Author: berkeleylugtransferred

http://openhatch.org/ offers members of the community to contribute to open source projects even if your not a programmer.

“OpenHatch was founded in May 2009 by three alumni of the free culture and free software movements. The company was part of startup incubator Shotput Ventures‘ inaugural class.

Our core product is an open source software involvement engine. For developers, we provide tools to demonstrate and broaden their experience and expertise in the open source community. Our vision is to make the open source community better connected, more productive, and ultimately well rewarded for its expertise.” http://openhatch.org/

Skyhook Wireless is a company that does one thing, and does it well: wardriving. They send vans equipped with wifi-detecting equipment and GPSs (wait, is that the plural of GPS? Is it GPSii?) and log the data. Unfortunately, they do not make their data publicly available. What they do have, however, is a XML API.

With a simple HTTP POST, you can (quite accurately) determine the location of a computer based on the BSSIDs (MAC addresses) and signal strengths of the networks it sees. You receive back an easily-parsed XML document containing latitude, longitude, and street address. However, Skyhook is quite bad at figuring out street addresses; the latitude-longitude data is much more helpful.

Skyhook has a Javascript API for web apps with a special browser plugin. The C API is handy for C apps (even has a Linux version!). But those are both wrappers over the simple XML protocol.

OATT is a Sourceforge project to create an open antitheft tracker for stolen laptops. Full disclosure: I am the admin of the project. For laptops without (insert plural of GPS here), I decided to use Skyhook and created a handy Python wrapper.

To use this wrapper in other Python apps, you must do three things (not including downloading the code and cd’ing into the source.)

1. From a shell, run “sudo IWList.py”. This will save network information accessible only to root to a file. To update location, you must rerun this command.
2. In your Python program (the OATT source must be in your $PYTHONPATH), add “import lookup” to the top of the source.
3. In your Python program, read the contents of “lookup.results”. This is a dictionary with the following keys:
   • “address”: This is a tuple containing the house number, street, city, state, country, and zipcode, in that order.
   • “latlong”: This is a tuple containing the latitude and longitude (both with very many digits after the decimal) in that order.
   • “accuracy”: This is a value taken from the raw Skyhook data. It represents the accuracy in some sort of units.

I am not affiliated in any way with Skyhook. However, they are quite technically impressive and I believe the API should be in much wider use.

Hi, Kory Malmrose here. We’re going to be doing another triage fest this Saturday, the second day of the new year. Same caveats and information apply from the last one, except with one change: There will be a suggestion(not a strong suggestion, but a suggestion nonetheless) to be there between noon and 4.

Berkeley High School student Kory Malmrose  will be hosting a triage fest tomorrow, Saturday Oct 31 and Sunday, Nov 1, at the Zareason shop in North Berkeley.  If anyone is bored tomorrow and would like to come assemble machines for Linux labs for schools in Mexico, this will be guaranteed to be a good time.  Plus free pizza!!

As an added bonus, this project will be held at the Zareason shop in Berkeley, the site where many of us have purchased pre-installed Linux machines.  Come on over and see the west coast’s best Linux-only retailed in action!

Here is Kory’s announcement:

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I need help frankensteining 30 desktops so I can send them to Mexico for a Technology Transfer Program led by Stormy Peters of the GNOME Foundation. Christian Einfeldt was nice enough to give us the hardware and last weekend we moved them from SF to my family’s computer shop in Berkeley. The project is for my Eagle Scout. I was going to have a group of friends help that helped my brother with his Eagle Project, but something came up at the last minute and now I have only one helper on Saturday and possibly two on Sunday (all from the Berkeley LUG). Are there any other LUG volunteers in the Bay area who can help me out?

The first session is at 10 am on Saturday (and other on Sunday) at our shop at 1647 Hopkins St, Berkeley, 94707. The BART is close & we can pick you up from there if that makes it easier. We’re also getting some great Gioia pizza and some good stuff from Hopkins Bakery for lunch. Stay however long you like and if you can’t come at 10, we have other times that will work too. Let me know if you can help.

Thanks for helping out at the last minute. I really appreciate it.

After giving me some great help with my Linux laptop, Jack Deslippe has graciously invited me to post something about a little project I’ve got going in Uganda, which some of you might be interested in. I believe he has already mentioned it at the last meeting.

I was the dean of an Eastern Orthodox seminary in Kampala, Uganda for 3 years till 2007, and as a result of that, am still trying to organize support for about 25 high school kids in Kampala so they can finish their schooling. You can find a flyer about the “St Nicholas Uganda Education Fund” at a link in the right-hand column of my Africa blog, http://jbburnett.com/blogs/blogafrica.html.

