Simon Willison's Weblog: oxford-geek-nights

Oxford Geek Night 8 - 27th August 2008

2008-08-25T21:00:10+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 8 - 27th August 2008

Once again in the Jericho Tavern, this time with a musical theme.

"You're No One If You're Not On Twitter"

2008-08-25T20:59:13+00:00

"You're No One If You're Not On Twitter"

The inevitable Twitter song by Ben Walker (@ihatemornings), the resident troubadour at the Oxford Geek Nights. Go along on Wednesday to see him live!

Tags: ben-walker, oxford-geek-nights, song, twitter

Oxford Geek Night 7: 25 June 2008

2008-06-24T14:55:07+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 7: 25 June 2008

I won’t be able to make this one, but a reminder for anyone in the area that the seventh Oxford Geek Night takes place tomorrow night at the Jericho Tavern.

Tags: events, oxford, oxford-geek-nights

Oxford Geek Night 4

2007-11-27T21:04:01+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 4

Tomorrow night, usual venue. Topics include mySociety, Pylons, MythTV and more.

Tags: events, mysociety, mythtv, oxford-geek-nights, pylons, python

Oxford Geek Night #4

2007-10-06T00:33:05+00:00

Oxford Geek Night #4

November 28th in the upstairs room at the Jericho Tavern; the first one run without Natalie at the helm.

Tags: events, jp-stacey, oxford, oxford-geek-nights

Oxford Geek Night 3 now on the 25th July

2007-06-04T21:49:41+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 3 now on the 25th July

The date has been moved back by a week.

Tags: events, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

Oxford Geek Night 3

2007-06-02T00:38:13+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 3

The date for your diary is July 25th (moved from the 18th).

Via Upcoming

Tags: conferences, events, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks, upcoming

oxfordgeeks.net

2007-05-29T01:20:08+00:00

Nat and I had a bit of a mini-hackday this bank holiday Monday. Nat's been doing a great job summoning local geeks out of the woodwork with Oxford Geek Nights event, but it's still pretty hard to find other interesting events in the Oxfordshire area. It's not that there aren't any, it's just that the geek community in Oxford is currently pretty fragmented.

We're hoping that Oxford Geeks, the result of today's efforts, will help improve things on that front. The site is a classic mashup: events from Upcoming, photos from Flickr, blog entries pulled from all over the place. We tried not to reinvent the wheel so much of the site is running on top of Planet Venus (using Django templates, naturally) with only a small amount of custom back-end code. Taking inspiration from Venus, the site is served almost entirely statically with just a few nginx-powered SSIs to share common components. See the colophon for more on the technical details.

We also spent some time collecting links to useful (and sometimes hard to find) sites relevant to geeks in and around Oxford. Finally, we've created a public mailing list (on Google Groups) for the Oxford Geek community. The plan is to initially use it for discussion of local events, but eventually expand it in to something more akin to the Brighton New Media list.

There's still lots more we want to do with the site. You can contribute to it right away by adding relevant events or photos to Upcoming and Flickr and tagging them oxfordgeeks. If you know of a local blog that should be included in the planet leave a comment here or drop me an e-mail.

Tags: django, flickr, natalie-downe, nginx, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks, planetvenus, python, upcoming

Oxford Geek Night videos

2007-04-25T21:01:57+00:00

Oxford Geek Night videos

The videos from the last Oxford Geek Night have now been posted.

Tags: oxfordgeeknight2, oxford-geek-nights

So that was Oxford Geek Night 2

2007-04-13T01:33:32+00:00

So that was Oxford Geek Night 2

Nat’s writeup, including video of the local news coverage (in which I look like a total dork).

Tags: local-news, oxfordgeeknight2, oxford-geek-nights, video

What the heck is HTML 5?

2007-04-12T14:41:33+00:00

What the heck is HTML 5?

Slides from my five minute HTML 5 talk at Oxford Geek Night 2.

Tags: html, oxfordgeeknight2, oxford-geek-nights, speaking, my-talks, whatwg

Extending a WiFi network with two Macs and a FireWire cable

2007-04-12T13:59:14+00:00

Last night's Oxford Geek Night went really well, despite more than the usual flurry of problems. It's definitely true that the more geeks there are in a room the less likely it is that the projector will work! Thankfully we got everything up and running in time for the talks to start, although it was a pretty close call.

A few of the talks needed internet access from the stage - always risky at conferences, which is why I've taken to recording screencasts of anything I want to demonstrate just in case there's a problem. For the last event we hooked up a mobile phone to a laptop running an ad-hoc WiFi network, which was slow but worked fine. This time round we checked with the venue well in advance to confirm that their WiFi had been installed.

The wireless was indeed up and running, but there was one pretty significant problem: the stage was just out of range! We could pick up a network signal fine from about 10 feet away from the stage, but the layout of the building meant that the stage itself was a WiFi blackspot.

