Iffy Books | 404 S. 20th St., PHL

🚂 Model Internet Club
2023-05-13 17:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
The Model Internet Club meets again on Saturday, May 13th at 5 p.m. Our goal is to build an offline network for fun and learning. We’ll have routers, switches, servers, and plenty of Ethernet on hand.
For this month’s meeting, we’re asking folks to make websites ahead of time that they can share on the network. All you need is an HTML file called index.html and any additional pages and image files you want to include. If you want, you can upload your tiny website using the form below (max size 5MB).
Making a website ahead of time is optional. If you’ve never used HTML before, you can start with this guide. For design inspiration, check out this gallery of GeoCities homepages from the ’90s.
Photo CC-BY Andrew Russell
Upload your website in advance (optional):

☀️🔋 Let’s Make a Solar-Powered Chat Network
2023-05-13 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
We’re looking for help to build a wireless, solar-powered chat network across the Philly area! Are you interested in learning about off-grid solar power? Do you have a sunny place on your roof, in your yard, or near an upstairs window where you can leave a small radio transceiver? This workshop may be for you!
Each participant will receive a free kit with all the parts needed to build a solar-powered LoRa node. You’ll assemble the kit, mount it in a weatherproof enclosure (provided by you), and use the Meshtastic app to start sending encrypted text messages. Here’s what the kit contains:
• Heltec LoRa32 v3 w/case
• 5V 6W monocrystalline solar panel
• TP4056 battery charger module w/ header pins
• 18650 lithium-ion battery
• Battery clip
• MCP1700-3302E low-dropout (LDO) regulator
• 100uF electrolytic capacitor
• 100nF ceramic capacitor
• Micro breadboard
• 1.25mm JST connectors
• DuPont jump wires
• USB-C cable
• USB extension cable
• Heat shrink tubing
This workshop includes some light soldering, suitable for beginners. We’ll provide soldering irons and lead-free solder. If you don’t feel comfortable soldering, we have a solder-free option for assembling the kit.
To complete this project, you’ll need to bring a weatherproof enclosure for your LoRa node. An opaque, light-colored material is best to keep the temperature down. Avoid metal containers, which may block radio communication. At the workshop we’ll show you how to cut a hole in the bottom of your enclosure to pass a power cable through. Here are some items that would make good enclosures:
• a plastic ammo box from Harbor Freight
• a waterproof container for boating, such as an Otter Box
• an empty Gatorade bottle painted white
• a food storage container with a good seal
• a plastic bucket with lid
Registration opens Monday, April 3rd at 8:30 p.m. We’re expecting this workshop to fill up quickly, so we’re keeping a waiting list. If you register but can’t attend, let us know ASAP at iffybooks@iffybooks.net. We can’t reserve kits for folks who miss the workshop, but Iffy Books will have a limited number for sale after the event.
Supplies for this workshop are funded by a grant from the Engaged Humanities Studio at Swarthmore College.
Register:
Registration for this free workshop is full. Thanks for your interest! You can join the waiting list here.
We’re also offering a paid version of the workshop on Sunday, May 14th at 1:00 p.m.

🎤 Fast Forward Open Mic
2023-05-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Friday, May 12, 7:00–9:00pm
hosted by Dream Poet for Hire
With featured performances by:
Alex Smith
Line on Some Trip (L.O.S.T.)
and Cameron Stuart
Accessibility: 1st Floor is up 5 stairs, Iffy Books is on 2nd floor by elevator

⚡️ Chip Set: A DIY Electronics Meetup
2023-05-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Chip Set is a DIY electronics meetup at Iffy Books on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. If you’re interested in circuits, microcontrollers, and/or single-board computers, stop by and make some friends! All ages and skill levels are welcome, including total newbies.

This is an informal meetup, without a set topic or agenda. Feel free to bring a project to show the group!

