Greetings List Lurkers,
As the good Sargent-at-arms has suggested, today's meeting will take place
without me. I am marooned in Portland for the last day of Pycon 2017, and
miss our regular meeting by a day. I need to pack out of the hotel so I
will make this a quick overview of my feeling about the state of Python.
PYCON
In summary, it is getting too damn complicated. I spent yesterday
afternoon figuring out how to install Python 3.6 and virtualenv, a tool
which allows you to run different versions of python for different
projects, all the while regression testing "pydonna", which still works.
I did get a chance to present a brief "Lightning Talk" about Visual Bash
at the education summit, and I am beginning to realize that what I am
really doing with Visual Bash is "Python-izing" Bash, that is structuring
a Bash program to resemble a Python program...
This may have some merit after all.
On the topic of the Sgt Soulfix and the BOSI Council meeting today, I am
very encouraged by this effort of additional governance. At some point we
need to consider making BOSI a legitimate non profit educational
foundation (501C4) entity under the law, and we may actually have enough
money from our modest sales of TechnoRubble to make this happen.
VISUAL BASH
The Council may be very active as I continue the Visual Bash tour from
hell and miss the June 12th meeting as I will be down in the Carolinas at
the South East Regional Linux Fest (and Craft Beer Festival), Then back
and off to Ohio State University from June 22nd till the 24th. With any
luck I will be at the swim Monday 26 June, to hob-nob with the IBM
VM'ers...and finally back to Vermont to catch my breath, get more craft
beer and head down to the SHARE conference in Providence, August 6-11th.
TECHNORUBBLE
The Barre Mini Maker Faire was great. This is happened on our home turf
and we really made a good impression, and about $32.00. The Barre Granite
Museum seemed like a good venue. BOSI and the Adult Swim were proud to
attend. I got to play with my new trailer.
Aubrey has been complaining that there is to much scutt work and not enough
training in programming languages like Python and Bash.
After the Barre Maker Fair, we need to 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, and the Maker Fairs provide inertia.
- The Website http://technorubble.org,http://technorubble.com
- The new donation letter has been updated, and is being used!
As usual, 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 farther to this.
I wonder if anyone in Burlington might be interested in Visual Bash?
KINDLE LIBERATION FRONT
No real news, the Barre Maker Faire has our complete attention.
TRANTOR
Again concentrating on the Barre Maker Faire.
We loaded-in the next 50 or so DVDs provided by Brother Tom Krasner...
It is complete not just to check then get the disks back to him..
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.
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 prototype 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, besides getting ready for the Barre Mini Maker Faire and Barbecue,
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,
While we need to update this list soon, 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 Adult Swim:
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 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
