Iffy Books

On Saturday, May 20th at 1:00 p.m. we’re hosting a darning workshop and mending session. Total beginners welcome! Register:

Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, May 21st at 1:00 PM EDT. 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 […]

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.

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 […]

• Command for opening serial connection with router: minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB0 -c on • Firmware download for Tenda FH1206 router • Docker command for decompressing firmware with unblob: docker run \ --rm \ --pull always \ -v /Users/iffybooks/Documents/Router_firmware/output:/data/output \ -v /Users/iffybooks/Documents/Router_firmware/input:/data/input \ ghcr.io/onekey-sec/unblob:latest --report firmware_reoirt.json /data/input/firmware.bin • Jim's unsqhashfs instructions On May 27th we're spending the […]

On Saturday, 5/27 we're screening the film Machines in Flames at 8 p.m., followed by a virtual Q&A with the filmmakers. Machines in Flames (2022, 50min) finds a secret history of destruction by following the footsteps of a clandestine group of French computer workers from the 1980s. In 1980s Toulouse, an elusive group began bombing […]

Hi all! I'm kind of feeling this "cold month of May" thing, reminds me of one of my favorite Cocteau Twins tracks. That said, anticipate a HOT HOT reading in the early evening of Sunday, May 28th, at Philadelphia's fabulous Iffy Books. I'm really humbled to be hosting some of my favorite poets! John DeWitt is a […]

We’re hosting a virtual meetup on Tuesday, May 30th at 7 p.m. to help Meshtastic users get connected. Our goal is to make a wireless chat network across the PHL area using low-power LoRa radios. To join the network, 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. ➡️ Join the meetup

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.

On Wednesday, May 31st at 7 p.m. we'll meet to discuss The Water Knife (2015) by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The Philly 2600 meetup will be at Iffy Books on Friday, June 2nd, starting at 6:00 p.m. > The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people. We’re also hosting a meetup for the Philadelphia Chapter of the Open Organization of Lockpickers: > Come join […]

On Saturday, June 3rd at 3:30 p.m. we're running a workshop on ImageMagick, an essential command-line tool for converting between image formats and applying custom compression and filters. Register:  

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.

On Thursday, June 8th at 6:00 p.m. we’re running a soldering workshop for beginners! Anyone can attend for free, but you’ll need to buy a circuit board with components for $6 to complete the project. Here’s what’s included in the kit: 1 x Weevil-shaped PCB 2 x LEDs 1 x 47k Ohm resistor 1 x […]

The Model Internet Club meets again on Friday, June 9th 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.

On Sunday, June 11 at 1 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: […]

We’re hosting a virtual meetup on Tuesday, June 13th at 7 p.m. to help Meshtastic users get connected. Our goal is to make a wireless chat network across the PHL area using low-power LoRa radios. To join the network, 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. ➡️ Meetup link

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.

Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, June 18th at 1:00 PM EDT. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #2I, PHL) or via Jitsi Meet. This month we'll discuss the new article Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Design Constraints in Computational Culture by Mansoux, Howell, Barok, and Heikkilä […]

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.

On Thursday, June 22nd from 6–8 p.m. we're hosting an open soldering session. If you've been meaning to get a soldering project done, now's your chance! We'll have soldering irons and solder to share for free, as well as DIY electronics kits for sale. If you're looking for a step-by-step introduction to soldering, we're hosting […]

On Friday, June 23rd at 6:30 p.m. we’ll play a round of the tabletop storytelling game Solarpunk Futures.Solarpunk Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine the pathways to a desirable world from the perspective of a utopian future. Players use a deck of cards to remember Ancestors and work together using Tools and Values to overcome a set of real-world Challenges. Through dialogue and collaborative […]

Here's a link with step-by-step notes on what we've done so far! On June 24th (1–6 p.m) we're meeting again to work toward installing open firmware such as OpenWrt or FreshTomato on an old FH1206 router. We have plenty of routers to go around, which we're selling for $8 each. Proceeds will be split evenly […]

Time and Place: 2nd & 4th Tuesday each month 6:30–8:30 p.m. @ Iffy Books Beginning Tuesday, June 27th Contact: neoluddite@victorgom.es @notnaughtknot Discord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite! You may have played around with chatGPT, or perhaps even used DALL-e to generate images from text. Though Large Language Models have been around since 2018, they're currently […]

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.

The Model Internet Club meets again on Friday, June 30th, 6–9 p.m. Our goal is to build an offline network for fun and learning. At our last meeting we all connected to a wi-fi router (instead of using Ethernet and a switch like the last few meetings). As usual, most of us were using Linux Mint. […]

We’re hosting a virtual meetup on Thursday, July 6th at 7 p.m. to help Meshtastic users get connected. Our goal is to make a wireless chat network across the PHL area using low-power LoRa radios. To join the network, 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. We recommend updating your Meshtastic firmware […]

On Sunday, July 9th at 1:00 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 updated zine on LoRa + Meshtastic. (Print-imposed PDF coming soon!) If you have a LoRa radio (or reserve one below), we’ll show you how to flash the […]

Time and Place: 2nd & 4th Tuesday each month 6:30–8:30 p.m. @ Iffy Books Beginning Tuesday, June 27th ➡️ Virtual Meetup Link Contact: neoluddite@victorgom.es @notnaughtknot Discord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite! You may have played around with chatGPT, or perhaps even used DALL-e to generate images from text. Though Large Language Models have been around […]

The Model Internet Club meets again on Friday, July 14th, 6–9 p.m. Our goal is to build an offline network for fun and learning. At our last meeting we settled on a design for our network (below). We're just getting started on building it, so newcomers are welcome!

We're hosting an open zine printing session on Saturday, July 15th at 1:00 p.m.! We'll help you turn your zine design into a print-imposed PDF and print ~200 sheets for free. Printing supplies are provided by a grant from the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College, arranged by recent graduate Pixel Stone. […]

On Sunday, July 16th at 1 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:

Come out on Friday, July 21st and celebrate Iffy Books's 2nd birthday! We'll have music and drinks from 6–10 p.m. Hope to see you there! Photo by JanetMcK | CC BY 2.0