OldNews2014
Lunch: Thursday December 18th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting / Social: Friday December 12th, 6:00 pm
In December we do something like board or card games, video games, etc because it's just too close to Thanksgiving and Christmas to fit in a social and a speaker.
Tina is hosting a gaming night at her house. Email her if you need address and/or directions. Start time is 6:00 pm. Note that this is NOT our usual second Thursday, we pushed it back one night so people don't have to deal with getting to work in the morning.
We play whatever you bring. Please consider bringing a folding table and chairs, board games, card games, video games, video game system accessories, and/or snacks and beverages. RSVP's of the types of stuff you're bringing would be appreciated so we don't have overstocks of some items such as four people hauling their folding table and chairs, or everyone bringing chips.
Dinner of pizza from Pizza Hut will be ordered promptly at 6:30, don't be late. Please bring cash to chip in for your portion of the pizza if you choose to partake.
Sign up
| Name | # of self/family/friends | Electronic games | Board/card games | Food/beverage contributions | Other | Pizza? |
| Tina | 2 players + 2 distractors | two tv's, a Wii with some games + 2 controllers, a PS2 with some games + 2 controllers + DDR with two dance pads | Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, Great Dalmuti, Fluxx, EcoFluxx, Candy Land, many others | ??? | two tables, ~7 chairs, lots of floor space, a large yard with some floodlights | Yes |
| Aaron Albertson | 1 distractee | N/A | Not sure yet, but I'll lug along a couple of the games I picked up at Gen Con | Cookies | I can bring a chair if it looks like we'll have a lot of people | Yes plz |
| Erik Voldal | 2 | No | Carcassonne, Electronic Catch Phrase, 5 Second Rule | Doritos | Card table and 4 chairs. | Yes |
| Will Schmidt | 2+1 | No | Munchkin Variants | Krumkakes | Yes | |
| Tollefoto | 1 | No | Castle Panic | cookies | Yes | |
| Your name here | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Extra Lunch: Thursday December 11th
11:30 am, 1st Avenue food court downtown, at the bigger tables near the entrance.
Planned Lunch: Thursday November 20th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Planned Social: November TBD
Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tina or Jon G.
Tina didn't get around to planning anything, and past history suggests nobody has time for a November social anyway.
Technical Meeting: Thursday November 13th
Kevin A, on DEFCON 2014.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Extra Lunch: Thursday November 13th
11:30 am, 1st Avenue food court downtown, at the bigger tables near the entrance.
Social: Saturday October 25th
10 am - Pumpkin tossing by trebuchet and catapult, at the Boy Scout's GameHaven. We're spectating, not participating. If in future years you want to participate, it sounds like community adults are allowed, chat about it on the email list.
Lunch: Thursday October 16th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday October 9th
Marc Thomas, from NORLUG. "Re-cloudify your life. Moving to your own cloud".
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Tired of wondering what all those companies are doing with your data? It's time to recloudify your life and move to your own cloud!
Marc is a software developer, designer and hacker with experience in web, database, server and desktop Linux. He has worked in the education, medical, and manufacturing industries and has several open source projects hosted on Github.
Marc is also a technology advocator in the fields of Linux, FLOSS, security, and privacy. He is also the organizer of the Northfield Linux User Group (NORLUG).
www.mthx.org
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His slides are here.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Tuesday September 16th
Disc golf!
6:30 pm - disc golf at RCTC. If you don't have your own disc that's fine, come out anyway. Don't know where to meet? Here's a map.
Technical Meeting: Thursday September 11th
Chris Abbey on Ingress.
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Want to learn about a game that ticks every possible game checkbox? cabbey will be talking about Ingress, It's a Cooperative Team Based Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Combat Farming Geo-Aware Layered Reality version of Capture the Flag.
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And here's his after action report:
-- Here's the slide deck I used last night:
https://docs.google.com/a/cabbey.net/presentation/d/1w-ni8qEfG8GNawdP6_X8yB7LNinAysZ8D_Y2zMMYF0k
If you're reading along at home, be sure to check the speaker notes where a lot of what I said is at least hinted at, if not written down.
The video I played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss-Z-QjFUio
The demographics report I mentioned: http://simulacrum.cc/2013/01/23/the-demographics-of-ingress/
This is also a great site for learning about the game mechanics: http://decodeingress.me
The video I didn't play due to time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zyibi6niWA Another video of another epic outing a friend of mine went on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmiE0yhYG8 and the second one, filmed by Niantic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D92gLsvbXvI (slicker production values, but more content free)
Ignore the fact that all of those are green operations, the so called "enlightened" (remember what we learned, they're the alien invaders seeking to crush humanity) seem to be a bit more vain about filming their victories. The resistance has mounted a number of equally epic operations... we just tend not to toot our own horns. (and yes, my self imposed restriction on trying to recruit is over.)
