A tour of Vince Clarke’s Synth Heaven via Sonicscoop –

Vince Clarke is inspired by his surroundings. These days, this music-making royalty resides in Brooklyn. In the sub-basement of a house on a quiet street, new ideas are steadily emerging from Clarke.

– it’s just him and long walls of classic synths which span decades. From ARPs to Arturias, Moogs to massive Roland system constructions, or custom modular synths and newcomers like Analogue Solutions’ Leipzig S monosynth/step sequencer — he can hear them all, playing together or apart, at a moment’s command.

(all photos: Janice Brown)

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Mayor Bloomberg announced a pilot program for software engineering in 20 NYC public schools. More from VentureBeat:

In his ongoing effort to make New York City a technological powerhouse, Mayor Michael Bloomberg today revealed the 20 middle schools and high schools picked for the city’s new Software Engineering Pilot (SEP) program.

As part of the program, the schools will get “comprehensive computer science and software engineering curriculum” for around 1,000 students. The program will launch this September and is expected to grow to 3,5000 students by 2016.

For its first year, the SEP’s core topics include computer programming, embedded electronics, web design and programming, e-textiles, robotics, and mobile computing. Elective classes include 3D printing, digital fabrication, and animation. The program also includes training for teachers.

“We know it’s vital to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly technology-centered economy, and the Software Engineering Pilot will help us do just that,” Bloomberg said in a statement today. “This groundbreaking program will ensure that more students receive computer science and software engineering instruction so that they can compete for the tech jobs that are increasingly becoming a part of our city’s economy. We’re creating the home-grown workforce our city needs and teaching our students skills that will open up new doors for them and their future.”

The announcement follows the “Made in NYC” campaign that Bloomberg announced last week, which supports the city’s startup community. Students participating in the SEP program will likely be strong applicants for Cornell NYC Tech’s campus, which is scheduled to open in 2017 (classes have already begun in temporary Manhattan locations). If all goes according to plan, NYC’s engineer shortage will be less of a problem in several years.

This is a great idea! Naturally, we’d like to invite all the young participants in this program to pick up one of our ‘learn to program’ badges to show their accomplishment off to the world!

As part of the larger Code Across America initiative, the NYU Poly Varick Street Incubator is hosting an all-day (9 to 9) app coding event this Saturday, February 23rd.

For this awesome, one-day civic hack day, we will have a little bit for everyone. If you are interested in building civic apps, we have some high value data sets for you to chew on. If you are interested in developing NYC’s 21st Century technology policy, we will have thought leaders for you to debate. If you don’t know where to start, we will have previous BigApps winners walk you though the concept of building a civic app.

The day will be broken down into three tracks…

1. BEGINNER (Technical and non-technical) – Idea-a-thon! Let’s prototype civic apps based on Civic Data! Come learn from Ontodia, BigApps 3.0 grand prize winners, and learn how to build awesome civic apps.

2. ADVANCED (Technical) – A mini-race for reuse by taking Code For America’s Open Source apps and tailor them to NYC.

3. POLICY FOCUS (Non-technical) – Plan for the future! Discuss the future of NYC’s Internet access, Education Policy, Open Government, and Technology Industry Policy.

Attendance is $5, and there are less than a dozen spots left, so if you’re interested, you should check it out now!

New York City MTA Graphic Standards Manual.

I’ve been trying to get my hands on a copy of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority Graphic Standards Manual ever sinceTriborough managed to do so. This style bible, written by Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda for Unimark, is the sword in the stone of transit wayfinding manuals.

About an hour ago, Mayor Bloomberg gave a press conference at BuzzFeed HQ to announce that he was extending the “We Are Made in NY” campaign, previously used for NYC films and television productions, to manufacturing and tech companies as well.

The first half hour of the video is just pre-conference setup, so I’ve cued it up to 33 minutes in, where the Mayor begins speaking about the new initiative.

In tandem with this announcement is the new We Are Made In NY website, which has job info and a list of tech companies in NYC. We’re proud to be on this list, along with our friends at MakerBot and littleBits, and all the other great firms that call NYC home.

If you are in the New York City area this weekend, there are still a couple of slots open at the NYC Resistor TIMESQUARE watch class for this weekend!.

Have you ever wanted to wear an Arduino on your wrist and tell the time with a giant LED matrix? Then you’ll love this three hour class at NYC Resistor that I’ll be teaching on February 9th. During the class you can learn how to solder through-hole components as we put together the Adafruit Timesquare DIY watch kit, and afterwards we will extend the watch firmware to add a new feature to the watch.

This class is a great introduction to soldering and some advanced embedded programming techniques. The coin-cell powered Timesquare watch isn’t exactly a normal Arduino and is very CPU limited, so techniques for limiting power consumption, waking up from deep sleep with interrupt handlers, low voltage brownout detection and some inline AVR assembly will be discussed. If you just want to learn to solder and have a very stylish wristwatch, you don’t have to stay for the walkthrough of the firmware.

Included in the class price for every student is a pre-programmed Adafruit Timesquare watch kit and an FTDI cable for re-programming it (a $49 value). You’ll need to bring your own laptop with the Arduino IDE installed to flash new firmware onto the device if you are staying for the advanced portion of the class.

Click here to buy tickets at eventbrite!

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Featured Adafruit Products!

TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit – Red Display Matrix: Show up stylish AND on time to any event with this awesome looking DIY watch. We have a few watch kits here at Adafruit but we finally have one that looks good and fits well, even for ladies and kids and others with smaller wrists and hands. Its got a 8×8 bit matrix display and a repurposed silicone watch band for a professional look.

64 LEDs light up to tell you the time in a variety of ways. Built into the kit are 3 different watch ‘faces’ – a scrolling marquee with time and date, a binary watch display (for geeks, robots and binary fans), and a moon phase display (for beach-combers, werewolves). There’s also a built in battery meter so you can check your battery life. Want to make your own watch? Easy! The microcontroller is an Arduino-compatible, all you need is an FTDI Friend and the Arduino IDE and you can design your own watch faces and upload them to the TIMESQUARE. (read more)

3D Printed Watch Body for the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit: Love the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch kit and have a great idea for a custom watch body you would like to fabricate to house the electronic parts? The watch kit already ships with style to spare, but that’s no reason to limit yourself to the included watch band when you can make one. Here are the steps I took to create the “Circling the Square” TIMESQUARE Watch Body. As I guide you through the steps I followed, I will share plenty of tips and tricks for how you can design your own! (read more)