Now, I’m a Linux novice, but you don’t need to be Linus Torvalds to see the usefulness of open-source solutions and open-source culture in Africa. Soooo…. right now I have 6 kids who are either poised to go into college, or are already in college. They all know each other, which means they can work together somehow if we can help them to organize. Their challenge, as always for Africa, is poverty. But I think most of them can get into computer studies if I can get them into college at all (that’ll take about $150/mo each, so it might not happen immediately)— and then, if they can develop as Uganda’s first Linux users, they can become the core of future total Linux domination in Africa, no?

Well, I’m dreaming. They’re actually pretty ground-floor guys, and i know only too well how plans that look soooo simple from over here in balmy Berkeley are completely unrealistic over there. Not only is Linux itself not really well known in Uganda; in fact, most people don’t even have much idea about computers. One student (not one of those i’m writing about) sat at my desk one day and studied my iMac for a while and said, “So, this is called a ‘monitor’, yes?” But on the other hand, i lent another student an old laptop and he immediately sat down and banged out 2 novels and a play! But, inexperience aside, Linux seems like a no-brainer if you’re interested in indigenous, local development, and I think there’s a real chance to get a nucleus of such development going right there…. if I can get them into school, and get laptops for them.

So what i’m looking for are

* some used laptops (maybe 3 to 6), pre-loaded with Linux, plus

* the wherewithal to Fedex them, and then

* the kind of ongoing support that this forum or others can provide.

(The Fedexing is serious: it will need about $800, most of which i may be able to raise, but help is appreciated; or at that price, it may be cost effective just to go through Nairobi on my way to Johannesburg, where i’m headed in aug/sept, and drop them off myself.)

Now, we can’t really start dreaming big things yet– these are folks who can do email, word processing, and maybe spreadsheets— and some of my friends were playing around with iMovie when I was there– but they’re very hampered by the cost of access, lack of equipment, lack of training, etc. They know nothing of command lines and stuff like that. However, those are issues that can be solved– and we really can envision some kind of professional or at least entrepreneurial development as an ultimate goal. In fact i’d suggest that three of them move into an apartment and get a wireless modem– in the right location, their front room could serve as an internet cafe and the whole operation become self-sustaining. And then open-source / Linux would begin spreading…..

It would, of course, be good if i could go back to Uganda and give direct input, but that’s not possible for now. Still, the purpose of this note is to say that, if any of you have some old laptops you’d like to place in active retirement, I know just where they can do some real good, even if this scheme doesn’t work out entirely as hoped.

And if you’ve got time on your hands and want a great vacation and would like to help directly, i can definitely hook you up with the time of your life, for pretty much not more than the cost of your plane ticket!

Electric power in Uganda is very unstable, so the laptops will need batteries that have life in them, the more the better.

I’m planning to come to the meeting this sunday, though i might be a little late, so we can talk about this then, or here, but you can email me also at jbb [at] jbburnett.com. Please do! And check out the flyer linked at the right-hand column of my Africa blog, http://jbburnett.com/blogs/blogafrica.html.

There will be an installfest this Sunday, Fathers’ Day, 10:00 a.m. to 5 pm
at a public middle school at Geary and Scott Streets in San Francisco.
There is ample free parking.  If you are interested in showing up and you
have questions, please feel free to call Christian Einfeldt at
415-351-1300.  On the day of the event, please also feel free to call Jeff
Shippen at 5O5-8O3-3456.  Please do not contact the school, as the principal
has delegated control over these types of activities to Christian Einfeldt,
and the staff will only be confused by phone calls.

It is recommended that you approach the school from the entrance to the
parking lot, which is located at the L-shaped intersection of Pierce and
O’Farrell.  Please do NOT attempt to gain entrance to this installfest by
going to the front of the school, as the school is huge, and you will just
get lost.  Instead, please call Christian Einfeldt or Jeff Shippen at the
above numbers on the day of the event to direct you to the Linux lab where
the work will be done.

The entrance to the school parking lot is located about 40 meters from the
corner of Pierce and O’Farrell, which is an L-shaped intersection.  Please
enter this search string into your favorite mapping service:

pierce & O’Farrell San Francisco

Agenda:
1) triaging, repairing, and installing Linux on old computers in storage at
the school
2) supporting the installation of Linux on old computers brought to the
school by newbies.

We have ample monitors, keyboards, and mice to support the installation of
Linux on old computers brought in by newbies.  We also have lots of distros
and screwdrivers; however, we encourage people to bring their own distro
collections due to the sheer size of the distro choices availabe.  We also
encourage people to bring their own screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, and
any other tools needed to work on legacy machines.

The computers will be deployed there at the school; or given to kids who
attend that school; or will be sent to Mexico, where GNOME Foundation
Executive Director Stormy Peters is building a Linux lab at a school:

http://www.stormyscorner.com/2009/01/setting-up-a-computer-lab-in-mexico.html

Summary:

What: installfest
Where: School parking lot at Pierce and O’Farrell
When: Sunday, June 21, from 10:00 am to 5 pm