Greetings List Lurkers,
It is a beautiful day here in Northern Vermont, the tragedy is that I may
not have the time to enjoy it!
The taxes are away and so the pyrs project:
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/pyrs
Languidly begins to languish, sleeping away another year, and be dusted
off May 2018. Sic semper projectus...
May will likely be a time of great progress in 3D design and fabrication.
Several factors conspire:
1. #1 SoN shall be here to actually assemble/repair/reprovision the
printers and other 3D stuff that is lying around in the upstairs of the
basement, as he actually has his amazing lights to print
(https://vimeo.com/204402154).
2. For some reason my copy of Fritzing has gone on the Fritz. Trying to
do collaborative design with a broken tool is not fun. Maybe we can get
to the bottom of this (I so much want to blame Ubuntu:^). Kevin has more
cool 3D CAD software to investigate and exploit, see next.
3. Kevin has just gotten back from a local DC Maker/Hack event and has
much very cool stuff to share. The DC hacker space is clearly a place
to be in the Makerverse.
4. Now if I can only find the time. First, Pycon was later in May than it
actually is. The wife pointed this out... second, I got roped into
attending a wedding on the day of the Barre Maker Fair. This is
devistating, as this will be very cool event.
5. The Barre Maker Fair! Just got the word from Doug. We will be
attending...
Anyway it is a beautiful day here in Barre, and will likely not have the
time to enjoy it
I am under so many guns and thus this screed will be mercifully short.
TECHNORUBBLE
We sent the application for the Barre Maker Fair in to Doug and just now
heard back. This confirmation fairly normal, but I sent a note of
confirmation. Doug Webstier now has a new Maker Fair Vermont the Barre
Maker Fair, this will be, held in conjunction with the Barre Barbecue
Festival Saturday May 13 from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm at the Barre Granite
Museum. BOSI is invited.
Looks like the Technorubble is bagged, now we just need to organize it.
The Barre Maker Fair stock will very likely include some towers and at
least one old HP LaserJet III that is in excellent shape. Most of the new
TechnoRubble is thanks to Dr. Mark, lotsa shiny new TechnoRubble now
untangled and bagged. So this upcomming meeting is now about sorting the
Technobble into cartons for display and sale. Aubrey has been complaining
that there is to much scutt work and not enought training in programming
languages like Python and Bash. We could always use more TechnoRubble,
with an eye towards being ready for the Maker Fairs.
After the Barre Maker Fair, we should maybe follow up on the interesting
angle to deploy TechnoRubble at Libraries. At the meeting in February, J
West came up with this angle and I would very much like to set up at
Kimball and the Aldrich Libraries and see if this would work. I may also
try to get some traction at the Kellogg Hubbard. The famous Jessamyn West
showed up at our meeting last week and checked out the whole TechnoRubble
Project. Hope she remains interested!
- The Website http://technorubble.org,http://technorubble.com
- The new donation letter has been updated, and is being used!
As ususal, we need more TechnoRubble. Two local sources of TechnoRubble
might someday be the ReStore and CVSWD. The TechnoRubble untangling and
packing is part of that effort. An additional part of this effort could
involve the Code for America Vermont brigade, who have not posted in
several weeks. The idea is to make TechnoRubble much more network centric
(after all what created most of the technorubble?) get people to mail
their TechnoRubble to us in a USPS Flat Rate Box. Get TechnoRubbble
available on Amazon!
Lets start with the hard part: A TechnoRubble Taxonomy
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/technorubble#TechnoRubbleTaxonomy After the
Barre Maker Fair I will get to this.
VISUAL BASH
The news flash here is I squandered precious time writing Menubot.sh
(http://docbox.flint.com:8081/visual.bash#menubot.sh). I am inclining
more towards takig a shot at bzinga...(http://bzinga.net/) Bzinga may be
promoted to a full-fledged project!
In addition to BOSI giving a talk on VisualBash at the The next VM
Workshop which is coming to Ohio State University! Taking place June 22nd -
June 24th, 2017, additionally we will be presenting at the SHARE
conference in Rhode Island August 8-11th.
http://visualbash.org/
KINDLE LIBERATION FRONT
All's quiet on the Kindle Liberation Front...