Photo by Raimond Spekking (CC BY-SA 4.0)

✏️ The Writing Room at Iffy Books
2023-05-10 17:00 - 20:00, 2023-05-03 17:00 - 20:00, 2023-04-26 17:00 - 19:00, 2023-04-19 17:00 - 20:00, 2023-04-12 17:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Wednesdays 5–8 p.m.
(5–7 p.m. the last Wednesday of the month)
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.

☀️ Make a Solar Zoetrope
2023-05-07 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Join us on Sunday, May 7th at 1:00 p.m. and make your own solar-powered zoetrope! This workshop is suitable for beginners and kids. No experience necessary.
A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. (Wikipedia)
Anyone can attend and draw animated clips for free. To build a zoetrope, you’ll need to buy a kit for $7.50.
Register:

📘 West Philly Spring Zine Fest
2023-05-06 13:00 - 17:00 | The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
We’ll be at the Rotunda with a table full of zines and books on Saturday, May 6th.
New Zine Show Incoming! West Philly Spring Zine Fest is happening at The Rotunda on Saturday May 6 from 1-5! Organized by Philly Soapbox, over 50 vendors, admission is FREE! Come out and Support the Philly Zine Community!

Iglesias Garden May Day
2023-05-06 12:00 - 18:00 | Cesar Andreu Iglesias Garden, 425 Arlington St., Philadelphia, PA, 19122, United States
We’ll be at the Iglesias Garden May Day celebration on May 6th. See you there!

🚨¡ guarde la fecha para nuestra primera fiesta del año! 🚨(English below)
SABADO 6 DE MAYO 12-5pm celebraremos el día del trabajado en Iglesias Garden!
Un evento gratis con actividades para toda la familia. Den una vuelta para una tarde de música, comida deliciosa, medicina natural, arte, actividades para niños, charlas + educación política. También es la inauguración del fogón comunitario!
❤️♥️❤️♥️❤️♥️❤️
Save the date for our first party of the season!
Join us Saturday May 6th 12-5pm to celebrate our 3rd annual May Day workers day at the Iglesias Garden!
This is a free event with activities for all ages. Join us for delicious food, herbal medicine, speakers, kids activities and more. We will also be celebrating the opening of our outdoor kitchen!
♥️❤️♥️♥️❤️♥️❤️
Accessibility info:
El jardín está situado en 5th y Norris Street. Hay una plaza accesible para sillas de ruedas y porta potty disponible. Hay una variedad de bancos y mesas dentro del jardín. Este evento es gratuito y abierto al público.
Iglesias Garden is located at 425 Arlington street on the corner of 5th and Norris Streets. There is a wheel chair accessible plaza and porta potty available. There are a variety of benches and tables inside the garden. This event is free and open to the public.

🔒 First Friday Philly TOOOL Meetup
2023-05-05 18:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Friday, May 5th at 6 p.m. we’re hosting a meetup run by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Open Organization of Lockpickers.
> Come join us for our monthly First Friday Open Pick Night at Iffy Books! Whether you’re a novice who just stumbled upon LockpickingLawyer, a seasoned safecracker, or somewhere in between, come join us for a evening of fun as we pop some locks.

Network-Wide Ad Blocking with Dave Slinger
2023-05-04 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Thursday, May 4th at 6:30 p.m. we’re hosting a presentation on network-wide ad blocking with Pi-hole and AdGuard Home. Dave Slinger will show you how to get started and answer all your questions.
Register:

Meshtastic 101
2023-04-30 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, April 30th at 6:00 p.m. we’re hosting an introduction to Meshtastic, an application that lets you send private text messages over the air using pocket-sized LoRa radios.
Here’s a link to our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic from 2022. (We’re currently updating it.)
If you have a LoRa radio (or reserve one below), we’ll show you how to flash the latest Meshtastic firmware to the device and customize the settings. If you don’t have a LoRa radio, you’re still welcome to attend!
Note that we have two antenna options: The slim antenna is smaller, and fits neatly inside the Heltec LoRa32 V3’s plastic case. The other antenna is slightly too big for the case, so you’ll need to attach it to the outside with a rubber band. The larger antenna comes with an SMA adapter, making it easy to swap in different antennas in the future.
Register:

