Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux Users Group

Category Archives: education

National Cyber Security Centre publish Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Security Guide

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National Cyber Security Centre publish Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Security Guide.

Last week the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) in the UK issued their latest publication which gives advice on how to configure Ubuntu 18.04 LTS in accordance with their security best practices.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)is the UK government department responsible for providing guidance on Information Security to the UK public and private sectors as well as responding to online security incidents and securing networks.

https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/30/national-cyber-security-centre-publish-ubuntu-18-04-lts-security-guide

Holsworthy Coderdojo

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Anyone who has been following the list recently will be aware of Tom, from Holsworthy who has been setting up a Coderdojo in Holsworthy.

Today, it was announced,  this is now all set up.  Please go here for more information.   I have added the details to the other events page.

We wish Tom best of luck with this venture and hope that it grows and does well,  which I am sure it will.

Paul

Torbay Tech Jam Nov 2015

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The next Torbay tech jam is on the 14th November at Paignton Library 1 – 3 pm

More details are on the website

Open to all ages / abilities.

I am hoping to be able to present a mini workshop on Interfacing the Raspberry Pi to an LED,  it is a start and hopefully the work shops can build up to more complex projects over time.  Also I want to do the same thing with Arduino.

 

Raspberry Pi jam 7th March

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Today saw another really good Pi jam in Exeter.

Demonstrations included a Pi based home automation system,  which also included a webcam which takes a photo of whoever presses the doorbell and e-mails you a picture.

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Led Traffic lights ( I think this is PIC based) – Tom Brough

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Toms latest robot (crazy Ivan)  this moves around, and can turn randomly and move forward again.

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Sadly marco mark 2 had a problem, so was here but just not working as planned.

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Pi Ready for eager coders to use.

 

Lots of people with new Pi’s in need of set up. so I did quite a bit of support here,  also minecraft-pi was popular and people seemed to like my modification which drops tnt blocks over grass.

Robots will make another appearance at next weeks Torbay Pi Jam 14th March, Paignton Library from 13:00

A Kit A Month Soldering Subscription Service

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CALLING ALL ELECTRONICS ENTHUSIASTS!

A company called Pocketmoneytronics who made the Raspberry Pi GPIO Christmas Tree in late 2014, have got a new Kickstarter campaign running called A Kit A Month.

A Kit A Month is a subscription service where you will subscribe and receive some easy to solder kits, such as a robot that has light up LED eyes powered off a 9V PP3 battery.
That’s not all, included in the parcel you will also receive some other components to experiment with, such as a bag with some LEDs and resistors.

I think this is a great service, as this is great to help people learn to solder while learning about electronics at the same time. I could see this also being useful in educational establishments such as running an after school electronics/solder club.

You can check out the campaign here

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – Feb 15

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This months Pi jam was a real gem,   lots of things being demoed and some excellent progress being made with various projects.

Tom, brought along his Marco 2 robot,  which if you are following this blog or are a regular attendee of jams.  This has now been updated to allow control via a web interface.

More information on this is on the Feb 2015 Exeter Jam write up blog post.  So I will let people go there for more info.

Tom also brought along Freddie and after some basic set up this worked fine,  following a green ball with his eyes.

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Video taken back in July


Doodle bot also made an appearence this is really good as it works without any user interaction and can draw (or try) to draw what it has been programmed to.

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We also helped a lady get up and running with her new pi,

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Here is the pi being installed from the NOOBS install tool

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And a picture of the pi running the Raspbian OS after install.

I also demonstrated my Minecraft Pi coding with python.  I will post a video to youtube and put this on my website blog.

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We also helped out a user who had an older install of GNU / Linux on his PC (Debian)  and wanted a newer GNU / Linux installed so flash player would function properly.

We were unble to help fully however he will be back at the next jam iwth his PC backed up so we can install Linuxmint 17.1

One of our younger members also worked on getting a cluster of computers up and running and thanks to a router / switch donated by Rick at Wifispark he got 2 laptops and my Pi up and running and proved that by sharing the load calculations can be performed quicker.   There is a dedicated page for this on the website.  Where results will be posted shortly.

We also had a Dan from the TDA drop in to see what was going on with the view on how they can help further and perhaps involve some of the local hi tech companies.

So a BIG thank you for everyone involved today and everyone who came along to support the event.  Hopefully next month will be more of the same and perhaps even bigger and better.

We also had Sarah from Inspiring Dreams, Achieving Change, who offered to help promote what we are doing.

The word on the Pi jams IS spreading.  which is a good thing.

See everyone on the 14th March 2015 at Paignton Library.  13:00 to 15:00

 

Exeter Raspberry Pi jam – 1/11/2014

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Today was another excellent pi jam up in Exeter,  and well attended,  the word is getting out there.

Highlights

Tom Brough demonstrated the parity bit trick and also had some coloured cones to demonstrate how a bubble sort works,  you can try this take about 8 cones of different sizes and put them randomly in a line now sort them one by one so the line goes from biggest to smallest.

I spent some time, with some help working on getting scratch to talk to the pi liter,  once done (not too difficult) we spent some time then creating a program that is the same as the chaser type program written in python.  This works really well,  further enhancements allows the user to interact, chance speed as well as stop / start the routine.

I also had a chat with another user who showed me his chromebook running lubuntu.  This was also connected to the Pi with vnc,  the performance was excellent.

Ivan was also showing various projects and we had minecraft running on another pi.  In the fab lab was the usual beginner work shop where you can learn to light up leds on a bread (project) board using the raspberry Pi GPIO

So in all excellent,   Looking forward to next week as it is the Torbay Pi jam from 1 – 3 at Paignton Library,   good news is that the 3 sd cards (well micro + adapters) arrived to day so these are all ready for next week,    I may look at preparing at least one with Noobs,  as this may save time next week.

Thank you to Simon and Exeter library for hosting another pi jam and everyone who attended.

Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women

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This came through on e-mail today

Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women
======================================================

The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program
for Women, OPW, in 2006. It was quite successful, and in the January-April 2013
round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to
announce that Debian will participate in the next round
(December '14-March '15) and, pending sponsorship, we'll offer up to three
internships. 

You can find more details about the program:
* http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about
Debian's participation.
* http://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about the
program in general.

Call for mentors and projects
=============================

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding,
design, marketing, web development... If you have any idea for a
project and you want to mentor it, please contact us at opw@debian.org
and we'll guide you through the process.

OPW provides a lot of useful information for mentors on the GNOME Wiki at
https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/Admin/InfoForMentors. Please
have a look, and don't hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Call for participants
=====================

The main goal of this program is to increase the number of women in
FOSS, so all women who are not yet a Debian Developer or a Debian
Maintainer are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and
applicants don't need to be a student.

If you want to apply, you must follow three steps:

1. Choose a project from the list of proposed projects on
http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen. Those lists may change as
mentors add themselves over the next few weeks.

2. Make a small contribution to Debian. Projects will add a task the
applicant must complete as part of the pre-selection process. If no task
is provided, you are welcome to ask the mentors of the project. You can
also make a different extra task of the one listed to show your skills
and interest.

3. Create a page in the Debian wiki with your application. You can do so
under pseudonym, but in that case, please give us information about
yourself privately by email to the people below!


The Debian OPW coordinators <opw@debian.org>
 Tom Marble
 Nicolas Dandrimont