At Tuesday Open Night tonight, we’ll have our first regular monthly talk.

Tonight’s talk will be by new member, Alex Mackinnon. Alex says:

…It’s about Arduino, Parallax’s sonic pinger and using the two to collect data and draw map of clear paths in front of the sensor head.

If you’ve ever dreamed about sonar-sensing bat robots or just want to see some cool tech and ask an expert about how it works, join us at TON tonight!

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Curious about the world of needle craft? Come participate in a one-night-only embroidery workshop! As kwartzlab’s current artist-in-residence, I will teach you the basics of hand embroidery. No prior experience required!

ADDED WORKSHOP BONUS: make your own reusable heat transfer patterns using a Silhouette SD machine (its like a Cricut, but way better!). Choose from an existing library of designs, create your own with the Studio software, or bring an existing .dxf file (all objects need to be ungrouped before saving as .dxf)!

Silhouette SD draws the kwartzlab logo on paper with a heat transferable ink pen

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Get ready for some epic gaming as the 24-hour Headshots from the Heart game-a-thon happens this coming weekend at the lab!

Headshots from the Heart is an online marathon where a team of four players will play through as much of Borderlands as they can in a twenty-four hour period and encourage viewers to donate to Child’s Play, a charity which provides toys and video games to children’s hospitals worldwide.

There are many marathons online which contribute to causes like this one, but what makes Headshots from the Heart unique is that viewers not only have the option to donate directly, but to pledge an amount of money to be earned by the players each time they defeat a foe with a critical hit, or “Head shot”. This will force us not merely to play for twenty-four hours straight, but to play well, in order to earn your money for charity. Children deserve our best, and we at Headshots from the Heart intend to give it to them.

On top of the gaming itself, there will be live auctions going on throughout the entire event ranging from handmade crafts (check out the Borderlands figures and the kickass Megaman afghan!) to glasses, cases and even VIP tickets to see & greet The Tea Party! All that and more is on the block, so make sure you check out the enormous auction catalog on the Headshots Loot page! There will also be a Livestream of pure headshots action, interviews with players, guests from the video game industry and more!

The Headshots game-a-thon starts 12:30pm on Saturday and wraps Sunday afternoon. Check out Headshots from the Heart website for more info on the event, Child’s Play and how to make a pledge and/or donation.

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Some of out there may be wondering, “Whatever happened during that Ludum Dare weekend last month?” Well the reason you haven’t heard yet is that I’m horrible at writing timely post-mortems, but I’m finally getting around to it. Better late than never, right?

The first thing to mention is that two of us got games finished and submitted to the competition: Jeremy and me. Follow those links to our Ludum Dare pages where you can download and play our games! Darcy, after a false start with a framework that didn’t do what he wanted, got a basic idea up that he demoed at TON a few weeks back, and Alex got a lot of work done on UI for his game engine.

Overall, Ludum Dare 23 was amazing. Over the course of one weekend, over 1400 games were brought into the world that didn’t exist before, and we contributed two of them from KwartzLab. If you want to check out the results from the competition, there’s a top 50 overall list and the list of top 25 from each category. I strongly encourage you to check out the top games. Some of them are really amazing for 48 hours of work.

I think we all had a lot of fun over the 48 hours, even though it was a lot of hard work. Ludum Dare 24 is in August… who’s with me!

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Ludum Dare is a 48-hour solo video game making competition held three times every year. I’ve wanted to participate ever since Ludum Dare 2 or 3, and I’ve followed it with interest for a long time. This month is the 10th Anniversary of Ludum Dare, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to finally throw my hat in the ring. Alex and Darcy have decided to join me.

You can too! If you’re of the video-game making persuasion (or if like me you’re of the wannabe-video-game making persuasion) you can come and join us and take on the Ludum Dare. We’ll be working away at KwartzLab, where there will be others like you making games, which should make for a good time.  The competition is:

April 20th @ 8 PM (theme announced at 9) until April 22nd at 9PM.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can register here. There’s a very limited number of spaces at the lab, as we want everyone to feel comfortable and not be crowded. By signing up you’ll also get a spot at Warmup Weekend (the 14th and 15th) reserved for you, where you can practice with your tools before the competition weekend.

