Matthew CroughanNix.Camp 2023 was the third of its kind, and the largest and most exciting Nix Camp to date. For 7 whole days, BOARC (Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre), a self-organising study site for research, communality and experimentation; and for me, what felt like the whole of Liverpool, was overrun by over 20 international Nixxers.
We had attendees from America, Australia, Israel and from all around Europe!
This year, we were lucky enough to be partially funded by the NixOS Foundation via OpenCollective, which was a massive help. Remaining costs were paid by Nix.How and ticket proceeds.
If you’re looking for purely productive outcomes of the camp, then skip to the bottom of this post.
Nix Camp 2024 is happening 2nd - 9th of September 2024. So if you like what you see here, then see the details at https://nix.camp
Venue
Bidston Observatory is large, cavernous and overlooks the skyline of the city of Liverpool. Used at many times throughout history as an instrument for observation, such as in the second World War for predicting tides. It has tons of rooms, nooks, crannies and a basement. Below is a crude GLB render from a survey we took with an iPhone’s LiDAR sensor. This is only one of the two sections. Atop each is a dome room, originally used for stargazing.
Welcome
Early in the morning, a tired pkharvey awaits attendees, with his loud and authentic dot matrix printer for printing tickets and welcome packs. We had spent hours getting this dot matrix printer working under Linux, due to the need for a specific kind of serial cable.
The first day introduced everyone to the building interior and exterior
Settling in
It wasn’t long before people began settling in and hacking, with a club mate or Nix & Kix.
Beans on Toast
In order to welcome everyone to the UK, we decided to serve the most memorable dish we could. Spicy beans on toast, with plenty of Nix & Kix. We’re not sure what effect this will have on the popularity of the dish worldwide, but we hope it’s good. Many came back for seconds, namely Las Safin, who was the biggest critic, but also the biggest consumer of the dish. The beans on toast for 20 was prepared by pkharvey, who has the most experience with Beans on Toast.
Cuisine
Aside from beans on toast, we had two real chefs helping out at the event, creating breakfast and lunch each day
Wheeliepad
Unlike the previous years at Nix Camp, this time we had access to a relatively flat floor space, and so were able to bust out the world famous Wheeliepad, a glorified iPad on a stick, controllable over the internet by using the WASD keys on your keyboard.
It was borrowed from Julian Todd, a member of the DoES Liverpool makerspace, and will surely make a return at future events.
This upped our attendance by at least 10 as we invited more nixxers from around the world to join us on wheels, having the ability to roam freely about the venue like a ghost.
Tomberek, Ilan and Robert Hensing managed to make use of the robot in order to pair program, ultimately merging PR #9043
Radio
A handheld NixCom™ was provided to all, for the duration of the event. To inspire communication, no matter the physical whereabouts in the observatory.
Attempting to contact the International Space Station
pkharvey attempted to set up his big rig on the rooftop of the observatory, with a little help from all of us he tried to deliver a message to the ISS BBS Mailbox via AX25 packet radio. Though, we hit a snag with serial device flow control, and missed our window. We did however hear voice chatter on a cross-band voice repeater, but were unable to send bytes.
Excursions
Over the next few days, to avoid cabin fever, we had some large group outings to some places worth seeing around Liverpool and the Wirral.
Hilbre Islands
Getting to the island from the observatory takes good weather, timing, and a short train ride. The Summer still seems alive mid September, so it turned out to be a great trip with too many great photos to share. So here’s some of the best.
Surprise contact
Whilst on the Hilbre Islands pilgrimage, we asked Raymond to keep an ear out listening for us on PMR Channel 11 to see if he could hear our calls. Eventually we did hear him come through, singing “~I’m a Nixie boy, in a Docker World~”. Thanks to this direct line of sight from atop the Bidston Observatory, we were able to hear him loud and clear at a distance of almost 8 kilometers!
DoES Liverpool Makerspace
Back on the train, we took the group into the heart of Liverpool City Centre, the makerspace I attend most days of the week, DoESLiverpool. Once we got there, we hung out, had a meal at the local restaurants and attended Tweag’s “The Nix Hour” , hosted by Infinisil
Talks
Nix Camp encourages spontaneity, and ad-hoc talks. Especially to try out new formats and talk ideas, in a low-pressure environment without being recorded. A few were given, and they were fantastic.
