We’ll have *another* traveler joining us this Friday, this one fresh in from Italia. While we’ve had many members of the Arduino family make appearances at Geek Gatherings past – the venerable Diecimila, the younger, faster Duemilanove, the much more pronounceable LillyPad and the Mighty Mega – the newest member of the family will be making a Houston appearance this Friday. That’s right – The Arduino Uno made its debut this past weekend at the Maker Faire: New York. We’ll be unboxing one (yeah – they actually come in boxes now!) this Friday before promptly plunging it into a pumpkin in an effort to make something scary for Halloween. From scooping out pumpkin guts to wiring up motion sensors and LEDs, we’re going to try to go from unopened box to finished project in the course of an evening. Things kick off
around seven in the evening and won’t end until the last Light Emitting Diode is lit. The Coffee Groundz serves coffee, tea, beer and wine in addition to a light menu. Free WiFi and a few available AC outlets complement the evening, as does the promise of a breezy back patio. Hit www.geekradio.com for details and directions.

Oh! We’ll also have a visitor from China – in the form of Seeed Studio’s ‘Film’, a flexible band containing a microprocessor and some supporting electronics. They can be joined together to do some interesting things with wearable computing. Unfortunately, I’m one film shy of having enough to go all the way around my wrist, so if you’re thin wristed, relatively free of Cheetoh dust from the elbow down, and have ever considered becoming a forearm model, we may require your services Friday night. I want to be clear that I’m not discriminating against my orange fingered bretheren out there – it’s just that the Seeed Film is orange, too, and we really do want it to show up in pictures.

Now, if you know that you can wash off the Cheetoh dust, but you’re still worried that you don’t have the required fortitude of forearm for photos on Flickr, you’re probably not spending enough time in front of the command line. As with many things, it’s really about having the right equipment. So if the equipment in your DOS gym feels old and busted but you don’t want to ante up enough money for a new Mac Membership, you can always hit the free weights at the Linux gym to really pump up your pecks and hunts or to get those rock hard abs you’ve always wanted. That’s ABS as in the Arch Build System, the software package manager for Linux. That’s funny, because I bet you all thought I meant Advanced Bash Shell Scripting… Bazinga!

If you need a little help in getting motivated or you want to pick up enough Linux acronyms to make your own joke train wreck, you’ll want to attend the Linux 101 workshop at HAL-PC Headquarters Tuesday, October 5th at 7:00 PM. The Linux 101 special interest group at HAL-PC takes a look at Linux from the beginners point of view the first Tuesday of every month. And while there *is* a very powerful command line under the hood, if all your moves are mouse-centric, you’ll be just fine in Linux with KDE or Gnome. HAL-PC is located at 4543 Post Oak Place Drive, not too far from the West Loop and San Felipe. Linux 101 takes attendees through a three month progression before turning them out on their own or inviting them back to rinse and repeat. Actually, that’s the attendee’s choice, I don’t think you can actually flunk Linux. Well, SCO did, but that’s a different story. Hit www.haaug.org and then click on the SIG Calendar for a full description of the workshop.

And lastly, if all you do is stay at home, hanging out on FaceBook, maybe it’s time you get a life and go out to see a movie about FaceBook. The FaceBook movie, called The Social Network, opens this Friday and chronicles the founding of social media site. Depending on ticket availability after the Geek Gathering, there may be a late night trip to check our FaceBook status on the Big Screen… I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll play the Twitter short, but we’ll see how it goes…

That’s it for your forearm forewarning and that’s that for BarretTime.

Not everything is purely sci-fi this year. On Friday night, a panel titled, “Con Season is in the Air: When a Young Fan’s Mind Turns to Flirtation” will be discussing fun, flirtation and the possibility of making a lasting connection at the con. The Panelists state that “anyone who says geeks don’t get any love has certainly never been to a convention!”

And for any con-goers who found a little romance six to ten years ago, there is now an ApolloKids track with everything from Oragami to Krav Maga for Kids. For those not in the know, Krav Maga is an eclectic hand-to-hand combat system developed in Israel which involves wrestling, grappling and striking techniques. It’s mostly known for its extremely efficient and brutal counter-attacks and is taught to elite special forces around the world. I’m assuming that they’re teaching it to the kids, and not to parents for use on the kids, though after having been in more than a few airports recently, I’d probably be up for attending a class on the latter.

For the politically aware KPFT listener, there is a talk entitled, “Deepwater Horizon: Beyond the Spill” in which panelists will discuss the spill, the realities of offshore oil production and how future environmental catastrohphes can be prevented. “Greening the Future by Recovering the Past” will discuss the concept that recycling isn’t just for aluminum cans and plastic bottles. The greenest solution may be to renovate, reuse, and recycle. And for those in posession of a hand-crank radio, you can continue your emergency preparedness education by attending “Hurricane Preparedness 201: The Post-Ike Lessons Learned Story”.

Also talking about the tangible future will be our own David Brummel, known on IRC and at Geek Gatherings as KD5, with a talk and Q&A session on the Future of the Space Industry. This is just one of several panels and workshops that KD5 will be on during the three day con, several of which add some extremely techy fare to the already dense sci-fi and fantasy content.

If you can only attend for a day and have a yearning for Mobile Computing or Open Source Hardware in your heart, then Saturday is your day. At noon, KD5 and I will be sitting in on a panel called “There’s an App for That” – I’ll be the Android advocate and KD5 will be representing his vast stable of Apple gear. On the heels of that, we’ll be giving an Introduction to Open Source Hardware talk that gives attendees a survey of currently available hobbyist micro-controllers, with some extra time spent on the Arduino platform, both hardware and software.

