News about or from Bristol Wireless
Last week BW volunteers Rich and Acesabe paid a visit to the Rosevear sheltered housing scheme in Newtown to see if their link to our network could be restored. One of the last things they expected to find there was wildlife interfering with our infrastructure… Rich takes up the tale below. “As I was unscrewing […]
Netsight, who connect the Bristol Wireless network to the internet have informed us that they’ll be doing a set of upgrades to the mains and high-voltage power infrastructure around the precinct in central Bristol where its Datacentre is located this coming Saturday, 9th April 2011. Netsight therefore asks all customers (including us) to assume that […]
Below is an email we’ve sent today to a Mr Eddie Grundy, of Keeper’s Cottage, Ambridge, Borsetshire. Dear Mr Grundy You might have noticed that one of your ferrets is missing; from your Twitter feed we reckon his name just might be Brooklyn. We haven’t kidnapped him (honestly) and decided to join us quite voluntarily […]
Bristol Wireless has been using wikis for years to document and plan the development of the co-operative and its work, so we were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the Bristol Wiki Academy at the weekend (news passim). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Wiki Academy to be organised in […]
It’s a busy day in the lab, with volunteers Michael, Jim, Rich, Acesabe and yours truly present and it’s a real hive of activity, the silence punctuated by the gentle tapping of keyboards. Acesabe is up to something to do with networking of which ordinary mortals like your ‘umble scribe is not meant to wot […]
Regular readers will know that last week, Ben – one of our long-serving volunteers – was invited to take part in an Innovation Academy event entitled ‘Imagine a City where…’ (news passim). Sam Downie has now uploaded Part 1 of the audio for the event, which features the following guest speakers: Tomas Rawlings (Peer-to-Peer Foundation) […]
Over the past couple of days we’ve gone and updated our WordPress install and, as part of the update, we’ve also added the WPTouch plug-in to enable customisation of the site’s theme especially for folk with smartphones. Apparently it delivers a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying […]
On 16 March Bristol’s Circle Interactive is hosting a one-day Introduction to CiviCRM with tutor Sean Kenny. Earlier this month, Circle held a CiviCRM user group meeting (news passim). The course will give an overview of CiviCRM use in small to medium-sized organisations and the first session will offer hands-on training in everyday tasks, such […]
From Bristol24-7 comes news that will gladden the hearts of Dorkbotters, the Bristol Hackspace crew, anyone else interested in doing strange things with electricity and technology, plus football fans with a bent for the cybernetic: next year Bristol will play host to the world’s most advanced autonomous robots competing against each other and the expertise […]
Next Thursday up at Auntie Beeb’s place on Whiteladies Road, Bristol (map), Bristol Wireless’ Ben Green will be taking part in a panel session entitled ‘Innovation Academy: Digital Bristol – Imagine a City where…” from 1.45 to 3.00 pm. The event’s publicity blurb states: Imagine a city where you could tap into the gigs, films, […]
A couple of days ago, we received a generous donation of an Acer laptop from an anonymous caller at the Lab (thank you kindly, sir! We did ask him if he wanted any kind of thanks, but he resisted all our blandishments. Ed.). He only asked that we wipe the data off the hard drive, […]
As announced a few weeks ago, a meet-up for CiviCRM users and developers was held on Thursday 10th February last at Bristol’s CREATE Centre (news passim), ably led by Circle Interactive‘s Dave Morton, who was being assisted by our old friend Sean Kenny. The main aims of the get-together were to discuss how the CiviCRM […]
Why not make this February 14th a very special Valentine’s Day? On Valentine’s Day, FSFE calls on Free Software users everywhere to show their love for Free Software . It is the perfect occasion to show our love for Free Software and the possibility to use computers in freedom. On its campaign page , FSFE […]
It’s a busy day in the lab today… Michael, our volunteer co-ordinator, and Rich have been having a meeting for the last hour or so with Volunteering Bristol to examine ways in which we can improve and enhance our use of our existing volunteers and new ones (we always welcome new blood. Ed. See news […]
Arriving at the lab on Tuesday this week, your correspondent was pleasantly surprised to see that an additional batch of LTSP thin clients had been set up in the lab. He was even more surprised to observe that all 4 new machines were in use and a full-blown lesson on use of the Linux command […]
Some years ago Bristol Wireless were involved in a project with a wild life sanctuary called Secret World on the levels in deepest, darkest Somerset. Recently we were approached again to stream more critters. How could we refuse? Needless to say, a couple of us went to Somerset to see what we had to achieve […]
Yesterday, Rich, Jules and yours truly were representing Bristol Wireless at a Connecting Bristol event (news passim) at the Watershed entitled ‘The Digital Challenge is Over – The Digital Opportunity is Here’. It was good to see some old (not in the geriatric sense. Ed.), familiar faces: Kevin and Stephen from Connecting Bristol, Stephen Dodson […]
A pleasant surprise awaited your scribe on his arrival at the Lab yesterday: one of the happy smiling faces lurking there was Mark, who had to bring a halt to his volunteering activities last year to find a job to pay the bills. Anyway, Mark now has some spare time on his hands again and […]
A couple of days ago, we received a donation of a rather smart machine; this will be refurbished and offered for sale as part of our refurbishment project, for which we currently have a selection of machines complete with a full set of software (internet, office, entertainment and multimedia applications) available starting from £30. The […]
To some people network neutrality may seem an esoteric subject, but it’s absolutely vital for the way modern information technology functions. Last Wednesday, Government minister Ed Vaizey told the FT World Telecoms Conference that ISPs could soon be allowed to drop net neutrality and prioritise content providers prepared to pay to ensure a better quality […]