard. Essential are your favorite music and your sense of wonder.
Bio
Madman. Genius. Visionary. Psychonaut. Guybrush has been shoveling triangles as fast as he can since he got his hands on an OpenGL Red book in 1999. Since 2003, he's been making demos with the Northern Dragons. In 2006, he released a WMP viz pack that has blown past 1 million downloads. In 2008 he presented an extremely hard to use HLSL-based vis framework at Notacon/Blockparty. In 2009, he and North American demoscene co-ruler blackpawn teamed up to deliver live visuals for the DataBEEZ west coast chiptunes tour. By day, Guybrush is a graphics hacker in the WPF GFX group at Microsoft.
GZPhreak
Hacking the Xbox360 controller for WADS!
Synopsis
Have you ever wanted to use a mouse and keyboard on your favorite console games? I'll show you how I hacked an Xbox 360 controller to do just that!
Bio
I have a bachelor's degree in computer science from Michigan Technological University. I work R&D for a major defense contractor and like to hack electronics for fun!
Gina Hoang
Hey Amigurumi! A crochet tutorial
Synopsis
Amigurumi are knitted or crocheted stuffed toys. Since I am not a knitter, I will introduce you to the craft of crocheted amigurumi with a hands-on workshop where you will learn the basics of constructing amigurumi and start on the construction of your very own Notacon doll. This workshop will be most useful to those who have at least basic crochet experience, but as long as you can make a bunch of slip knots and like to craft, I'm willing to try to teach you. Limited supplies will be provided for a fee (at cost), for up to 10 people. Alternatively, feel free to bring your own supplies.
Bio
Gina is a self-taught crocheter who has been working with fiber and fabric since she was in pre-school. She taught herself to crochet in elementary school because her sister learned to knit, and she wanted to be "different." She then promptly forgot until medical school, when she taught a fellow medical student how to crochet to stay awake in lecture, and has been intermittently crocheting ever since. Be warned, as a self-taught lefty, her way of crocheting may be a little quirky at times.
Ralph Hyre
Teaching about the future: leveraging technology
Synopsis
Would like to conduct a workshop/brainstorming session to gather ideas for relevant learning experiences for a "futures studies" curriculum for high school students.
Bio
Ralph holds a bachelor's degree in cognitive science from MIT. Prior to college, Ralph was a student in an experimental high school "futurology" program in the late 1970s, at a public school in Southwest Ohio.
Michele Martaus
Pilates for Common Cubicle Injuries
Synopsis
A session featuring the exercises discussed by Michele Martaus at Notacon 6. These exercises will address issues from feet, low back to hands and neck issues- or any other issues that might pop up for participants. This is about having simple exercises that one can do either at work or behind a desk giving them relief from pain or just maintaining healthy movement. Handouts will be provided with contact information. This is an interactive workshop.
Bio
Michele is a Pilates Instructor and Tennis coach and does a lot of work with injury rehabilitation and teaching movement. She was a competitive tennis player and played Division I tennis for Virginia Tech from August 1997- May 2001. She graduated with a degree in Public and Urban Policy but has always been drawn to working with the human form. After many years of competition and vigorous training she realized how important it was to take care of her body and rehabilitate chronic injuries as well as paying attention to nutrition and environmental stress. She has been teaching Pilates/Rehabilitative movement since April 2007 and has a small studio where she teaches in Stamford, CT.
24 hours the girl
irregardless noizehacking: manic minimalism and cautionary soundscapes
Synopsis
We will perform the music that sometimes sounds like shoegaze or ambient, but does not always fit into just one type. We will do it using a lot of different instruments. some of them will be ones we made ourselves. Every once in a while we will stop making music to explain what we are doing, what we are using, where we got it/how we made it, etc. After the show we will share our toys with our new friends.
