FOSS and Crafts

FOSS and Crafts

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FOSS and Crafts episodes

  • 42: Learning the Sewing Machine

    Christine finally overcomes her fear of the

    sewing machine
    and we talk about Christine and Morgan's respective experiences
    learning it, and how you can pick it up too!

    Links:

    • Morgan's article on

    Basic Sewing Patterns.
    Includes pictures of the dicebag and skirt!
    (More tutorials coming soon!)

  • You probably know what a

    • sewing machine is,
    but isn't there always more to learn?

  • A Cultural Perspective on Gender Diversity in Computing

    • and Building an Effective Computer Science Student Organization: The Carnegie Mellon Women@SCSAction Plan
    (On that note, when Christine was in college she attended a
    presentation by Lenore Blum about women in CS, which is where the
    potluck anecdote comes from.)

    1 hr 2 min
  • 41: Learning Emacs

    Morgan finally overcomes her fear of Emacs

    and we talk about Morgan and Christine's respective experiences
    learning it, and how you can pick it up too!

    Our talks tomorrow at FOSDEM's

    Declarative and Minimalistic Computing
    room:

    • Lisp but Beautiful; Lisp for Everyone
    • Spritely Goblins Comes to Guile

    Switching capslock and ctrl stuff: (it's a great idea even if you don't

    use Emacs; many keyboards used to have ctrl key where capslock now is,
    and much advanced program use benefits from keyboard shortcuts):

    • Switching on GNU/Linux

    • Switching on Windows 10 & 11

    • Switching on OSX

    • On Guix: (keyboard-layout "us" #:options '("caps:ctrl_modifier" "shift:both_capslock")) in your system configuration both makes capslock a ctrl and allows you to press both shift keys at once to enable capslock behavior (should you want such a thing)

    • And actually there's a whole EmacsWiki page about it

    Links:

    • Emacs!

    • Git and Magit

    • Org-Mode

    • Spacemacs

    • Mousemacs

    • Emacs Themes… find one that's right for you!

    • The Emacs lisp reference manual

    • emacsconf

    • Org-mode and Org-Roam for Scholars and Researchers

    • Sacha Chua, whose blog is full of awesome emacs and emacs news

    posts, and who also releases lots of great videos about Emacs!

  • Emacs Rocks!

  • Episode 14: Digital Humanities Workshops

  • Episode 15: Scribble and the Open Document Format

  • mu4e, ERC, crdt.el (video)… many more emacs tools mentioned,

    • not all linked! Trying to be comprehensive would result in a
    trip to the M-x doctor for sure…

  • wireworld-el, Christine's (minimalist) implementation of the

    • wireworld cellular automata (cellular automata circuits!)

  • And yes, it turns out you CAN annotate PDFs in emacs, using

    • the pdf-tools package!

    51 min
  • 40: Interdisciplinarity and FOSS (SeaGL Keynote)

    Morgan and Christine talk about the skills they’ve learned in their

    humanities backgrounds and how those have translated into their work
    within FOSS communities and projects. They’ll then discuss the
    benefits of seeking out varied skillsets within your communities, the
    value of looking at problems from multiple lenses, and how to use all
    of the tools we’ve got to promote our projects.
    (This episode is the audio from
    our SeaGL keynote of the same name!)

    Oh yeah, and as we said in the intro, the

    TinyNES campaign is going strong (see our last episode)!
    We met the minimum goal which means it's happening!
    Still a couple of weeks left (at time of writing) to get yourself
    an open hardware NES, but over half of the "genuine chip" ones are
    now sold out, so get yours while you can!

    Links:

    • SeaGL, and a

    video of our keynote of the same name

  • Spritely

  • Okay here's Christine's old comic Lingo

    • from nearly two decades ago, don't judge too harshly pls

  • Emacs

  • LaTeX

  • Racket and

    • Racket's picture language

  • MediaGoblin

  • Digital Humanities Workshops episode

  • Music Production on Guix System

  • Jessica Tallon and Spritely interview

  • FOSS Stitch episode of F&C, and ih!

  • The Liberated Pixel Cup

  • Deb Nicholson

  • Urchn Studios

    • 0 min
  • 39: The TinyNES: An Open Hardware "Tiny Nostalgia Evocation Square"

    Dan Gilbert of Tall Dog joins us to talk

    about the
    Tiny Nostalgia Evocation Square (or TinyNES for short)!
    The TinyNES is an open hardware system compatible with the compatible
    with original Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom cartridges and
    controllers.
    Instead of being just an emulator or FPGA-based implementation, the
    TinyNES uses the original 6502-derived chips and a custom circuit
    board, preserving and carrying forward computing history!
    Oh yeah, and it's also running a crowdfunding campaign,
    so you can order your own
    and support open hardware in the best way possible: by playing video games!

    By the way, we mentioned that FOSS & Crafts Studios would be launching

    its first collaboration... we're helping to run the crowdfunding
    campaign on this one (and couldn't be more excited about it)!

