Technology Bytes

This Sunday afternoon, come out to Caroline Collective for the “Can-Do Technology Bash”, a celebration of do-it-yourself and hands-on technology. Demonstrations will include a build-your-own water pump, robots, LED projects, a solar cooker, and the Makerbot 3D printer. Or bring along your own project to share with the community. It is a free event, but will be a benefit for a water and power project at a hospital in Kenya. Things go from three to seven this Sunday December 13th at the Caroline Collective, located at 4820 Caroline. More information can be found at www.technology4charity.com. That’s technology, then the number four, then charity.com.

And while the Mac folks have been too busy making tough decisions as to which Apple product will receive their hard earned dollars, the Linux folks are plowing ahead with their monthly meetings as if all their stuff was free. No planning what-so-ever. They just install whatever they want on any old hardware. Seriously, Christmas isn’t about sharing, it’s about buying.

Anyway, if you’re into that whole Free Software thing, the Linux Special Interest Group at HAL-PC is holding thier first monthly meeting this Saturday, December 12th, at two in the afternoon. The HAL-PC headquarters is the place to be, tucked conveniently close to both caffeine and a major computer retailer just off 610 West and San Felipe. The presentation generally runs two hours, and contains an abundance of practical knowledge for both graybeards and noobs alike.

Hit www.hal-pc.org for directions to their headquarters and www.houstonlinux.org to keep tabs on what the Houston Linux folk are up to.

And backing it up an hour, at 1:00 that afternoon, the monthly meeting of the iPods, Smart Phones & Mobile Gadgets SIG takes place. This newly renamed special interest group examines portable media players, mobile phones, GPS receivers, laptops…pretty much whatever digitalia they can affix to their person. Not sure if they’re familiar with that term, though, so be careful… Common issues include setup, connectivity, rate plans, accessories, troubleshooting, importing and exporting data, how to find help, tips and tricks and even how to get vendor discounts. Again, that’s One o’clock this Saturday afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters.

You know, this show is cool because a lot of the issues we deal with are applicable not only to the caller, but to a lot of our listening audience as well. In fact, most of BarretTime is geared towards a fairly wide array of people, otherwise I’d spend two or three minutes each week delving into design patterns, server security, and hardware hacking. So most of my stuff isn’t geared toward any one person in specific.

But I feel like that last event is really geared toward one caller in particlar. Again, that’s this Saturday at one o’clock in the afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters. These are your people; they can help you.

And backing it up a full day, this Friday is the December “Make-up” Geek Gathering. That doesn’t mean you should go heavy on the rouge, it just means you now have a second chance to geek it up with your peers before the post-holiday tech support calls start rolling in from various family members, immediate and extended, sure that you will be able to help them through whatever troubles they’re having. These calls tend to come in during meals, at critical points in online multi-player games, and right after you’ve gotten all hot and sweaty trying to squeeze into your new Sailor Moon outfit after having a big Christmas dinner. (Dwight knows what I’m talking about…)

The Coffee Groundz offers a light menu, a full bar, and a wide selection of coffee, tea, beer and wine. Free WiFi will warm the air, and electrical outlets abound. And building on our two month tradition, we’ll pack in a bunch of open source hardware to play with. We’re planning to set up a station where people can design their own animated LED snowflakes, then export their design to a stand-alone RGB matrix for the rest of the crowd to check out. And if I can find two Super NES controllers, we’ll be able to put an 8-bit homebrew gaming console up on one of the televisions at the coffee groundz. The console, called the Uzebox, is built on the ATmega644 chip and is capable of running just about everything you would find in an arcade circa 1980, in addition to a ton of community created content.

So that’s 7:00 this Friday at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. 2503 Bagby @ McGowan. We were snowed out last week, but the weather for this Friday evening looks like it will be in the lower 50s with a 60% chance of showers. An overnight low of 46, with morning clouds on Saturday, followed by afternoon sun. Highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 50s.

That’s it for this RTFWM Weather Update and that’s that for BarretTime. Jay, back to you!