Chief scribe
Regular readers of Bristol Wireless News may recall that in early 2008 we had a series of secure cabinets designed and built for the public access internet suite at St Werburgh’s Community Centre – our base for the past 3 years (news passim). Last Friday Rich, one of our longest serving volunteers, spent the day […]
Via a very circuitous route, an email forwarded by Paul Webster arrived in your scribe’s inbox yesterday afternoon. Its text reads as follows: Hello there I need your help. I’m working with a Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council/British Council/VSO (soup) project which is trying to recruit four or so young adult volunteers to spend up to […]
Following on from the two successful gatherings to date – a rural hack meeting in the Wye Valley in June 2008 (news passim) and an urban one in Leeds in October 2008 – HacktionLab is pleased to announce its next rural gathering will be taking place between Thursday 11th and Sunday 14th June 2009 and […]
News arrives in yer ‘umble scribe’s inbox from Bristol Dorkbot organisers Mike and Rachel (must be that time of the month again. Ed.), who write: Hello everyone, As you probably have heard, the next Dorkbot encounter is taking place on Tuesday, 21 April 2009 7:00pm – 10:00pm at the Pervasive Media Studio, Anchor Square, Bristol […]
At 6 pm on Friday 3rd April, Bristol Wireless is jointly hosting a talk entitled Nowtopia at St Werburghs Community Centre (map here) in conjunction with our friends from Bristol Radical History Group and Bristol Anarchist Bookfair. The event will be of interest to radical historians and futurists, permaculturalists, free-skillers, open sourcerers, class warriors, transition […]
Your scribe discovered yesterday that today has been designated Ada Lovelace Day by Pledgebank and is intended to promote the role of women in technology. The Pledgebank pledge for Ada Lovelace Day is: “I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 […]
On 24th March (next Tuesday) the Arnolfini is hosting a talk entitled ‘The Art and Politics of P2P. It’s free, starts at 7 pm and the speakers are Michel Bauwens, Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova. The presentation introduces the work of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives – a clearing house for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented […]
This coming Saturday 21st March sees Bristol Dorkbot’s regular monthly meet, only this time both the day (normally Tuesday) and venue have been changed, the latter to Hamilton House on Stokes Croft (map). Once again our friends at Bristol Dorkbot are at Hamilton House and this month’s challenge will be to Hack a Hat! (Are […]
Opening my inbox this morning revealed the arrival of news from Europe (Not Brussels though; no need to shudder and fear the worst! Ed.😉 ). Yesterday, 11th March, saw the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) celebrating its 2^3 (eighth) birthday. Over that time, the FSFE has been working for basic rights and freedoms in a […]
Just arrived in my inbox is an email from fellow Bristol Wireless volunteer and joint Dorkbot Bristol organiser Mike, informing us that Xtream, in which Bristol Wireless is a partner, are in streaming action tonight. Mike writes: Thought you might be interested to know that XtreamLab’s streaming Femelek 2009 tonight. This is a Barcelona festival […]
OSOR reports that the French Gendarmerie‘s gradual migration to a completely open source desktop and web applications has saved millions of euro. “This year the IT budget will be reduced by 70 per cent. This will not affect our IT systems,” says Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard. This Thursday, Guimard gave a presentation in Utrecht in the […]
Yesterday our friends at Connecting Bristol hosted a Techno Footprint Green ICT Workshop, organised jointly with the council’s Sustainable City Team and The Carbon Trust. The participants came from a wide range of organisations, ranging from charities, the community and voluntary sector, local authorities, the local universities, NHS, local, national and multinational businesses. It was […]
Earlier today Bristol Wireless volunteer Sam alerted the co-op to the launch of Whitehall’s action plan for open source, including support for ODF. The action plan has a foreword by Digital Engagement Minister Tom Watson MP, which starts: Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the […]
Regular readers will be aware of the activities or our DIY wifi enthusiast Tony whose adaptation of a humble USB wifi dongle have been documented here before (news passim). Well, he’s been making further modifications… Bristol is not blessed with the most clement of climates, although its soggy grey skies prevent plenty of moisture for […]
Tony, our DIY wifi devotee, has now sent me graphic evidence of the effectiveness his fan grille-enhanced USB dongle (news passim). It’s fairly obvious from the image that there’s a clear signal boost to the dongle when attached to the grille (left-hand plot) than when used on its own (right-hand plot).
Ben, our server admin, has just announced the update of the Bristol Wireless Debian repositories. As a preface, Ben wrote: Debian 5.0 “Lenny” was released on Valentine’s Day, how sweet. I suspect that this has caused many break-ups as enthusiastic Debian Sys Admins rushed from candle-lit dinners to attend to their servers.* Anyway, Ben informs […]
The Wireless Community Weekend (WCW) hosted annually by Freifunk is taking place at the end of May (22.-24.05.2009) and will be staged once again at c-base in Berlin. The event programme has not been firmed up yet and will be arranged by participants. Proposals for the programme can be submitted before the event. Further details […]
Pete, the Chair of Bristol Wireless, has posted details to our daily mailing list of a petition on the 10 Downing Street website, requesting the British Prime Minister to promote greater use of open source software in UK schools. At present, use of free and open source software in schools is very much a minor […]
After taking a well earned break in January, the first Dorkbot Bristol meeting of 2009 will be on the Tuesday, 17th February 2009 at the Pervasive Media Studio, Anchor Square (above the Firehouse Restaurant) from 7pm until 10pm. It’s a free event with donations accepted for refreshments. It’ll be a ‘Show & Tell‘, an open […]
Users of open source and free software are very familiar with open licences such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). Indeed all the content of this site is available under it (we’re still on version 2; the GPL itself is on 3.0 now. Damn techies. Ed.). One piece of news that may have been […]