Setting up a hackerspace in Southampton

Time – almost 3 years ?

Cost of commercial space

Regulations – constraining progress

Fear preventing renting a place

Liability

Demand / Passion / Interest

Council

Comparing to allotments

Subsidisation

Business sponsorship / investment

Location

Model Engineering Societies

Legalities

Charity

Comparisons with new hackerspaces in comparable countries and cities

Roll on 2025 …

“Big society” … ha ha ha … nice try blue/yellow liars …

No … I won’t be volunteering to do the WORK … the way this is going to “go down” is that the wealth stolen from most of the YOUNG (those born after 1970) by many of the OLD (those born before 1970), WILL be returned to them through the meeting of the demands by the YOUNG for significant wage increases, to meet the hyperinflation, in the basic costs of food and shelter. The OLD have caused this hyperinflation through speculation in housing, commodities etc … either directly or indirectly, through their gold plated final salary pensions and other sources of their wealth. The YOUNG can’t and won’t simultaneously pay for an education, a mortgage that is 6+ times their salary or equivalent rents and yet more of their income in tax.

Median voter by 2025 will be those born in 1970 … then things will get interesting ;O)

Follow up to you-will-prise-my-pc-from-my-cold-dead-hands

So, now using eMusic because they “get it” … eventually they all will, till then eMusic gets my monthly sub – which is the way the business model should always have worked. Any tracks I want that aren’t available on eMusic, I’ll get through Soundike, because globalisation is suppose to benefit everyone ;O)

Ubuntu Everywhere

After close to a decade of “playing” with Linux, mainly in server type roles. I have finally opted to ditch Windows as the main OS for all my machines, where ever and when ever possible. I have four machines which I regularly use … three desktops (two home, one work) and a work laptop …

The work desktop has been running Fedora Linux since that was first released and is the main machine on which I have developed my Linux skills.

The work laptop runs Windows XP for now, mainly due to not being able to get Linux versions of all the software I run to do my job. Happily, that is now no longer the case and as soon as practical, I’ll reformat and bung Ubuntu Desktop on it.

The main home desktop has until the intervention of God (read – freak electrical event which fried my motherboard, keyboard and mouse) run purely Windows XP. Following the rebuild, and investment in quad core Intel goodness, I switched that to Ubuntu Desktop (after reviewing the videos of various distributions on Youtube and being very impressed with the 3D acceleration, update functionality and general “rightness” of it) as main OS, with Windows XP still hanging around, for those times when I have no choice but to boot it – i.e. games. I’ll also keep a virtual machine version of Windows XP running, for those times when I only need a brief but emulated stroll back to the “dark side”. What would be very cool is an ability to run the Windows XP install, as a virtual machine under Linux … however I suspect the amount of weaving the device drivers make into the Windows XP means this is a pipe dream :O(

The other home desktop has run Linux since it stopped being the main home desktop a few years back. It currently runs a MythTV Linux distibution, though spends most of it’s time torrenting and NASing – at some point I’ll either shift to Ubuntu Server, or actually utilise the MythTV functionality – another project I started but lost interest in … mainly because it would have to be on 24/7 to perform the role of a PVR and it simply isn’t energy efficient enough.

Oh, and I also obtained a free iMac G3, which seems to have a broken CD tray … I’ll fix that at some point and play around with MacOS again – last time I really used MacOS was during a work experience assignment at a printing company in Havant.

Goodbye (slowly and gradually) to Windows and Microsoft forever – I only ever tolerated you ;O)

You will prise my PC from my cold dead hands …

 Quite frankly these people can go fuck themselves, their product (and remember that is all they do, sell you something !) simply does not have the value to me that they appear to believe it does …

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/07/197201

I WILL stop buying their product and seek alternative sources of music if they actually manage to con even 5% of the general public into putting such shite on their PERSONAL property.

Is the latest “chart topper” really worth THAT MUCH to you ?!?

Commercializing the Nintendo Wii For The Leisure Industry

Random thoughts on how the leisure industry could go about commercializing the Nintendo Wii – this is going to get thrashed around …

Givens
The Nintendo Wii is an amazing product. Personally, I haven’t seen a product bring together people of all ages, abilities and social groupings so much since, well probably the television.
The games are especially enjoyable with a group of friends

Issues

Security
Use the bluetooth to confirm the location of the controllers within a defined distance from the “Wii Booth”.

Safety
Blah, blah, blah – it’s a console design for use by kids, so it ain’t gonna hurt you directly. Players might accidently knock someone’s pint over, but if that genuinely endangers your safety after replacing the pint and apologising, then you are in the wrong sort of pub I’m afraid.

Education
The console is designed so that users need as little instruction as possible. If the customer can’t pick up a game after 5 mins, they are too drunk TBH :O)

Funding
Pay per person per usage slot. Pub could subsidise (even to 100%), according to what they think the profit from booze and food sales will yield.

Remote booking
Let customers book the systems in advance through the web (on their smart phones etc …) and at the venues themselves. No shows after 10% of slot time = slot available to whoever wants it.

Opportunities

Multi-venue simultaneous tournaments – Wii tennis leagues complementing billiards leagues. Electronic pub quizzes linking 100s of pubs together at the same time – pub goers love to compete with other pub goers … have local rivilaries, national rivilaries …

Cheap Multitouch / Surface-ish Computing

Following on from https://mobilebeamer.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/surface-computing/ …

A very cool demonstration of just how useful the Nintendo Wii can be …

The author has a bunch of other videos about similar Nintendo Wii hacks, all very cool and most importantly accessible to pretty much anyone with a Wii and a small extra outlay.

CCTV

I don’t like being spied on. I therefore don’t like CCTV, at least not the current implementations …

CCTV systems are justified by the statement that they prevent crime, or, at the very least, provide evidence to facilitate the successful conviction of criminals.

Fair enough if it were true, but it isn’t … the criminals all know exactly where the cameras are and normally just shift the location of their criminal activities away from them. Or they commit the crimes in full view of the cameras and obscure / disguise themselves.

The way it is now, a few people control and view the footage. They are easily influenced by those who want to commit the worse crimes.

Better solution … make access to the cameras available to every member of society and encourage them to view them, whenever they want. Then and only then will I support the idea of CCTV cameras covering all public places.