links for 2010-02-04
February 5th, 2010-
Dig for victory - faced with a collapsing economy & ecology, what better response than growing, preserving and sharing abundance?
Someone wrong on the Internet?
February 4th, 2010Thanks to Michael Sparks, on the GeekUp list, I was recently reminded of this wonderful XKCD cartoon.
Not only did it make me smile, but it reminded me that “now” is always a good time to stop in an argument on an e-mail list, thus freeing up no end of useful time :-)
Cool Arduino Projects
February 1st, 2010Last week, I found myself writing (to a very tight deadline) an article on the Arduino board - and how it has led to a new sort of participation in Open Source, bringing more people from a range of backgrounds to playful & creative fun with technology.
The article will appear next month in Linux User magazine #84 [to be published 18 Feb 2010]. In the meanwhile here are links to some of the really cool projects that I found in the course of knocking out the article.
Where to buy one
http://www.earthshinedesign.co.uk/
http://www.tinker.it/en/Projects/TinkerKit
robot kits that were integrated with arduinos at Howduino:
http://kre8.com/
Or make Your own
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware
http://arduinofun.com/files/byoa.pdf
http://www.ladyada.net/make/boarduino/
Basic info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino [a technical article]
Of course, you can Google for Arduino, Freeduino, Howduino, & Hackspaces. :-)
Learning
HOWDUINO: http://www.howduino.com/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/LilyPad/
The complete beginner’s guide to the Arduino
Projects
A. Wearable
LilyPad - Arduino in wearable form
The LilyPad: http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/LilyPad/
Leah’s Lilypad Lecture: http://www.smm.org/ltc/node/175
The bike vest: http://www.mykle.com/msl/?p=10 & http://speedvest.com/
B. Music
Cake Orchestra & mark II & see the video
Theremin as a Capacitive Sensing Device
Theremin controlling xylophone - AKA ThereXylomin
C. Power Monitoring
D. Around the home
The amazing Weasley Clock
Arduino, Stepper Motors, Weasley magic
James Devine’s Arduino Laser Projector
E. Practical
Camera remote:
http://www.fizzpop.org.uk/blog/nikon-dslr-ir-remote-project/
http://benosteen.tumblr.com/post/253208029/ir-control-for-a-nikon-d60-updated
http://www.bigmike.it/ircontrol/index.html
Vivarium temperature monitor
F. Fun
The Flock Clock & others….
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Flock-Clock/
hallowe’en is a popular excuse for Arduino family projects in the USA.
But here, and for Ben Tappin, it was an 80s party
http://www.thingiverse.com/oomlout
Misc
All sorts of links:
http://howduino.pbworks.com/PossibleProjects3
http://howduino.pbworks.com/Project-DisplaySharing
http://www.instructables.com/tag/?q=arduino
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=DIYbio
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=growduino
And big thanks to
Asa Calow, Cyberspice, James Devine, Hwa Young Jung, Lady Ada, John McKerrell, Nick O’Leary, Pindec, Ben Tappin, Aisha Yusuf, everyone on the various UK hackspace mailing lists who helped, & special thanks to Adrian McEwen.
links for 2010-01-13
January 14th, 2010-
I'm developing a few sites in Drupal myself, and it's good to see that I'm not alone in this :-)
Hyperlocal
December 7th, 2009(It’s more than just blogging)
There’s been a lot of great buzz about hyperlocal sites as the new local press, with added community cohesion. Indeed I posted a couple of months ago about #tal09, the Talk-about-Local unconference for hyperlocal bloggers. Action within and for the local community is essential if we are to fix what the Tories somewhat pessimistically call the Broken Society. Nevertheless there are important issues in the wider world which can also be well addressed locally, so on Day 1 of Copenhagen let’s take a look at “Think Global, Act Local”.
Town in Transition
Last week my eldest two children played with the Lions Youth Brass Band at the Congleton Christmas Lights switch-on. What was different about this switch on was a street full of local stalls, mostly from community groups. One of them was the recently-formed Congleton Sustainability Group (CSG), selling locally-grown apple juice[1] to raise both awareness and funds.
Following this, I spent this morning at CSG’s monthly meeting, and was pleased to see representatives of local businesses and groups, together with a few individuals, getting together to plan practical changes to make their community more sustainable. Hydro power, energy advice, seed swaps, and, closest to my heart, beginning to look at Community Supported Agriculture and local food production.
The aim of the CSG is to prepare for Transition Town status. A refreshing contrast to places that just declare they are transition towns without actually having community buy-in or any practical results - CSG hopes to bring in more local people and organisations, and get real change in motion before declaring Transition Town Congleton.
[1] 450lbs (210kg) of unwanted apples were collected from local trees and
juiced and bottles at Eddisbury Fruit Farm, producing 106 bottles.
Next year the group aims to at least quadruple the amount of apples
it collects.
