geek.week 2010

03.2010 Langdon St Cafe presents GEEK WEEK 4.0!

2010-03-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Round up the data cowboys! Its time for Geek Week 4.0, the Langdon Street Cafe's week-long tribute to hackers, board gamerz, knob twiddlers, synth pimps, comic book nerds and hardware junkies!

GEEK WEEK 4.0 :: MASTER SCHEDULE

March 24-31, 2010 :: BE THERE AND BE SQUARE

langdonstreetcafe.com

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Wednesday March 24: CLIQUE TO LOAD

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cafe closed from 5:30 - 7.

7pm Opening ceremony

Ms. Pac Man tourney begins, Hacker Challenge, Bananagrams tournament, board game shelf revealed

8pm Matt Lorenz of Rusty Belle presents THE SUITCASE JUNKET

One-man band CD release party

9:30pm The CASIO project: Madmad Bicycle

The most confounding weirdness ever to enter your earness. Lots of little circuit bent Casio synths. Matt Lorenz, Max Adam and Ryan Nestor on knobs and buttons, projections, video distortion.

10:30pm Dance Party! with ERNIE RIVERS AND THE BORN-READYS

Late 50s inspired "Dirty Rock" in the vein of "Hang on Sloopy" LIVE

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Thursday March 25: GEEKS THROUGHOUT THE AGES

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7pm WORKSHOPS

- Modular Origami by Crispy

- Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition by Ben t. Matchstick

9pm DURIANS (electro-freakout)

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Friday March 26: FLASHBACK FLASHDANCE

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6-8 Happy Hour with Information Overload 80s edition

Live Trivia with Jen Dole (prizes!)

10pm the return of SPUTNIK

Featuring Anais Mitchell, Noah Hahn, Sara Grace, Jay Ekis and Ben t. Matchstick (80s dance party)

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Saturday March 27: HACK THE PLANET

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12noon ANARCHIST SOCCER

Montreal Anarchist Soccer collective -- Statehouse Lawn.

2pm Ethical Hackers Workshop with Grep

Cutting edge hacking techniques & countermeasures, including Metasploit, SSLstrip, and the Social Engineering Toolkit (SET). All aboard the Pwnie Express!

http://grep8000.blogspot.com

4pm WORKSHOPS:

- Hardware Hacking Workshop with N0izMaker: Circuit bending, microcontrollers, & ultrasonic sensors abound.

http://nicolecarrollmusic.com

- Tapeloops with Nick Painter

- Live Mapping with Shane Watt

6pm BUTTERFLY STARPOWER(6 yr. old lead singer)

7pm James KochalkaSuperstar. 8 bit songs created on the GameBoy Advance.

http://www.americanelf.com

Bacharach Galactica: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TnINqVvUI

9pm Beware! the Other Head of Science(Albany, NY punk)

11pm MATHEMATICIANS

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Sunday March 28: GAME ON!

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Geek Week Gaming Con.

1pm - 6pm

8pm Rory Raven, mentalist/spoonbender

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Monday March 29: SCHOOL NIGHT

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8pm Miss Wizard Anne Watson presents uber geek John Cohn, chief engineer of IBM

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Tues March 30: Capes and Tights and Slo-Mo Fights!

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Superhero Showdown!

7pm Workshops

- D&D 4th edition

9pm kufui

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Wednesday March 31: ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO QUIT?

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7pm Workshops

8pm VOLTAIC/HARMONIC

local, live electronica w/ host ROBO

06.2007 Mathletics challenge & Quantum Mechanics

2007-06-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

More Geek Week photos! Thanks SirStan!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirstan/sets/72157600455971443/

Nutty Steph says:

Hey this is Nutty Steph reporting on the Geek Week Mathletics challenge! We determined if the number of $ in the US Budget deficit was greater, less or equel to the number of nuts on earth if the earth was made of Nutty Steph's granola. Here's what we found out, with much thanks to the all-knowing interweb.

The volume of earth is 1.0832073 x 10^12 k^3
(This is scientific notation for: 1,083,207,300,000 cubic kilometers)

We changed that to cubic meters, which are easier to imagine than cubic kilometers anbd the volume is: 1.0832073 x 10^21 cubic meters

Since we had the volume of granola in cups, we converted the earth's volume to cups and got an even bigger number, since cups are so much smaller than a cubic meter. The volume of the earth in cups is: 4.57839229491 x 10^24

We're almost there! Ben measured out a cup of granola and then picked out the nuts and weighed them. He even repeated the porocess 3 times and took an average to ensure the numbers were properly representative of The Truth. Ben found 1.125 ounces of nuts in a cup of granola. SOOOOOOO....

