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Planned Lunch: Thursday December 21st

Meet up with those geeks who aren't or haven't yet left town for the holidays. 11:30 am, near the Chinese restaurant in the Galleria

New Years Eve party?

The idea has been brought up to have a party, somewhere, on New Years Eve. Suggestions (volunteers?) are needed for where to host this. Are you willing to volunteer your house? If you're willing to open your home we can definintely make it a potluck, you wouldn't be stuck providing food/beverages. Or do you know of a place that wouldn't be too packed? As of the November 21st page update, there was no positive response for this idea.

Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday January 11th

(Note the Plone meeting has been moved to February) K-LUG could use additional meeting topics, the PCIG topic for January is Paint Shop Pro, This is not a truly Linux topic, but given the amount of interest in Robert Nix's GIMP presentation I thought there might be interest in comparing/contrasting.

Planned Social: TBD, January

Some interest has been expressed in having an introduction to curling. Due to limited ice availability in the curling season, the hands on intro would have to be a weekend activity in January. You'd need to plan on at least half a day, since we'd have to go to Owatonna. Please let me know your interest level on this potential activity.

Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday February 8th

Plone by Eldon Nelson, with PCIG. Also, KLUG officer elections. Please submit your nominations for president, vice president, and treasurer to the email list prior to the day of the election. Self nominations are accepted.

Description of Plone:

Plone is a web based open source content management system (CMS) built off of the Python programming language. What do I need a content management system for? I'm not a book publisher or magazine; even though my glossy finish might make you think that way. The person that needs a content management system is every knowledge worker - which today, is everyone. We all need ways of managing the knowledge we work with and content types that are flexible to match the work we do. In the past, I've loved wiki for filling part of this role, but as I look at what wiki gets you it is not the whole picture. Sometimes, you need a tool chest instead of a hammer - this is where Plone fits in as your own secret tool chest.

What you get with Plone is a scalable, object oriented, pluggable system that handles all of your content management needs. Plone itself is actually a collection of plugins that give you the code to represent the objects that will eventually represent your data. So you might ask, on what is Plone built upon if it is just a collection of plugins? It is actually built off a very complete web framework for the Python scripting language named Zope. So yes, it is a collection of utilities from Python -> Zope -> Plone to get to the tool, but all of that hierarchy gives you a full framework to do everything and hooks and methods ready for your use.

With Plone you get rock solid access control that can be as granular as you want. You can integrate Plone plugins into your site to transform it to include seamlessly complex structures such as: bulletin boards, issue trackers, picture galleries, and more or use out of the box calendaring. Pretty much, Plone quickly, without the need for any coding, turns into your Swiss Army knife of web interactivity – all the while, maintaining a coherent look and feel and security of Plone.

During my Plone presentation I will be doing things a little differently than traditional KLUG or PCIG meetings. I’ll be showing part of my presentation through the use of screencasts to demonstrate activities that I have recorded before and edited into consumable nuggets of interest. I’ll also be using screencasts from the Plone.org website itself, so you may or may not want to watch their intro videos before you come – depending on how entertained you will be by them. I’ll be bringing some popcorn to keep you engaged – so look forward to a treat! Of course, a technical meeting isn’t any good without some hands on, in the dirt, demonstration. For that, I’ll be doing some live manipulation of Plone before your very eyes.

I hope you will enjoy this fun presentation.

Eldon Nelson ( eldon_nelson@ieee.org )

Plone http://www.plone.org

Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday March 8th

Second Life, with PCIG. Part of the presentation will be virtual, if you can't attend because you're home with the kids maybe you'd still want to tune in for that portion.

Old news

Technical Meeting: Tuesday December 12th

The December "technical" meeting (ie gaming) will be held at the standard day and time, Tuesday December 12th, 6 pm. Since things just don't seem to be panning out for gaming at Cinemagic or Chateau (more details will remain below), we're going with the old standby of Lounge51 (formerly Xgames).

Location: Lounge51, 115 North Broadway, this is next door to the Senior Center and just south of the railroad tracks. This is NOT the old Xgames location.

When: Tuesday December 12th, 6 pm. However they open at 10 am, so you're welcome to start earlier. Also, while Lounge51's posted closing time is 9 pm, if three or more people want to keep playing and they're paying hourly rates, Lounge51 stay open later.

Cost: $5/hour if a non-member. Other options are memberships or day passes. Snacking options: Pop, sugar, snack foods, basically anything that doesn't actually require a food license for them to sell.

Games available (and # of simultaneous players allowed): They have 24 computers. See http://lounge51.com/content/Games.aspx for a 6-12 month old list of games. Many more are now available. As far as licensing, that varies. Some games are available on every computer at once, and for those it's not available all at once it sounds like things are at least improved over Xgames' limitations. Examples I was given on the phone were:

-Age of Empires (version not specified), all machines

-Battlefield 2 - 10

-Counter Strike 1.6 - 6

-Counter Strike Source - 12

-Warcraft III - all machines

If there is a particular game you want to know about, I can call to ask. If there's a lot of interest in a particular game they don't currently have enough licenses for AND you are willing to pre-pay, they'd look into getting additional licenses for us. Besides computer games, they also have a big screen tv, with an Xbox, PS2, PS3, Gamecube, DDR pad, Guitar Hero, and lots of games to go with them.