So long, AFFS
November 28th, 2009The Association For Free Software (AFFS) has been formally wound up this week. Founded at a meeting during the 2002 Sheffield Linux Seminar, AFFS was a membership organisation for UK supporters of Free Software - as distinct from a national chapter of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which would have been more official, and less member-led.
AFFS had some great early successes, including securing donations from UKFSN (apologies for the 3rd set of initials in two paragraphs) to support UK Free Software projects. Jason Clifford’s UK Free Software Network is a not-for-profit ISP created to support the local Free Software community.
I was co-opted to the committee early on to help with projects such as campaigns to get Free Software into schools, and served as chairman for a few months before family needs and conflicts with work led to me scaling back voluntary commitments.
Sadly AFFS had problems with membership renewals, and stalled somewhere along the way. Now it has been formally wound up I hope we can look back on the successes of the Free Software community in the UK, and ponder what comes next. A UK chapter of the FSFE perhaps (the UK being the only significant country without one), or some other form of membership organisation. Does the success of the Manchester Free Software Group show the way? After all, it’s always best to build on existing structures.
Free Software Funding
The residual membership voted to distribute the remaining AFFS funds as follows:
The funds remaining in its (the AFFS') bank account have been disbursed as follows, two thirds, £2307, to the FSFE, and one third, £1154, as a grant, to a UK project to develop software.
In more detail, that £1154 has been entrusted to me to disburse to the Free Software projects I’m working on for the Voluntary Sector. It will be mostly used to fund financial software for Credit Unions, and to help with a project trying to provide entirely Free Software cloud services for 3rd Sector groups.
Open Collaboration
More details of the projects will appear here, as part of my “Calls for Collaboration…” posts, however here’s the basics: We have begun work on flexible, web-based, Credit Union software. Development cost is currently covered, mostly through donated time, but incidental expenses need to be met.
For cloud services I have a server generously donated by Blue Fountain Systems. We’re hoping to get donated hosting (call me on 0779 456 0714 with your generous offer), but the project has expenses to meet in getting geographically-disparate volunteers together.
By funding projects that have actually started, but are at early stages, and by funding incidental expenses to supplement voluntary and otherwise funded coding, I hope to make the community’s money go much further. For this reason I may also consider other projects that arise over the next 12 months.
Transparency & Accountability
Regular updates will appear on Twitter, with occasional summaries published here. However, to be clear on what’s happening with the money, I will publish an interim summary of progress here next summer, and a clear summary of where the money has gone at the end of 2010.
links for 2009-11-25
November 26th, 2009-
"Government Digital Inclusion Champion Martha Lane Fox was the Big Thinker at COI last week. She announced the launch of her campaign to Race Online for 2012, which aims to get more people online particularly from socially excluded groups."
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"Grain edit is focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s and contemporary designers that draw inspiration from that time period.
"Site content includes interviews, articles, designers’ libraries as well as examples of rare design annuals, type specimens, Ephemera, posters and vintage kids books from our bookshelves." -
"For every SoyPrint toner used, you save 2-3 litres of petroleum, and you keep 6 pounds of heavy plastic and a pound of metal out of landfills. This environmentally friendly SoyPrint black laser toner cartridge replaces HP item number 92274A and is compatible with HP 4L, 4P, and 4MP machines."
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"A suite of reports on Green Infrastructure looking at a number of issues; Green Infrastructure development based on the need expressed within the Region, the opportunities for GI to deliver sub-regional economic plans, an assessment of the CITYgreen computer model for estimating economic benefit, an outline strategy for linking green and grey infrastructure, and a collection of pioneering work on the economic benefits of Green Infrastructure"
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"Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away"
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"Throw out your business plan." Like it :-)
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"…the potential for danger in the ice field of libel law is terrifying"
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The Hub for UK Tech Events & Groups
Born from 'Wheres The Geek', we decided on a brand change partly because we've shifted focus a little and partly because people kept moaning about the grammar! -
"THE Bespoke project is an innovative collaboration between a number of different academic and commercial bodies around the UK, including the universities of Central Lancashire, Surrey, Newcastle, Falmouth and Dundee, the Lancashire Evening Post and Nokia Research.
"Highly skilled Bespoke project members work across a number of different disciplines, and include anthropologists, product designers, engineers and mobile applications developers – as well as experienced multi-media journalists."We are currently arranging a series of digital storytelling workshops with members, users and clients of groups and organisations as diverse as the Ablaze Youth Group, Callon Kids Community Club, Contour Housing, Fishwick Rangers Youth Development Scheme, Preston FM and Preston College’s Elev8 initiative, as well as individual members of the public"
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"demonstrate that virtual collaboration can drive social innovation, adapting our collaboration process for improved results as experience is gained"
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“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” “I never worry about action, but only about inaction”
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lowercase "g"
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"In a purpose built facility Recycling Lives provides a multi-agency approach to addressing the causes of worklessness and homelessness through the provision of employment opportunities and skills-training, opportunities for new business incubation, and a strategy for reducing landfill waste"
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There is some hope, but not much. The depressing reality of "An economy predicated on constant growth cannot be the engine of a change that urgently demands less of it"
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Population Control / Reduction = "Way too many of you, just enough of me". The world can support a huge population, just not on a European/US consumption pattern
Open09 - what next?