Bio
24 hours the girl is a band with two members. We make music that sometimes sounds like shoegaze or ambient, but does not always fit into just one type. We often use sounds that we record in everyday life and use computer programs and musical instruments to arrange and compose them into music. To perform this music, we use normal instruments like electric keyboards and also more unusual things like specially changed toys to make the sounds or control the machines. We want our shows to be interesting to look at so we use videos that are made by a computer. (Our friend Steve Mokris talked about this program at last year's Notacon.) We also like to decorate our instruments. Our songs sometimes have words but they are not like normal pop songs. The main ideas of the songs are about many different things. Some are about feeling helpless and others are about being angry. We want to make friends with other musicians.
ruori.orgProject Ruori
Performance
Synopsis
project ruori performs retro-futuristic electronic music, making use of old-fashioned sound synthesis techniques such as the viola, clarinet, the sound chips of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Commodore 64, and a variety of knives and other kitchen devices --- but relying on modern technology for interactive sequencing and interactive visuals using a suite of commodity and homebrew software. Topics which are commonly tangentially addressed include meaninglessness and absurdity, societal reconceptualization of rationalization, the iron cage, the iron curtain, and the glass ceiling.
Bio
project ruori is a top-secret fellowship manufacturing works apparently plagiarized from the communist rubric. We juxtapose concrete music and rock formations, self-referential madlibs, snippets from marketing class recitation, sonograms of top-40 popsongs, and an indeterminate quantity of cordless office supplies to harrass eavesdroppers with an overwhelming intellectual scientific proof. (Just like mother used to make.)
But, more seriously, the group of people representing project ruori has been performing together around the Midwest and East Coast a few times per year since 1998, and has released a few albums and a peculiar sort of feature-length film.
Recycled RainbowRecycled Rainbow
Build Your Own Interactive Experience
Synopsis
Recycled Rainbow hosts a configurable environment, inviting Notacon participants to build, change and augment their surroundings as the event unfolds. To participate, simply send your music, sound, images and video to http://recycledrainbow.org/notacon from now until Notacon. Then attend on Friday night to see your content mixed with the other community contributed images and sound.
Bio
For eight years Recycled Rainbow has been hacking audio art, space, community, language and culture. For the past three years, Recycled Rainbow has set on dismantling and reassembling the ideas of temporary community to reconfigure the concepts underlying community, space, culture and festivals. Every September for four days, Recycled Rainbow provides a temporary space for participants to engage, create, experience and reconfigure their surroundings, community and selves. If art is the technology of the soul, Recycled Rainbow is the garage workshop.
http://www.recycledrainbow.org
Gaming room
Hosted by Jason Viers
Synopsis
New for Notacon 6 wil be a room dedicated to games of all sorts. From console games old and new to board games of all types, we hope the gaming lounge will provide a social gathering place where gamers of all stripes can come, relax and play together.
Anything But Ethernet
Hosted by Myself
Synopsis
Too many kids, and a fair share of old farts, think the world runs on cat-5. It just ain't so! From the first smoke-signals and drumbeats of prehistory, to modern muti-gigabit optical links, there's a lot more to communication than just Ethernet frames riding twisted pair. This contest aims to celebrate the long and varied history of communication.
For up to date rules and information, see the Notacon Wiki AbE page.
Blockparty Wildcard Compo
Hosted by Blockparty
Synopsis
Starting in 2008, instead of having our usual Talent Show we will interface with
Blockparty even further by encouraging those of you who are interested in the talent show to instead participate in the
Wildcard Compo. Get your entries ready!
Notacon Trivia Night!
Hosted by rogueclown
Synopsis
Pub trivia nights are great, but haven't you always wished there were a few more questions about the kinds of interests that bring you to Notacon? Congratulations, you're getting your wish! Join your host rogueclown for a fun game of trivia about technology, art, and the hacker world. Teams of up to four people can participate, and the questions in each round will range from easy to head-scrachingly difficult.
Bio
nicolle neulist, otherwise known as rogueclown, is a trivia nut. For every bit of useful knowledge in her brain, there are several bits of randomness that she picked up along the way. This makes her a formidable opponent at Trivial Pursuit as well as at pub trivia, which she has been playing since she was old enough to get into a pub. Since June of 2009, she has been the co-host of Monday night trivia at Chief O'Neill's, a bar right down the street from her hackerspace, Pumping Station: One. Her favourite nugget of trivia is the fact that Burger World in Beavis and Butt-Head was named after Big Edna's Burger World in the Weird Al movie UHF.