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/kindle
Did you ever try to use a Kindle outside in the sun? What we need is
aware of a version of the Universal Insight Virtual Realty Glasses or the
like for the Kindle, which would allow you to operate the Kindle in full
sunlight. 3d Teleconferencing and system management could be way cool as
well. Anybody see such a thing? I am thinking about trying to fabricate
one based upon the original cardboard, now that we are getting back into
3d printing this summer.
TRANTOR
Sort of recovered from the eventful week inspired by Sam.
As you recall, Brother Sam was playing around with the library setup, and
thought it would be entertaining to boot the server off of one of the
sticks that the server can print. One thing led to another and the next
thing you know is that Sam has formatted the trantor server - Twice!
So a fair amount of last week was spent bringing this back from the
backkups. It was actually a healthy activity, as we finally got a chance
to work on the "sane" routines, and tweak the installation process. Sam
learned a thing or two as well.
Sarah the librarian still wants a press release. I hope that the concept
of Library Based Local Destinations has not been completely wiped out by
entrenched powers would so much prefer that to raise revenue by
concentrating everything in the very expensive DII Data Center at National
Life, likely for a hefty monthly fee! I may still do a press release, and
after talking to her will no doubt have a draft for her to review on the
Trantor web site shortly. Sarah has been busy, I may stop by and see how
things are tomorrow.
Other Digital Collections?
Do not be bashful (pun?). let me know if you want something faithfully curated
and The real question here is should I simply rebuild bosivt.org based upon
sphinx? Or, we could do it all in reStructuredText... Todo this we would
need a translator lets call it the rosetiddily project. To convert tiddly
markup into standard markup, from there a reSturcturedText version of
reality should be no problem.
Not to digress, but the hard part of trantor turns out to be:
1. Getting a State bureaucracy to recognize
Free Open Source Software (what's in it for them?)
2. getting the visual bash trantor prototye complete, with
appropriate features, which is sorta done..
TADA
Teleconferencing from Adult Swim starts again at 6 PM EST today. I would
dearly love to know how to do more than one party, we like Joseph Hart but is
there more we can do?
Hopefully these will be discussed on:
https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/flint.com/tada
To summarize, the meeting today is again at 40 Washington Street, Barre, VT
05641.
Topics for discussion as usual remain:
- 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? We clearly have a
Maker Faire coming to town. Could it be that the
commercial power centers are beginning to appreciate the value?
I need to revise my paper on this subject and get it out.
Here is the statewide plan:
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/bb
who has good ideas about a Barre Maker Space. Why not do digital stone?
- Move BOSI towards reStructuredText. I am seriously considering a
tiddly2rest converter. This would allow us to become more git
centric... avoid the need to change to gittlywiki...
We still need to convert... Yea buddy... Shut up Effin.
- Blue Sky R&D, but in Vermont it will be Gun-metal Grey Sky(c) R&D
(GMGSR&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. How to get over it? The secret
may be empty pellet bags. Is TechnoRubble organized DREK?
These five points are quickly becoming more than our policy, and more like a
prayer...
Anyway, we have the technology and we will have Pizza tonight 5-7 at Hedding
UMC.
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,
and figure out where our good chairs went. 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, does work,
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://docbox.flint.com:8081/vm - A Docker copy of VM370
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/kindle - The Kindle Liberation Front
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/pyrs - A pythonic interface to Income Tax?
- 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 about a years worth of DVD's which is quite a task. You
may want to watch this space for developments.
Anyway, come and do open source stuff. For more information about the BOSI
Adult Swim meeting time and location try this:
Directions to the EVENT:
http://docbox.flint.com:8080/bosivt.org/directions or, go to http://bosivt.org
and click on 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 we like 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... I gotta to out in the sun!!!
I will continue to refactor this newsletter, and at some point in the future
(do not hold your breath :^), it shall become readable!
Ok, back to the deadlines!
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
