Potatoes looking bountiful.
I really need to buy some of those potato grow bags when I move house.
Arriving to find a large delivery of bark chippings for the garden paths had been helpfully placed on the patio where our new greenhouse was to be constructed. We got stuck in by moving the bark chippings 6ft so Andy and his rag-tag bunch of construction engineers, John, Alfie and Nell could start building a greenhouse.
The beginnings of a Greenhouse.
This particular greenhouse was flatpack-on-steroids and so only the frame was finished today. I expect the panels will be put in soon.
Greenhouse progress by the end of the day.
There have been more hold-ups to vegetable planting. Soil conditioner had been ordered, Andy had been told it was delivered but no soil conditioner was to be seen. The silver lining is that we didn't have to move a couple of tonnes of soil conditioner.
Even without the soil conditioner other jobs had to be done. So myself, Nell and Emma set about evening out the paths with clay and topsoil whilst the greenhouse was being built. Next I turned over the compost pile, which is looking very rich and nutritious.
This was my third visit to the garden and I realised that I have not actually done any sowing, planting or plant-tending. So I was very happy to actually plant some potatoes in the bottom ground-level bed.
An open day is planned next Sunday (16th May), with activities and a chance to meet the people involved. Visit the DulwichDVG Project Dirt page for details.
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Saturday I visited Brixton Village Market (or Granville Arcade). The market is a great indoor market with about 100 units shared by a mix of grocers, artists and other quirky little shops.
The market is a place I may not have discovered had it not been a plea from Pete Gravell for someone with OpenStreetMap experience to host a small stall to promote the project. Pete was organising an Open Sourcery event as part of Spacemakers organisation that is trying to re-invigorate the market. Spacemakers are allowed to use some of the empty units to host weird, wonderful, arty things that encourage people to come and see what's going on. Which has the hopeful knock-on effect of businesses wanting to rent units in the market because of the increased foot-fall.
Along with Simon, I went along to try and get more out about OSM and crucially more geo-information for OSM.
Brixton like most of London is well mapped however as this was likely done from aerial imagery, and a few people on the ground there is not much local information about playgrounds, pubs restaurants and local businesses. Even the Market itself was not on the map! Which Simon quickly sorted out.
To get local POIs we had the idea of having a large map that people could write on (similar to Walking Papers) and me or Simon could add the data into the database ourselves. This morphed into using pins and wool, and extra blank pieces of paper either side because there wasn't much space on the map for writing descriptions
Starting at 10:00 I was worried that people would walk past and not be confident enough to add their local knowledge to the map, however the free-minded/spirited people of the market seemed to be used to being asked to do slightly crazy things in Brixton Village Market. Once people clicked that their favourite park, cafe or restaurant was going to be on a public map they were very enthusiastic although I'm not quite sure I got across to everybody what OSM was about.
Halfway through the day - Me in my OSM Surveyors Hi-Vis jacket trying to explain OSM to general public. Image courtesy of Pete Gravell©.
Once a few things were added the visual attraction of pins and coloured wool meant that more people stopped to have a look and then got caught to adding more information. One woman even came back 5 times (probably more) trying to add information and only on the 5th time did she have a cafe that had not already been added!
The map at the end of the day.
By the end of the day we had at least an extra 30 POIs on the map and with all the which has been left in the Market because I couldn't bear to tear it apart to take home. Now that the market has been added to the map I'd like to go back and add in all the little businesses in the units. The market changes from week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year and OSM is probably the only project that could even come close to coming up to date.
I've never taken part in an OSM event like this before. I have been to mapping parties but they are always with people who understand the project and we usually map a place that is already blank. So we are trying to add in the roads and road names, and hoping someone else will add in POIs. Seeing as it didn't cost much to make the map, and it's a very intuitive way of adding information I think it should become a part of OSM outreach activities.
The map was using Mapgen.pl (originally designed to be a quick and easy way to generate maps for emergency response in Haiti) and sent it to the printers. Total time between thinking of the idea and having a map was less than 24hrs! The map also "only" cost ~£16, which for a 4 hour print time, one off colour printing on very high quality A1 paper I thought was quite reasonable.
