gmane.user-groups.linux.birmingham

[Meeting] February - Education and Programming - John Pinner

Martin Meredith — 2012-02-10T11:22:36

Education and Programming



Raspberry Pi is a single board computer, costing $25 or $35 according to 
which model you buy, and should be the 21st Century replacement for the 
BBC Micro. As supplied it runs Linux and is expected to be available in 
limited supply this month.

John Pinner will discuss the Raspberry Pi project, and will have a 
system to demonstrate.


  Recently there has been considerable publicity around the shortcomings
of our educational  system teaching children 'ICT' (or how to use
PowerPoint) rather than programming skills, and this has been aided by
Government ministers jumping on the bandwagon.

Some pundits, looking through rose-tinted specs maybe, hark back to
the 'good old days' when schools had BBC Micros (too expensive for
most kids who maybe aspired to Sinclair ZX81s) and kids bought
magazines and typed in programs for text-console games and learnt
debugging skills as the published programs usually did not work.

The proposition is that if somehow we can return to a situation w

New sub/spin-off group update.

Keith White — 2012-02-09T08:09:57

Following the CovLUG tech meeting on Tuesday 7th, here is an update and 
my attempt at a summary of things so far. I have updated the web page 
http://www.covlug.org.uk/index.php?n=Members.Subgroup accordingly.

*Overview*
The group has multifaceted interests, two of the main ones are:
1) Both influencing and giving education to community, public, schools, 
government.
2) Microcomputers/controllers and their programming, electronics, robotics.

These is also interest in two types of regular meetings:
1) talks/presentations/theory/demonstrations.
2) hands on practical doing and hacking sessions.
Perhaps the meetings could alternate.

A first meeting was proposed for the last week of February pending:

*Issues to be resolved*

*Mailing List & Website* Are a priority for group infrastructure and 
communication. They will probably be set up soon after 11th February 
when our Server-Masters return from their holiday, so we have to be 
patient for a little while.

*Venue* To be arranged.
- City centre (Coventry) l

Formation of new sub/spin-off group at CovLUG

Keith White — 2012-02-05T11:50:53

Part 2:
Related to the presentation at the next CovLUG tech meeting, on the 7th 
February, there are some exciting developments going on to which your 
contribution, influence and involvement is invited:

The meeting will begin the formation of either a CovLUG subgroup or 
spin-off group, the nature of which may be determined by meeting 
discussion, on-line and by initial interested parties. The new group's 
interests may be some combination of open source hardware, micro 
computers/controllers, Raspberry Pi, Arduino and similar devices, micro 
computer/controller programming, electronics and may include some 
involvement with education at various levels, schools, academia, local 
community etc.

It's up to you. If you would like to have your say and have some 
influence on what happens and what gets formed then come along to the 
meeting.

Keith
%%%%%%%

Micro machines and computing in schools: Invite to CovLUG techmeeting,

Keith White — 2012-02-05T11:48:43

Part 1:
Following recent discussion on the mailing list relating to the 
Raspberry Pi and government educational announcements, the CovLUG 
technical meeting this coming Tuesday 7th February, may be of interest. 
You are invited and welcome, as you always are, to attend:

*Micro machines and computing in schools*
By Dr.Steve Matthews

Practical experience in architecture design has been around since the 
BBC micro, but is now making an interesting comeback in the Arduino and 
the almost here Raspberry Pi.

The first question posed by the evenings talk is whether the LUG could 
be developing a part of its activity to encourage members to buy such 
micros and simply have fun programming with them for the greater 
strength of the LUG's traditional interests in Linux and open source.

The second question, following on from the first, is the recent 
conclusion of government that the ICT curricula in schools needs to be 
strengthened this year by "programming", "computer science", and "open 
source". The fear of m

Fast broadband

Stephen Welch — 2012-02-01T20:52:12

I thought some of you might like this picture......

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1744237244.png

Fazeley Studios, Birmingham.  Looks like a leased 100MB contended
connection to the cloud.

So the architects office of three partners and a secretary paying a
reasonable rent for an office in the media center of Birmingham opt
for the cheapest internet package for their office.

OUCH.  At circa 10 am they were getting 68 down and 55 up.  The
needles were in red - barring you tube this is the fastest I have
seen.

Funnily enough this morning near Selly Oak I see a new BT telco box
next to one stripped out with a sticker on it for BT fibre.

Following this I get all excited and put a call into BT to enquire
about BT fibre  Selly Oak are being done as we speak so it might be up
and running now or very soon if anyone makes enquires.  As for
Edgbaston or kings Norton it going to be another 18 months I get told
- STD stock answer - who knows!?