❤️ No Arena in the Heart of Our City Rally [Postponed 'til 6/10]
2023-04-29 11:00 | 10th and Vine St., 10th and Vine St., Philadelphia, PA, United States
Postponed until June 10th due to rain! Mark your calendar!
Chinatown has survived for 150 years because we fought to be here. Chinatown is one of the few remaining communities of color and low-income communities in Center City. We are here to stay. Join us on 4/29 6/10, 11 AM, at 10th and Vine.
RSVP here!

Collide Zine Live Reading + Open Mic
2023-04-28 18:30 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Join us for a night to celebrate COLLIDE zine’s third issue at Iffy Books in the Vox Populi Art Gallery building in Chinatown.
Enjoy light refreshments and Iffy’s charming new space which hosts monthly events for avant-garde artists, poets and internet techies! Open-mic sign-ups will be available for anyone that wants to read from the zine or test a new piece in a small setting.
11 x 17 posters of featured Collide art and hard copies of Collide Issues 3 will be available for purchase!
Details on EventBrite

⚡️ Chip Set: A DIY Electronics Meetup
2023-04-27 18:00 - 20:00, 2023-04-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Chip Set is a DIY electronics meetup at Iffy Books on the second and fourth Thursday of every month. If you’re interested in circuits, microcontrollers, and/or single-board computers, stop by and make some friends! All ages and skill levels are welcome, including total newbies.
This is an informal meetup, without a set topic or agenda. Feel free to bring a project to show the group!
Photo by Raimond Spekking (CC BY-SA 4.0)

📚 Reading Group: 'The Three-Body Problem' by Cixin Liu
2023-04-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Wednesday, April 26th at 7:00 p.m. we’ll meet to discuss the novel The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.
Stop by Iffy Books and get a paperback copy for $17.99, or get the audiobook at Libro.fm.

🎉 DVAA Everyday Futures Fest Block Party
2023-04-23 12:00 - 17:00 | Da Vinci Art Alliace, 704 Catharine St., Philadelphia, PA, 19147, United States
We’ll be at the Everyday Futures Fest Block Party on Sunday, April 23rd, 12–5 p.m. at 7th and Catharine St. See you there!

🌺 Let's Make Wildflower Seed Balls!
2023-04-22 13:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Stop by Iffy Books on Saturday, April 22nd from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and make your own seed balls with native wildflower seeds. We’ll have plenty of supplies to share!
This event is part of the DVAA Everyday Futures Fest.
Registration:

This event is free. Donations accepted.
Photo CC-BY Kevan Davis

Raise the Sun: A QTBIPOC Zine Workshop
2023-04-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Raise the Sun: A QTBIPOC Zine Workshop on Friday, April 21st, 2023 will combine the spirit of Iffy Books’s zine collection and the aesthetics of solarpunk. We will discuss our relationships with the sun across our cultures and identities. We will learn how to make our own zines to share those experiences as we imagine and realize better worlds aligned with solar embodiment. We will center the ways in which QTBIPOC are leaders in the climate movement as we exist and breathe as our radical selves.

People who identify themselves as both Queer and/or Trans and with Black folx, Indigenous folx and/or People of Color are invited to participate in this workshop. A QTBIPOC space is a step towards ensuring these resources are accessible to groups that have been historically marginalized and are disproportionately affected by climate change.

This workshop is open to folx at all levels of experience, whether this is your first time hearing the word “zine” or you’ve got a personal distro running out of your bedroom. We’ll have zine-making supplies to share, but you may want to bring your own scissors.
Based on responses to a pre-workshop survey, Iffy Books will remain open during this event. But the workshop will be for QTBIPOC registrants only.

