Bristol Wireless News

After unsuccessfully bidding to run a massive Internet presence (wireless and drop-in access) at Glastonbury Festival 2005 you’d have thought we’d have been dissappointed. Not to be deterred though, Bristol Wireless volunteers, supported by Psand, and part funded by the Scarman Trust, again put together another successful event, running a massive open air “Internet Cafe” and wide area wireless cloud for a week in Dorest at the Home Education Festival 2005 .

The Internet tent was a great success, the daily users were mainly kids who queued patiently and then stampeded the moment the doors opened. Main activities were runescape, hotmail, yahoo, checking webstats on their websites and remarkably the local chat client (twenty kids in a room saying nothing but chatting to the person literally sat next to them through the chat window). We were open for about 5 hours a day and about 150 people a day came through. More of a cyber creche than a cafe because the vast majority were kids.

Wednesday afternoon Psand delivered a satellite VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) conference to other home educators around Europe, including near-simultaneous translation with the French and German speakers and the translator at the Hes Fes. We also had network gaming sessions. Some people were playing interactively and others on their own. Interestingly we attracted a few adults too to the gaming. The suite was full and functioned really well. Due to the popularity, we set up a table for email, what’s on guides and public transport times, this helped enable a faster turnover.

At the end of the session we shut down the thin clients remotely, there was a groan of despondence from the users. It would have been good to run something 24 hours but a lot of the kids did have set bedtimes! A long enjoyable week was had by all volunteers involved. Definitely something that could be rolled out quickly again at outdoor events across Bristol or larger festivals across the South West summer weather permitting. Sadly we won’t be doing it at this years Glastonbury Festival as we’d hoped, but there will probably be plenty of Bristol Wireless volunteers in attendance possibly setting up freelance nodes across the site and definitely not trying to hack any Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspots in the vicinity

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Bristol Wireless have successfully installed a new broadband computer suite in a sheltered housing unit, improving the quality of life for its 54 residents.

The computer suite, located in the meeting room, is impressive, with five recycled computers, all ready for use.

Princess Royal Gardens is one of many sheltered housing schemes, providing homes for residents aged between 55 and 100. It’s not just age that plays a factor in the need for support, a range of reasons specific to each individual, which can include learning, emotional or family difficulties.

Ronnie Corbett, the in-house scheme manager since October 2004, has the challenging job description ‘to give the residents the best possible quality of life’. And that’s exactly what he’s doing, running local lottery, having tea afternoons, film nights, they have raised enough funds to buy the necessary hardware for the this project. The Committee funded £250 to cover hardware that could not be sourced from recycled goods.

‘Widening their horizons, making them feel useful again, experiences they have had can be shared’
The suite currently has 6 regular users, accessing the technology for communication, shopping, organisational software and research purposes. From Dave’s interest in lineage research, to Mary’s newly purchased mobile phone, this technology is providing a gateway for residents to a bigger ever-changing world. With a growing number of forums for practically any subject, users have found a new voice to the greater community. And this 10+% user rate is set to grow, with Ronnie enticing younger family member visitors ‘to show nan round the computer’.

Without serious funding to pay for software licensing fees, charged by companies such as Microsoft, this project would not have been possible without ‘fee-free’ open-source software, which has an interface very similar to more used packages, including a login and desktop for each user. An added bonus to this is its pop-up free, ‘You can watch this all day and not one pop up will appear, no porn – that’d frighten the life out of them’ says Ronnie.

So where can it go from here? Funding is being sought for a training programme for residents, similar to courses already being run by BW in other venues, and Ronnie would like to see headsets and webcams to build on the usage of communication with family abroad.
Plans are in place for an official opening in the near future.

On the 8 April 05 Lloyd installed a server with 3 thin clients in a supported housing project in Redfield Bristol. The residents are already surfing the net and signing up for computer courses.

The solution consists of Linksys WRT54G access point attached to an antenna, We ran POE (Power Over Ethenet) to the pole and routed it to the switch in the communal room. Ronny received some donated PC’s from us, 3×233 dell Optiplex diskless clients booting from an 800mhz twin scusi server with 512mgs ram. The server is fast enough to run LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) using Redhat Fidora linux distrobution. It’s encouraging to see residents, some of them novices, are taking to the browser and open source.

Amy Dillon
Bristolwireless volunteer

Streaming from the Chelsea tonight 8 may 05 8pm is Shane, a five piece who play rare songs of murder, adultery and death. The combination of snare, bass, 2 acoustic guitars, trumpet and vocals gives songs by cohen, parsons and hazlewood a distinctive feeling of mexican blues. Listen in!!

stream location is http://live1.radiovague.com:8000/chelsea.ogg

Bristol Wireless has just signed the contract to run a UKOnline Centre at Easton Community Centre. We will be offering free and open access to the Internet, and other facilities from 10am-4pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and from 10-12 on Wednesday. We will also be providing computer courses (free to unemployed). There will be free computers available to people that complete the course.