[imc-scotland-discussion] Basement rooms (Edinburgh IMC)

[Space Bunny]

Dear Indymedia people,

I am not able to devote the time I might have wished to Indymedia at the
moment, but I do wish to devote a little time to helping with sorting out
basement room at 3, Bristo Place.

I am willing to give time seeing how it goes there. It is good the room is
basically secure for us in short term.

The ADSL broadband that was set up has now ceased because it was set up
for G8 IMC with a too expensive contract for our needs, and we were not
able to roll this down to more suitable one, due to finding out this too
late. We had set to prepay 20gigs a month transfer when only used 150Mb in
all.

I  hope to set ADSL again using the Phone Coop http://thephone.coop and
switch the phone line and phone calls to them as well as they are cheaper
then BT as well as being more right on. They give small biz/orgs like us
same rates as home users ADSL 18.99 a month, and 12.50 a month line rental
on phone line.

The only other supplier of ADSL broadband I would consider would be Free
Software Network http://ukfsn.org/

I am think should just go for sorting this a soon as possible though may
be Thursday meeting before anyway.

It will take a few days for line to start. In meantime we should perhaps
move 4 computers set up at moment in first room to the other room while we
clean walls with sugar soap and paint first room, maybe fillin in holes
wall as well. Also Ulla has been dead keen to remove the redundent
ventilation duct, which should be done soon as well, if it is going to be
done.

As regards four computers set up at moment one of far left does not have a
working cdrom so only has Windows 2000 installed. The second from left has
'Vector Linux' on, one needs to press escape button (ESC) after it is
started when it errors on wrong time as it loses track of time due to dead
battery when turned off.

The computer (IMC1) in middle is dual boot with Windows 2000 and Mandrake
Linux on. But it has always been using Windows 2000 because it is
connecting to ADSL with a usb modem that only works with Windows drivers.
On the right is a computer that is dual boot Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux
( http://ubuntu.com/ ) . Both are set to work on network with static IP
address (number that lets computers know where they are on network to
receive traffic.

Now the plan is one we decorate the first room and make look presentable
we set up network again with an ADSL modem Tef has said he will donate,
that works with Linux. We can run a dedicated Linux box set up with ADSL
to act as router assigning dynamic IPs with DHCP. We can start going
through all the computers setting up as many as we have easy space for.
Tef has suggested that most of computers run same Linux distribution to
make maintaining them easier. I confer with this.

I was hoping we would be at stage of having decorated and be setting up
computers properly by now. Anyway I have found it difficult to motivate
myself to work on space without collective move forward, which I think has
been difficult without space being secure which I think it now is almost.
A few times I have hoped to go there and start sorting out stuff but not
in end, becuase not solid sense of others will be there, and with other
tasks competing for my time.

But only once the place is presentable can we advertise web-jamming
sessions, going over various aspects of contributing to indymedia, or
working with producing various audio and video output. Onhce we get more
people using space and see how much donation they contribute to help
towards costs. Then we can really get rolling.

The second room will be quite a good meeting space in it centre when clearer.

Sorry I have not yet written to to the Forest cafe to clarify the
situation with regards to their stuff that is in the room. I will try
before next meeting.

cheers,

Space Bunny
--
http://j12.org/sb/