Greetings List Lurkers,
It is a Beautiful day here in Barre. A wonderful day to be tormented by
the world of 3D.
There are two ways:
1. 3DPrint and
2. 3DCNC
I honestly do not know which is worse. Anyway I continue to flail around
in this the crucible of maker space, trying to get my bearings. I will
likely continue to complain about this in subsequent newsletters. BTW
anyone who wants to help with this is welcome to contact me.
Thanks to Mr. Shawn (of the Dead :^) for opening the Adult Swim doors last
week. Apparently he was able to make the pizza, watch over the
enterprising geeks who attended, clean up and shut down. This allowed
me to get south at a sane hour this afternoon so that I could
get to the MVMUA conference. Now if I can just get the Keys back from
him...
That said, there will be Pizza!
FIELD TRIP TO CASTELTON
This Thursday, 26 October, we take off to Castelton State College, the
objective is the Vermont Maker Conference
(http://docbox.flint.com:8081/travel#VTMakerConf2017). This will no doubt
eventually turn into newsletter fodder, but for now anyone who wants to
come along should contact me now.
SPLUNK CLASS
This weeks activity...
We have the rpm download for Red Hat, and we are gonna install this thing.
I remain confident that Los Weasel will actually support this project
by such good acts as sending me the URL I need to fill out for
this program offered by Splunk.
THE ADVENTURES OF SGT SOLIFIX
Brett posted, and offered us back one of the club chairs as well as
Effin's coat (like Effin needs it in SF). He looks for work in the
southland, but seems serene.
VISUAL BASH
Visual Bash has been quiet this week.
Say what you want but spell it correctly... As you may surmise, I have
been trying to develop and popularize the VisualBash framework. I have
tried in vain to get an article posted about VisualBash on Wikipedia, but
do not seem to have the "psudeo-savvy" necessary to satisfy their editors.
So I need help. Any of you who can, write about VisualBash either on
Wikipedia or other blogs, I would very much appreciate it.
TADA
Now that Sgt Soulifix is remote and many folks we know including your truly,
are traveling, we really need to work on Teleconferencing At Da AdultSwim
(TADA) which starts again at 6 PM EST the meeting after this one. The
teleconference equipment will be with me, and who knows, I may pull over at a
rest stop on some damn super highway and try to use it to call in, as I join
Kevin Cole currently in Oslo, Brett in the South and Joseph Hart at Niagara
Falls who might want to participate. What we can do? Would TOX support this?
What about a Visual Bash or Termux interface to Google Plus? BOSI needs a
solution.
Kevin discovered something while in OSLO, some technology involving
webRTC. I am hoping that I can find the reference...
Hopefully these will be discussed on:
https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/flint.com/tada
TECHNORUBBLE
Technorubble has been quiet, which may change next week.
Technorubble at Libraries.
At the meeting back in February, J West came up with this angle and I would
very much like to try to set TechnoRubble up at the Kellog Hubbard, Kimball and
the Aldrich Libraries and see if this would work. I may also try to get some
traction at the Kellogg Hubbard.
I am beginning to believe that this will never happen, and may take this off
our agenda unless I see some action, going third time's a charm...
TechnoRubble Supply
Beyond direct donation, our favorite method, two local sources of TechnoRubble
might someday be the ReStore and CVSWD. The TechnoRubble untangling and
packing is part of that effort.
TechnoRubble Taxonomy
Lets start with the hard part:A TechnoRubble Taxonomy
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/technorubble#TechnoRubbleTaxonomy. had some good
feedback about this issue. As the summer burns off I intend to tackle this,
using the framework developed in the Trantor project. This needs to be
reflected in the "unlikely candidate for software development" category above.
While at the Maker Fair last month, I Talked to Nick Floersch and the gang at
the Code for America Vermont brigade. Code For America Burlington appears to be
Slack based, and I clearly am not. The idea is to make TechnoRubble much more
network centric (after all what created most of the technorubble?) maybe get
people to mail their TechnoRubble to us in a USPS Flat Rate Box. Get
TechnoRubbble available on Amazon or Ebay! Not high priority, but could
change...