Bloody good advert for Fazeley Studios if anyone is looking for a plac

Richard Stallman lecture

Antonio Roberts — 2012-01-31T17:58:33

Was the video of Richard Stallman's lecture last year ever put online?

Ant

Ripple Monetary System

James Haigh — 2012-01-27T15:26:33

Hello,
Has anyone heard of the Ripple Monetary System? Or know of any
Midlands group where this would be on-topic?

James.

(
https://ripplepay.com/
http://ripple-project.org/
)

FLOSS UK Spring Conference

John Pinner — 2012-01-27T13:56:48

The FLOSS UK Spring Conference is in Edinburgh in March. It is an 
excellent conf, with a very high signal-to-noise ratio. A Bursary is 
available to assist a student to attend:

"""
Due to generous sponsorship from Opengear <http://www.opengear.com/>, we 
are pleased to announce the 'FLOSS UK 2012 Conference Grant' to 
encourage students in computer science and related courses to attend and 
participate in the UKUUG 2012 conference, 21-22 March, Edinburgh, UK.

We encourage all students to apply.

One person will be chosen from the applicant pool to receive:

    * free registration for the main conference (Accommodation not
      included).
    * up to 400 GBP for travel costs and accommodation (to be claimed
      back from UKUUG after the event).

To be eligible for a conference grant candidates must:

    * Be a student studying Computer Science or relevant course
    * Attend both full days of the main conference
    * Be over eighteen

See: http://www.flossuk.org/Events/Spring2012/Bursaries

for more

configurating Linux

Joerg Hahn — 2012-01-19T12:26:46

Hello all

Once upon a time...

Ok, not that long but long, I wrote the last post on this list. Now I
have a question to all Linux users out there.

After one installed Linux, you have to configure this and that. For
example vim or mutt or fetchmail or procmail or exim...
Sure there are lots of information on internet, but I like to know what
things you configured to make the programs fit your wants/needs. Maybe
this could lead to a very small database on what switch has to be,
should be, or shouldn't be switched.

Questions that come up are i.e.

mutt/vim: set the appropriate spelllang for the language the message is
 written in. Maybe give a additional parameter to each list you
 subscribed.
mutt: When a spam mail gets through and you push it into a spam
 folder, run a script afterwards which adds the sender address
 to a spam blocker.
vim: Switch on cindent, autoindent... whan needed. When to use
 which one?
procmail: Tell me some more details when a mail is processed. i.e. Who
 wrot

Thursday's meeting

Charles Barnwell — 2012-01-17T17:37:14

We don't have a speaker for Thursday's meeting so we shall be having
lightening talks (enlightening talks?).

Please come along with a lightening talk if you can do.  We shall retire to
the Sack of Potatoes  afterwards.

Charles

The raspberries will arrive soon

Joerg Hahn — 2012-01-13T17:18:20

Hello all

For those who are interested in embedded boards I am glad to suggest
the raspberry board.

www.raspberrypi.org

Christmas

Joerg Hahn — 2011-12-24T12:07:47

Hello

It is too late. All fighting against it didn't succeed. I couldn't stop
it. I appologize. All effort didn't work. The connections were cut off
over and over again. As I got the right number of the real Santa, he was
already on the way. I feel ashamed for it.

For all who enjoy the spectaculum a merry christmas.

Meeting this evening?

Keith White — 2011-12-15T12:31:08

So for our regular meeting this evening (15th Dec.) it's appearing like 
things have ground to a halt? If there is going to be a social meet up 
in the city centre then I am likely to be along - where will it be if 
it's happening?

Keith
=======

Wednesday 14 December 7pm - Pop up Christmas Social

Zeth — 2011-12-13T13:37:31

Hello guys,

I see there is already some embryonic efforts to make a social in the 
centre which sounds great.

However, I am decamping this week so I am suggesting anyone who is free 
joins me for a social in Kings Heath on Wednesday (tomorrow) 14 December 
at 7pm.

Who is free? I have a curry and non-curry option. Regarding the previous 
conversation, if Charles is coming then we go for non-curry.

Best Wishes,
Zeth

Sysadmin Position Open < at > Mobile Fun

Martin Meredith — 2011-12-12T17:04:04

*Job Description:*


*Keywords: *Linux (Ubuntu Server), MySQL, Apache2, KVM, PCI DSS, Active 
Directory, Networking, Amazon Cloud, DNS, Nagios, XML., CUPS, Samba, Windows

Mobile Fun (www.mobilefun.co.uk <http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/>) has a 
vacancy for a System Administrator to join our IT team. This is an 
excellent career development opportunity for an individual with passion 
and enthusiasm looking to build a comprehensive knowledge of an 
E-commerce environment from the website through to fulfilment. The 
successful candidate will be instrumental in the maintenance, 
development and strategy of technologies adopted for a fast growing 
e-commerce company.

