091 Labs

As part of 091 Labs’ series of workshops for Irish Hackerspace Week, one event for which we received a great deal of positive feedback was our “Introduction to Linux” class, tutored by Matthew Kolder, Barry Coughlan and Aaron Hastings. The class, which we are looking to hold more of in the future, covered the very basics of Linux and Ubuntu (our Operating System of choice) – installation, initial setup, cool applications and benefits of running Linux over Windows and Mac.

By putting an 091 Labs laptop and an Ubuntu disc in front of each attendee, we guaranteed that everyone could get hands-on with the system, while having comfort in the fact they weren’t messing up their own computer.

A summary of the topics covered can be found on our Wiki, at the following link:

Introduction to Linux – Summary

If you would be interested in attending a future “Introduction to Linux” event or have any suggestions for Linux or Ubuntu-themed workshops, we’d love to hear from you at aaron@091labs.com

Maybe one of the most consistently popular workshops that 091 Labs has been holding to date have been those for Linux beginners. Come in, meet the members, and learn to use Linux while under the supervision of one of our Linux gurus. Although if you wind up with me assisting you, you are expected to stoically endure a certain amount of baleful stares and dark imprecations as I bravely cd and ls my way through your folders.

The majority of 091 Labs members choose and use Ubuntu Linux for its ease of use and installation, its broad user base – and implied support base, and the depth of its software repositories. In addition to our own personal laptops and workstations, Ubuntu also powers all of the work machines here at the Labs.

091 Labs <3 Ubuntu, in short.

In the next few months, we are hopeful of extending our Linux offerings for both Labs members and the public alike. They include:

• A regular series of beginners Linux workshops with a focus on Ubuntu.
• Shell accounts for Labs members to learn remote administration on.
• Advanced Linux courses that will delve into security, advanced command line usage and kernel compilation using enterprise Linux distributions.
• A local repository of current distributions for members.

I’ll start with a shout-out to Barry for providing me blog access!

Hello, world.

My name is Mark and to describe what I do in inscrutably technical terms, I take photographs. Most of the time, I’ll go out into the real world to photograph skies or trees or ruined buildings. Some of the time I’ll sit on a couch and (ostensibly) visually archive the activities of other 091 Labs members.

And during a wee small part of that time I’ll hop into virtual worlds to photograph skies or trees or ruined buildings.

The virtual world in question is that of Azeroth, from the hugely-successful 2004 video game World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, a continuous online world where you are interacting with thousands of people simultaneously. You may form parties to raid dungeons, slay dragons and battle the opposing faction, or you can set out alone by yourself to simply quest and experience the world. I get out of bed an hour before the virtual dawn to set up my virtual tripod so I can capture that perfect ray of (it’s okay to groan) virtual light.

I began this small project, which I call Vistas of Azeroth, back in 2006 on a whim. Can I? Let’s see!

After chipping away, on and off, at different scenes from the video game at a low-quality for a few years, I’ve very recently gained the ability to “photograph” scenes at an incredibly high quality. I can now go to more new places than I’ve been able to in the last four years and on every single graphic bell and whistle with the help of other Labs’ members.

We built a graphical workstation.

Late last week, I spent an hour bemoaning my desire for a more powerful workstation while I struggled with a laptop that wanted to do nothing more than roll over and die. Matthew suggested that we could build a graphics, video and gaming workstation for the Labs. He donated a motherboard, RAM and a CPU. I donated software and a graphics card gifted by one Jennifer Tidmore of Dallas, Texas, USA – yes, we’re international!

In a hard-work montage straight out of an 80′s film, complete with upbeat soundtrack, we constructed, installed and tested. It is a fantastic piece of equipment for the Labs to have on hand because now have capabilities for:

• Still image editing. I’ve transferred my imaging workflow from my laptop, although the screen real estate and underlying performance have jumped hugely. I’m down from (up to) six hours of building a scene, down to frequently under an hour.
• Video and audio editing. I believe I saw somebody stream editing a video under Windows? I can build a time-lapse screencast in h.264 format and append an MP3 soundtrack in less than five minutes. Down from 20 or 30.
• 3D video game creation. Matthew and others have been very happily cracking away at the Unreal developers SDK.
• Video games. Don’t share this with anyody, but not all of my World of Warcraft playtime have been to capture scenes. And Matthew runs Portal when nobody is looking.Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Its proving to be a busy time of the year on the domestic hackerspace scene. Cork moved into their new home in July, Limerick are actively recruiting new members and TOG in Dublin have completed a 2 month refurbishment of their new home on Chancery Lane (before, during and after videos here). August sees the first annual Irish Hackerspace Week take place August 14th-22nd. Events and workshops are being organised by each location to promote hackerspaces throughout the country. We are busy finalising details of our workshops, events and talks which will be announced next Monday.

On the local Galway front things are continuing apace. NUIG plays host to this years International BlogTalk 2010 Conference on August 25th-26th. The organisers have pulled together another great lineup of speakers with the full schedule here. Tickets for the event are still available for those interested in attending. 091 Labs is delighted to host Galways first IGNITE event in Galway on September 10th. There are still slots available for speakers and sponsors. BizCamp Galway takes place on September 11th in NUIG so it promises to be a very special weekend. In closing we would like to thank the Ubuntu Ireland team for sending on desktop and server disks for our space which arrived in time for our build your own pc workshops!