Yesterday was opening day for the new South Lake Union Streetcar line in Seattle, WA. This is not to be confused with the first stretch of light rail, scheduled to arrive late 2009.

I met a group of friends downtown at the Westlake station to join in on the festivities. After collecting a bags worth of streetcar swag, we piled into the inaugural run of the purple train along with probably 200 other people. It was crowded. Sadly amidst all the chaos, only one out of the five people in our group got a golden ticket.

I think I see the back corner of my head somewhere in this picture.

For some reason – probably to be absolutely sure that there would be no accidents on the first day – they were running the streetcars at a maximum of 12mph (they are governed for 30mph, but will unlikely be run over 25mpg according to a City representative). Because of this, it was a slow ride, and left many people unimpressed. The city probably should have told everyone about the speed cap in advance.

One of the things that was being handed out was a “passport” containing a list of retailers, restaurants, and other businesses along the streetcar line. These participating businesses would stamp their name in your passport if you stopped by, and if you got 10 stamps, you could drop the passport off to enter into a drawing for prizes. Many businesses were also giving discounts to streetcar riders.

We got off the streetcar the North end of the line, popped open our passports, and found a nearby participating restaurant for lunch. Afterwards we set off, by train and foot, to explore. The passport served as a guide – getting enough stamps to enter the contest was really just a secondary goal. We all had a great time walking and riding around a neighborhood that none of us have spent much time in, and discovered new coffee shops, parks, expensive-yet-amazing condos, and a very cheap and tasty happy hour menu. The city did a great job with this program.

Throughout our travels, we bumped into a reporter for the Seattle PI. Both Andrew and Jessika were quoted in an article about the streetcar.

Three blocks from the streetcar line, near Fairview Avenue North, the streetcar’s debut brought busy sales of the SLUT T-shirts at the Kapow Coffee shop, where entrepreneur Jeremiah St. Georges has been selling them.

Outside the shop, Andrew Filer called the line a “small start” toward developing density that will support it — “a good idea in the long run. I like it.”

But Jesika McEvoy, sporting one of St. Georges’ T-shirts, was unconvinced. “Why spend a lot of money on something that doesn’t go very fast and stops at every stoplight? It seems like Paul Allen should have funded this exclusively … the only ones benefiting are him and a couple of retailers.”

The day ended with 11 stamps, a streetcar ride back downtown, and a bus ride home.

The next meeting is this Saturday (September 1st, 2007) at 12:00pm, here’s the announcement that Ian sent out on the list:

  The September 2007, inaugural meeting of the Greater Seattle
  Linux Users Group (GSLUG) will be held on Saturday, September 1st,
  starting promptly at 12:00 PM on the North Seattle Community College
  campus.

  We are confirmed to use room IB 3319. (Yes, the same room we've
  had in the past)

  Parking is free on weekends.

  For directions and complete details, please visit the meeting's Wiki
  entry:

      http://wiki.gslug.org/index.php/Meeting_2007-09-01
      (Links to: http://www.northseattle.edu/maps/ for directions)

  Please feel free to forward this announcement as appropriate.

  This will be the first meeting GSLUG has had in quite a while, and
  things have changed. The presentation format will be that of Lightning
  talks (Several talks from 5-10 minutes in length, with open Q&A
  afterwards) instead of the traditional hour or so long presentations.

Microsoft might be right on the other side of the water, but Linux and Free Software is alive in Seattle! If you’re reading this and in the Seattle area, I hope to see you there! (Also, I’m giving a talk!)

Hacking BoF

I’ve organized a “hacking session” BoF at Ubuntu Live, anyone interested in improving Ubuntu and GNOME is invited to attend.

Here’s the official description:

Do hackers of a feather flock together? Let's find out at Ubuntu Live!

Anyone interested in hands on experience improving Ubuntu is invited to come by
to share ideas, bugs, code, or whatever else is on your mind.

Agenda may include (and is certainly not limited to):

    * Overview of technologies that make up the modern GNOME/Ubuntu desktop
    * Problem solving/debugging tips
    * Brief introduction to launchpad.net (reporting bugs, suggesting features,
      etc.)
    * Going through the Ubuntu Desktop team TODO list and working on small
      tasks.

I'd also like to throw everyone in the room at a specific project, such as
fixing out-of-the-box touchpad support for laptop users, and see what we can
accomplish in a night. This will be a great opportunity for both experienced
and brand-new developers to make something cool that will (hopefully) see it's
way into a future release.

See you there!

P.S. If you're from the area and have a projector and/or whiteboard to bring,
that would be great!

The event will be taking place on Sunday from 8:00pm to 9:00pm. If things are going well, we will find somewhere else to keep hacking after they kick us out at 9.

More information at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuLive2007

See you there!

It was a lot of fun!

Talks were on Saturday at the Last Supper Club.

A list including slides are up on the website.

Saturday night’s party was at the Public N3rd Area, which was temporarily converted from workshop to dance club.

Sunday started off with a trip to the Museum of Communication, which was really cool.

Next it was back to the Public N3rd Area, which was back to shop mode, where people were building robots with lego mindstorms… and whatever else happened to be laying around.

The weekend ended with an almost 40 person DDOS attack on a local restaurant. Some poor family got caught in the maddness and had to be relocated to the backside of the restaurant.

See everyone at Toorcon San Diego, and hopefully at the next Toorcon Seattle!