I did try to look into other options. For future reference, I dug up the following information on several possibilities:

-computer gaming at Lounge 51 (formerly Xgames) with a charge per hour. Open to the public.

-Xbox gaming at Cinemagic, $6/half hour/person. At most 4 play at a time, and it sounds like only 1 room would be available. Open to the public.

-Xbox gaming at Chateau late at night with a per person charge ($25, but good for 6 months and includes other goodies) and at most 4 play at a time per room but multiple rooms would be available. Open to the public. Friday and Saturday nights, 9-11 pm on whiteboards, then 11 pm - 3 am in the theaters.

-Xbox gaming at Chateau with a room reservation fee ($35) with at most 4 play at a time

-free board and collectable card games at Chateau. Open to the public. Fridays starting at 8 pm.

All of these things except the one where we have to commit to paying a room reservation fee are things that are open to the public.

Social: Monday November 27th

Outside trail walking. Meet at Panera South by 6:30 pm, dress warm, prepare to walk ~1 hour 20 minutes with socializing and warming beverages at Panera afterwards. Don't be late or you won't catch up with us.

Lunch Meeting: Thursday November 16th

11:30 am near the Chinese restaurant in the Galleria. Discussion about December gaming options or desired social activities would be appreciated.

Technical Meeting: Swap Sale Thursday November 9th

Swap meet!! Buy/Sell/Trade - at this annual event, even the general public can bring computer / gadget related gear to sell or trade, or just come to browse for the bargins. Set-up will be at 6 pm, with an estimated swap start time of 6:15 pm. We also plan to have a truck available to recycle old equipment at a price of $0.35 a pound When: Thurs, Nov 9th 6pm Where: University Center Rochester Heintz Center in room HA108. Set-up will be at 6 pm, with an estimated swap start time of 6:15 pm. Location: RCTC room HA108 Attendance will include be members of PCIG, IBM Ham Radio Club, students from RCTC, and the general public.

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K-LUG Club members, we NEED YOUR HELP! How?

-Bring your stuff to sell/swap.

-Print and Show this Sale Flyer to friends

-Bring your computer stuff that needs to go to the recycling ($0.35/pound).

-Bring a bathroom scale that's accurate at low weight ranges, so we can figure out the appropriate recycling fee to charge.

-Bring your truck and be willing to take a load to the recycling during the recycling center's open hours (Mondays-Saturdays, 8-5). (Pat S. and Tim M.)

-Coordinate the pizza fundraiser, buy pizza and pop plus bring paper plates and disposable cups in quantities sufficient for those who show up. Will be reimbursed out of the profits from the fundraiser (charge is a donation). (Steve F. and Steve S.)

-Making some Ubuntu CDs to give away. (Dave Berg)

-Posting

Volunteers are needed to post to many locations. Please sign up to be the poster for the following (suggestions welcome):

-KLUG mailing list and wiki - Tina W.

-IBM calendar - Tim M.

-PCIG website - Tim M.

-Ham radio club - Tim M.

-Mayo classifieds - Pat S.

-Craigslist - Tim M.

-Rochester Freecycle (limited to free pick-up of non-swapped items headed for recycling at the end of the swap) - Steve F.

-UCR bulletin boards - in hard copy - Ren T.

-RCTC bulletin boards - in hard copy - Tim M. (I've made up something already, go here and print)

-Wherever else you can think of

Please RSVP for what tasks you can help with. If I haven't heard from anyone on a task, I'll have to start pestering people. This has got to be a group effort to be successful.

Mister House 2nd Opportunity: Monday October 30th

A second opportunity for you to see the Mister House presentation! 7 pm, directions are here.

Name	# of attendees
Robert Bleimeyer	3
José de Leon	1
Mark Diez	1
Bill Marshall	1
Joe Sedelmeyer	1
Mike Fallenstein	2

Social: Thursday October 26th

5:30 pm Frisbee golf at East Park. Weather-related cancellation will be announced around noon to email list and wiki if necessary.

6:30 pm Warming beverages and/or dinner at Whistle Binkies. You do not have to play frisbee golf to attend this portion, just meet us there. This will occur whether or not we have to cancel frisbee golf.

Lunch Meeting: Thursday October 19th

Come one, come all, at 11:30 am to the vicinity of the Chinese resturant in the Galleria food court.

Technical Meeting: Tuesday October 10th

Mister House - Home automation - road trip to a Rochester home being controlled by computers. We're limited to ~25 participants. If there are closer to 50, we might be able to split and have a second session. Please sign up, in order, below or email Tina to get added. Indicate if you could only attend if it were not the original October 10th date, you'd be at the head of the list if we had a second date. Some details on Mr House: http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/

Directions and map to Mister House can be found here.

Technical Meeting: Thursday, September 14th

Open source in Croatia, Croatian government. Guest speaker Vlatko Kosturjak, from Croatia, temporarily in the US. Room will be HA108, our new "permanent" location.

Wink has been postponed. Wink software used for making demos of new products. Records screen sessions and audio.

Old News Items

See the OldNews page.