We had a lab meeting and worked on understanding routing. Bruce has set up a routing lab of five computers running Pebble. Each machine has at least two network cards. He has Zebra running and is working on configuring OSPF in the best possible way.

Jim reconfigured my Via (thanks jim!) and Schuyler created a new kernel for Bruce that includes the dummy network driver.

We also had takeout food from Peking Chef.

It was a wonderfully productive evening.

We had a fun lab meeting last night. Lots of people came, and I learned a lot.

We took apart one of the three 2.4/5.8 ghz 90 degree sector antennas that Streakwave donated. Pictures were taken, but havn't been put online anywhere yet. These antennas have two N connectors and would be perfect to hook up to a 802.11a radio to provide backhaul over 5.8 ghz, and service over 2.4.

At the last regular meeting the comment was made that due to electricity use we'd be better off using new low electricity using boxes in place of older high consumptive machines (like recycled PC's).

Bruce showed me how to use my ohm meter to measure amperage used by a computer, and then figure out the power used in watts.

The old compaq pizza box that Bruce has set up as an http proxy in the lab (set your browser proxy to 10.42.3.9 to use this proxy!) takes about .20 amps. My p75 Dell that is my router to Holly Ridge uses .29, and my Via with a 20 and 120 gb drive takes .45 or so.

This translates to something like 23-54 watts, or around 16-40 kWh per month. At 12 cents per kWh, that is $2.76-6.48/month.

Does anyone have different numbers?

Mark suggested being more diligent at having agendas and tracking action items. He was unanimously, by all present, appointed 'person in charge of having agendas and tracking action items'

Mark sent pictures, and I also took a few.

Mark's photos

My Photos

Also, I totally forget to mention the great fun that was had as we hacked about with Shaun's new pan and tilt web cam. Bruce and Shaun set it up so that we could watch ourselves while we were meeting. More entertainingly, anyone on the web could have watched us that evening.

I'm sure I'm forgetting other fun stuff.

So...when do we meet again?

And we Have Pictures So we've been kicking around with the 'Technical Working Group' (TWG) for a while. We met at the Powerhouse one time, and at people's houses, and finally we said 'let's set up a lab.'

So last month (was it only last month?) we gathered for the first lab meeting in my workshop. It was an effin pit, but the guys (Heather calls them my tribe, or one of my tribes) were polite and pretended not to notice.

Last meeting included moving a heavy equipment rack. This month we moved a couch downstairs. And we got so much set up! When all is powerd up, we have at least five fully functional machines on the network.

And we proved the link to Holly Ridge, 11.2 miles away!

I'm a Freenetworks.org sort of 'Anarchist, Criminal, Parasite." I'm meeting down with all sorts of freenetworks geeks, freaks, and activists down in San Fran...don't call it frisco.

Today at the Bay Area Wireless User's Group meeting the Freenetworks mission statement was officially released: "freenetworks.org advances the development of community digital infrastructures through education, research, and advocacy."

Yesterday we had a wireless 'think' session that was great! Lots of great thinking and comaraderie. I felt honored to be a part of it all.

I wrote a haiku version of the mission statement that didn't fly

freenetworks dot org
networks pass traffic for all
the people live free

Schuyler Erle and I have been setting up community network mapping at Maps.nocat.net. We have the ability to geocode addresses and generate possible line of site along with pretty pictures. This pretty picture shows the profile between The Testing Range and Steve Chalem's link at Holly Ridge, 8 1/2 miles away. We will be presenting a talk on this process at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in April.

I had the opportunity to go to Etech last year...it was amazing. I hung out with the freenetworks.org geeks and we ran around wearing our 'Anarchist, Criminal, Parasite' shirts. And I met Cory Doctorow of boing boing and Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor, author (Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas), lead attorney in the inexplicitly denied Eldred vs. Ashcroft case to Free The Mouse, and one of my personal heroes.

John Naughton says... www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,668735,00.html

turtles via 802.11b wireless cameras located in the water.

Remote sensing packages are set up around the island, beaming data back via 802.11b. I think I have a new model of totally cool. Business2.com article

Kottke has his thoughts, a map where approximate 802.11b signal strengths are denoted by color. This is like the Wireless Network Visualization Project, and it is like doing a raster graph of the DEM data, where the DEM data isn't elevation, but is signal strength.

A small raster map of Digital Elevation Model data showing relative heights.

http://www.opensourcegis.org/

http://www.aac.uc.pt/~seabra/ gpstrans

GIS Data Translators http://pages.infinit.net/danmo/e00/

And he is working hard to do all of the best things with his collection. Read the wired article.