Chief scribe
On Tuesday 30th September, the Bristol branch of the British Computer Society (BCS) is hosting a talk from Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, entitled ‘Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government’. Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of […]
FACIL, a Canadian voluntary organisation that promotes free and open source software, has filed a suit with the Quebec Superior Court against the Quebec Provincial Government. The suit was filed on 15th July and has come to light during the last week. FACIL alleges that the provincial government has refused to consider competitive bids from […]
Stephen Fry, well-known modern renaissance man, TV and radio personality and lesser known free software advocate, has produced a video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the GNU Project by Richard Stallman. In the video, Fry explains why free software (as used by Bristol Wireless. Ed.) is important, both to him and […]
The weekend after next, on Saturday 13th September, Bristol’s first anarchist bookfair for 15 years will be held at St Werburgh’s Community Centre in Horley Road (home of the Bristol Wireless lab) and we’ll be there! We’ll be out in the foyer, keeping company with the bookfair itself, the Kebele Cafe and a constantly running […]
In its 2008 Internet Access report, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that in spite ofthe rise of broadband, more than one-third of UK households are without a web connection, ZDNet reports. According to the ONS’s 2008 Internet Access report, 65% of homes – some 16.46 mn. households – have internet access, an […]
In case you hadn’t heard, last weekend saw the climax of this year’s Climate Camp near Kingsnorth, Kent. Bristol Wireless was in attendance, providing kit and tech support for the Be The Media centre, including Camp Radio (archive here). As usual, the event was powered by renewable energy: indeed, as can be seen below, the […]
ITPro reports that pre-installed Linux has arrived on the mass market and is growing rapidly, according to new market research. Figures from market researcher Context show that, based on sales of PCs shipped with a pre-installed operating system in the UK over the past 18 months through traditional distribution channels, Linux could only claim a […]
Even though it’s the height of summer and we really should be out enjoying the sunshine (like our network engineer who’s actually getting to achieve his ambition of combining tech with festivals 😉 ), work continues apace in the lab in the Burg. One noticeable change is how much cooler it is in the lab […]
Gill Adams of Digital Unite has emailed us to let us know that the closing date for nominations for this year’s Silver Surfer of the Year Award has now been extended from the original 19th July to 31st July, giving people a bit more time to think of a deserving nominee aged 50 years or […]
Yesterday, Saturday 28th June, saw “An Adventure in Technology” come to Trinity Community Arts in Bristol (news passim), followed by an after-party at some city centre hostelry (although I missed the latter). It was wonderful to see the event so well supported by the local tech community: I spotted familiar faces from both the Bristol […]
In its early days, Bristol Wireless relied heavily on ‘homebrew’ equipment, such as the whisky tin wifi antenna (cantenna), some of which has survived very well (news passim). We were therefore very interested to hear that, at the recent hackerspace.net 08 festival in Paris, Benjamin Henrion from Belgium’s Reseau citoyen.be was presenting a waveguide antenna […]
Bristol Wireless has been using OpenWrt for some time now for its network infrastructure. We’re very pleased to learn from our friends at the Freifunk blog that the OpenWrt team has announced the release of its latest version, named Kamikaze 808. The release schedule is as follows: Last day in July – final release candidate: […]
The Linux Boot Camp returns to the University of the West of England (UWE) from 30 June – 2 July this year. It’s aimed at folks who’ve done their A levels who want to do practical technical computing and get in touch with their inner geek. The event will involve two and a half days […]
Mike Harris writes: Hi All, Just writing to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to all for coming to HacktionLab and making it a success, not only did it seem to be good fun, but it also felt very productive and useful. I do hope you all got as much as I did from it. […]
This piece, the second on Hacktionlab, was supposed to have been written on Sunday, but that didn’t happen through a combination of circumstances, so it’s being scribbled first thing on Tuesday morning following the return home of Bristol Wireless’ final site tat-down crew yesterday afternoon. My last post ended as Saturday’s lunch was arriving. Following […]
It’s summer again (allegedly) and Bristol Wireless is sitting in the countryside playing with technology. We’re providing the technical infrastructure and running some of the workshops at Hacktionlab (news passim), which is being held this weekend at Stepping Stones Housing Co-operative, Highbury Farm in the picturesque Wye Valley. We’re using the barn as a dining […]
The last 2 weeks yer ‘umble scribe has been to 2 events organised by DC10plus, a collaborative project that has grown up between the finalists (Bristol, Birmingham and Shropshire, Ealing, Hull, Norfolk, Nottingham, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Stratford on Avon and Sunderland) of the Government’s Digital Challenge, who have formed an alliance to spend £2 million […]
We’ve been on new ground this week at Bristol Wireless. All week we’ve had Guy and Isaac, two pupils from Fairfield High School, with us in the lab as part of their work experience. BW: “What have you been doing with us this week?” Guy: “We’ve been learning about Linux, LTSP, hardware, building a computer […]
Alastair Ball has told us the forthcoming Open Source City event being held in Liverpool as part of its programme of events as European Capital of Culture. Taking place from 20-22nd June, Open Source City is being billed as a “micro-festival of open source practice in the production of media art and music” and is […]
Our old mate Shevek is putting on a little event at the end of June at Trinity Community Arts. Full details are – taken shamelessly from his recent post to the Bristol and Bath LUG mailing list – are as follows: “Hi I am co-organising an event called “An Adventure in Technology” as a follow-up […]