Greetings List Lurkers,
The Brave Brothers of BOSI got up fairly early Saturday and took a field
trip Saturday up to the Burlington Tech Jam.
Meh...
I do not know what the politicians, plutocrats and techno-lackies of
Vermont are looking for when they put on this show , but I really wish
them well. Is it that Microsoft product and Chittendon County are so
assured that they represent the technical center of Vermont (New England,
The World...) that their hubris extends to merely back-slapping each
other? Is the Vermont "slap and tickle" culture of conflict of interest
the best our State can offer? Or does the world see us as a "banana
republic" without the bananas? Keep sending those checks to Redmond...
...anyway, I proudly abide here in the cold, ignorant darkness of
Washington County...
Regarding teleconferencing with Joe Hart of beautiful Buffalo New York, we
are very much trying to nail the infrastructure down for better video
presence, I may want to take Joe over to prototype land sometime this
coming week. There may be a solution.
Not a bad day today for the Adult Swim. The Temperature Sensing System
working in the basement on a real old Dell Dimension 630 said 42 degrees
F.
http://docbox.flint.com:8081/tsp
I now know that Tech Jam is not the place to have a session on angular.js.
Tech Jam appaears mostly as a cattle call held by some really sick
cowboys... Maybe St. Anthony and the folks at Code Camp are really the
brighter lights...
Speaking of light, the bright spot was after the Jam, and the Chinese
Buffett. Ribbon Recyclers, is an unlikely name for a real, down home,
surplus electronics boutique located in one of the innumerable industrial
strip malls of deepest, darkest Williston. The proprieter, James Young
was a charming old elf, with a clear taste for making a sale. Brother
Chris walked out with a fine dual core server for $20.00. While not
entirely on the Linux bandwagon, Ribbon Recyclers belyes its name by
having a much wider technology offering than merely recycled ribbons!
This is not to forget WinCycle of Windsor, where you can get IBM Thinkpads
with Linux installed selling for $80.00 each. This is very exciting, and
I recommend that folks be aware of this resource in central Vermont. My
damn Toshiba appears to have a loose hinge! Where are the Stinkpads of
yesteryear? Why at Wincycle in Windsor...
Wincycle appears to be very similar to the worker owned cooperative, Vermont
Computing Cooperative (VCC) of Randolph Vermont. Thus the fact that Wincycle
and VCC are offering local linux is great. I really think that these folks
embracing Linux in consumer computing are onto something. If you know of
anything going on in any Linux related space, send it on and I will be happy to
investigate and mention it in the newsletter.
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, with any luck!
The dreaded future projects remain ever present on our small minds:
- Maker Movement A Maker Space in Barre? Why not? Could it be that the
commercial power centers do not yet appreciate the value?
- Move BOSI to become more git centric... develop gittlywiki... working!
check out tiddlywiki5 here: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5
- Blue Sky R&D, but in Vermont it will be Gun-metal Grey Sky R&D.
Looked seriously at firefox OS for the Pi...
- Open Source Educational Human Development (nothing new here:^)
But I wish there where.
- I fought the DREK and the DREK continues to win, especially after the
mini-maker fair. 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. Now after moving everything
to the Maker Fair in Shelburne it has gotten worse.
Anyway, we have the technology and we will have the pizza tonight 5-7 at
Hedding, assuming the traffic in Rutland is under control.
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?
As Bit Ed using an ISP in Plainfield, first reported many services block http
service on odd ports, one immediate projects needs to be to reflect all of the
current project pages to git hub. This is why we will be initiating the
gittlywiki project...
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.
If you wish to be included on the "Linux_adult_swim" mailing list, send a
response to this note.
This is Flint signing off... We are at the Swim in Barre this afternoon...
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