RESIST. Its Humanity's Only Hope.
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Kevin A - DefCon 2014 summary This has been delayed.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Monday August 25th - Minigolf
Monday, August 25th, 6 pm - minigolf at Skyline Raceway. There's a coupon in the half-sized local mailed coupon book for $2 off a round, these coupon books can also be picked up in the entryway of many local stores. http://www.skylineracewayrochester.com/mini-golf.html
Planned Social: August TBD
Rocket launch and picnic. Saturday August 30th, time and location TBA by launch master Kevin Arhelger.
This fell through.
Planned Lunch: Thursday August 21st
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday August 14th
Speaker needed, please let Tina or Jon G know if you're willing to volunteer. Willing to present but want to know what people have expressed interest in? Check out our requested topics page.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Next Meeting: - No Meeting, but Disc Golf
->When: Thursday, August 14th - 6:00 pm - 7:35 pm
->Where: meet at the RCTC Campus for disc golf, park in the UCR Gym lot
Social: Wednesday July 30th
6:30 pm - disc golf at RCTC. If you don't have your own disc that's fine, come out anyway. Don't know where to meet? Here's a map.
Social Preparation for August: Friday July 25th
Last rocket build night at the Rabbit Hole.
REMOVED_FOR_SPAMBOT
6 pm
"Technical Meeting", aka ice cream social: Sunday July 20th
No speaker volunteers (typical for summer) and no officer energy to kick behinds, we're having ice cream and flying kites instead.
Location: That park by Steve Fox's house, officially known as Pine Ridge Estates Park, on Redwood Lane SW.
1:30 pm
This park has a nice playground for the littles, picnic tables, and room to fly kites, as well as usually being unpopulated. The lack of trees and being on top of a hill mean it's pretty bug free even when there's not enough breeze to fly the kites.
Please bring your family and friends who might want to hang out. If you don't want to sit at the picnic tables or on the playground equipment, bring your own folding chair. And bring your own beverage.
Special second lunch: Thursday June 26th, downtown
Take advantage of Thursdays on First PLUS the RochesterFest vendors.
11:30 am, the tent by the RochesterFest sound stage, downtown (by the library and civic center)
Lunch: Thursday June 19th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: June 12th - Android App Development - Jon Tollefson
Thursday, June 12th - 6:00 pm - 7:35 pm Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 1926 College View Road SE, Rochester, MN 55904
Jon has developed a java based game and published it to open source. This talk will focus on how to setup for and code such an application for Android
Lunch: Thursday May 15th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 8th 2014
Next Meeting: - Node.js and Amazon EC2 free tier hosting - Tim Massaro When: Thursday, May 8th - 6:00 pm - 7:35 pm Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 1926 College View Road SE, Rochester, MN 55904
Presentation summary: Node.js is a server side javascript platform currently very popular for easily building fast, scalable web applications. This presentation will be an introduction to node and will demo how you can set up a free (for 1 yr) hosting environment on Amazon's cloud based hosting service called EC2.
Technical Meeting: Thursday April 10th
Dennis DeLorme, on Beaglebone Black.
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Small scale computing is becoming more affordable as technology advances. For low cost simple 8 (or occasionally 16) bit micocontrollers were the norm. This trend lead to the Arduino microcontroller on a board. The low cost and popular support have made it a very popular system.
A few years ago the Raspberry Pi project was started to bring the cost of a full computer on a board into the Arduino price range. This was followed by the Beaglebone Black, a lower cost version of the Beaglebone family. These new systems, which have price points under $50, are significantly different than the Arduino level systems. They have similar I/O capabilities but much more computational power than the Arduino. They are also more complex to use effectively.
In this presentation I will briefly compare the differences and than discuss some Beaglebone Black features. Unlike the Arduino, development can be done directly on the Beaglebone as a stand alone system. I will also talk about VNC which allows a PC to remotely control the Beaglebone GUI.
Dennis' slides are here.
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6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA109. Please note we're going to try meeting in the computer lab just across the bigger hallway (to the west) from our usual room, due to hardware differences between the two rooms.
Also a reminder that Tim will be running this meeting, along with all things K-LUG for May-August (thanks Tim!). If you have any agenda items to add, please make sure Tim knows about them in advance.
Planned Social: March 2014 TBD
Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tim or Tina. We've got lots of potential indoor activities at the bottom of this page, speak up if you have preferences.
Tina didn't get anything organized, sorry.
Lunch: Thursday March 20th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday March 13th, 2014
Mark Diez will be coordinating an audience-driven "Andriod devices, apps, and accesories".
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ALL THINGS ANDROID – BYO – SHOW ‘N’ TELL
K-LUG/PCIG members and guests will demo favorite and interesting Android stuff – including devices (phones, tablets, other?), apps, accessories, and tips/techniques. Attendees are invited to bring their own or just come to see what others have brought in a wide-ranging demo and discussion of EVERYTHING ANDROID.
