Greetings List Lurkers,
See here, this is gonna get pretty graphic, and this is mostly due to my
beloved wife. Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon she pronounces that it is
gonna rain tomorrow, so we have to go get her beneficial nematodes...
(warning this is where it gets gross, if you can't do this go read a man
page...). As for betting on June bringing more rain, I can go along.
So first to Agway, they have no nematodes, good or bad. The Cat is
furious, so we make the jump from Barre to "Gardner's Supply" which as
far as I can figure out is the Great Hall and Castle of June. We get
there, the snack bar is closed, but that is OK we are there to buy
worms - ring-worms specifically, and they have them in stock.
How can it get any better?
Oh these things cost as much as good Rib dinner, something you probably
should not be thinking about in the same paragraph with nematodes, and you
need a special applicator, bringing the total up to somewhere north of
fifty bucks - for Worms! So after an excellent rib dinner overlooking the
Winooski we are back in Barre spraying our lawn and garden with
Nematodes... actually the wife is spraying, and I think she gets some of
this worm infested water on me on purpose!
Open source de-wormer anyone?
Ok that ends the gross for this missive. Interestingly enough it is
raining so I hope her nematodes are doing Ok in her garden. I could have
lived my whole life and not known or cared about nematodes beneficial or
malevolent...
Got in some 20 watt high powered Light Emitting Diode array illumination,
which I mounted these into Ball Jar Lids as a glare shade and affixed this
above a work station. What an excellent source of illumination. Expect
to see some additional pictures of this on the LEDroid.org site. In
addition with the coming development of the Butter-flying Capacitor this
will actually work for stage-lighting. As we mentioned already, this
Bright Idea now has a name, LEDroid, and oddly enough, a web site:
http://ledroid.org/
I continue on this stuff and truly find it fascinating. One angle I intend to
pursue is can these little bright lights be directly attached to tin ceilings?
Anyone out there who has ideas about Very Bright illumination, drop me a line,
as it has been a very illuminating experience for yours truly.
In addition, we have come up with is what I am affectionately referring to as
the "Berserker-mod" for a standard PC power supply. So what else comes out of
the PC supply is 170 VDC. While this actually works, I am still banging out
the engineering necessary to get line isolated 40 VDC from this, besides
putting 4 high power LEDs in series. Check out the LEDroid site for more
information. My latest approach to this issue now has the working name
"Butter-flying Capacitor"
In addition I am back on the shower project at casa open source I really
want this to end so I can take a shower.
The Vermont Computing Cooperative of Randolph Vermont which we had the
pleasure of visiting last month. We should all be aware that Ian, Matt,
Bob, Dan et al. have taken Open Source by the horns and formed a Worker
owned computer cooperative. This remains the candidate for the coolest
thing of the year. I really think that these folks are onto something,
Attain let me say that anyone with assignments or service opportunities
should contact Mr. Ian Stewart of VCC, Randoph. These are good folks and
this is a shameless plug. Keep the faith VCC!
Anyway, we have the technology and we will have the pizza, and maybe a
surprise announcement later this week.
This is the official notice of the Barre Open Systems Institute (BOSI) Adult
Swim. For those coming in via the Google Plus and the Internet, The swim stars
at 5:00 PM EST, our continuing vanity being to include a goggle hangout, which
we will get going this time at https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1
until 6:00 PM EST. Note that we really want to support TOX based video
conferencing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_%28software%29).
I may have puzzled out how to get our G+ meeting running from a shell
script. Hopefully this will allow us to get together with J. Hart who
really wants us to get our act together on Google Plus. So this meeting
we will start G+ at 17:00! I hope that this is a reliable way of getting
a Google plus session going at every meeting!
For some reason many of our projects are turning into hardware. Anyone want to
computer control a gas powered model race car? There will be a web site coming
soon!
Our ongoing major objective is to continue to try to figure out how to invest
the time and resources to turn the Barre Open Systems Institute into more than
just the Adult Swim technical clinic and more into a real learning facility.
One direction we have been working on is to begin thinking about classes. The
curriculum that I am most interested in is teaching documentation.
We continue to wonder about how to build the BOSI curriculum to this webpage:
http://bosivt.org/classes Take a look if you dare...
As I cannot say too damn often, the meeting today is at 40 Washington Street,
Barre, VT 05641 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM!
Remember, the BOSI Adult Swim is essentially about helping out fellow users of
open source products in a clinic environment. Despite my very best of
intentions, the Adult Swim is really almost a perpetual Linux install-fest, and
only secondarily a learning environment,
Once again, the goal of the meeting shall be as usual, to get organized
and try to get the various projects moving forward.
The ever growing list of projects (now on our web site :^) includes:
- http://ledroid.org - Ok, this is a real project eh?
- http://bzinga.net - What happens when you combine Bash and Zenity?
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/nodejs - ok, it is on the list.
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/snobot - jesum they love this robot
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/furmon - monitor that pellet furnace
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/arduino - moving in the arduino groove
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/javajive - to get better at Javascript
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/tsp - Temperature Sensors Project
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/robotsrules - The quest for Roberts Rules -
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/visual.bash - Yea, I am not kidding...
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/mrtg - remedial raw mrtg for the slow...
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/raspberry - all versions
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/strembot.org - maybe a very cool project.
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/organized - oh please let me be organized!
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/music - this may be the least organized
site ever!
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/bb - A big noble idea.
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/grantbot - A less noble idea to feed the
big idea...
Otherwise, Barre indeed remains a great venue for a Linux and Open Source
Software discussion and general system rejuvenation. Expect to be remotely
preached at on the various topics of Open Source and how I am confident it
shall cure all the evils and ills of this wicked world. In a perfect meeting,
people would come in, sit down, see the stuff we have been doing and hopefully
help us get the DIY stuff we are doing done, or maybe just fix a laptop.
So, do not forget that the Barre library stocks "Linux World", and the latest
issue is on the shelf, and it is good. The DVD's are available to checkout and
copy, we shall to continue provide copies and isos of each and every one. I am
continuing to duplicate abot a years worth of DVD's which is quite a task.
Anyway, come and do open source stuff. For more information about the BOSI
Adult Swim meeting time and location try this:
http://bosivt.org/directions
Show up at Hedding UMC if you have questions or are interested in Linux or the
concept of free and open systems. Again, we are in the basement of the Hedding
UMC facility which is actually working out pretty well.
If you wish to be included on the "Linux_adult_swim" mailing list, send a
response to this note.
After I finish the new group shower, we fully intend to get organized. I mean
it this time.
