21 November 2020

Four people attended the virtual Makerspace via Jitsi this week. Although Tony wasn’t feeling too good and didn’t stay long. Theo and his sister Darcey have started making another game featuring criminals and secret agents. Barry is looking for a network switch to install in the church in Preston where he volunteers. I (Mike) warbled on about all sorts of stuff as usual. Gas boilers which always break down in the winter, never in summer. Electric heating, solar panels, house insulation ……

14 November 2020

We continue to meet each Saturday at 10 using Jitsi. Tony, Les Mike and Theo looked in this week. We talked about the numerous incarnations of the raspberry pi, growing tomatoes from cuttings, baking, jam making, game development and various other interesting topics. What else do makers do?

Linux user group Ten years ago – May 2010

With the Makerspace and LUG closed until further notice, I decided to take a trip down memory lane…….. again.

Ten years ago, the LUG had not yet formed the Makerspace and meetings still revolved around Linux. This week, Les provided the write up:-

Hi everyone

Great session today, I enjoyed chatting to Bob about his Linux
experience. Bob, welcome to the LUG, as I said, if there is anything
that you would like to do or see at the LUG, then just ask.

Mark & Bob
The joggler is a fantastic hobby gadget, £50 until the end of May and it
can run Ubuntu from a USB stick! It does only run on mains power, but
don’t let that put you off as there are loads of hacks that can be done
to this device, turning it from a lowly picture frame into a full blown
atom based PC.
What I like the most is the flexibility of the gadget, I can do what I
want with it (I’m actually thinking of using it as a fileserver for my
1TB external drive).
Anyway for more info follow the link below.

http://www.jogglerwiki.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

Also, especially for Bob, here is the Myth TV frontend for the joggler
that we discussed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgwjPRBAFrU&feature=youtu.be

Everyone
If you haven’t heard, or just not booked a place yet
http://barcampblackpool.com/

Barcamp Blackpool is a FREE event at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Casino
(the White Tower, for all us oldies 😉 ) on the 3rd of July.
If you want to come along, then please grab a FREE ticket!
There will be free tea and coffee, lunch, swag and an evening do if you
fancy, all for £0.00p.
The event is called an “unconference” where people turn up and do a talk
on their chosen subject (tech related mainly).
You don’t have to talk, just grab a ticket, turn up and enjoy the day.

Tony, Mike and myself are looking to set up an Ubuntu booth to show off
Ubuntu to the attendees, and provide free cds!
If you are interested in helping, shout up.

Well thats all folks.

Les

Ten years ago – Blackpool Linux user group

With the Makerspace and LUG closed until further notice, I decided to take a trip down memory lane.

Ten years ago, the LUG had not yet formed the Makerspace and meetings still revolved around Linux:-

2010-04-17 22:11 UTC

At this weeks meeting, we looked at how to get free hosting with php/mysql support.

We then installed Drupal at the host of our choice, and the three members present, Les, Colin, and Tony were assigned admin rights to enable them to practice different aspects of Drupal.

There will be no content added to the site, it is just there to practice configuration and administration.

http://blackpoollug.100webspace.net/drupal/

Mike

—

A good meeting this morning Mike, Les Colin and Tony. Colin had a Flash Drive which he wanted to check out, a 128 Gig (yes I do mean Gig) one he had got off e-bay for the princely sum of £40. Unfortunately this was not the bargain we all first thought, as it was not working and no amount of fiddling by Mike or Colin could resolve the issue. Colin also had a brief play at running a live Ubuntu CD in his aging Apple laptop but while it did work after a fashion there was a problem with the video and it was very slow. After this the 4 of us decided to look at using the Drupal web content management software to set up a web site on a free hosting site, there was a problem with the byte host site so Mike set another up on the 100webspace.com site. We looked at getting the site registered and setting up the SQL data base before setting it up with Drupal.

Tony

Right to repair

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/eu-brings-in-right-to-repair-rules-for-phones-and-tablets

Manufacturers of phones, tablets and laptops will face legal obligations to make their products easier to repair and reuse, under a far-reaching recycling plan from the European Union executive.

the “circular economy” plan is a new economic model for the continent.

“The linear growth model of ‘take, make, use discard’ has reached its limits,”