Congratulations, Bristol Wireless

Bristol Wireless network coverage
Bristol Wireless network coverage

Bristol Wireless have completed their 5.8 GHz backbone infrastructure – it’s fully tested, legal and now – most importantly – live. It gives them a network coverage of approximately 15 sq. km, which they think makes it the largest community wireless network in the UK. Unless, of course, anyone knows otherwise, in which case you’re asked to get in touch with them and let them know.

WP-iPodCatter

I just have to big up Garrick Van Buren’s WP-iPodCatter WordPress Plugin. It’s allowed me (with a few modifications) to add videoblogging information to the standard RSS 2.0 feeds that WordPress spits out by default so that it’s compatible with iTunes. I’ve been busy debugging the Plugin this week, and it’s now up and running on The Spirit of Football site. If you plan on podcasting, videoblogging, vlogging — or whatever it’ll be called next month — through WordPress, check out this neat Plugin.

[UPDATE]

I guess I ought to mention that this has now been folded into the eminently sensible podPress plugin and I’d advise using that instead now.

New Arnolfini website

Arnolfini logo

The Haystack Admin System powers the new website for the Arnolfini, Bristol’s premier art gallery. Well, most of it, anyway. There’s a standard news system with a bespoke database for managing the events that the gallery puts on, from film to exhibitions, from dance to performance art. All that remains to do is to build the vcal exporter so that people can subscribe to the schedule from within a calendar application such as iCal. I’ll update this entry once it’s done. In the meantime, get down there – there are lots of interesting things going on.

Temporary Autonomy

Detail of the Temporary Autonomous Art exhibition poster

This weekend saw Bristol, er, “hosting” the latest Temporary Autonomous Art exhibition in a squatted warehouse on the banks of the Malago river in Bedminster. Although I ended up being there through a convergence of people I know in London and Bristol, I would have looked in on it anyway, since the title so obviously made reference to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone, a text I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I suppose it’s another way of judging a book by the proverbial cover.

Detail of the Temporary Autonomous Art exhibition poster
Detail from the exhibition poster

Whilst speaking to B——, who had apparently “prodded people” to get stuff together for the exhibition, I mentioned the TAZ connection. B—— told me a story that seemed to echo it in an unusual way: the above detail from the poster was photographed a week before the exhibition on the street in Bristol. B—— said that apparently the graffiti had been done by Banksy, and that it had since been painted over. I haven’t confirmed who made it – but it doesn’t really matter in this context – what I liked was the way that the poster and flyer for a deliberately temporary art exhibition made an artefact less temporary by accident.