Bristol Wireless News

While the big wide world classes Bristol Wireless as supertechies or ubergeeks, we do have artistic sensibilities: indeed, the co-op has several artist(e)s – musicians, DJs, wordsmiths, practitioners in the plastic arts, etc. – in its ranks and I reckon that collectively we have more appreciation of creative works than your average Radio 4 studio full of art critics.

It is often said that code is poetry: proof of this is the fact that software is treated as a work of literature, but is poetry also code?

You can now judge, since one of the pleasant experiences we brought back from the Ragged Hedge Fair (news passim) was community poet Tony Hillier’s visit to the cybertent. This resulted in Tony sending us a poem which we’re pleased to reproduce below:

Conversion process

Looking for
Twelve volt flat screens
So we don’t lose anything
In the conversion process

This warm co-operative hot spot
There for you and your world
This teenage crèche

These cheap café chairs
Bring you rich text format
And plain vanilla computing
Four chairs made from one coke can
They’re that comfortable in this
Solar powered penguin paradise

Flaming foxes and frozen weasels
No nose can sense the smell of diesel
From gnu to re-new in penguin suits
This apple-free cider space
Well dressed, well addressed, innit
www.bristolwireless.net

Thanks very much Tony! We’re now wondering if any other IT co-op has had poetry written about it…

A Bristol Wireless group and photo pool has now been established on Flickr, the popular image sharing site.

The idea is to document the work and personalities of the Bristol Wireless project.

At the time of writing the group has 7 members and nearly 80 pictures, including some historical images from our first high-rise install on top of Twinnel House in Easton, Bristol, such as the geek version of the Statue of Liberty shown in this piece (Thanks edmittance ).

If you have a Flickr account and some relevant pictures, please visit the group page, join up and add your photos to swell the pool.

iT4 Communities, the national IT volunteering programme of the Information Technologists’ Company, is accepting nominations for the 2007 IT Volunteer Awards, which aim to recognise the best, most innovative examples of IT volunteering and projects. Charities can nominate themselves and/or their IT volunteers by submitting an application by 6 October. Anyone who has volunteered their professional IT skills, or charities which have used of IT volunteers over the last year, can gain national recognition and win prizes, including £250 for the charity involved.

The award categories are:

• Best Accessible IT Volunteering Project – to be awarded jointly to a volunteer and charity that have worked together on a successful project that used IT to help people with disabilities;
• Best IT Volunteer – open to charities to nominate the IT volunteer that has made a difference to their organisation;
• Best IT Volunteering Project – Impact on Organisations – to be awarded jointly to a volunteer and charity that have worked together on a successful project;
• Best IT Volunteering Project – Innovation – awarded jointly to a volunteer and a charity.

Last year’s top honours went to projects such as a mental-health charity website, an art gallery ticketing system and a Citizen’s Advice Bureau referral system.

“IT volunteers make an enormous contribution to both the industry and the community as a whole,” says John Davies, programme director of iT4C. “iT4C’s volunteers have already provided more than £2 million-worth of contribution in skills and time so it is vital that these efforts are recognised and rewarded. Without volunteering, many organisations and individuals would not have access to the high level of IT support and consultancy that they need in the digital age.”

Instructions for submitting nominations can be found on the iT4C website.

The winners will be announced at an evening awards event and reception on 29 November 2007 at the Information Technologists’ Company Hall, in London. To book a free place at the event, visit www.it4communities.org.uk/it4c. For further information about the awards, please contact John Davies (John (at) wcit.org.uk).

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have rebuffed the efforts of Microsoft to have its Open Office XML (OOXML) document format accepted as an international standard.

Of the 87 countries that participated in the vote, 26% opposed Microsoft’s bid. Under the rules for approval, no more than 25% of the countries could oppose the bid. Microsoft also failed to win the vote of 66% of 41 countries on another panel of ISO and IEC members.

The defeat of Microsoft’s attempt to have OOXML is important since more governments are demanding interchangeable open document formats instead of proprietary formats for their copious records. The one standardised format currently available is Open Document Format (ODF) – developed by a consortium led by IBM and used by office suites such as OpenOffice – which the ISO approved in May 2006.

The full report is available on the New York Times website.

Once camping in a field meant being well out of touch, but today your ‘umble scribe at the Ragged Hedge Fair has sent a birthday greeting to his sister by text message and phoned the family on a VoIP telephone (routed via satellite, back to earth in Germany, Bath, Switzerland, back to the UK and then breaking out into the telephone network for the final leg ) – all quite wonderful if it is remembered how isolated one could be in the same situation just a couple of decades ago. Unfortunately, sometimes the most basic communications can fail, but the best has to be made of a bad job, as the image shows.

Day dawned bright and sunny at Cirencester and there’s a bit more breeze for Magrec Ltd. to keep us running. Magrec, our neighbours here, have some very interesting bits and pieces, including small solar rechargers just suitable for mobile telephones, although our Rich is hesitating over whether to buy one(at 12 quid they cost more than his phone. Ed. ).

Steady traffic has flowed through the cybertent all day, although working here has been a very relaxed affair. Our only casualty to date has been one of our new Evo T20 thin clients, which has decided to turn into a brick, although Bails has the expertise to revive it. The wireless access has been working perfectly, except when someone closes the van door… (name(s) omitted to spare the blushes of the guilty!). On the plus side, there’s been plenty of interest in Linux and open source and our setup has impressed visitors and users – a good weekend for advocacy.

We’re taking down and heading back to Bristol tomorrow with some good memories and souvenirs; will it be good to sleep on a mattress again?

Saturday at the Ragged Hedge Fair started bright and sunny, but to misquote the late Larry Grayson: “What a grey day”. As we’re running off solar, that’s not working at its full capacity due to cloud cover, although Clive, our power supplier, still has the wind.

The free first hour of internet access for kids is proving very popular, with a queue forming whilst we were setting up, which we recruited so as to let them get on quicker. Wireless access is also running nicely. Since we opened we’ve had a steady stream of users, with plenty of interest expressed in Linux and free/open source software in general.

The festival is now in full swing, with a large crowd enjoying live music, performance and the programme of educational and cultural activities (Lloyd one of our satellite techs, started out the day with yoga). Workshops have also been going on, with one run by Clive, our power supplier, paying a visit with his group to neighbours Bristol Wireless for an explanation of our low-energy systems in action. As we’re powered by renewables, we are very conscious of energy consumption and have taken every opportunity to turn kit off and unplug it save power. At the same time, some neat kit has also been discovered, such as low-power LED lights.

We’ve got a few more hours to run, after which we can relax and enjoy the bands and perhaps enjoy the local apple juice if we can arrange delivery or an off-site jolly.