    Links:

    • TinyNES crowdfunding campaign (launch announcement, sources will be on tinynes.com when campaign succeeds)

    • Tall Dog, Dan's company (they do some

    other cool open hardware stuff too, check 'em out!)

  • Tall Dog's statement on supporting open source

  • The 6502 chip

    • and its specially modified version for the Nintendo Enetertainment System, the
    Ricoh 2A03

  • FreeCAD and KiCAD

  • Visual6502

  • Nova the Squirrel

  • Everdrive (proprietary hardware, but lets

    • you run custom ROMs, including Nova)

  • Robot Finds Kitten on the c64!

    • Written in Racket!

    0 min
  • 38: Spritely Updates! (November 2021)

    It's time for some updates on Spritely, the project Christine founded to advance decentralized networking technology! A lot has happened since our episode about Spritely from last year (which is really where Spritely got its main public announcement)! Most notably, Jessica Tallon has joined the project thanks to a generous grant from NLNet and NGI Zero! But there's a lot more that has happened too, so listen in!

    ALSO! As mentioned at the end of this episode, starting with the NEXT episode, we'll begin signing off every episode by thanking donors to FOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! By donating you both support this podcast AND Christine's work on Spritely!

    Links:

    • The Spritely Project

    • FOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! Donate to show up in the thank-yous for upcoming episodes!

    • The previous "What is Spritely?" of this podcast

    • Jessica Tallon joins with a grant from NLNet/NGI Zero! Plus an interview!

    • Spritely Brux, Spritely's identity and trust management framework, which Jessica is working on (and Morgan dressed as for the costume contest)

    • Goblin-Chat (mostly a prototype to demonstrate the underlying networking tech)

    • Spritely Goblins, Spritely's distributed programming environment framework (and which Christine dressed as for the costume contest) (code, documentation)

    • Work in progress port of Goblins on Guile! It's getting close!

    • Spritely Aurie, Spritely's security-preserving runtime serialization and upgrade framework

    • Safe Serialization Under Mutual Suspicion by Mark S. Miller

    • Pickling, Uneval, Unapply by Jonathan Rees

    • OCapN, the new generation of CapTP and friends (see also What is CapTP, and what does it enable?)

    • Coroutines, Goblins' scoped suport for them. As for why they aren't prioritized in Goblins, read up on re-entrancy attacks, including this ancient e-lang email thread

    • Goblins' integration with Racket's asynchronous programming stuff via sync/pr (will be documented in the next tutorial version)

    • SeaGL, where Morgan and Christine keynoted... and performed in the costume contest as the Spritely Brux and Goblins mascots!

    0 min
  • 37: Salt on Resilience in FOSS

    Wm Salt Hale joins us to talk about his

    dissertation on resilience in FOSS communities (especially after
    crisis events), the kind of impacts founder decisions can have on
    long-term community development, especially as seen through reactions
    to software vulnerabilities and license decisions.

    Also! Salt mentions that we're

    keynoting
    at SeaGL this weekend! It's an online
    conference, so maybe we'll see you there!

    Links:

    • Wm Salt Hale

    • Salt's master's thesis: Resilience in Free/Libre/Open Source Software

    • Community Data Science Collective

    • Benjamin Mako Hill

    • Wikipedia article on Heartbleed

    • Debian

    • Champion, Kaylea. 2019. “Production Misalignment: A Threat to Public Knowledge.” Master of Arts Thesis, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington.

    • Pandas

    • Scrapy

    • Harvard Dataverse

    • Snowdrift

    • SeaGL

    0 min
  • 36: Topics of interest!

    Lightning round! Morgan and Christine blast through a bunch of

    snack-sized topics they're currently interested in, ranging from an
    actual FOSS video game made for the NES, to "Free Soft Wear" clothing,
    to compiler towers!

    above image from Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear"

    Links:

    • This episode's title was inspired by Ian Bicking's 2009 PyCon talk,

    "Topics of Interest", but it's bitrotted off the internet so we
    can't link you to that one. Boooooo!

  • Nova the Squirel

    • by... Nova the Squirrel

    • Source code!

    • upcoming SNES sequel!

    • You might need an NES emulator... Mednafen

    is good and can play games on a lot of systems

  • Mark Bitman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" First edition

    • and no I'm not linking you to the second edition which is good but
    not as deeply instructive

  • Elena "of Valhalla"'s blogpost about tie-on pockets

    • see also

    • see also (see also)

  • Episode 17: Gardening, from seedling to seasoned

  • Guile's compiler tower

  • Kat Walsh's awesome necklace she made during Hack & Craft

  • Jim's Big Ego's song Mix Tape from the album They're Everywhere!

    • If you like this song, you might really like the album free* which Christine would argue tells a collective narrative very relevant to this podcast

  • Robo Rally!

    • Program robots!

  • Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear" (term coined by the great Kat Walsh!)

  • Morgan's tablet weaving pattern for the "html strap" (Partly inspired by this pattern, but honestly mostly different. Bonus question for the reader: what constitutes a derivative work for weaving patterns?)