Register:

💻 Hackers' Assembly: Shodan for Defense
2023-04-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
This month’s topic will be “Shodan for Defense.”
The speaker for this month is Leonardo Serrano. Leonardo has spent the past 8 years running various events in the Philadelphia area and 5 years working in the security department of a small local ISP. In that time he’s picked up a few tricks with Shodan and a few other tools for identifying exposures as well as evaluating the length of exposures.
If any one is interested in speaking in May feel free to reach out.
-Leo

Details on Meetup

Bleeding Control Basics
2023-04-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Presented by Untitled Medical Collective in association with Philly SRA, Bleeding Control Basics will go over first aid as it applies to severe bleeding. We will cover scene safety, injury assessment, basic bleeding control, and tourniquet application. This class doesn’t provide any kind of certification, and is just meant to provide essential information to as many people as possible.
If you have any questions about class content, reach out to untitledmedical@proton.me.
Register:

🧶 Learn to Crochet!
2023-04-16 15:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, Sunday, April 16th at 3:30 p.m. we’re hosting a crochet workshop for beginners. We’ll have supplies to share, as well as yarn and crochet hooks for sale.
Register:

Photo CC-BY Connie

💾🌾 Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup
2023-04-16 13:00 - 15:00
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, April 16th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #2I, PHL) or via Jitsi audio stream.

➡️ Jitsi Stream Link
From Permacomputing.net:
Permacomputing is a more sustainable approach to computer and network technology inspired by permaculture. Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in digital technology.
In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages a more sustainable approach, maximizing hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focussing on the use of already available computational resources. We do this because humans are part of nature and technology is an extension of humans, and we acknowledge that technology has been used to harm nature. We want to find out how we can practice good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems to leverage and re-center existing technologies and practices. We are also interested in investigating what a permacomputing way of life could be, and what sort of transformative computational culture and aesthetics it could bring forward.
If you want to know more, please start reading about what is permacomputing in essence, and then dive into its principles.

🎤 Audio Recording Basics
2023-04-15 15:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Saturday, April 15th at 3:30 p.m. we’re running a free workshop on the basics of recording audio. We’ll discuss mic technique, audio hardware, recording conditions, and software options. Everyone will get a chance to make a recording with Audacity and start editing with Reaper.
We’ll have a computer available for everyone who signs up.
Register:

This event is free. Donations accepted.
Photo CC-BY Tm

🚂 Model Internet Club
2023-04-14 18:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
The Model Internet Club meets again on Friday, April 14th at 6 p.m. Our goal is to build an offline network for fun and learning. We’ll have routers, switches, servers, and plenty of Ethernet on hand.
Last month we connected half a dozen computers to a switch, gave ourselves IP addresses with ip, and set up tiny websites with http.server. Fun!
Photo CC-BY Andrew Russell

Virtual Meshtastic Meetup
2023-04-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Jitsi Meet (iffybooks.club), 19107
We’re hosting a virtual meetup on Tuesday, April 11th at 7 p.m. to help Meshtastic users across Philly get connected. Our goal is to make a wireless chat network across the PHL area using low-power LoRa radios.
➡️ Jitsi Meet Link
To join the Meshtastic chat, you’ll need a LoRa radio such as a Heltec LoRa32, LILYGO LoRa32, or LILYGO T-Beam. Here’s a full list of compatible devices. If you don’t have a LoRa radio, you’re still welcome to join the meetup.
Here are a few things we’re hoping to accomplish:
• Flash the latest stable Meshtastic firmware, version 2.1.5.23272da.
• Decide on a channel setting (e.g., Long Range Fast or Very Long Range Slow).
• Discuss Meshtastic device roles (client, router, router client, etc.).
• Set up a shared encryption key.
• Chat!
Here’s our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic from summer 2022, which is now slightly out of date. We’re working on a new version.