We determined that this equation would caluclate the pounds of nuts in the earth:

1.125 oz nuts/1 cup granola X 1 pound/16 ounces X 4.57839229491 X 10^24 cups/ earth

= 321.918 x 10^18 pounds of nuts/earth full of granola, which, spoelled out, is the following gargantuant number of nuts in Nutty Steph's Vermont Granola:

321,918,000,000,000,000,000 lb NUTs

and this is much more than the measley US. budget deficit of $8,812,128,177,807.

The lesson, boys and girls, is clearly this:
Don't sweat the budget, just eat Nutty Steph's Vermont Granola. Thanks and enjoy!

All Geek Week Mathletics Challenge participants shared in some delicious Nutty Steph's Trail Mix, made with Belgian chocolate, Virginia peanuts, juicy flame raisins and the original Vermont Granola.

GEEK WEEK QUOTES OF THE DAY:

Entanglement, tunneling: I didn't know quantum physics was so sexy.

Physics is how. Philosophy is why. And the current administration is when.

Seven Days Video Log

2007-06-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Eva Sollberger for putting together this fantastic Seven Days video tribute for Geek Week!!
http://7d.blogs.com/stuckinvt/

And mad props to Liz Drake for this truly tubular Geek Week photo archive!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizdrake/

Yesterday's top quote: "Well.. that's when you call in the data cowboy"

2007-06-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's "Innoventions" day at Geek Week, and tonight (9 to 9:30) I'll be doing my electronic music set with home-made light sensing synthesizers and other never-before-seen electronic instruments. After that I'll be playing some classic Aphex Twin, Autechre, u-ziq, and orbital with slick-of-the-art visuals! The full schedule for today is here: http://lscgeekweek.blogspot.com. I really hope you can stop by! Support Geek Week! Check it:Times Argus: http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070622/NEWS02/706220365Seven Days: http://www.sevendaysvt.com/calendar/spotlights/062007/hip-to-be-square.html
love and power converters, GREP

Ben here, if you are checking this and wondering if you should come down tonight the answer is a resounding YUPYUP. There is Ms. Anne Watson aka Ms. Wizard's World- magnets, lazers, and buckets that make music- a must see for geeky freeekys. Then show and tell- bring your invention, your innovation, gadget, gizmo, or fun science info. you just might learn something.
5pm ms. wizards world.
geek out, ben t matchstick

2007-06-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Whoa.
Its Sunday morning and finally we have a chance to relax with the cereal bar (with gummi worms) and some Fraggle Rock, Inspector Gadget, cartoons cartoons cartoons! We got the Nintendo System rigged up in the "crash pad" zone and of course the Arcade machine is shuffling around everybody's favorite games, like Rampage (Peoria Totally Destroyed!), Mortal Kombat ("Get Over Here!"), and Ms. Pacman (join the tournament!). Thats just the beginning. Today we are getting our backgam-mon! Its the Anti-Social Social, all day today, sunday with Jazz Theory and Jazz tonight.
Lets recap shall we? Thursday with Electric Halo and the interactive soundscape- killer spacetrip. Friday with Information Overload- congratulations to the B-Team, with Jen on their side serving as Dominator! Then Jane Fonda's workout-thanks Debbie for getting us warmed up for Sputnick! We rocked so hard for Sputnick! Everybody dressed to the nines with big hair and roller skates! Totally Rad 8os geek out!
Yesterday for Hack the Planet we kicked it off with the Toast and Jam then workshops in Cardboard Hacking and Ethical Hacking. The bands, the Wards, moshing! too much and still more to come!
What a response to geek.week! We welcome those who have confessed thier geekiness! Be not afraid.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070622/NEWS02/706220365
http://www.sevendaysvt.com/calendar/spotlights/062007/hip-to-be-square.html
Heres Joe with some info for things to come on Thursday....
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Hi folks, my name's Joe Weinmunson. I'm a Man in Black for Steve Jackson Games, and I'll be bringing a couple of great games next Thursday. First up, the always-popular Munchkin, a comic take on the kind of dungeon-grinding, monster-killing game we know so well. Kill everything you meet, backstab your friends, and keep all the treasure for yourself! In honor of Geek Week, I'll also be running Chez Geek, a card game of young apartment life. Not life like that old game with four kids and pensions and insurance--life like working low-wage jobs, hanging out with friends, watching bad movies, petting cats, and avoiding losers. Both games are loads of fun, and hey--prizes! I hope to see some of you there.

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Thanks Joe! Now if we could just find someone with a truck to help us get the ping-pong tournament on. Please geek gods, shine upon us.
Come on and geek out with us, your brain will never be the same!
BEN

PRE-Registration now available online!

