RobotSkirts

Now, on the eve of Hack a Day’s fifth anniversary, seems like an appropriate time to announce my resignation. Site founder [Phillip Torrone] published the first post, a red box, on September 5th, 2004. On May 7th, 2005 I took over editorial duties at Hack a Day by publishing one of my favorite projects: [Jonathan Westhues]‘ proximity card spoofer. Since then, I’ve run Hack a Day with a number of great contributors over the last four years: [Fabienne Serriere], [Will O'Brien], [Ian Lesnet], and current senior editor [Caleb Kraft] just to name a few. I’ve enjoyed watching the site grow, powered by the constant stream of tips from readers. Whether we were turning hard drives into molten goo or putting our hardware designs into production, it’s been a lot of fun. With all the new talent we’ve brought on recently, I have confidence that Hack a Day will continue to be a great resource in the future.

You’ll be able to find me online running my personal blog RobotSkirts.com and on Twitter as @sweetums. In real life, I’ll still be attending hacker conferences, like the upcoming ToorCon in San Diego, and local Los Angeles tech events like Mindshare and the weekly Hacker Drinkup.

In closing, I’d like to thank you, the readers, for all the support you’ve given us over the years. If it weren’t for all the tips, personal projects, and ideas you’ve sent us, we’d never have made it this far. Thank you.

[photo: Viss]

I’m fairly bah humbug about April Fools day. It’s a day where everyone trips over themselves in a rush to attempt humor while failing to understand how it works. My favorite example is when TechCrunch posted their April 1st joke on March 31st and then wondered a month later why people still believe it.

There have only been two occasions where Hack a Day ran an April Fools post. They’re both tongue-in-cheek and intended to entertain instead of confuse with absurdity: Hack a Day goes autonomous, Introducing Craft a Day.

I do like YouTube’s &flip=1 option.

Immediately after moving to Santa Monica, I headed to Cleveland for Notacon. Well, not right away. First, the power steering hose had to blow on the panel truck while visiting Sarah.

Notacon is a hacker convention, but is interesting for featuring Blockparty, a demoparty. You can find my posts about Notacon on Hack a Day. The conference was okay. The 12 hours it took Holiday Inn to get me into a room were freaking awful. Cleveland sucks. Knowing my track record for hating on places, I’ll end up moving there some day.

Okay… I’m going to attempt to get this blog back on track by doing short daily posts, not necessarily current ones, but what I’ve been up to in the last four months. Looking back I realized that I never announced what I’m doing right now. I’m working fulltime as Head Editor of Hack a Day. I left AOL/Propeller.com at the end of March. I’ve been writing quite a few posts at Hack a Day while trying to acquire more and more contributors.

I haven’t been posting much here, but I do post quite frequently to both Twitter and Flickr (thanks to my geotagging/autouploading N95).

SitesCollide – Hack-A-Day – Eliot Phillips

I think my interview about Hack-A-Day went really well and I suggest you have a listen if you’ve ever wondered what we’re all about. (Yes, “I’m feeling lucky” for the word hack has been bumped by Wikipedia yet again)

UPDATE: Link fixed.

I drove down to LA this weekend to tour Mr. Jalopy’s Hoopty Rides headquarters. It was an interesting time and you can read about my experience on Hack-A-Day. A bonus was meeting Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing. I met Coop as well. He is heading to Mexico on Wed. to codrive a WRX in the La Carrera Panamericana rally. I think this will be at least his third year. Later this week I’m flying to San Diego for ToorCon. This will be my third one; it’s my favorite event of the year.

Hack-A-Day is looking for people to contribute how-tos and other original content to the site. It is a paid position. Let me know if you are interested. To get an idea of the type of content we’re looking for, visit Engadget’s how-to authors pages since most of them were Hack-A-Day contributors:

• Benjamin Heckendorn
• Eliot Phillips
• Fabienne Serriere
• Will O’Brien

Paul and Larry from Pauldotcom Security Weekly were in town this week for the SANS Las Vegas. I put together some schwag and donated it to their live podcast. It went fairly well and I got a review copy of their Linksys WRT54G hacking book. I plan on eventually reviewing it for Hack-A-Day. BTW, if you’ve always loved Hack-A-Day and wanted to contribute, now is the time to get a hold of me and let me know what you’d like to do.

A friend of mine is planning on picking up a paid blogging gig and asked for a little advice. I decided to write up what I’ve learned over the years. I was never the most prolific blogger, but I consider myself a fairly decent lead blogger/editor. Note that most of these ideas only apply to working for a commercially viable group blog (you’re not going to find it in practice on RobotSkirts, we’re only future proof viable as a robot accessory line). If you’re just doing a personal blog you should throw this post out and pick up some of Tony Pierce’s tips (old favorite of mine even if I don’t agree with all of it). I did cover part of this topic a year ago while talking about the blog industry. I’m curious to see what people think I’ve left out or am just entirely off base on. (more…)

The rumors are true! Bre Pettis and Eliot Phillips are actually friends. Will they collaborate on a Monsters of Hardware Hacking tour? Only time will tell. (thanks for the pic, fbz)