All of that talk is theory. If you want to get your hands on some actual hardware, we’ll be putting on a two hour workshop in which participants will build their own functioning Arduino clone from the ground up. We’ll be using cool looking translucent solderless breadboards. The key word there being “solderless”, meaning that no harm will come to your hands during the construction of these mini micro-controllers, only your pocketbook, as we’re passing on the cost of the kits to the participants. You’ll also need a laptop running Linux, OS Ten or Windows along with a functioning USB port.

While you’re able to attend all the panels with just a basic Con Badge, you may need to sign up in advance for any of the workshops requiring materials. You can get details on Apollocon Panels, workshops and ApolloKids activities by surfing to www.apollocon.org. Both three day and single day passes are available.

That’s it for this Sci-Fi and Fantasy Four One One and that’s that for BarretTime.

If you’re old enough to remember that skit, you may, from time to time, have issues with the myriad of ANs that exist in the world of computers today. From WANs to MANs to LANs and even CANs, PANs and HANs, it seems like there’s a new Lefty at every elecronics show trying to move yet another AN. So how do you keep them all straight? To help you out, we’ll borrow a bit from Grover’s Near and Far skit. I don’t know if Jay Lee has a Grover in addition to his Kermit, but the skit entails Grover running into the foreground of the television frame, shouting NEAR, running to the background, shouting FAR. That’s pretty much it. For our own AN tour, we’ll start with Far and work our way up to Near.

The universal bulding block in this excercise is the AN, which stands for Area Network. The network is the medium used to connect any number devices or users to other devices and/or users. So really, all you have to do is learn and understand the first letter of each Area Network acronym. It’s not like I’m asking you to memorize CCMP. Anyone want to take a guess at that? CCMP? It’s my latest acronym.

Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol aka the new 802.11i encryption protocol that does away with parts of WEP and WPA.

*You* don’t have to memorize that. All you have to do is remember ‘Area Network’ and make an educated guess at the first letter.

So, starting with farthest out, we’ve got the WAN or Wide Area Network. If you have a hardware router or wireless access point at home, chances are it has a WAN port on the back that you connect to whatever device provides your broadband. And that’s what a WAN is, a large network designed to cover very large distances. Several routing protocols exist to make this happen, with TCP/IP (or Transmission Control Protocol slash Internet Protocol) being the most widely known. So when you see WAN, think Internet, and plug things in accordingly.

A little closer to home we have the LAN. This is the Local Area Network that interconnects all the computers in your home or all of the computers in a small office. Most home broadband routers, firewalls, and Wireless Access Points will have a LAN port on the back. Some have several. If the WAN port faces the Internet, then the LAN side faces the computers on your side of the device. Most LANs use a certain class of TCP/IP address that isn’t routable on the WAN. These IP addresses usually start with a 192, 172 or 10. And if you remove the wires, you’ve got a WLAN, or Wireless Local Area Network. So that’s your one hard AN acronym. Technically, you can have up to 254 hosts on a LAN. If you want to go beyond that, say, in a large office environment, you have to look back to the WAN or decide to go MAN.

Now there’s some gray area surrounding MANs. MANs are Metropolitain Area Networks and can usually be recognized by their exellent personal grooming habits (that’s where the term MANscaping comes from), their fashionable wardrobe and their stylish accessories. Remember: It’s not a purse, it’s a Metropolitain Area Network Bag. Actually, it’s a purse.

Continuing the run into the foreground, we have CANs. CANs or Controller Area Networks, have already been deployed in newer automobiles, in factories and even in some hospitals. These simple network devices replace short runs of wire where wire just won’t do, letting things like the air pressure sensors in your car’s valve stems communicate with your car’s controller, flashing a ‘low air pressure’ warning on the dash. Another application is letting multiple pieces of medical equipment communicate with each other without the need for runs of wires all around the operating table, tripping both doctors and nurses.

HANs or Home Area Networks are definitely the new hotness. This network connects household appliances like washers and dryers to Smart Energy Meters and thermostats that are popping up in parts of Texas. With a HAN, you can easily do things like schedule your washer and dryer to run when energy prices are low. And your appliances will know the current price of electricity because the SmartMeter on the outside of the house makes that information available to the main HAN controller. Giving you the ability to turn on your AC remotely or even pre-heat the oven if you’re on the way home from the store with some frozen fare.

Both Controller Area Networks and Home Area Networks take advantage of low power devices with a very small form factors. The ZigBee standard is one that’s being leveraged more and more these days, due to the small size and the fact that it can run months if not years on a single battery. If you remember WarDriving or using Network Stumbler in the early days of WiFi, know that this is going to be the next version of that. There’s already a Network Stumbler-esque program for the ZigBee standard, which is quickly becoming the defacto standard for HANs and CANs.

And finally, the PAN, or Personal Area Network. BlueTooth is an excellent example of this. PANs let you connect personal devices to other personal devices. For instance, streaming music from your phone to another BlueTooth device, like a pair of wireless headphones. Several of Dwight’s mice would also land in that category, along with any kind of pairing you do between your phone and your laptop or car.

So, you’re now ready to handle anything “AN”, golden or otherwise.

To check out some PAN, HAN and CAN gear in person, come out to this Friday’s Geek Gathering, happening at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston at McGowan between Bagby and Brazos. Things get started at seven and can go quite late. We’ve lined up our own 8-bit DJ for a return performance, along with Brenden Macaluso of Recompute. He’ll be bringing at least one Recomputer, a very green PC that’s made of corrugated cardboard held together with non-toxic white glue. We’ll also have a smattering of Arduino gear and open source hardware. WiFi and electricity are free, but coffee, beer, wine, liquor and food will set you back a dollar or two. All of this happens this Friday starting at seven on the Siete de Mayo.

And while that’s nearly it for the cessation of your Cinco de Mayo, that’s that for BarretTime.