Steve Lambert

wrote a book!!!

Yearly Archives: 2015

Expo Chicago

Charlie James Gallery is delighted to present a dual booth by Jennifer Dalton and Steve Lambert for our third year exhibiting at EXPO CHICAGO. The International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art takes place each September at historic Navy Pier. Now in its third season, EXPO features over 140 of the leading galleries from around the world. Drawing upon the city’s rich history as a destination for arts and culture, EXPO bridges a critical gap for Chicago’s contemporary art community by engaging with regional, national, and international institutions and collectors.
 

To view more information about the fair, visit expochicago.com

HOURS

Friday, September 18 | 11:00am—7:00pm
Saturday, September 19 | 11:00am—7:00pm
Sunday, September 20 | 11:00am—6:00pm

LOCATION

Navy Pier
600 E Grand Ave
Chicago, IL 60611

Setting up a Raspberry Pi (with Bash-it)

I’ve been using a Raspberry Pi Model B as a file server and backup in my studio for the past 3 years. It’s connected to an old 1TB harddrive and ran btsync (I now switched to Syncthing) and is basically my replacement for Dropbox – except unlike Dropbox I own all the computers my data is on. No NSA backdoors, and cheap!

I found I use my ol’ Raspberry Pi so much stuff that I could take advantage of the upgrades in the Raspberry Pi 2. Unfortunately simply swapping the SD card didn’t work, so I had to install fresh.

Here’s how I got started, before installing Syncthing (I may post about that later). This is how I setup a Raspberry Pi. You don’t have to do this, this is just what I do.

Get Raspbian on an SD Card

I use MakeMyPi for this. It’s fast and includes stuff I like, such as git, ssh keys, and wireless configuration.

Upgrade the install

sudo rpi-update && sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo shutdown -r now

Install tmux and htop

Very handy stuff. Check it out if you’re not already using it regularly.

sudo apt-get install tmux htop

Install bash-it

Go home

cd ~/ 

Clone the bash-it files. (You’ll need to have installed Git already of course)

git clone https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.git
mv bash-it/ .bash_it/
~/.bash_it/install.sh

These are the bash-it completions, aliases, and plugins I use, or aspire to.

bash-it enable completion git
bash-it enable completion dirs
bash-it enable completion defaults
bash-it enable alias general
bash-it enable plugin history
bash-it enable plugin dirs
bash-it enable plugin extract
bash-it enable plugin base
bash-it enable plugin git

Also, I like fasd, but barely understand it. And it really bogged down the old Pi. I may reinstall it on the Pi2 and give it another shot.

Add my own bash stuff

cd ~/.bash_it/custom/
touch mine.bash
nano mine.bash

Paste in the following, as you like

## GREPS
    function hgrep()
    {
     builtin history | grep "$*"
    }

    function lgrep()
    {
     ls -alh | grep "$*"
    }

Note: bash-it has some similar ls+grep alias, but this is what I remember

## ALIASES
    alias lsss='ls -lht | less'
    alias cdslvr='cd /media/silver'
    alias cdsync='cd /media/silver/st'

The last two are really specific to me, but may inspire you.

## UPDATE
    function update()
        {
         sudo rpi-update &&  sudo apt-get -y update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
        }

I don’t know why I wrote the above and below as a function – it probably could be an alias. Maybe I had some future plan I forgot.

# Shutdown
    function restart()
        {
         sudo shutdown -rF now
        }

The -F flag forces fsck which is used to “check and repair a Linux filesystem”. That’s good for that 1TB drive I have attached.

# History
# all via http://www.eriwen.com/bash/effective-shorthand/

# Don't put duplicate lines in the history
export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

# Store a lot history entries in a file for grep-age
shopt -s histappend
export HISTFILE=~/long_history
export HISTFILESIZE=50000

# No reason not to save a bunch in history
# Takes up several more MBs of RAM now, oOOOooh
export HISTSIZE=9999

# Ignore dupe commands and other ones you don't care about
export HISTIGNORE="&:[ ]*:exit"

Note: bash-it adds some good history search stuff as well.

Decrease GPU Ram

I don’t use the gui of this RPi, though I may connect it someday. Or I may remove it entirely. In the meantime, I decreased the GPU Ram to give it back to the CPU.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Added this to the bottom

# Decreasing GPU Ram, to increase general Ram.
# source:  https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/673/what-is-the-optimum-split-of-$
# The value can be 16, 64, 128 or 256
# 16MB =  almost zero graphical power. Enough GPU memory to render the screen, not much else
gpu_mem=16

Then I go from there. Hopefully this is useful to you.

516 ARTS | Albuquerque Downtown Block Party

The Public Energy Art Kit will be part of the 516 Arts Downtown Block Party in Albuquerque.

Saturday, September 12, 4-8pm

516 ARTS presents our third Downtown Block Party, this year in partnership with Downtown ABQ MainStreet Initiative and the Outpost Performance Space. We invite everyone to this free outdoor event featuring interactive art projects, performances, demos and education opportunities that examine issues of climate change and ways we can make a difference for the future. Topics include solar power, alternative energy, water issues, local farming and food economy.

Source: 516 ARTS | DOWNTOWN BLOCK PARTY

Included in book, CO-LAB: Collaborative Design Survey

Duncombe and I did an interview as the Center for Artistic Activism for new book: CO-LAB: Collaborative Design Survey.

A direct link to our interview is at co-lab.us/duncombe-lambert/ and you can buy the book as well – CO-LAB: Collaborative Design Survey.

CO LAB: Collaborative Design SurveyYoung, hungry, interdisciplinary designers and artists are teaming together in small packs to tackle personal and client projects, while bucking old world views of authorship and agency-based assembly line production. Armed with cheap gear and accessible programs, they can design anything for anyone, wearing their voice proudly on their sleeves. Authors/designers/faculty ras+e–themselves a small, interdisciplinary team–explore this collaborative landscape with an overt sense of humor, original illustrations, custom typography, dozens of Q+As with a diverse range of contemporary practitioners, and buckets of bright red ink (0, 100, 100, 0). Because design theory needs an imp, this collection of accessible essays and tightly curated Q+As refuses to bore.

Interview on BBC World Service

Yesterday I did a short interview for World Business Report on the BBC’s World Service — because when you think international business news, you think “Steve Lambert”.

The story was about a new billboard using facial recognition technology designed by M&C Saatchi. I was asked (as leader of the Anti-Advertising Agency) to bring a counter-point to the story.

The full show is linked above, but you can listen to the segment I was on below. The first half is a representative of Saatchi, the second half is me.

[audio:http://visitsteve.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Steve-Lambert-on-BBC.mp3]

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