November 17th, 2009As the second day of Open09 closes in a (somewhat muted) panel session, what has come out of this?
For me, every session seemed to point towards greater need for collaboration within and across sectors. Creative people, whether artists, coders or web designers, need to let go of the fear of losing control of their ideas, or having them stolen.
There are risks, but the potential benefits for individuals & micro-businesses of sharing ideas, and trying to build on them together are huge.
This is best shown by the success of Free & Open Source software. Projects like Debian GNU/Linux (the foundation on which Ubuntu is built), comes from open sharing with big companies like HP, local governemnts like Extremadura, and small companies and individual programmers.
Network Effect
Techies have the advantage that since the advent of the Internet they’ve collaborated online. Now the whole world’s doing it, so what’s stopping creative people following the Free Software model? No, really, what’s stopping them?
Let me know why you’re not collaborating more. We can only break down the barriers to change if we know where they are.
BarCamp Manchester 2
November 9th, 2009
It's behind you - robot fun at #bcMan2
This weekend saw the 2nd BarCamp Manchester - an unconference that carries on through the night. Like all unconferences, attendance implies participation, and therefore giving a talk. I gave three.
The first, on permaculture, sustainability, & forest gardens, was quite poorly attended - not something one worries about in general at barcamps, as there’s so much going on it’s impossible to be everywhere. However it did lead to some discussions late into the night on the disconnect between the techie community and those working for a more sustainable future (something we tried to address with #SmallSteps, & will return to in the future). Sorry, NO SLIDES, but plenty of info online.
My session with Paul Robinson of Vagueware on collaboration, co-working & virtual boards, entitled Profitable Collaboration for Freelancers, brought together freelancers eager to learn more about co-working, and to build better businesses through smart collaboration rather than taking on more employees. This is something the local tech sector really gets, but those paid by the government to support small businesses don’t seem to understand at all. It also made me realise I should probably get round to joining Fly-the-Coop.
Saturday night’s revels (which didn’t stop at all during the 6 hours I slept) meant Sunday morning started fairly quietly, but still brought a number of people to my third session, on organisation “for those who are really bad at it”. In this I count myself, which is why I have developed systems to allow for that, as well as adopting GTD. Conversations between two of the participants on this were still going on when I left the event an hour later.
Again, no slides, but this poster is more than tangentially related. Also, you can:
buy David Allen’s GTD book
"Sleep is ones & zeroes"
Far better than running sessions is going to others’ talks, and hearing about things about which people are really passionate and knowledgable. Also the talks which lead to great discussions, leading you to new areas of familiar topics. Even better, the conversations in the bars & corridors, as BarCamp brings together 200 great people with so much to say.
There’s far to much to list the highlights, so I’ll just mention the very first session I went to on Saturday morning: the Surrealist writing exercise. This involved writing nouns (techie & abstract) & their meanings, then swapping them round with often startling results.
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End of the first day: catching up on micro-blogging [CC by-nc-sa image from yajamesu
Many thanks are due to Contact Theatre & their staff, who really got involved in the spirit of the event, from beat-boxing and rapping the introduction, to taking part in late night Powerpoint karaoke. Also to the sponsors, and the tireless organisation work of organisers Andrew Disley, Tim Dobson & BBC Backstage’s Ian Forrester. Photo credits for all BarCamp Manchester pics (save the last, above) from Barry at Contact Theatre: @contactmcr. www.contact-theatre.org
Blog Action Day: Climate Change (& where I was wrong)
October 15th, 2009
I don’t normally join this sort of event, but the theme of this year’s Blog Action Day is Climate Change - and that seems a good opportunity to make a confession: I was wrong.
Not about climate change, I’ve been wittering on about the unsustainability of burning fossil fuels since the 1970s, and changed much about my lifestyle (transport, diet) in the 1980s in order to live more lightly on the earth.
No, I was wrong about the potential of popular mass actions focussed on tiny, incremental changes in people’s behaviour. Very specifically I was wrong about 10:10.
A Simple Step
10:10 asks an interesting question:
What if we resolved to cut 10% of our emissions in 2010?
Not a bad start. What if we got everyone we know to do the same? And what if all this made governments sit up and take notice? Maybe this could be the first step towards a brighter future. Time to stop imagining. It’s happening right now. Sign up today and be a part of it.
I had despaired of politicians making a worthwhile change throughout the Major & the Blair/Brown years, but was ready to accept a popular push could create political change. I just didn’t see any popular pushes working.
Happily, I’ve been proved wrong: 10:10 seems to have garnered unexpected support from businesses big & small, numerous individuals, and is pushing the politicians. It has worked because it has taken the vast, overwhelming problem of runaway climate change, and given us all an achievable, practical step we can take with tangible result. I wish it every success, and happily recall the words of 老子 (Lao-Tsu): A thousand mile journey begins with one small step.