The latest news is that we have the worlds cheapest RFID system arduing card,
and 101 RFID cards. Apparently this RFID card also works on the Raspberry Pi
(http://docbox.flint.com:8081/raspberry#PiRFID). We have a long way to go
here...
LAKECRAFT PI
Nick of Code for BTV developed "Lakecraft" (http://www.lakecraft.net/) which
is a terrarian of the Champlaign Lake that can be used on an intel Minecraft
version. We now know that Minecraft is default loaded on Raspberry Pies...
Wonder if there is data set compatability...
TRANTOR LLDD
The Trantor Project designed to be a Linux based operating system resource
(http://docbox.flint.com:8081/trantor) languishes. As you My know, LLDD stands
for Local "Library Digital Destinations", and is the real important part of
this project that remains undone. As of now the system is once again 100%
operational after Sam performed a "security evaluation", on the physical
hardware at the library.
I have an ongoing conversation about this with Sarah, the Aldrich Library
director, as I am most interested in her help with both the trantor project and
Library-based TechnoRubble.
Sarah the librarian indicated that there is new management (Scott Murphy) at
the State Library level and that they are hiring a technical coordinator who
can address Local Library Digital Destinations (LLDD), but this has not yet
happened.
Sarah also still wants a press release. I hope that the concept of Local
Library Digital 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.
Maybe we can crank out a press release before much longer.
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?)
Could there be some action here finally?
2. getting the visual bash trantor prototype complete, with
appropriate features, which is done.
3. Adding the new elements to the collection...
Sadly, not much has changed here. Sent David Zukerman a note about this, but I
am not getting involved with State Gumment...
WATCHING OTHER MAKER SPACES
Likely be up at "Big Maker: Amelia Marzec – Making Systems Prepared For The
Apocalypse" 27 September at the Generator... If you want to come along
register, let me know if you need a ride.
EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES
Python
We will be scheming (no pun intended) to go (pun intended) forward with this
somehow.
LOFTIER EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES
Blockchain Tic-Tac-Toe
part of the SHARE conference is to reconnect and somehow figure out how to code
the transactions. This will be attached to the tic-tac-toe.py game. We have
decided on using python 3 for the first cut which merely involves writing a
simple tic-tac-toe game. Now get thinking!
see http://docbox.flint.com:8081/blockchain#blockchainttt
I am gonna continue this because it seems relevant.
MAINFRAME ZLINUX
Being in New York and hanging with the Metropolitan VM Users Association,
Inc. (MVMUA) gang was fun, and shall be what I continue to do.
REXTRY
Now that the Maker Faire is over I am going to get back to this.
We actually got copy of the VM program RexTry running on the zPDT. Now I need
to figure out how to turn it on. I am almost ready to focus on this again,
just got to debug some Visual Bash, then I can get at this.
I also have a line on curl for VM. This could be very cool.
he BOSI Adult Swim meeting today is again at 40 Washington Street, Barre, VT
05641. We shall again meet tonight at our usual place and time if you need to
know more see below...
Topics for discussion as usual remain:
- Open Source Educational Human Development
I am working on the BBB and ... 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 profile. Could it be that the commercial power centers
are beginning to appreciate the value of the maker movement.
See http://bbbvt.org/
Here are the city and statewide plans:
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/bb
who has good ideas about a Barre Maker Space. Why not do digital
stone soup?
- Move BOSI towards reStructuredText. I am seriously researching 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? Or is DREK
just what you get prior to something becoming TechnoRubble?
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. Accept no substitutes... 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.
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, works, and has just been updates see javascript link to
"classes"...
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?
This will be updated, hopefully two newsletters from now!
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 look at the list of stuff we still have to
do and I wonder where it all came from!
I expect to hear from eagle-eyed Dr. Mark, as he is our Honary Editor.
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