*The Role*

As part of this technical role, your primary responsibility will be to 
support our production environment mostly running the Ubuntu Server 
Linux distribution. In addition, you will assist in supporting the 
businesses day to day IT needs, as well as maintaining other 
technologies across all departments in the company. You will be 
suppor

LUGMaster Role

Tim Williams — 2011-12-11T17:41:42

Some of you know this already since I mentioned it at the last meeting or 
you may have guesed it from my recent posting regarding the Xmas party, 
but work commitments are currently causing me to spend a lot of time outside 
of Birmingham and this is taking up a lot of my time. Therefore, I think 
that the time has come for me to take a step back from my Co-Lugmaster 
role (alongside Mez/Zeth) and invite somebody else to take my 
place who will have more time available to organise things.

Your tasks will be:

1) Make sure the meeting always happens every month and find speakers.
2) Keep an eye on the mailing list admin.
3) Update the website as necessary.
4) Join the LugMaster mailing list.

I still intend to be a regular participant at meetings and on the list.

Tim W

Anyone have a dvd burner?

j michaelson — 2011-12-11T11:55:51

I want to install ubuntu's 12.04 alpha, but they've increased the size
to 750mb, so it doesn't fit on a cd. I've got a dvd drive, but it's
not a burner.

Any chance someone burn the alpha onto a dvd for me? I can drive over
to pick it up and pay for the disk and your time.

Thanks.

<rant>
I spent ages trying to get the damn thing to boot from usb and even
longer trying to get it to work with unetbootin, which is an
irrational piece of crap that I now hate with a passion.
</rant>

AD and Linux DHCP

Marcus Becker — 2011-12-09T11:01:42

Hi,

I just joined some project to setup dhcp on six Linux boxes.
There is a migration going to happen to pure AD and no other
directories (the one we used before had also fields for MAC address
etc.).

At the moment the dhcpd queries the existing (not AD) directory for
new clients and adds them to it's class subnets. No IP for unknown
clients.
Those scripts are 'copyrighted' and we are not allowed to see them (I
also have no full root access yet).

Since all clients will be touched and migrated to the new directory, I
want this to happen properly and if possible with hardware
information(mac) for each object.

In the meantime, I thought to write a script to query for clients
(using ldap) computernames, update the classes and use the fqdn for
identification. This is also not secure, but better than nothing?

There is no PTR or A dns update set up at the moment.

The primarys and fallbacks could share the files for each class/site
then (copy them over once or twice a day, no AD query needed here).

Anything e

Christmas Social

Charles Barnwell — 2011-12-08T14:19:38

Is there really no interest at all in this?  I recognise that central
Birmingham would be better, but I've had no responses.  Keith are you
interested if it's not Kings Heath?  Anybody else?

I'm actually working away from Brum in the afternoon so I'm going to be
late anyway, but I'd like this to go ahead if possible.

Charles

POSIX Regex Help

2011-12-07T10:25:11

Really quick help required please, if anyone can answer the call.

 

Trying to do a MySQL Backup which only supports the use of one -include
param, and I want to exclude one DB. I need a regex which will match
everything from:

 

Random_db_name1

Random_db_name2

DBName

Random-db-anything

DBName2011

DBName2010

 

But exclude only: 

 

DBNameNew

 

--include=[^DBNameNew] doesn't work as I think it requires
DBName.TableNames. It takes so long to test that I can't just keep
trying loads of different permutations. 

 

Would something like [^DBNameNew].* work?

 

Any help gratefully received. Thanks.

Stanford free online courses 2012

Keith White — 2011-12-06T14:26:34

Stanford are launching several free, online classes for January/February 
2012.

You may have already seen this course list if you are subscribed to 
CovLUG-Chat, if not it may be of interest.

Myself and another CovLUG member have been taking a couple of Stanford 
courses this term. I have been studying the Machine Learning course, 
which is excellent, and the other gentleman the AI course. The current 
Artificial Intelligence class, www.ai-class.com, does not appear in the 
list below but I am sure it will run again. My course requires about 10 
hours of study per week (5 x 2 hours per day) and includes marked review 
questions and programming exercises and has provided a lot of useful 
material.

*The courses*

CS 101 by Nick Parlante < at > www.cs101-class.org

Natural Language Processing by Dan Jurafsky and Chris Manning < at > 
www.nlp-class.org

Software Engineering for SAAS by Armando Fox and David Patterson < at > 
www.saas-class.org

Human-Computer Interfaces by Scott Klemmer < at > www.hci-class.org

Game Theory by M