Linux Jam in TOG

tuxWe’re having a Linux Jam in TOG on Saturday 16th May. Whether you’re a complete beginner and haven’t even opened the box of your shiny new board, or you want to explore Linux on your laptop, or you’re an experienced user who wants to hack a set top box, you’ll fit in.

This isn’t a class or instruction. It will be a relaxed informal atmosphere with other like-minded people. So the idea is to bring your Pi, Galileo, Laptop, Linux device etc. and play/use/hack. Bring tutorials, web links, instructions…. anything you like. Whoever you are from complete beginner to advanced….just work on whatever you want to do, and hopefully get some “bounce” off other people doing similar things. Several TOG members will be around too.

We’re asking for a small donation to attend the Jam. All proceeds go to keeping a roof over TOG’s head and are much appreciated. The space will be open from 10:30 with a nominal finish time of 19:00, but the open social is on that day, so the space will be open much later than this. You can sign up for the Linux Jam here.

Coincidentally, 16th May is the same day as our regular open social.  Our open social is a great way to see the space, hang out, meet other members & visitors. There’ll be all the usual madness of an open social. Weather permitting, there’ll be pizza. There may also be beer samples, courtesy of Capital Brewers at TOG. You might even get to pick some locks if our friendly lock pickers will show you some tricks. The space stays open until the last member is left…. usually the small hours of Sunday morning. The open social is free to attend.

On intergalactic space travel, sound waves, the Guzman prize, and human communication

So I’m just back from a 400-odd year space flight, which felt like a weekend, but actually took 270 years, depending on where you’re standing. Imagine the jetlag! Sunday was mostly taken up with the first recorded arts-based intergalactic mission in human history, also known as Starship Hack Circus. Starship Hack Circus

My involvement in the project started some months ago, with a trip to the utterly brilliant Hurdy Gurdy Radio Museum in Howth, Co. Dublin, and some research into early radio transmissions for some upcoming workshops. It was in Howth that I first learned of Fred Cummins and his Guzman Boxes. From Wikipedia:

“The Prix Guzman (Guzman Prize) was a 100,000 franc prize announced on December 17, 1900[1] by the French Académie des Sciences to “the person of whatever nation who will find the means within the next ten years of communicating with a star and of receiving a response.” It was sponsored by Clara Gouget Guzman in honor of her son Pierre. Pierre Guzman had been interested in the work of Camille Flammarion, the author of La planète Mars et ses conditions d’habitabilité (The Planet Mars and Its Conditions of Habitability, 1892). Communication with Mars was specifically exempted as many people believed that Mars was inhabited at the time and communication with that planet would not be a difficult enough challenge.[2] Nikola Tesla claimed in 1937 that he should receive the prize for “his discovery relating to the interstellar transmission of energy.”[3] The prize was awarded to the crew of Apollo 11 in 1969.

Cummins, a keen astronomer and radio enthusiast, had retired to Howth in the 1930s, where he built hundreds of basic radio kits to try to detect alien transmissions and claim the prize. Each used a helical resonator tuned to a specific narrow band of frequencies, in an attempt to pinpoint an ET signal. Ultimately, Cummins failed, but left behind a huge legacy of hundreds of beautifully crafted yet utterly useless ‘Guzman Boxes’.

Earlier this year, fellow Tog Dublin member Jeffrey Roe and I were gifted the shell of a Guzman Box from the Cummins estate, little more than a wooden cube with a helical resonator attached, to restore and develop for the Hack Circus voyage. We decided to flip the Guzman prize on its head – instead of looking for extra-terrestrial communications, we would examine the signals that have left earth, to wander indiscriminately through the galaxy, acting as unwitting human ambassadors. With the help of woodworker extraordinaire Javier Leite we were able to return the box to something of its former glory. Jeffrey worked on engineering and code, while I researched appropriate transmissions, ably abetted by Benjamin Schapiro in the States (thank you again Ben!).

The box plays the most historically significant transmissions from exoplanet exploration, catalogued by where in the galaxy that transmission is now reaching. For example, Reginald Fessenden’s Christmas Eve 1906 transmission of Handel’s Largo (now reaching the planet HD 37124c in the Taurus System – the furthest reach of human art), a moving recording of Allied troops landing in France, 1916 (just now reaching the first-discovered-and-closest rogue planet CFBDSIR2149-0403) to the fall of the Berlin Wall, transmitting to possibly our closest neighbour in the habitable ‘Goldilocks’ zone – Gliese 667cc. What must our neighbours think of us?

