Archive for February, 2012

MakerSpace Arduino Day

February 28th, 2012


This Saturday gone we held our first notable event at Maker Space, that being the MakerSpace Arduino Day. We had a good turnout to the point of reaching capacity. People were working on a few projects from laser games to wireless railway signaling, and a lot learning about the Arduino.

I spent most of the time not in fact working on Arduino code, but working on optimising and improving the development environment. My plan is to blog about this in the near future when I have finished my experimentation. The best tip I have is to turn off your virus scanner when compiling Arduino code.

We will no doubt be holding other maker gatherings and workshops in the future, and I suspect we will have another Arduino day soon so keep an eye on the email list. We are also continuing with our drop in sessions on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of every month. If you have something to show, need some help or advice with something, or just want to join in the chat then come along.

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Posted in Tech

I can give up BarCamps any time I want to…

February 12th, 2012

…I just don’t want to yet. I have blogged before about the BarCamps I have attended, and then again about a few more, and now I need to bring the list up to date. So here is the list…

  • BarCampBlackpool2, 3rd June 2010, Geek event wifi
  • BarCampBrighton5, 2nd – 3rd September 2010, What apps should I install on my new phone?
  • BathCamp2010, 30th – 31st October 2010, Flash Talks + Duck365 replay
  • BarCampLondon8, 13th – 14th November 2010, HTTP: What it is and how it works
  • BarCampBournemouth3, 26th – 27th Feburary 2011, Can we do Backstage without the BBC?
  • BarCampSheffield2011, 16th / 17th Apr 2011, The low level details of QR Codes
  • BarCampNottingham, 23rd – 24th July 2011, Playing with GPS, DRM, and a World Service TX
  • BarCampNorthEast4, 13th – 14th August 2011, Organiser + PowerPoint Karaoke presentation
  • BarCampBrighton6, 10th – 11th September 2011, Building SmallQR.com
  • BarCampMediaCityUK, 17th – 18th September 2011, Be Happy
  • BarCampBlackpool3, 15th October 2011, Let’s make a pop video
  • BarCampLondon9, 29th – 30th October 2011, I am on a startup accelerator

There is the list, taking me to a grand total 41 BarCamps attended over 5 years.

I also hold a rather unusual record still, that being I am the only person who has attended all the overnight UK BarCamps. It is not a record I have gone out my way to keep, and sadly that is a record about to come to am end. BarCampBournemouth4 is scheduled for the 1st weekend in March when I will be assisting with the ThinkVis conference in Leeds. It had to end at some point and I am surprised it has taken 5 years, but end it must.

So here is to BarCamps in 2012! I hoping there will be lots of new and smaller ones as I am enjoying these a lot more than the larger ones. If you want to organise one near you then feel free to ask for help and encouragement. It is easer than you might think and unless we have new people put there hands up and say we want to do that then the movement is in danger of fizzling out in time.

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Posted in Events, Tech

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