Third Old North End Repair Cafe this Saturday August 15th!

The next Old North End Repair Cafe is this Saturday, August 15th from 11am-3pm. Come on down and volunteers will do our best to repair anything you can carry in! And if you’d like to help out, please fill out our volunteer interest form (free snacks for volunteers!). This is an outdoor, socially distant event and masks are required.

Also, going on concurrently will be Degrowth Fest which Repair Cafe will be a part of. We’ll have a poster illustrating the merits of repair 🙂

More info on our Repair Cafe page.

 

Second Old North End Repair Cafe this Saturday!

Hello everyone, here are the results for our first Repair Cafe last month. 70% success rate is pretty good! Especially for our first repair cafe. It looks like 29% bicycle but that’s actually sewing!

The next Old North End Repair Cafe is coming up THIS SATURDAY, July 18th! Come on down to 12-22 North st between 11am and 3pm (we can only accept new repairs until 2:15pm)

More info on our Repair Cafe page

Repair Cafe June 20th

Laboratory B will finally hold our first Repair Cafe this weekend on Saturday June 20th. Assuming the weather is clear (we will decide Thursday night whether to postpone) we’ll have tables socially distanced apart for volunteers to repair whatever people show up with! Whatever you can carry with you, electronics, bicycles, furniture, small appliances, etc,  we’ll do our best to repair it for you. All for free!

If you’d like to volunteer please fill out our volunteer interest form.

  • Saturday, June 20th
  • 11am-3pm
  • 12-22 North st

The main Lab B Repair Cafe page is here

Join us on Mumble!

Come hang out with us on our Mumble server. Mumble is a free, open-source, encrypted voice chat application and we’ve been using it to host our virtual member meetings and open hours. We’re online every Thursday from 7pm-9pm, we’d love to have you drop in and say hi.

Getting Started

Start out by downloading the Mumble client for your device. There are even clients for Android and iOS so you can connect from your phone.

After installing, you’ll want to grab some headphones, and get set up using Mumble’s Audio Wizard. If you run into audio issues after setup, you can always re-run the wizard from the Configure menu dropdown. This step is important so everyone can hear you clearly, and your mic only turns on when you’re talking.

Get Connected

These instructions are designed for the desktop Mumble client. If you’re using your phone, they’ll be slightly different, but the connection info is the same.

You’ll want to add the Lab server by going to the Server menu, then clicking Connect, and Add New. You’ll be prompted for a username, this can be anything, and others will see it when you join.

Mumble "Add Server" dialog

In the Add Server dialog that comes up, enter the mumble.laboratoryb.org in the Address field and press OK.

A list of servers will show up. Double click the new mumble.laboratoryb.org server you just added (under Favorite), and a message will come up prompting for a password. You’ll need to enter the password “laboratoryb” – without quotes.

That’s it! Any time you’d like to connect, load up Mumble and connect to the server you added.

Connection Info

Address: mumble.laboratoryb.org
Port: 64738
Username: this can be anything you’d like!
Label: this can be anything, adjusts the server name in your list

Policies and Activities During the COVID-19 Stay-At-Home Order

At the Lab monthly meeting tonight, we decided on the policies that we’ll be keeping in playe until the Vermont “Stay-At-Home” order is lifted, and also some ideas for virtual events we’ll be putting on in the meantime.

Policies:

      • No public in-person events until the State of Emergency from City and State is lifted.
      • Only one member may be in the space at a time. Members are expected to sanitize door knobs and any surfaces they use when they leave.
      • Members will log their use of the space, and post to Slack if they are headed in so other members will know the space is in use.

Virtual Events:

  • Thursdays, 7-9pm – Minecraft hang-out: Instead of our usual in-person public hours, we’ll have weekly Thursday night hang-outs on a Minecraft server a member created, with audio chat facilitated by the Lab Mumble server. We’re not posting the login credentials publicly to avoid griefers, but friends of the Lab are welcome, so feel free to reach out to a current member for details.
  • Saturdays, 7:30-10pm – FOSS Virtual LAN Party: Each week we’ll pick a different FOSS game to play together, with voice chat on the Lab Mumble server. Check the Lab Facebook page for specifics, but we’ll be starting the series off with RTS 0AD

March 14th Repair Café Postponed

We have decided to postpone the Old North End Repair Café due to public health concerns around gatherings. We are still planning on hosting the Repair Café on April 18th, 2020. We will provide further updates on our Facebook page and here at laboratoryb.org.

We’d like to thank everyone in the community for their interest, as well as everyone who signed up to volunteer. We are greatly looking forward to our debut, so stay tuned!

Feel free to message us on Facebook or send an email to [email protected] with any questions.

Jumping the CoreOS Container Linux Ship

The end is within sight for CoreOS Container Linux: May 26, 2020. For a few years now we’ve made use of Container Linux for hosting the laboratoryb.org website. Sadly, this is where our CoreOS journey ends, with end-of-life coming right around the corner.

We’ve finally jumped the CoreOS ship over to Flatcar Container Linux by Kinvolk, an OSS fork of the original project. Everything has been faithfully copied over and is once again running smoothly.

Thanks to Kinvolk for keeping the Container Linux legacy alive!