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Hack spaces are a recent thing in the UK and I had a small part in the inception of Birmingham's Hack Space, FizzPOP. Since moving to London I have been meaning to become part of the London Hack Space which so far seems the most well established of the UK hack spaces.
Currently London Hack Space rent attic space in Barnsbury, map, which they are allowed to access via the hackspace key-holders (Jonty and Russ). They have regular opening times for members to get access and also hold frequent open hack evenings on Tuesdays where anyone can come and actively use the spaces equipment and collaborate with others. They also run regular monthly "Public Hack Evenings" every 3rd Wednesday of the month at The Trampery.
So far I have only attended the monthly meetings which seem to be dominated by software developers working on their pet software projects, whilst also drinking beer and mixing socially. This is probably due to the ease of software development compared to hardware tinkering with limited tools. The Trampery probably doesn't like people using saws, dremels etc on their lovely tables. However they did allows us to solder whilst Mitch Altman was on his UK Hack Space Tour 2010.
I attend a Tuesday hack evening yesterday, so I could actually see what the space had to offer. The space is very impressive, quite a bit of space, sturdy tables (not so sturdy chairs, but that's being sorted) and lots of miscellaneous tools and equipment for the use of members. Equipment includes, signal generators, oscilloscopes, a sewing machine, a Makerbot 3D printer, reems of wire, and various hand-held tools (a more complete list is on the wiki). More importantly it is a space to which they call their own and can do what they wish within.
About 15 people attended the evening hack-fest but they were of a different type from the montly meets. The majority seemed to be working on a project that involved a physical construction rather than software (although there were coders there too!).
The most exciting piece of kit they currently possess in the Makerbot 3D printer. Solexious was using it to construct London Hack Space coins, that could be handed out at monthly meetings or other events to be refunded for beer. A very clever little marketing ploy I think. He constructed the model from the London Hack Space logo SVG, extending it into three dimensions using Blender, simples. The coins are brilliant demonstration of what can be done with the 3D printer. For some variety we also downloaded a chess piece from Thingiverse, which I have kept as a momento of the evening. See below.
The Maker bot in action. (Click image for large version)
Chess peice made on 3D Printer (Click image for large version)
I sat next to another member (whose name I cannot remember) whose is currently building a balloon that will fly across the Atlantic, but also is a Ham Radio enthusiast. He lent me his portable radio receiver which we attached a long (5m) copper wire to so we could try and pick up other Ham Radio broadcasters. We were able to receive transmissions from Poland which is very cool. Although I have no interest in Ham Radio, apparently it's a lot of old men complaining about their prostate..... (sure that's not entirely the case).
Jonty was working on a face-tracking webcam, made from a web cam, and two stepper motors that seemed to be blue-tacked together. Images from the camera were sampled and put though face tracking software and moved the motors to centre the face on the image. It was a clever little machine that Jonty managed to "knock together in 20 minutes", it is to become part of an automatic Nerf attack gun turret. However the software can be fooled by putting your hand over your nose, al á "a polar bear hiding in the snow".
I felt a bit bad turning up without a project, but I have one in mind. I continually find myself wanting to learn electronics but never bother to learn. After riding past a local shop I have spotted a old portable radio (with vintage "NI", "France", "Sweden" radio stations) that turns on but no longer receives any signals. I plan to buy this, then work out the wiring schematic (nice large, old parts, doesn't seem to have any ICs), get it working again, and then hopefully add some extra functionality.
Membership of the space is easy, just sign up on the website and set up a standing order for £20, if you cannot genuinely afford this then speak to Jonty and Russ and they will hopefully sort out a mutual arrangement for you to use the space.
After speaking to Jonty on various occasions the future of the hack space looks very good. Financially they are keeping their heads above water and have been speaking to other organisations to hopefully get a more suitable place that provides better (unrestricted) access for the members of the hackspace.
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I visited Dulwich Park a while ago and after glancing at the noticeboards I spotted a flyer for the Dulwich Vegetable Garden (DVG) that was being established at the rear of an old ground keepers cottage. So I contacted Andy Bodycombe the project leader to see how to get involved.