(Photos all credit whoever took them, not me!)

Seattle has been in great need of a good public transportation system for a long time, and it’s really great to see it finally happening.

The facility is located in south downtown (also known as “sodo”), across the street from the former Raineer Brewery, which is now the Tullys coffee headquartes.

The mayor of Seattle started things off.

As part of Sound Transit’s art program, they had the huge “R” that used to stand high on top of the former raineer brewery restored, and used it to write “Rail” on the side of the building, I thought this was pretty cool.

The poles that hold up the electrical wires for the rail cars in the outside lot are also part of an art project, apparently.

These are supposed to be horsetail. As the mayor said, “I always thought that the stripes were a safety thing, but it turns out that they are art!” (paraphrased). Honestly, I thought they were ugly safety stripes too, so who knew. A sound transit representitive referred to the yard as the Sound Transit Missle Defense Silo, which I thought was aptly chosen.

Painful speeches from various politicians went on for a while, I had a whole rant prepared here but decided against including it. Maybe in a future post.

Anyway, obviously no building dedication is complete without a pair of oversided scissors and a photo opt:

With the facility’s only security now lying on the ground in ruins, everyone swarmed into the building where were were greeted by cake, coffee, and lots of free swag.

Too much cake, coffee, and swag later, our tour group set off, lead by Roger Pence, a community outreach coordinator for sound transit.

The building is four stories tall. The upper floors have very nice offices, with very nice views of the city. Note that they still had not installed furnature, computers, or anything in most of the building.

This will be the command center:

The lower and ground floors are warehouse space and repair/maintanence shops.

Since the electrical system is on the top of the rail cars, each service bay has an overhead mezzanine, as well as an underground pit for working on the wheels and stuff.

To keep the cars looking nice, they have a paint room and a 2-car carwash:

And finally, we got to walk through one of the cars, they are very nice!

More photos here and here. Official press release about the opening here, website and factsheet here. The Seattle Channel also put together a video, although I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.

Light rail – finally coming to seattle for the first time in 2009!

Saturday’s field day was a success! The alki group got together around 11:30 and quickly had a link to the folks at magnolia.

The primary form of communication between sites was FRS, which was absolutely horrible. Apparently everyone else could here us fine, but we could barely hear anything, and had to constantly ask the other end to repeat what they said, causing much frustration for everyone involved. For the next field day we are definitely going to consider CB or MURS as an alternative.

I also ran an IRC server on my laptop which worked quite well when my laptop wasn’t randomly disassociating from the network for no apparent reason. When there wasn’t a huge cargo ship in our line of sight, the link to magnolia was good enough to make VoIP calls across the water using a WiFi SIP phone that Casey brought. It was pretty cool to see people from all three sites chatting over a completely “off the grid” network.

A bit later in the day, Ken pointed another antenna around towards downtown and got a ridiculously good connection to some “free Internet while you wait” access point. He advertised it over the mesh so folks at all three sites were able to get online without any additional configuration.

Gasworks fell through due to lack of planning but everyone there eventually relocated to a hill above the Elliott Bay Marina, and managed to join the mesh by linking up to us at alki.

Everyone involved had a great time, and many people expressed interest in doing this more often. Once winter is over, expect to hear about Spring Field Day 2007!

Photos:

• http://pics.caseyhalverson.com/album/10175/all
• http://www.networkoverload.net/photos/swn06fd/
• http://flickr.com/photos/tags/2006fieldday/

From the website:

Field day is a free hands-on, all-day exercise for those interested in
learning about wireless networking and community wireless networks.

We will be setting up a mesh network at three parks around Seattle:
Alki, Magnolia and Gasworks; as well as directional wireless links
connecting them all together. We will be building the network with our
own equipment using readily available open source software such as
GNU/Linux and OLSR, the Optimized Link State Routing protocol.

The configuration will be very similar to that of the SeattleWireless
Network, so if you’ve been interested in joining the network but haven’t
been introduced to all of the tools, this is an excellent opportunity to
come and see how it all works.

There likely will not be Internet access available, but we’re looking to
get a few different projects going as well once the network is up, such
as Voice over IP, and Internet Relay Chat, so be sure to come prepared
with any software or hardware you might want to use!

We recommend downloading OLSR, any wireless tools you might want to try
out, IRC client software, and the likes for other projects you’d like to
get involved in before you come. SIP phones, network cables, power
strips and any power source you may have to power your gear is
specifically encouraged. Be sure to also bring food, rain gear, a chair,
or any other necessities to keep you comfortable during the festivities.

Much more information is available on the wiki page:

http://seattlewireless.net/FieldDay2006

Information specifically about how to about how to get on the network at
field day is available at:

http://seattlewireless.net/FieldDay2006ConfigurationGuide

Hope to see you there!

More photos on flickr.

Coming to Seattle in May for that other hardware conference? On your way out, stay for the hardware unconference where you’ll learn how easy it is to make your hardware compatible with free, open source operating systems such as Linux, and available to new markets such as servers, next-generation entertainment devices, and more.

Get answers on everything from kernel data structures to the fine points of licensing. Discover how participating in the Linux process is fast and simple, how the development process works, and where to get started.

Also, a few days ago there was an anti-DRM rally outside of the Washington State Convention Center (where WinHEC is taking place) that a few friends participated in.