2007-06-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

Workshop space is limited! Sign up now! http://fs2.formsite.com/mgambler/form785947039/index.html

GW-2007 project photos

2007-06-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

Information overload
[ circuit-bending a game show podium]

Arcade machine
[Joystick, free wi-fi, & bombay sapphire]

NES Redux
[Talk about retro-fitting]

current.schedule

2007-05-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

thursday [june 21]: Power-up!

5:00 Interactive soundscape
5:30 Multiplayer gaming extravaganza
8:00 Mista Ruddy (acoustic)
9:00 Electric Halo (Electro-SpaceTrip)

friday [june 22]: 80s Geek-out

5:00 Arcade explosion & Pac-man fever
6:00 Mark Legrand & The Lovesick Bandits
8:00 Information Overload: 80s trivia!
9:00 The Mathematicians (Math-hop electro)
10:30 Sputnik (80s cover super group)

saturday [june 23]: Hack the Planet

12:00 Toast'n jam: Cardborgs attack!
2:00 Bike Geeks demo by Freeride
3:30 Cardboard hacking workshop by CTI
5:00 The Ethical Hacker’s Workshop
8:00 Dead End Armory (alt-rock)
9:15 28 Degrees Taurus (psychedelic)
11:00 The Wards (VT's original punk)

sunday [june 24]: The Antisocial Social

9:30am Cereal bar: with cartoons!
All day: Puzzles,cards,board games,chess
12:00 Myspace workshop (Rachel Rice)
2:00 Ping-pong tournament
3:30 Digital video workshop
4:00 Backgammon & Mancala Hour
5:00 Angela Easterling (folk guitar)
7:00 Jazz Theory with Andrew Moroz
8:00 Moroz trio (Smart-Jazz)

monday [june 25]: Innoventions

5:00 Ms. Wizard’s World
7:30 show-and-tell
9:00 Geektronica by Grep
9:30 Time wrap IDM/electronica

tuesday [june 26]: Comix-con

5:00 Comic book showcase & trading
6:30 Information Overload: Comix!
8:00 Andrew Parker Renga (folk/rock)
9:00 kaFui (Drum&Bass heroes)
9:30 Reverend (Floppy Disc Jockey)

wednesday [june 27]: Pop-science!

5:00 Intro to Quantum Mechanics
6:00 Mathletics challenge!
7:00 Electronic music workshop
8:00 The Mountain Wolves (ALT-alt)
9:30 The Thimbles (ALT-psychedelic)

thursday [june 28]: Aliens vs. Warlocks

5:00 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Costume Con
5:30 Magic, Dungeons & Dragons
7:30 Information Overload: Sci-Fi!
8:45 GrottoBlaster (adventure core)
9:30 Sara Grace & The Suits
10:45 Geek Week: FINAL SMACKDOWN!

call.to.volunteers!

2007-05-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, geeksters, we need your help! To volunteer for any of these items, reply to this post or send me an e-mail.

Top priority:

- For Media Outreach, need poster distributors, workshop recruiters, sponsor finders, and general hype practitioners.

- Need to recruit Comic shops, collectors, and artists for comix-con.

- Need geeky art and artists of any kind! The geek wall of art showcase will be up for about 2 weeks; great coverage for artists!

- Need a digital photography and/or digital video instructor to host a 1-hour beginner's workshop.

- Need a Ping-pong table & accessories, or someone who can build one.

- Need Dungeon Masters to host Dungeons & Dragons, Magic, or other RPG gaming sessions (thursday, june 28, evening).

-- Need board games, Legos, puzzles, mancala, backgammon, chess, brain teasers, where's waldo, comic books, trading cards, vintage electronics, old TVs, stereos, video games, computers, synthesizers, magazines, books, art, strange lights, LEDs, Sci-Fi paraphernalia, D&D materials, my god i'm drooling..

Medium priority:

- Need to airbrush/paint a full-size arcade machine with video gamey art.

- Need a few more geeky music acts to do 30-minute openings. Electronic, experimental, video game covers, homemade instruments, etc.

- Someone to organize the "Geek Registration desk" and name tags for attendees.

- Someone to build/host the King/Queen Geek Test.

- Inventions to display at the Geek Show-and-tell.

- Need an old 70s/80s style TV.. for Nintendo.

- Anyone into Live-Action Role Playing or the SCA?

- Experimental short films; any local filmmakers?

- Woodsmiths - we need to build some simple boxes and other structures for the game show and other displays.

-Large rolls of paper, wallpaper-sized

- Large pieces of black cloth.

Yeah! Do it!