So the Saturday after I was back with the hope of helping with the DVG. Three of us were there, myself, Andy and Tim. The garden currently has 8 raised beds and a large wheelchair friendly raised bed, and two non-raised planting beds, they also have a compost pile which has been started off with horse-manure from the riding school next door. Currently they are growing some beans, potatoes, rhubarb and onions, however they are a bit limited due to the necessity of having the soil pass some tests, which are being carried by the park. The land is owned by Southwark Parks, and they are paranoid about the quality of the soil, as such no serious planting until we get the all clear, they have been waiting 7 weeks for this to be sorted. Come on Southwark Council pull your finger out!
The mornings plan was to keep on top of weeding, line the wheelchair friendly beds with clay and build a bench. Moving clay is hard work, it took me about 6 wheelbarrow fulls. Now, the morning after, I'm feeling the unused muscles in my back complaining about all the heavy lifting they have done. The bench was worked on by Tim and Andy and they were finished in no time. We now have a place to sit and admire our land, there are plans to add at least two more benches.
Our bench, picture by Tim.
Other notable events are the finding of a bone during the weeding. I have no idea what animal it came from but it doesn't look human. I'll leave it to the interwebs to find out for me what creature it once was.
The mysterious bone! (Click image for larger version)
The garden is now waiting for delivery of a greenhouse and tool shed which should be all sorted within the fortnight.
The DVG can be followed on twitter, or more information about when work is being done can be seen by signing up to the DVG Project Dirt project page .
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A fortnight or so ago was the London Python Code Dojo at Fry-IT. This was my first time attending any Python event in London (only been living here for about a month) after sending an email to the Python-UK mailing list (people in London seem to think they *are* the UK, why there isn't a Python-London list I don't know) saying "I'm looking for python groups to meet with", a reply came back saying the Dojo was on although I was a bit worried about attending an event where you have to code publicly. However the offer of complimentary beer and pizza, provided by Fry-IT0 sweetened the deal enough for me to go.
A Code Dojo is meant to be a group learning exercise to learn new techniques and improve your old ones. I have neither so I should be able to gain great benefit from attending. The format of the learning can vary although I believe traditional Dojo's are meant to practice one particular technique over and over again.
This Dojo was organised by Nicholas Tollervey and others (sorry I can't remember everyone's names and I don't know who did what) and took the format of writing a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Only one person would write code at a time, the pilot, and a second co-pilot could sit next to them and make suggestions. However there was a third co-pilot which was everyone else in the room who could see the code you were writing on a massive projector. Hence, geeks being geeks, what you wrote was both wrong, correct, absurd and brilliant. Each person had 10 minutes to write code, or pass a particular test whichever came first.
There were about 20-30 people attending, and first off we all got stuck into the beer and pizza. Which was delicious. Soon after the social formalities were out of the way we were beckoned to the Dojo area to begin.
A lot of group discussion was involved on very developer orientated topics, when to write tests, what tests to write, what game are we playing, how should we check for this, that or the other. Honestly a lot went over my head, but I got the overall theme of the discussions and managed to learn one of two things about testing code and Test Driven Development
My Python-fu is not as developed as most of the attendees however I can see a geek-gag when I see it. My one and only contribution to the code base worth mentioning was the print statement that would be displayed when the code ran.
"Do you want to play a game?"
Which got enough laughs for me to be happy. I can't honestly remember what other code I wrote, but it didn't work!
During my turn the suggestions from the other attendees would come at a phenomenal pace, however I can the calm Marcus at my side making clearer suggestions than the "wisdom of crowds" in front of me.
To encourage participation and prevent "wall flowers" there was a prize draw to every participant who coded at the front. You name was put in a hat and you got the chance of winning your choice of O'Reily book (Kindly donated by Josette Garcia from O'Reily of international conference fame), IronPython in Action (signed by the authors) or some management twaddle book.
I got pick out of the hat first so I am the proud ownwer of the Python Cookbook!
After the Dojo quite a few of us went to the Doggett's Coat and Bade for a drink, which left me feeling worse for wear this morning, so much that I was a little late for work. Getting to know the other participants made me feel like I've arrived in London and starting to integrate.
Nicholas Tollervey and company did a tremendous job organising the Dojo and it would not have go so smoothly without their prior effort. Nicholas explained how they are going to be adapting the Dojo as they host them and made a raft of changes since the last one. I can only see the events improving as the experience of the crew grows.
I'm certainly looking forward to the next event which will be in a few weeks.
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