Some food and energy drinks will be provided to the developers thanks to our initial two sponsors, CCJ Clearline and TribeHR.  If you’re interested in buying some crazy game devs some pizza, chinese food, or energy drinks, hop over to the registration page and sign up as a sponsor! We don’t ask for much, and we’ll link to you!

Finally, if you’re not interested in making a game, but you want to watch, we’ll have the KwartzLab stream on all weekend and we’ll be in the #kwartzlab IRC channel on freenode. We might also take some time on Sunday night to demo the games, if you want to come out and see them.

It’ll be a crazy 48-hours, and thanks to KwartzLab for making it happen!

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Jennifer Gough of Minds Eye Studio is Kwartzlab’s artist in residence for the months of February and March.

Jennifer’s spent a lot of time in the lab the last six weeks, working on a piece sponsored by our neighbours at Carbon Computing in downtown Kitchener. She has an impressive collection of Apple hardware that she’s stripped down in preparation of… something. I’m not going to say. But she’s been teasing us with hints and pictures on her blog and Twitter for several weeks now.

This Tuesday, March 20 at 7:30pm Jennifer will be giving a talk entitled The Order and Chaos of Abstract Composition during our regular Tuesday Open Night. All are welcome. It should be fantastic!

Next Tuesday, March 27th at 7:30pm, she’ll be hosting a workshop: Exploring the Art of Collage. The cost for the workshop is $10, which includes supplies. Participation is limited to 20 people, so sign up now if you haven’t already. You can register on Jennifer’s website.

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Coming Soon! Hacky Hallowe’en: Carve, Solder, Hack is coming to THEMUSEUM October 29th from 10am until 5.  Funded by a grant from the KW Awesome Foundation.

Here’s our poster. Print it out and help us spread the word!

Tags: hacky halloween
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We’ve finally gotten confirmation that we can set up our Stitch’n'Bitch session on King Street in front of Queen of Hearts Costumes. It’ll be in conjunction with car-free Sunday, so there will be people wandering about and checking out what we do!

The street closes at 10:30 a.m.; as our setup is pretty minimal (as far as I know, just us and our chairs and maybe a folding table?), we can get ready just before then, and set ourselves down once the street has been closed. The street will open again at 3:00 p.m. so strike will begin at 2:45 p.m. to be sure we can get out of the way. In the interim, we plan to yarnbomb the lamppost outside QoH. For those not in the know, “yarnbombing” is the decoration of public stuff with stitched stuff (usually knit/crochet) – you have probably seen it around K-W already.

All you need to bring is yourself and your stitchery – crochet, knitting, cross-stitch, tatting, latch-hook, crewel, whatever you do! – and something to sit on. You may also want to bring your own refreshments.

So, to summarise:

Date: Sunday, September 18th
Time: 10:30 a.m.-2:45 p.m.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me at katchan@lilbluekat.net or Stephanie at punkin@mag3.14519.ca.

See you there!

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Our September Art Wall artist is the supremely awesome Terre Chartrand.

The work, entitled Tainted Memento will be on display at Kwartzlab for the remainder of September. Terre will be in the lab Tuesday, September 12 (today!) to talk about the piece.

If you’re coming to Open Night specifically for the opening, Terre asks that you register so we have some idea who’s coming. (This isn’t required if you’re simply coming for the usual Tuesday Open Night festivities).

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On September 15th, THEMUSEUM, in downtown Kitchener, will be opening its newest exhibit: RAM – Rethinking Art & Machine.

“RAM showcases the work of pioneer artists who have addressed the relationship between art and electronic technology, light, graphics, robots, and virtual reality dating back to the 1960′s.”

Alongside RAM, members of kwartzlab have been given the opportunity to exhibit their own work. On Thursday, I stopped by to grab a few pictures while Bernie Rhode was setting up.

Here’s a sneak preview:

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