In the Public Lab community newsletter this week, check out an invite for a hackfest next weekend, read about air monitoring projects underway and learn a much easier way to install CHDK on your Canon. Enjoy!

1. Science and the City hackfest. On the 9th and 10th of February, Science and the City, a hackfest dedicated to citizen science for cities, will take place at NYU's ITP. There's a bunch of interesting projects that have been proposed, but if you have a project to pitch, they're still accepting.

2. New Zealand vs. the U.S. It's not actually a competition, but Mathew Lippincott, the resident Public Lab kiting expert, wrote-up a couple of notes on the different techniques used in New Zealand and the United States to tack kites against the wind.

3. Cypress Hills air quality monitoring program update. Assembly of modified Air Quality Eggs with SD cards for use at the Cypress Hills Community School in Brooklyn began this past week.

4. One Sky global event. Work is underway on an idea for a global event of balloon flying to collect atmospheric data. Research notes are being collated under the tag "air-column-monitor".

5. Simple CHDK installation. Remember how frustrating it was to put a CHDK script on your Canon camera when you were late and running out the door to go on a mapping trip? Although I may be the only one to have had such an experience, finally there's a super simple program for installing CHDK!

6. Citizen science and the BP oil disaster. Louisiana State University hosted a conference on citizen science this past week. Scott Eustis wrote up a note from a session he attended where Daniel Nguyen of Mary Queen of Vietnam spoke about fishermen from the Village d'Est working with Tulane researchers on a monitoring project.

7. Last but not least, research notes: Suction cup spectrometer attachment (posted by Mathew) CHDK usb remote shutter Digispark sketch (posted by paycoyle) Light sockets tests for countertop spectrometer, 3d prints of mobile spectrometer (posted by warren) Desktop spectrometer assembly (posted by nutandbolt) Attempt at distance spectrometry (posted by jetson)

As always, if anything was missed, please post a research note, email the Google Group or message shannon@publiclaboratory.org for inclusion in the newsletter next week. Have a great weekend, Shannon