MidsouthMakers Lan Party! Location: 2194 Freemont Rd Memphis, TN  38114 (Google Maps). Some food will be brought by the group. If there is something you wish to bring food to share, then please bring it.  $5 for hamburgers & hotdogs and $0.50/ea for sodas. We’ll have a large amount of Mountain dew and a small amount of various others. Bring whatever you’d like! Alcohol is allowed. Everyone that is drinking will be of age BYOB (Bring your own Booze).

Some of the games we’re talking about playing: Starcraft I, Starcraft II, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2142, Unreal Tournament, Alien Swarm, Warcraft 3, Command and Conquer, Borderlands, Doom, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Half Life, Half Life 2. We’re also open to any other suggestions!

Those Who Are Not Playing
If you wish to join us at this event, please do so as we would absolutely love to have you there. You have only but two things you are responsible for, yourself and a little cash to if you want food.

Those Who Are Playing: You are responsible for the following:
* A Computer (preferably capable of handling some of the games, not all)
* Various Power & USB Cables
* Monitor(s)
* Keyboard
* Mouse
* Headphones
* Ethernet Cable
* Any Games that you might insist we play
* A little cash for food

For more info check out the event on our wiki: http://wiki.midsouthmakers.org/w/September_11th_LAN_Party

Relief Press Printing is the process of taking a medium, removing specific pieces of it so as to make it thinner in areas, and inking the raised portions of the medium to press onto a desired surface.  The purpose of this workshop is to demonstrate an easy way to create your own linoleum stamps, and more specifically how to apply this to T-Shirts. Through this you can take a linoleum block, carve out any design you wish, and print it onto any shirt that you would like. The cost to participate in this workshop is $20. Because of the cost of materials it is necessary for us to have a very clear number of how many people plan to participate so we are able to order enough supplies. For more information, check out our T-Shirt Printing Wiki.

If you would like to prepay to participate in the workshop, you can visit http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/ and select your shirt size, and click Buy Now. We’d like to recommend that everyone interested pre pay so we’re able to have shirts and materials for those interested. If you’d rather pay cash feel free to talk to Daniel during any meeting.

At last Friday’s meeting Sonny brought and demonstrated his Doppler Direction Finder Kit. Here’s the video of the demonstration and some questions / answers about it.

MidsouthMakers Doppler Direction Finder Kit Demonstration from Midsouth Makers on Vimeo.

MidsouthMakers Doppler Direction Finder Kit Demonstration by Sonny Mounicou on 8/6/10. www.midsouthmakers.org

Image provided by Mary

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at making my own wedding favors.  I stumbled onto two thing. 1: homemade soaps, 2: homemade bath salts.

I found some information from a few places and found that for soap making, there are 4 methods: Melt and pour-the easiest (but it’s compared to baking a cake using boxed ingredients versus cooking from scratch); cold process- mixing up your items from scratch, the lye, oils, ect; hot process- a similar variation of cold process; and rebatching- grinding up premade soap bars and adding in your own extra ingredients.   For the beginning of a new project I’d like to start with something a bit simpler, so I went with the melt and pour bases.   I found an inexpensive source for soap making supplies that had beginner kits (kits with small quantities of multiple items).  Within a week I received the supplies. I got a few different types of soap.  I got a few different oils for scent, and a few other items I thought might be a good idea.  I’ve always loved strawberry scented things, so I got some strawberry oil, seeds, and some pink soap dye to play with.

So on the next Friday, I was off work, thanks to pulling a 22 hour shift the night before. I started with making the strawberry soap.

First: I cut up a pound of Shea butter soap.  (A pound is a bit less than I thought it would be.  The mold I purchased holds exactly 2 pounds of soap and makes 8 total bars.  For my first batch I improvised with a Ziploc container lined with wax paper)

Second: I heated up my solid aluminum double boiler to melt the soap.  After the soap melted, I put a few drops of the strawberry oil in, I played with the amount until the smell was just right.  Then I used the soap dye and added it until the soap was a desirable color.  I also used strawberry seeds to add exfoliants to the soap.  Lesson learned: strawberry seeds float; they all ended up on what was to be the bottom of my soap.

Next I decided to make some lemony soap.  I used the goats milk soap and the honey soap.  Honey soap is a clear base, and goats milk is a solid base.  I melted the honey soap and used one scent on it – listea cubea. After the first layer had formed a shell on top, I melted down the milk soap and mixed a little yellow food color and verbena scent.  I am much more pleased with this attempt.

When looking online for small gifts I can use as favors at the wedding I found homemade bath salts…  To make them it’s surprisingly easy.  Pour in the salt of your choice- Epsom salt is the suggested.  Then you mix in your color- just 2-3 drops of food coloring.  Then mix in 2 tablespoons baking soda and the scent of your choice.  that’s it.  Simple.

I also accidentally found a body scrub that is only slightly more complicated.  It takes a whole 15 minutes to make a batch.  3 table spoons of: white sugar, turbinado sugar, 1 table spoon of glycerin, baking soda, and salt of your choice.  Then you add olive or almond oil to it until it’s about the consistency of a slushy. Last you add your scent, about 1-2 ml works perfect.  That’s it, and it works great!

The HAM Radio Technician License is the entry level licensing for Ham Radio operators to get their call sign and the ability to talk over the air. On August 13th (after an abbreviated regular meeting) we’re going to hold our very own study group to prepare to take the Technician’s License test. We won’t be administering a test, but we will be covering where and when you can take the test and we’ll be covering topics covered on the test. If you’re interested in learning about HAM radio please join us at 7pm in the Nolan Building at Christian Brothers University. There is no cost involved. (Donations are welcome)