We RTFM so you don’t have to | 8-10 p.m. Wednesdays, 90.1FM KPFT in Houston
Our pre-Christmas extravabonanza. Cynthia joined us in the studio to read her special Christmas poem and at about 9:20 pm we were overrun with Christmas carolers. Around 100 or so people following the Sideshow Tramps through the Montrose, singing songs and playing music. They performed two songs on the air with us before moving on.
Best pre-xmas show ever!
Jay’s wife Cynthia wrote this for us and we’d like to share it with everyone
TECHNOLOGY CHRISTMAS
An original poem by Cynthia Lee
T’was the Night before Christmas, in Technology house
No computers were active, not even a mouse.
Virtual stockings were hung by a flat screen display
In hopes that Santa Geek would be arriving next day.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds
Their I-Pods with earphones plugged into their heads.
The poor little dears, their thumbs were all sore
Texting wish lists to Santa is really a chore!
And mama and papa their knuckles were popping
From a couple straight weeks of non-stop online shopping.
Mom and Dad contemplated their mountain of debt
As they went to turn on their new electric blanket
But just as the couple had turned off the light,
A loud sonic warning rang out through the night.
The security system and electronic guard
Activated motion detectors outside in the yard.
Papa looked out the window, and what should appear
A stealth hover-sleigh with eight robotic reindeer!
Papa looked at the driver, and knew with a peek
That it was none other than old Santa Geek !
Like a fast data transfer, the robots they came
And he used voice control to activate them by name !
On Hacker ! On Blogger ! On Twitter ! he roared
And up to the rooftop the hover-sleigh soared.
And then down the chimney he came with a bound
And he stood in the living room, looking around.
He was dressed in a raggedy DEFCON t-shirt
With old Cheetos stains and sweat stains and some dirt.
And his glasses had tape to hold them on straight
And each of his socks was missing its mate.
He had a round face, and broad belly I fear
(Too many late nights eating pizza and beer!)
And he spoke not a word, but pulled out his geek phone.
Downloaded an app, customized a ring tone.
Then he filled all the stockings with e-cards and toys
And Playstations and notebooks, flat screens and Gameboys
And raising a finger, and picking his nose
And checking his e-mail, up the chimney he rose.
Then he sprang to his sleigh, with its digital drives
Activated the robots, and started to rise
But he paused, just a moment, with a tear in his eye
And took just a moment, to understand why
Christmas just isn’t like what it was before
All the elves have been outsourced to Bangalore
And all of the Wish lists are now digitized
You get just what you want and there is no surprise.
And “Naughty” and “Nice” is a concept outdated
While old-fashioned values remain under-rated.
But time marches on, and though these times seem strange.
Digital or Analog, some things never change.
And I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,
Merry Christmas to all, from 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!
Appears the live stream was offline tonight. Fortunately this did not affect the ability to capture the podcast. Here’s is Wednesday night’s show in all its glory.
Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PCmag.com calls in to talk about the death of the Crunchpad and the future of tablet computing. Good discussion throughout the second half about memories of our first electronic toys.
All right – the weather outside is getting colder, and the holiday season is now fully upon us. Decorations and gift giving definitely seem to highlight this time of the year, but that wasn’t always the case. Gift Giving in the modern sense didn’t really get underway until the 1820s. The first advertisements for Christmas gifts hit the US in 1804, and it wasn’t until the 1840s that it had become an integral part of the American Christmas tradition.
And just like our grandparents and their parents before them walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways, each generation seems to state that gift giving was never that important when they were a kid. Harriet Beacher Stowe wrote in 1850 that, “the very idea of a present was new!” and that “there are worlds of money wasted at this time of year.” Stowe was a member of the last generation to be able to legitimately make that claim. If you’ve heard similar words escape the lips of anyone under 150 years old, they probably didn’t notice all the commercialism as a kid because they distracted by all the presents they were getting.
However, calling grandpa out on Christmas Eve is not what this BarretTime is about. If you want to go that route, you go it alone. I need to check out Snopes for the real deal, but I suspect that Grandma getting run over by that reindeer was directly related to her always correcting grandpa’s snowy, giftless, Christmas recollections on Christmas Eve. But unlike stories past, Grandma won’t be around to refute the reindeer story and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever be able to produce Santa in court.
So rather than implicating grandpa, I’d like to ask the Technology Bytes crew if they remember the first electronic toy, gadget or game that they received for Christmas. We should probably be pretty loose with what constitutes electronic, as some of us in the room may have received gifts before the birth of the integrated circuit. That’s 1956, for those keeping track.
We could probably open that up to our callers the last half of the show as well…
And speaking of free things, If you’ve heard the comparisons between free as in speech and free as in beer when it comes to Open Source wares, you’re probably aware that speech usually trumps beer. Sadly, there isn’t a lot of free beer going around these days, but that could change tomorrow night, depending on how quickly a firkin of Fireman’s Number Four is drained tomorrow evening at the Petrol Station in Garden Oaks.
The Petrol Station is the new Kaveh Kanes of early Geek Gathering fame and a firkin is an old English unit of volume, equal to nine imperial gallons or seventy two pints. If the crowd at the Petrol Station can drain a firkin of Fireman’s in under seven minutes, Real Ale will open up a free as in beer firkin of Coffee House Porter. You’ll want to arrive a little before 8:00, because by 8:07, it could all be over. The Petrol Station is at 985 Wakefield near Golf just north of the 610 loop.
Another Free as in Beer activity is the Geek Gathering this Friday night at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. Bundle up or plan on spending some time indoors, as things will be chilly regardless of any frozen precipitation. Things get started at seven o’clock at 2503 Bagby at McGowan. And be sure not to park along the street on McGowan, or you may be starting to run after a tow truck by eight.
WiFi, Geeky Comaraderie and side hugs are all free. The beer, spirits and food will cost you.
Hit www.geekradio.com for details and directions.
And one last free as in beer related item, though I’m going to make you come out to the Geek Gathering to collect. Open Source Hardware, like the Arduino platform, is free as in schematics, but often falls under the same category as beer. Not this season. A US based Open Source Hardware vendor is giving away $100 of the gear of your choice to all practicing or aspiring tinkers and hardware hackers. The catch is that it is one day only, they’re capping it at $100,000 in total giveaways, and you’ve got to pay your own shipping. This is a really awesome deal from some good people aimed at the hardware hacking community. Ask me about it at the Geek Gathering and I’ll give you the company name, the date and the link.
Knowing that not everyone can make it out to the Geek Gathering, I’ll give a hint to help track down the company. They were recently mentioned in a Canadian newspaper when one of their bluetooth to serial devices was discovered in a mobile credit card processing machine at a restaurant. The photo, intentionally or otherwise, prominently displays their company logo on the nefarious device. Rather than shy away from the news release or burying it, they’re embracing it. After all, serial to bluetooth converters don’t debit card numbers and PINs, people do.
That’s that for your holiday Free One One and that’s that for BarretTime.