Whose Slide is it Anyway?
Host rogueclown
Synopsis
Picture yourself about to give a presentation in front of hundreds of people... lights shining in your eyes, microphones tuned to amplify your every utterance, video and audio recordings to prove that you in fact did just say that. Imagine that your audience is itching to heckle you or otherwise make your life difficult. Realize you have never before seen the slide show you are about to present on, nor know anything about the topic!
Sound like your worst nightmare? NO! This is "Whose Slide is it Anyway?" Borrowed from the Chaos Computer Club's "Powerpoint Karaoke", and loosely from the show of a similar name, where the points don't matter!
Random personalities, presenters, and maybe even YOU (if you are brave enough), will be put on stage and have 5 minutes to successfully present a small random PowerPoint slide show on a randomly chosen topic. Audience members will vote via boos, hisses, claps, shouts and other utterances.
Come for the laughs! Stay for the embarrassment! We have no idea if this is going to work, but it's worth a shot. Hey, if the CCC can do it, why can't we?
Opening Ceremonies
Featuring Notacon & Blockparty crews
Synopsis
The founders of Notacon and Blockparty kick off the weekend.s festivities and go over some of the highlighted events, presentations as well as covering some of the event ground rules and procedures.
notaconradio
Notacon Radio
Presented by Krnlpanik
Synopsis
The Notacon Radio project is back for another year. We hit the airwaves on Friday and we don't stop until the ball drops on Closing Ceremonies.
This is a great chance to have some fun while you mingle and BS with your fellow Notaconners. We are looking for people who are interested in doing a live (or even pre-recorded) show. It can be art or tech themed, or just consist of random thoughts about life and the universe in general--it's entirely up to you! The only caveat is: NO MUSIC. Our goal is 48+ hours of solid Notacon-interest radio.
Questions? Ideas? A burning desire to ramble for an hour about the elegance of the CPU scheduling algorithm for the MULTICS operating system? Please email the the Notacon radio station manager at krnlpanik@notacon.org and he will be happy to help.
Also, check out the website: http://www.notaconradio.org/
Special Event Ham Radio Station N7C
Presented by KC2PIT
Synopsis
This year Notacon will have it's own special event Ham Radio station, N7C. Please see the Notacon Wiki Ham Radio page for more information on the station and how to get involved.
The station will run the entire weekend of Notacon. Anyone interested in Ham Radio or already licensed is invited to participate.
Amateur Radio License Exam Session - Sunday Morning
Notacon will feature a amateur radio license exam in the N7C room on the second floor. The exact room is yet to be determined. Walk-ins are welcome. Please register for your FRN the FCC website before coming to the VE exam session, so that you do not have to provide your social secuirty number when registering.
More information is available from arrl.org
Notacon Rant Session: Tell us how it went!
Hosted by Froggy and Tyger
Synopsis
How did your Notacon and Blockparty go? This is your chance to give input directly to those running the event! Without it, we really have no idea what it is you want nor how better to run the event so that everyone can get more out of it! We encourage questions and suggestions. What event was the most fun? What presentation made you think the most? Which demo did you think really deserved top honors? Did you learn anything new this year?
This event wrap-up will include a breakdown of Notacon costs and go over some of the numbers that make Notacon happen.
Make your voice heard! There will also be written feedback forms that will help us to plan for next year.
Blockparty Awards Ceremony
Hosted by Jason Scott and RaDMan
Synopsis
After many intense days of competition, including untold hours spent before Blockparty to compose and develop the various compo submissions, find out who is top dog. Come support the artists, musicians and programmers who put in so much hard work into their entries!
Many awesome prizes will be awarded.
Closing Ceremony & Awards
Hosted by the Notacon core team
Synopsis
After three tireless days working the event and 362 days of planning, Froggy will clutch the podium for dear life and give Notacon and Blockparty a final farewell for the year
If he is in the mood, he may hand out awards to the remaining Notacon attendees for whatever categories he comes up with at the last minute. Traveled the furthest to get here? Had the funniest hack of Notacon? You name it, he'll likely think of it. If he's still awake and sane. Prizes will be handed out at his discretion.
Audio Visual rentals provided by Rentech Solutions
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