Because it’s Hack Circus however, and that means never taking *anything* for granted, Jeff and I decided we couldn’t count absolutely on human means of aural detection. In space no-one can hear you scream (or sing along to Ken Dodd’s 1965 classic Tears for that matter – just now reaching habitable exoplanet Gliese 163c), so we needed a means to transmit audio through the vacuum of space, and through whichever aural cavity alien physiology might have evolved. The safest bet was bone conduction, and a method ruthlessly stolen from Dave McKeown at Artekcircle earlier in the year – biting down on a copper rod attached to a motor, attached to an amp. Here’s a tweet of @metabrew, demonstrating technique –

And the Guzman Box itself: IMG_20140914_184218 The Guzman Box will be available to try at Tog Dublin on Culture night – this coming Friday 19th September, along with the Tachyonic Antitelephone , and a host of other art, craft, tech, and engineering projects from fellow members.

PHP + MySQL intensive weekend-class

Hey there eager programmers!

Interested in learning a new programming language or in freshening up your rusty skills? Here is your chance! A whole weekend of PHP and MySQL fun is awaiting you.

When is all the coding happening, you ask?

Friday, 14th of Feb – 7.30pm till 10pm
Saturday, 15th of Feb – 1.30pm till 7pm
Sunday, 16th of Feb – 1.30pm till 7pm

3 days, 10 hours (excl. breaks)

Continue reading “PHP + MySQL intensive weekend-class”

Linux 1. Introduction to the Command Line

tuxLinux is a free open-source operating system invented by Linux Torvalds and developed by a community of developers worldwide. Linux is based on UNIX and has been ported to every platform in use today including PC, Mac, Sparc and ARM and is the base operating system behind Arduino and Android. It is released under the GNU public license and can be copied and reused freely.

TOG will be offering a six week introductory course to the Linux Command Line on Monday nights starting in January. This course assumes no previous programming experience.

This course will teach you how to administer your Linux system from the command line. It will not cover installing Linux nor will it cover Gnome or KDE functionality. Instead, we will be using VirtualBox and each student will download a virtual hard drive with the latest Debian preinstalled and configured for the course.

When: Mondays Jan 6th – Feb 10th 2014.
Time: 7:00 – 10:00pm (with 30 min break)
Sessions: 6.
Where: Tog Classroom.
Price: 100 euros.
Curriculum:
  • Introduction – setting people up, using the command line.
  • Linux file system
  • Processes
  • The vim Editor
  • Command Line Utilities
  • Shell Scripting
  • Startup and Shutdown
  • Globbing and Regular Expressions
  • awk, sed, grep
  • Installing Software with apt-get and make

Continue reading “Linux 1. Introduction to the Command Line”

Coder Nights

Thursday 7th November at 7pm will be Coder Night (and every 2 weeks after)

8395923694_63ddba89f1Photo by iLikeSpoons on Flickr

 

Starting this Thursday we’re bringing coding nights back to Tog!

For our first night its going to be a casual affair, with no speakers or projects or prescribed idea of what we’re going to do. It will be much like the lock picking and crafting nights, with a meet-up of people interested in programming as a general topic.

If you are knowledgable in a particular framework or language, it’d be great if you could come along and lend a hand if somebody has any questions.

There is no language favouritism, there’ll be people attending with Python, Objective-C, Java, Javascript, C#, C++, UnityScript (Unity3D), and many other tools and languages.

I will personally be working on a mobile app for Tog for both iOS (Objective-C) and Android (Java), but you can come along with whatever project you have in mind, or none at all.

We’ll be using the first few nights to figure out how people want these nights to be, whether they should be project based, or remain very much a casual affair. So please come along if you have some ideas, or just to chill out with fellow would-be and expert coders.

3D Printer Reprep Code Improvement

220px-RepRap_'Mendel' SmartController

On Saturday 5th of October from 2pm-6pm TOG is holding a 3D Printer Arduino code improvement day.

3D printers are all the rage at the moment. However they are not without their faults and some of the budget, hobbiest models could do with an improvement or two.

The aim of the afternoon will be to improve the Reprap code to add extra features.
The stand alone reprap uses an Arduino based stand controller to print without needing a computer connected.

A second project would be to add bluetooth wireless operation.

The controller being used is:
http://reprap.org/wiki/RUMBA

The display is:

http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRapDiscount_Smart_Controller

and the code is:
https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin/tags

http://reprap.org/

Whoever works on the project will be given access to a working Reprap with all the hardware for testing the setup. There may be a budget for the time involved if working on the code after the first day. The main plan for the day is to specify what changes need to be made.

No need to book, just show up. Anyone with an interest in 3D printing is welcome. While the event is free we will be asking for donations to cover the hosting costs.