[u-u] Stuff mentioned last evening...

[Colin McGregor]

Here are some of the things I mentioned last evening...

Rachel - https://racheloffline.org/ The goal of this project is to
provide a High School library in a box for places where high speed
internet isn't available or is prohibitively expensive.  A collection
of Project Gutenberg books, a "curated" version of Wikipedia, Khan
Academy and other bits. Rachel is available in English, Spanish,
French, Portuguese, Hindi and I gather other languages are being
worked on.  This has been ported to several platforms, including some
routers that have a USB port for external storage, but I would like to
show this off on a Raspberry Pi.

Blender Movies - There are 4 short films (with a 5th currently in
production) to show off what this graphics software can do when pushed
hard. The films are "Elephants Dream" ( https://orange.blender.org/ )
, "Big Buck Bunny" ( https://peach.blender.org/ ), "Sintel"
(https://durian.blender.org/  ) and "Tears of Steel" (
https://mango.blender.org/ ). Any event something to show off video
playback software without having to worry about copyright issues
(well, basically, Sony has falsely claimed ownership of "Sintel" :
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140406/07212626819/sony-youtube-take-down-sintel-blenders-open-source-creative-commons-crowdfunded-masterpiece.shtml
).

Spanish Solar Powered Birdhouses -
http://www.generalibirdhousealarm.com/en# Yes, these are designed to
provide homes for birds in northern Spain, but each bird house also
contains a smoke detector and a device to connect the bird house to
the local cell phone network, so that when a fire is detected it is
reported quickly. The solar panel keeping a rechargeable battery
topped up...All of this sponsored by the insurance firm Generali .