Fortress of Solitude

What is it? It is very messy.
Can I turn it into something else? Maybe a computer lab or a second lounge?

Good question, is it still under classroom committee?

There is another thread where someone discusses the room and it’s uses.

I will be fighting for it to be another larger classroom. There are a lot of opinions.

I just look at the calendar and we have more and more events (Very Good Thing)

Personally don’t want to tell people to have to reschedule.

We have discussed A Computer Lab before the current thought is to just use laptops in the RFID Storage (Pending RFID Storage) Also how to manage a computer lab from a operations standpoint.I don’t mind a “Computer Lab” assuming that it can act as a classroom.

Robert Davidson

How much other stuff can we cram in there without diminishing it’s classroom functionality too much? (eg silk screening)

I really like the idea of a computer lab. I can see a few AV classes being conducted there (editing, graphics, chroma key, etc.) as well as a lot of the software classes that go on at the DMS.

The lack of an appropriate computer lab inhibits me from teaching some of the classes that I could be teaching. Software licensing has been a problem with implementing a computer lab, though.

The “Fortress of Solitude,” aka, the Pillar Room, is just another big room that we have at the Space, but with a pillar blocking the view in the middle of the room. It’s used as a catch-all space, even more than the other rooms (hence, the mess). When we need a big room for events that don’t need a clear line of sight, we might use the pillar room. For example, it has been used as a pinball gallery a few times (fills the room with pinball machines), a meeting room a few times, a classroom for electronics and radio classes, a photo studio, a film making Meetup group and a going-away party room. It also houses the DMS library and a few plotters, besides random, large electronic items that we want to keep around but don’t have any place to put them just yet.

My suggestion for the Pillar Room is to move arts into the room. Then the old arts room can serve as a smaller class room or other purposes, the new larger arts room could support larger arts classes, and arts could then house not only all of it’s equipment, but also the vinyl cutter and the screen printing equipment. This seems like a real win win setup. Also, for those in favor of a computer lab, the arts room is currently one of the only committees with general use computers. More space would allow for more computers as well.

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Come Summer, the current Arts Room could serve as a sauna. I’ve not had much exposure to DMS in the blazing daytime, so I was disoriented when I happened to walk into the Arts Room back during one of our warm spells over the Winter. I really thought someone had a big radiant heater by the wall. It took me several minutes to figure out that heat was coming from the window. 3D Fab also is affected by that issue.

Your plan sounds pretty good; I know that Creative Arts is cramped for space, and the sewing group could use more room for their sewing table.

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Can I go in there, lets say, next weekend and set up the computer lab for the time being?
Very little overhead is required to set up the lab or tear down the lab.

I have these laptop locks to keep our laptops from fleeing or walking off.
I would use the tables in there as lock mount, I would consider setting up 4 tables (2 laptops each). The lab will face the wall that is opposite of the door.

I would move the library shelf out of the way and possibly the wooden arcade system as well.

I would pre-install
-blender,
-pycharm,
-intellij,
-clion
-putty,
-source-tree,
-sublime-text
-dropbox
-android-studio
-npm,pip

I would also set up a small projector.

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I’d add GIMP and Inkscape to that software list…

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It’s more complicated than just setting up a build it and they will come.

I would be happy to work with you to come up with a final solution but I would ask that you don’t setup a computer lab next weekend.

Here are just a few of the things that must be decided.

  1. If there is a committee that has the utilization that warrants the need of the pillar room?
  2. Hardware that will be used and cost of build out?
  3. What kind of utilization and what best fits into the goals of the organization?
  4. Who is going to own it who will Manage the room, Fix the Equipment, Replace cables that go missing?

Svejk if you would like to work on the computer lab side of the problem here are just a couple of the more challenging things to come up with.

  1. Hardware, we have HP laptops but most are extremely slow at a Min they should be swapped to SSD.
  2. Licensing of software that is going to be used. (I am in the process of solving the Windows Licenses and should be done by next week)
  3. Software to be installed should be in line with the teachers that want to use it.
  4. Storage when not in use, unless the utilization is high enough they are being used at least every couple days I don’t see a good reason to just have a room wasted to computers.
  5. Who will work with instructors to get the software they need on the machines.
  6. Malware/Keyloggers it’s pretty well known in the past that there was a problem with keyloggers installed. (Deep Freeze has worked very well for us it’s approx $50 per seat.
  7. Writing Documentation on how to bring the lab online and offline.
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No point in installing dropbox… we have our own file server that has 16TB of space. The laptops are already ready with bare minimum software. They’re not powerful enough to do any graphics stuff, IMO.

Anyways, I tried to set up a computer lab in there but ping pong somehow won use of that room.

Yeah and the idea of using that room for arts was also discussed by @alexrhodes in that thread, but since the thread got silly discussing ping-pong “education” and reaching 100 posts, it’s possible that most people missed that. :smiley:

@Svejk The biggest problems that I see to simply putting in a computer lab are:

  1. Who is going to maintain it?
  2. How do we move it out of the way when necessary?
  3. Will it have software that we actually need to use?

@Robert_Davidson I don’t expect that utilization would be a problem, based on your criteria of use at least every few days. People always use computers when they are available. Of course, they use the best computers that are available, which might not be what we have.

@bscharff I’m not sure how Dropbox manages files, but I’m under the impression that it synchronizes between computers, so removing files from one also removes the files from the other. Does that mean that Deep Freeze would wipe out all the Dropboxes every day?

It wouldn’t delete everything, but it would have to redownload EVERYTHING everytime it’s rebooted. Again, we have a gigantic file server - why not use that?

Inasmuch as I don’t know why @Svejk wants Dropbox on the computers at all, I cannot answer that.

Speaking of the file server, I’ve uploaded at least one video to it, but I don’t know what to do after that to make it publicly available.

That will be one of my questions @Nick Tuesday how that is working out I am just as disappointed as anyone that a Ping Pong ball table happened instead of a classroom that could have added value to our education mission.

I am still waiting on those classes that @Nick promised back in November.

@Svejk if you happen to come out Tuesday night I would be glad to sit down with you and work through some of the challenges.

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Ask the Germans, we had ping pong tables in the hallways at school.

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