  • Eat the Weeds is a great resource to learn about what kinds of weeds you can eat, and which ones you can't, but even then, be careful. Really, seriously, be careful. Poison hemlock looks almost just like its more innocent cousin Queen Anne's lace except that it will kill you quickly and painfully. There's lots of great wild stuff out there, but be careful, and maybe take a class or instructions or help from someone who knows what they're talking about, or only eat the stuff that's generally agreed upon as "there's nothing dangerous you could mistake this for". And even then, be sure!

    • 0 min
  • 35: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 2

    In Part 1 of Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman

    Empire,
    we discussed the practical matters of textile production in domestic
    and commercial contexts. In this second episode, we look at the
    performative ways that textile production was used to construct
    women's identities. This includes the incorporation of textile tools
    and production into rites of passage such as marriage, childbirth, and
    death as a symbol of the virtuous matron. We further discuss
    religious use and association of textile production through the
    stories of the Fates, Arachne, and the Virgin Mary. We then come
    around to weave the rest of the narrative together: could the piece
    that fits in the women-shaped hole of textile production in ancient
    Rome be... women?

    This episode is dedicated in loving memory of Laura Callahan-Hazard

    and Sigrid Steinbock, both enthusiastic supporters of Morgan's
    dissertation, themselves both textile artists, and who both had wanted
    to read Morgan's dissertation but left this world too soon.

    Links:

    • Morgan's dissertation

    • Episode 34: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1

    • Trinkl, Elisabeth. 2004. "Zum Wirkungskreis einer kleinasiatischen Matrona anhand ausgewählter Funde aus dem Hanghaus 2 in Ephesos." In Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien. 73:281-303

    • Roman version of the Arachne Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses VI Content Warning: suicide, oblique mentions to rape, gods being jerks to mortals

    • Roman description of the three fates or Parcae by Catullus, 64, scroll down to line 305.

    • Roman version of the Europa Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses, II, 833-875 Content Warning: abduction, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals

    • A summary of the mythology of Leda and the Swan, very brief Roman summary in Hyginus, Fabulae 77, scroll down to § 77. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals

    • Roman version of the Danae Myth by Hyginus, Fabulae 63, scroll down to § 63. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals

    0 min
  • 34: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1

    In the first of two episodes on

    Morgan's dissertation
    we introduce the topic of women and textile production in the Roman
    Empire. Scholars have often viewed the domestic and commercial divide
    in textile production along gendered lines, associating domestic
    production with women in the context of the ideal of feminine virtue
    and commercial production with men working in centralized production
    centers. Here we use the cottage industry model to contextualize the
    role of women’s labor in the Roman textile industry, exploring the
    links between domestic production and commercial distribution.

    Links:

    • Morgan's dissertation

    • Episode 26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey

    talks about the process of getting a PhD (from Morgan's personal
    experiences, your mileage may vary)

  • Episode 3: Textile production and a nostalgic past

    • discusses Augustan propaganda and textile production and gives a
    summary of the stages of textile production from sheep to sweater.

  • The two Augustan versions of the Lucretia myth by

    • Ovid, Fasti 2.722-751
    and Livy, History of Rome 1.57.9
    (Content Warning: rape, suicide, revolution)

  • Another instance of a woman's labor from Ovid, this time a more

    • modest country woman who must weave cloaks etc before winter to
    protect her family from the cold:
    Ovid, Fasti 4.687-714.

  • Hitchner, Robert Bruce. 2012. "Olive Production and the Roman

    • Economy: The Case for Intensive Growth in the Roman Empire." In
    The Ancient Economy, Taylor and Francis. Partial text available
    on Google Scholar.

  • Barber, Elizabeth. 1994. Women’s Work: the First 20,000 Years:

    • Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York : Norton.

  • Lena Larsson Lovén

    • has written extensively on both the iconography of textile
    production and the performative relationships between women and
    wool work in the Roman Empire.

    0 min
  • 33: Which Color Should We Paint This Episode?

    In this episode, we discuss "bikeshedding" (also known as the

    Law of Triviality),
    the famous proposition that complex contributions and ideas (such as
    plans to build a nuclear power plant), often of high impact and
    importance, move forward with relatively little interference, whereas
    simple contributions and conversations (such as which color to paint a
    bikeshed) get caught up in committee and high-volume debate, and how
    this tends to impact FOSS communities.
    We do a (slightly dramatic) reading of the original email, hold a
    conversation about it, and then come back to the topic with a twist
    right after everyone (including ourselves) thought the episode was
    over.

    Links:

    • The original bikeshed email hosted at shed.bike

    • But wait! Use bikeshed.org instead!

    • Wait! You should link to the white background page!

    No, the green one! No, blue!
    No, purple!

  • Poul-Henning Kamp's page on the subject

  • But wait! Brett Glass (and others) respond!

  • yourlogicalfallacyis.com,

    • but be sure to read about
    The Fallacy Fallacy
    before you start linking to these to try to win an argument on the internet

    0 min

About FOSS and Crafts

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A podcast about free software, free culture, and making things together.