BRING YOUR FAVORITE ANDROID DEVICES, APPS, and ACCESSORIES.
• Devices: Android phones and tablets, direct-attached hardware, Bluetooth-attached hardware, …
• Apps: backup, anti-virus/firewall, VPN, productivity, utilities, development, fun stuff, …
• Accessories: covers, stands, …
• Tips/techniques
Here are some items that are likely to arrive. Mark Diez and Mo Holahan will be hosting the show’n’tell.
• Devices discussion: Nook HD+, Nook HD, Samsung cricket SCH-R720
• Android For Nook (AFN): putting Cyanogenmod Android on your Nook HD and HD+ device via commercial microSD card.
• Non-traditional keyboard input apps: Dasher, Dvorak, GKOS, Hacker's, Messagease
• Handwritten text input app: MyScript Stylus
• Editor: Jota+
• Office apps: Kingsoft Office, OfficeSuite Pro 7.2
• File and task managers: ES File Manager, ES Task Manager
• Cloud file management: Dropbox (including offline access of files)
• Chromecast – YouTube
• Skype – audio only, video and audio
• E-book readers: Moon+ Pro (paid), EBookDroid (free), FBReader(free)
• Miscellaneous favorites: Stopwatch, Yukon Gold Solitaire
• Other interesting apps: Google My Tracks (GPS/mapping), Physics Toolbox (sensor, accelerometer readers), Autodesk Force Effect, Force Effect Motion, simulation of mechanical linkages
Contact Mark Diez for further info or if you have questions or suggestions.
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6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Other items on the agenda include pie to celebrate Pi day, PCIG elections and potentially a PCIG future discussion, and a request for March/April/May social ideas.
Lunch: Thursday February 20th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday February 13th, 2014
Matt Bruzek will present on Juju.
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Juju is an open source cloud orchestration tool that allows you to configure, manage and deploy on a public or private cloud environments. The presentation will describe what Juju does and what Charms are, and a live demo of the tools.
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A copy of Matt's slides are here.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Saturday February 1st
As a part of Rochester's WinterFest, there's free admission and a free snow globe making session at the Art Center (which is on the south side of the Civic Center downtown).
Meet at 12:30 at the Rochester Art Center. Saturday February 1st.
The admission to exhibits is open and free from 10-5. The snow globe making activity runs from 1-4. So those who want to participate in snow globes will have a half an hour to browse the exhibits before showing up for the first round of instructions at 1 pm, in the 3rd floor studios. Anyone wanting to avoid snow globes can continue to browse the exhibits. I'm having a hard time with the exhibit schedule on the art center's website, as it looks like most of the current exhibits ended recently and they haven't updated their website with what's new. So if what they're exhibiting matters to you, keep an eye on their website or give them a call, and let the rest of us know what you find out.
Lunch: Thursday January 16th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Social: Saturday January 11th, 2014
We're off to the Children's Museum! The one here in Rochester, so no need for a big trip. Event 10 am - __, with plans to stay at least through 11:30 for the 11-11:30 special event physical activity since the kids need to burn off some extra energy.
Always felt too awkward to go to a Children's Museum without a kid of your own in tow, or your kids were "too old" to want to be used that way? Come hang out with the group, and feel better that at least some of us are bringing kids. Do be aware that the MCM-Rochester's policy on adults attending without kids is that you will be required to show photo ID.
$5.50/person for ages >=1. $1 discount with proof of AAA or AARP membership, or military ID.
1643 North Broadway Street, Suite A
River Center Plaza
Rochester, MN 55906
That's across the street from Silver Lake Foods, in the same strip mall as La Fiesta, and across the parking lot from Wendy's.
Afterwards, anyone interested can walk next door for lunch at Kingdom Buffet (Chinese). Prices here: http://www.kingdombuffetofrochester.com/rochester-mn-chinese-buffet.htm Their re-designed website doesn't seem to have the discount coupon any more, let me know if you spot one.
Technical Meeting: Thursday January 9th, 2014
Kyle Jervis will talk to us about bitcoin, including a lot of time for Q&A.
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Bitcoin is decentralized peer to peer money. There will be a brief overview of the system in the context of previous electronic money systems and show how bitcoin solves the problems encountered by them. There will also be a technical introduction to the inner workings of the system (cryptography, network, transactions, scripts, etc.) The remainder of the session will be Q&A/discussion. Questions on virtually any bitcoin-related topic are welcome.
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Here are the slides from his presentation.
6 pm, in or near RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Also on the agenda: The annual K-LUG coup attempt (ie officer elections), and round 1 of PCIG officer nominations. Anything else you want to see on the agenda? Let Tim or Tina know.
I'm sure we'll have something eventually.... ;)
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