As an effort to get the local tech-inspired artist community involved with ToorCamp, we are offering a program where you can apply for a grant to fund building your art project and/or transporting your existing art project to the camp. Need some gas money for bringing out your flamethrowers? Want to bring out your singing tesla coils from the midwest but need some money for shipping? Want to build a giant glowing ToorCamp logo out of EL Wire and need some funds for materials? We're here to help! For more information on getting an art grant please contact artgrants@toorcon.org.

Part two of our video series captures the test construction for our PRIME Dome at ToorCamp. In this build, we only constructed the first seven tiers of the PRIME Dome, giving us roughly a 17 foot ceiling. The completed PRIME Dome will have nine tiers and will be 25 feet tall and 50 feet wide. The PRIME Dome will also include a stage and electricity for lighting, a speaker system, and a video screen for the ToorCamp talks and workshop sessions. The experience gained from this test construction is invaluable. Not only will it prepare the installation crew for a safe and efficient build, but it ensures all of the pieces match and fit. Plus, once we are on location the nearest hardware store is over an hour and a half away!

To see the video of how we constructed all of the struts, check out our blog post on Part 0.

We're proud to announce a couple more workshops, first off there's Lock Picking Practice & Skills, which is part of our Lockpicking Village at the camp, which sets aside some time for people to stop by and learn how to lockpick or dust off their skills and spend some time trying out some new locks. The workshop will also cover making your own picks and how to properly care for the picks you have.

We also have a workshop that will teach you to calm your mind by teaching 5-7 different meditation techniques. Our plan is for the workshop to be done on the beach and should be a real treat! Definitely don't miss Meditation for Hackers.

Talks for today start off with one that presents makeyourlaws.org which is a new project to gradually bootstrap a direct (liquid) democracy, everywhere. This talk presents the basic ideas behind the project, addresses common questions about practicalities of direct democracy, and how fellow hackers can help create systemic change in their governance. Come check out Make Your Laws.

Also accepted is Penetration Testing with Metasploit which is a class that teaches the basics behind harnessing Metasploit and other tools such as nmap and the Social Engineering Toolkit to perform penetration tests.

The first round of pre-registration is closing on May 1st so make sure to register before the prices go up! Also, the first round of the Call for Papers is being finalized on May 1st so submit a talk ASAP before slots run out!

We've got a couple of security talks for you today. First off we have Robert R talking about the issues he deals with while defending over 1 million sites and around 100,000 attacks daily giving a good profile of web app vulnerabilities and backdoors that are common in this day and age in his talk, State of web app sec.

Also, we're proud to have Georgia Weidman talking about the new Smartphone Penetration Testing Framework, a DARPA Cyber Fast Track started project, and how you can use it to find vulnerabilities in modern smartphones, in Introducing the Smartphone Penetration Testing Framework.

We have a couple of exciting talks for you today. The first is Rob Eby showing how you can use ham radio equipment to send email, for those of you who just can't go without email, in Communication breakdown: Sending & Receiving email via Amateur Radio.

Second up is Robin DeBates who will discuss mental health challenges in the hacker community, warning signs, and things that you can do to help keep up on your mental health in Hacker Mental Health Meet Up.

Ever have something stolen and want to get back at the bastard that took it? Come learn from Ken Westin some of the crazy tricks that GadgetTrak uses to reunite people with their devices and catch the crooks that dare steal their gadgets in Gadget Bounty Hunting.

Also, we're proud to announce David Bryan / VideoMan will be talking about hacking embedded systems and how often times service providers screw up with their custom solutions and how you can find these vulnerabilities yourself in I pwned your router. Oops.

We're proud to announce 2 workshops today. The first one focuses on sexism in the tech/hacker/geek industry/community and how all of us can be better at responding to it. Taught by Danielle Hulton and Leigh Honeywell, How you can be an ally to us females, is not to be missed!

Also on the agenda is one that we're very excited about. Hex will be teaching people how to brew Shadow Mate, a drink similar to Club Mate, that is typically highly caffeinated and fuels many of the multi-day hackathons in Seattle. If you don't know what Club Mate is, it's a popular German drink that many hackers and tech enthusiasts drink, that's lightly carbonated and sweetened Yerba Mate iced tea -- a south american herb that contains caffeine but has slightly different effects than traditional coffee. Come to DIY Soda / Brewing Shadow Mate!

There’s been a lot buzz lately about UEFI Secure Booting, and the ability of hardware and software manufacturers to lock out third-party loaders (and rootkits). Even the NSA has been advocating the adoption of measured boot and hardware-based integrity checks. But what does this trend mean to the open source and hacker communities? In Hacking Measured Boot & UEFI, Dan Griffin will give a demo of measured boot, show the data that’s collected, and discuss the weaknesses of the system.

Also, in Sai's talk, Cognitive Psychology for Hackers, he will be showing how to experience firsthand some of the most interesting, surprising, and perspective-changing findings from cognitive and social neuropsychology. With perceptual illusions, priming, biases, heuristics, and unconscious influences, humans have tons of firmware "bugs". All have exploits; some even have patches. Learn how to improve your own thinking, use others' bugs to your advantage, and gain new perspective on the unconscious and often illusory processes involved in your perceptions.