Elger ‘Stitch’ Jonker (Founder, Hack42)

SIGINT TITLE:  Close-Up of Three Technical Hackerspace Projects

SIGINT ABSTRACT:

Hacking isn’t all security, it’s a state of mind that mixes “getting things done”, creativity and knowledge. This review of three projects from hackerspace Hack42 underline these concepts: something needed to
be solved and we hacked our way to a cool solution.

This is a guide on how we solved things: what techniques and tools are used and how they connect.

One project is called “George and the Dragon”: a system to provide central heating in our hackerspace. Hack42 is situated in a huge building, without gas utilities. So we connected a stove/heater to the existing radiators. Of course with an insane amount of statistics.

Another project visualizes the open/closed state of the space of the last three months in one easy image. Since we do not have strict opening-times, it was hard to say “drop by”. Now we know when we expect to be open… nearly-guaranteed.

If the third project will be a twittering telex, a cookie-laser-engraving-machine, spacecam, the power-management system or something newly developed in may 2012 will be surprise.

ABOUT ELGER ‘STITCH’ JONKER

Elger “Stitch” Jonker is one of the founders of hackerspace Hack42 in Arnhem. He’s active in the Dutch hacking community, supporting it with various ad-hoc projects. This regularly includes mediawiki
development, radio shows, promotion and retro gaming. He also manages a retro gaming project called “Awesome Retro” that shares the joy of old-school gaming.

Professionally Elger is working as a software developer and researcher at a large ICT company in the Netherlands. He answers questions like: Is our software “hacker”-safe? Can we improve the way we use a certain
technology? (How) can we apply this new technology to our business?