- Las gave a talk on WASM derivations in Nix, which eventually became a full talk given at scale21x
- DavHau gave a talk on dream2nix, and dora.dev/research
- Robert Hensing gave a talk on Hercules CI
- Emery gave a talk on Syndicate and the Actor Model
- Matthew Croughan gave a talk on using Nix + Rust on to process point cloud data from a simple HTML frontend
- David Nuon gave a talk about nix2html, which was made at the camp
- alejandrosame gave a talk on live coding music, which was very immersive and interactive. He demonstrated SonicPi, TidalCycles and Strudel
Domes FM
Domes FM is an artist-run online radio station, broadcasting from the basement of Bidston Observatory in the former IBM mainframe computer room.
Although the recording is lost, alejandrosame played live music for a Domes FM stream, which was a fantastic live coding set.
Domes FM plays every Wednesday from 20:00 - 23:00 GMT, and you should definitely tune in via the stream link below.
Movies
The same cosy basement room where talks were given was also a great space for watching films. So as camp came closer to the end, we watched the notorious Hackers (1995). For some, it was their first time and for others, their tenth.
A film new to all of us was “The Zero Theorem”, which we thought would fit well with the definition of “Nix”. Despite having identical ratings on IMDb, only one of these films deserves a re-watch.
Chalkboard
The chalkboard located at the entrance was subject to much turmoil. However, towards the end, there was a clear concensus. The people want Nix on Windows.
Who are the organizers?
This year would not have been possible if not for the luck of meeting Emery Hemingway at the Liverpool Nix User Group earlier in the year. He had a stewardship role at Bidston Observatory, and before long, we had established communication between Nix.Camp and the Observatory and had a plan for Nix Camp 2023.
pkharvey adorned and flashed firmware to 20+ NixCom™ radios, and was also a massive help and second brain in organizing the event.
Productive Outcomes
David Nuon
djacu
Las
- Initial work on /wæ~zm/ derivations (PR to be published)
Enzime
- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9039
- https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/pull/785
- https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/258473
Frederik Rietdijk (FRidh)
Initial support for PDM in dream2nix:
- https://github.com/nix-community/dream2nix/pull/702
- https://github.com/nix-community/dream2nix/pull/710
- https://github.com/nix-community/dream2nix/pull/714
Rob Hernandez (Sarcasticadmin)
- https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/257921
- https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/258056
- https://github.com/ngi-nix/scion/pull/7
- https://github.com/socallinuxexpo/scale-network/pull/623
Ilan Joselevich (Kranzes)
- https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9043
- https://github.com/socallinuxexpo/scale-network/pull/625
- https://github.com/Kranzes/pyshit/commit/b073134e8ae98319dae1c21e0463d0f5c840c6b9
Andrea (aciceri)
- Initial spago support in dream2nix
- Script for creating a store containing all FODs in the closure of a given derivation
- Polish agenix-shell
- Add agenix-shell to flake.parts website
- Played with nix-ts-mode
- Had fun with qsstv
Matthew Croughan
- opened fetchFromBittorrent for review after implementing rqbit backend https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/212930
- runInDarwinVm with @Enzime
- https://github.com/MatthewCroughan/NixThePlanet
Emery
- Nim packaging RFC for Nixpkgs
- Nim lockfike generator nim_lk
- Sigil - Genode depot package generator
Robert Hensing (roberth)
- hercules-ci-effects: git-update / flake-update: keep branch up to date with baseMerge
- NixOS/nix reviews and merges including Absolute attrpath notation, Cross compile to BSD
- tweag/jupyenv flake-parts module
- NixOS/nix: contributor guide: emphasize solving a well-specified problem with each pull request
- NixOS/nix: refine the maintainer's process to unblock discussions more quickly
- edolstra/flake-compat nix#7796: Ensure that self.outPath == ./.
- Explored a potential module system refactor
Memes
