Category Archives: Tech

Loving, Graceful Machines to Watch Your Chickens With

It’s gotten cold in Detroit again, and the chickens need the usual TLC: more food, more straw, heated water dispensers, and active heating inside the coop. In previous years we’ve used a single incandescent lightbulb to keep the coop at a hospitable temperature, but this year, we’re trying something different: we’ll use an infrared heat [...]
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ISPconfig and chiliproject

Some hints for the internet: * gem install fcgi * symbolic link CHILIPROJECT_ROOT/public to ~/web for the ispconfig user * comment out the section of .htaccess in CHILIPROJECT_ROOT/public/ and there you have it. easy-to-deploy project management systems for all your friends!
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ssh agent forwarding protip

my source code management / git workflow just got a bit easier: i’ve never used ssh agent forwarding before, but now i can just use one key to manage access to different repos instead of having separate keys on all my hosts. in the past, i’d never really used “ssh -A” because it didn’t automagically [...]
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Springtime meshes

It has been a busy winter for me, and I’m sad to say that i haven’t been very active with the community internet building until recently… that said, it has been pretty awesome for the past few weeks. For the past couple OCD “open hack night” Thursdays, I’ve invited fellow wireless hackers to work on neighborhood [...]
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Magento dev notes: conflicting extensions

Scenario: you’ve developed a magento extension, tested it on your development server for all these potential fringe cases, even brought in live customer data+code to test against… finally you deploy it to the live site, only to find that another (3rd party) extension uses the same dirty <rewrite>s as your code does.  Damn. What a great [...]
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Vote for FACT Social Justice Challenge projects!

The public voting period for this year’s FACT Social Justice Challenge ends this Friday!  Read about how to vote on projects — unfortunately it’s a bit complicated.  I should’ve written up a grant to improve their website. There are two interesting Detroit projects, as well as a few other cool ones, that I would like to [...]
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Detroit digital justice-related netsquared/FACT grant ideas

I worked with two groups in applying for Netsquared/FACT grants: http://netsquared.org/projects/detroit-garden-sensor-development http://netsquared.org/projects/pomaceous-detroitfruit-trees The former project will hopefully lead to other sensor tech developments including environmental air-quality sensors. The latter is a bit more ethereal but will hopefully get more urban agriculture-minded people interested in using media for organizing. If you have a moment, leave a note of support by commenting [...]
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Late summer updates: leaves, chicken races, hacker spaces, garden sensors

I’d like to share a few stories: 1) Leaves For some odd reason a tree in my backyard thinks it’s Autumn, turned yellow, and pooed its leaves all over the place.  Here’s a photo with my dog Auto. This leaf event, combined with the end of an endless heat wave, has noticeably  changed my mood.  Time to start storing up [...]
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GSM hijacking + VoIP + community wifi

Via HN: Chris Paget demonstrated a nifty little GSM hijacking device at Defcon: with a directional antenna and some clever OpenBTS-based software, he was able to provide an irresistably-strong signal for cellphones, which would switch off call encryption and then trunk the call onto a VoIP network. Sure, this is awesome for espionage, playing jokes on [...]
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Lyme disease

Well, it’s Maker Faire weekend and after attending a somewhat lackluster and under-attended “can do camp” in Detroit Proper this past thursday, I’ll visit the actual Faire (in Dearborn) on Sunday. I’m excited to hear Dewayne Hendricks speak, and can’t wait to see some metro-area residents come out of the woodwork. This coming week, I’ll [...]
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