At that point the evening started feeling a bit like Apollo 13. We had a bunch of laptops, various cables (but sadly no 10 foot network cable; that's on the list for next time) and about half an hour to go before the event kicked off. That's when I remembered that Internet Connection Sharing under OS X has a "FireWire" option.

So here's how to build your own WiFi repeater using two Macs and a FireWire cable:

Connect Mac A to the existing WiFi network. Confirm with ping or a browser.
Turn off the AirPort card on Mac B (for the moment).
Run a FireWire cable between A and B.
On Mac A, bring up System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet.
Share your connection from "AirPort" to "Built-in FireWire".
On Mac B, find System Preferences -> Network -> Built-in FireWire, and check that you've successfully connected.
Confirm that Mac B can see the internet, using ping or a browser.
On Mac B, browse to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet.
Share your connection from "Built-in FireWire" to "AirPort".
Click "AirPort Options..." and set a name for the new network (and optional WEP key). This is the network that other machines will connect to.
Hit "Start".

All we had to do then was position our pair of laptops somewhere that was in WiFi range of both the venue network and the stage. Job done!

Except for one thing... we forgot to factor in the dampening factor of human bodies. As the area filled up the signal strength from the venue WiFi reduced, leading to intermittent network failures. The nice thing about laptops is that you can move them around, so for the talks that needed network access Nick and I stood near the door with our laptops held over our heads.

It's a good thing the venue microphone showed up at the last minute, as our backup plan for that involved two laptops, a USB microphone, a patch in to the mixing desk and iChat AV...

We've started adding slides to the official site, and will hopefully soon have videos up there as well. If you took any photos at the event tag them on Flickr with oxfordgeeknight2 to have them show up on the site. Nat's planning the next event for June or July, so subscribe to the announce-only mailing list if you want to stay informed.

Tags: events, macos, oxfordgeeknight2, oxford-geek-nights, torchbox, wifi

Talks for Oxford Geek Nights announced

2007-04-06T00:21:29+00:00

Talks for Oxford Geek Nights announced

Microslots on Yahoo! Pipes, Semantic Mediawiki, Second Life and more.

Tags: natalie-downe, oxford-geek-nights

Oxford Geek Night 2

2007-03-28T19:21:16+00:00

If you missed the last Oxford Geek Night, you really owe it to yourself to make it to the next one. If you were there then you shouldn't need any convincing.

Oxford Geek Night 2 will be on the 11th of April, starting at 7.30pm (talks start at 8.30) upstairs at the Jericho Tavern. Nat has just announced the two keynotes: Jon Hicks will be talking about typography on the Web and his thoughts on typographic trends for 2007, and James Webster from Amazon UK will be presenting Amazon's web service suite.

In addition to the two 15 minute keynotes there will also be eight 5 minute microslots. Nat is currently taking proposals for these; this is a good chance to give a lightning demo of something you've worked on and a great opportunity for first time speakers to gain valuable experience in front of a friendly audience.

The event is sponsored by Torchbox. Entry is free to all, but you should sign up on Upcoming to give us an idea of numbers.

Tags: amazon, james-webster, jon-hicks, natalie-downe, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, torchbox, typography

Oxford Geek Night 2 call for proposals

2007-02-27T00:42:17+00:00

Oxford Geek Night 2 call for proposals

The next event is coming up in April. Get your talk proposals in now!

Tags: call-for-proposals, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

Oxford Geeks hit the media!

2007-02-25T02:12:06+00:00

Oxford Geeks hit the media!

Coverage in the local newspaper and on the radio, with MP3s.

Tags: natalie-downe, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

A Gathering Of Geeks

2007-02-22T09:35:55+00:00

A Gathering Of Geeks

The Oxford Mail’s coverage of Nat’s Oxford Geek Night event.

Tags: local-news, natalie-downe, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordmail

Speaking at the Future of Web Apps

2007-02-10T23:45:54+00:00

Just a quick update to say that I'll be speaking at the Future of Web Apps conference in London on February the 21st, talking about OpenID. I really enjoyed last year's event and feel honored to be included in such an exciting schedule.

I gave a 15 minute introductory talk on OpenID at the first Oxford Geek Night last Wednesday. The event was an enormous success (attracting over 100 people) and there should be another one in the not too distant future. Recommended.

Tags: future-of-web-apps, openid, oxford-geek-nights, speaking

First Oxford Geek Night a success!

2007-02-09T00:51:11+00:00

First Oxford Geek Night a success!

It really was the best evening geek event I’ve been to in a very long time.

Tags: natalie-downe, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

Oxford Geek Nights

2007-01-22T19:22:51+00:00

Oxford Geek Nights

8pm on the 7th of February 2007 at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. Three 15 minute talks and a bunch of 5 minute microslots. I’ll be giving a talk on OpenID.

Tags: geeknights, openid, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, speaking