Greetings List Lurkers,
Back to the practical business of being a Geek...
Yesterday, Brett and I, at the hellish time of 5:00 AM began a road
trip to the Boston Wireless Society Flea Market, in an attempt to
clean all the clutter out of the Laboratory here at the Hedding United
Methodist Church (under no circumstances refer to this as the "Meth
Lab"). The good news is that it all went very smoothly... the bad
news is that based upon a fixed cost of about $60.00 to get there,
pay for a space etc, we lost about $30.00. That said, if you had the
stuff folks wanted to buy you might be able to do something here.
TECHNORUBBLE - The Concept
Maybe the workable idea is that the Barre Open Systems Institute runs a
non-profit educational activity that could benefit from a donation of the
kind of unused technology that you need to dispose of. In addition to
hauling the stuff away, we could also give you a receipt that you could
use showing that this material was donated to a non profit organization.
As a commercial enterprise you want these materials gone, That said, to
come and get these items and give you a receipt.
The items would be straightened out, evaluated and if necessary bagged,
priced and placed both at Hamfests and on ebay. The doner gets the
charitable deduction, and does not have to pay for the disposal, and BOSI
gets whatever they can recover in a sale. This could go a long way
towards paying for our weekly pizzas but also help train fledgling
technologists.
Keep this in mind if you have surplus stuff you need handled.
Touch screens are hooked up to my Raspberry Pi 2&3, bluetooth is working
on the 3 and both are installed in really cool enclosures... Check out:
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/raspberry
Note that I am still getting this site together... Of particular interest
might be:
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/raspberry#PiTch-Box
The PiTch-Box is an enclosure built out of the shipping case the Raspberry
Pi Touch Display comes in. I am very happy with how this is coming along.
As we had success with the audio feed to Joe Hart last week, we will
merely morn his going off to Japan with his lovely bride starting end of
this week. The Kindle liberation front started working on the 5.1.1
version of the software. So far it looks desperate.
Brother Bit Ed in Plainfield is attempting to use the internet attached to
a very early Verizon installation that was inherited un-updated by
Fairpoint. This is the reason that many services are blocked on this
network, for instance this system blocks block http service on odd ports.
It also blocks outbound ssh... That said, we still need a project to
reflect all of the current project pages to git hub. This is why we will
be initiating the gittlywiki project... I am gonna go by and confirm this
issue sometime in the next few days, when he can take time off from
building Alex her palace...
I continue to modify visualbash.org sample code to include sanity and so
to include the use of secret-tool to enhance visualbash's capability to
store encrypted passwords in the gnome keyring. What fun to write good
code in bash...
I have as of this writing not had the time to invistigate the pythonic
answer to all of our programmatic word generating problems, the
python-docx library... Next week we travel to Portland Oregan to become
indoctrinated in ython 3.0. The function labeling feature may convert me
to the dark side, but I have a few days before I go to PyCon and face this
music.
Sadly I remain fascinated with the idea of writing a python tax library...
PYRS - A python interface to the IRS! (http://docbox.flint.com:8081/pyrs)
Maybe the conference can disuade me.
Due to the bandwidth issue, and the traveling adventures of Joe Hart, the
Kindle Debian, and the entire Kindle Liberation Front is lagging, but
there is good news on this front:
Amazon had a blow-out special on the kindle for $39.00 a piece. We have
three. Sadly they were all 5.1.1 and not 5.0.1 versions. My goal is to
get one to Joe Hart to get the Kindle Liberation front back on track..
These do not leave my sight till I hack the bootloader...
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/kindle
We will get to the bottom of wether or not debian supports the touch screeen.
I get wonder if you can get Ubuntu Touch loaded on one of these...
As for our gathering here in Barre, I beseech you to to go to the directions
web site should you need them at:
http://bosivt.org/directions
To summarize, the meeting today is at 40 Washington Street, Barre, VT 05641
There will be pizza.
- Open Source Educational Human Development
I am working on an idea... I am changing the priority of our
eternal needs, and placing education first.
- Maker Movement A Maker Space in Barre? Why not? Could it be that the
commercial power centers do not yet appreciate the value? I need to
revise my paper on this subject and get it out to Lucas Jensen
who has good ideas about a Barre Maker Space.
- Move BOSI to become more git centric... develop gittlywiki... working!
check out tiddlywiki5 here: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5
We still need to convert... Yea buddy...
- Blue Sky R&D, but in Vermont it will be Gun-metal Grey Sky(c) R&D.
- I fought the DREK and the DREK continues to win. Remember, What
really is holds us back is DREK!!! DREK is what happens to your
workspace (both hardware and software) when you fail to put stuff
away, or you let your friends or relatives use it. This is a cosmic
law. I am still fighting the DREK.
Anyway, we have the technology and we will have the pizza tonight 5-7 at
Hedding.
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, and there are
folks who are gonna try, the swim stars at 6:00 PM EST.
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.
Once again, the goal of the meeting shall be as usual, to get organized and try
to get the various projects moving forward, despite DREK. We continue to wonder
about how to build the BOSI curriculum to this webpage:
http://bosivt.org/classes, Take a look if you dare...
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,
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...
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/gitlywiki - is tiddlywiki5 the answer?
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 Format", 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.
Somehow we need to make progress not more projects!!!
If you wish to be included on the "Linux_adult_swim" mailing list, send a
response to this note.
This is Flint signing off... again, we Swim in Barre this afternoon with
the gun-metal grey New England sky overhead in the snow!!! It is good to
be on the inside looking outside!...
Kindest Regards,
Paul Flint
(802) 479-2360
(802) 595-9365 Cell
/************************************
Based upon email reliability concerns,
please send an acknowledgment in response to this note.
Paul Flint
Barre Open Systems Institute
17 Averill Street
Barre, VT
05641
http://www.bosivt.org
http://family.flint.com/flint
skype: flintinfotech
Work: (202) 537-0480
