News about or from Bristol Wireless
Bristol Wireless volunteer Tony Stone has been experimenting with increasing the range of USB wifi dongles and has come up with a splendid bit of home-made kit. In Tony’s own words: I was having trouble picking up my local WiFi hotspot. I was using a USB dongle and added an extension cable to put it […]
This coming Tuesday 20th January is Penguin Awareness Day (hat tip: Kerry McCarthy). Why is a tech news site so concerned about aquatic, flightless birds you may ask? Anybody familiar with Linux will be aware of the existence of a character called Tux, the mascot of the Linux kernel and a penguin to boot (should […]
When I saw that as the subject line in an email we’ve received, I thought it was a great way to open a testimonial to Linux. Last week we had a visitor in the lab who bought one of our splendid £30 computers. Normally, we don’t hear from our customers: the machines just keep running […]
Aar me hearties! Jules, Bristol Wireless’ treasurer will be taking us back to the 1960s in a couple of weeks time, when he talks on pirate radio (Ah! The pink-shrouded mist of nostalgia descends over my eyes. Ed.) in the Zoo bar at St Werburghs Community Centre (map here) on Wednesday, 14th January 2009 from […]
The sad plight of our dear friends the Internet Explorer user base has come to our attention. Apparently a serious security flaw in version 7 of their flagship web browser and according to the BBC, the seriousness of the problem means that security experts are advising users to switch to another browser until the issue […]
The time: first thing on Monday morning this week (Groan! Ed.). The place: outside the Watershed by Bristol’s historic docks, where Rich Higgs and yer ‘umble scribe found ourselves unloading a car full of stuff – a refurbished £30 computer, the Bristol Wireless banner, blank CDs, literature, etc. – to haul inside for the South […]
Instead of the traditional Christmas-time office booze-up, Bristol Wireless is organising something slightly different this year: we’re putting on a geek quiz night as a fundraiser. Details are as follows: Venue: St Werburghs Community Centre, Horley Road, BS2 9TJ; Date and time: Friday 19th December at 7pm; Team size: 4-6 persons; Entry fee: £2.50 per […]
On the morning of Saturday 29th five Bristol Wireless members arrived at the Red Factory social centre off Portland Square, Bristol armed with one of our mobile LTSP servers, 3 of our posher LTSP client laptops, one of our 30 quid Linux PCs and some bumf about free software and BW to assist in the […]
Yesterday the Bristol Wireless lab was graced by a visit from Ronnie Corbett – the real one that is, not the wee comic… 
Anyway, avid readers of BW News will remember that Ronnie was the warden at Princess Royal Gardens (news passim). He’s now retired from wardening duties for Bristol City Council, but is […]
Every now and again one’s previous work comes back up again to haunt – just like the previous night’s dodgy takeaway meal. This has just happened to Bails, one of Bristol Wireless’ longest serving volunteers, who yesterday posted the following message to the BW mailing list: Last year I was requested to put together an […]
Over the last few weeks Bristol Wireless volunteers have been installing seven LTSP workstations for public use in the foyer of Easton Community Centre in Kilburn Street. In keeping with our greener credentials, the Compaq workstations (also known as clients. Ed.) run on minimal power, having no moving parts such as hard disks and optical […]
Bristol Wireless volunteer Acesabe is currently doing the final installation and configuration of a laptop due to go out to Palestine in the near future through the good offices of Bristol Computers For Palestine, who are currently raising funds for computers for educational and community use in the West Bank. The machine itself is a […]
On 31st July our mobile Internet suite set out from St Werburgh’s Bristol en route to this year’s Camp for Climate Action, pitched up near Hoo St Werburgh, on the Hoo Peninsula betwixt the Thames estuary and Medway river in a great big 30′ x 45′ marquee that would be the camp’s Be The Media […]
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 […]
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 […]
July 15-16th Bridgewater hall Bristol Wireless took its new revised LTSP suite for 2 days to the Substance Conference in Manchester. The Dell server laptop has been newly installed and the Evo T20 thin clients have been configured on the server, 7 flat screens and 3 laptops made up a suite of 10 machines: it […]
On July 4th in St. Pauls Ujima Radio was launched by the Lord Mayor, Chris Davies. Ujima Radio is run under the auspices of CEED, the Centre for Employment and Enterprise Development and its remit is to be a community station featuring local voices, to inform, represent, educate, entertain and celebrate culture, heritage and diversity […]
Mike Harris from Bristol Wireless was kindly invited by Craig Duffy at the University of the West of England (UWE) to give a talk on some of his past activities at this summer’s Linux Boot Camp (PDF flyer). An entertaining one-hour talk was duly provided to around 35 participants, which covered everything from initial faltering […]
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 […]