OldNews
Slashdot 10yr Anniversary Party: Tuesday October 16th
October 16, 2007, 8 p.m. - 10 p.m.
West Fire Grill
2043 Superior Drive NW
Rochester, MN, US Host: grungewolf (1164849)
Technical Meeting: Flood Relief...Date Flexible
Location CompuSwap - (Near Whistle Binkies South)
The current proposal for our Oct meeting is that we dig in and help Steve Severson with a United Way Flood Relief Project. The recent flood in SE Minnesota meant that many victims lost their computers. The United Way Tech Team (and Steve) are coordinating a couple of hardware build parties to ready 200+ CompuSwap systems for deployment to people, nonprofits and schools throughout SE MN. K-Lug helped with this type of event after Katrina and it is actually a lot of fun! A little cleaning, a little installing of diskdrives and memory and a little boot testing.
We plan to volunteer during one or more of these time sessions
Wed, Oct 03, 2007 08:00 am to 12:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Wed, Oct 03, 2007 01:00 pm to 05:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Sat, Oct 13, 2007 09:00 am to 01:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Sat, Oct 27, 2007 09:00 am to 01:00 pm: (20 slots) [Register]
Social: Thursday October 4th
RoboRally and whatever other board/card games you wish to bring, so far we're also expecting Puerto Rico, Power Grid, and Munchkin. 6:30 pm, at Steve Fox's house (N 43° 59.263, W 092° 29.033, house number 1538). Consider bringing food/drink to share.
Social: Thursday September 27th
6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or bring a shoe to throw.
Lunch: Thursday September 20th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.
Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday September 13th
No presenter, no meeting.
Social: Tuesday September 11th
6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or bring a shoe to throw.
Lunch: Thursday August 16th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.
Technical Meeting: Thursday August 9th
UCR main campus, East Hall, room 119, 6pm
Wii, with PCIG. Hopefully two units will be present so lots of people can play.
Social: Geocaching and potluck, Saturday August 4th
Geocaching followed by potluck/picnic/ice cream. Come for either or both as your interest level and time allows. Many more details and the sign-up sheet can be found on the Social page.
Lunch: Thursday July 19th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.
"Technical" Meeting: Thursday July 12th
We're having a picnic and relaxing evening instead. See the Social Meetings page for more details and to sign up.
Social: Thursday June 14th and Tuesday June 26th
6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger, or throw shoes. We've learned the hard way that shoes are not very aerodynamic.
We're having highly organized events occuring for socials in July and August (paintball and geocaching+picnic, respectively), so we're sticking with low key for June.
Cancelled or rescheduled in the event of lightening or hail.
Lunch: Thursday June 21st
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.
Technical Meeting: Tuesday June 12th
UCR main campus, East Hall, room 102, 6pm
Steve Fox on LEGO Mindstorms NXT. Also, PCIG will be having their Thursday June 14th meeting on LEGO Mindstorms as well.
Still not back in the RCTC Heintz Center location. Instead we'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.
Social: Thursday May 17th and 24th
6:30 pm, East Park, for Frisbee golf. If you don't have a frisbee, you can probably borrow one from another K-LUGger.
Lunch: Thursday May 17th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court. Look for geeks sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it's a 30 minute walk.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 10th
UCR main campus, East Hall, room 102
Robert Nix (and Pat ___?) on running Linux on a different hardware platform. They will be showing us zVM, then doing a network install of SuSE.
Our meeting cannot be held at the normal RCTC location, due to asbestos removal closing down the whole building. We'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.
Social: Wednesday April 25th
6 pm, road clean up with a few members of the Ski Patrol. Oronoco - meet at County 18 and County 12, clean a section going north from there. Recommended items to bring: garbage bags, reflective clothes, work gloves.
Robo Rally will hopefully make an appearance in the future.
Logo Contest: Deciding on a printer and products
LogoPage The winning logo is Anon #1's green state shaped logo. We need you to look into finding printing locations, prices, and products available to print on. So far we have information on the following:
-local print shop such as Superior Screeners. Probably would require bulk order. More details needed, someone please do some research.
-Printfection, bulk discount information available here. This was the source of the blue K-LUG shirt Tim brought to the Second Life March meeting.
-www.cafepress.com. Probably slightly more expensive, but would not require a bulk order. We've been warned they won't look great. For items that can be printed on, see Cafe Press. Tim has already done some research, see the following pages: 1 , 2.
-Robert Nix has a source for weaving the logo into items such as afghans, pillows, tote bags. 70 x 54 inch woven blankets of the logo for $70 each.
-Nametags??
-Other products or sources you've done some research on?
Lunch: Thursday April 19th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court sort of near Barnes&Noble. If the weather is nice, people from downtown may choose to walk together to lunch, it is supposedly an ~15 minute walk.
Technical Meeting: Tuesday April 10th
UCR main campus, East Hall, room 121
Carl Albing will be presenting on bash. Carl is one of the co-authors of the O'Reilley book bash Cookbook. Topics will include: do we still need command line tools, a rapid fly-by of bash as a programming language, a few power-user features of bash, (time permitting) a short discussion of "so you want to write a technical book".
Our meeting cannot be held at the normal RCTC location, due to asbestos removal closing down the whole building. We'll be on the UCR main campus, which is south and east of the Heintz Center building. See directions to UCR, the general campus building layout, and the floor plan of East Hall.
Social: Bowling, Saturday March 24th
noon-2 pm. See the Social page for more details.
Technical Meeting: Thursday February 8th
Plone by Eldon Nelson, Combined meeting with PCIG.
When: Thursday, Feb 8th, 6pm
Where: University Center Rochester, Heinz Center in room HA108
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 )
Technical Meeting: Thursday January 11th
(Note the Plone meeting has been moved to February)
Paint Shop Pro by Tony Drumm, with PCIG. 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. 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.
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.
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.
CANCELLED Social: Saturday September 9th CANCELLED
Flatwater canoe trip down the Root River. See the SocialMeeting page. Please sign up by noon on Thursday.
Social: Wednesday August 23rd
Frisbee golf, 6:30 pm, East Park. Bring friends, bring frisbees.
Lunch: August 17th
11:30 am at the Galleria, near the Chinese restaurant.
Technical Meeting: Tuesday August 8th
We currently have no meeting topic. You can come to RCTC's HA104, find a janitor to open the room, and discuss whatever geeky topic crosses your mind. Or you can go to X-Games, although so far nobody has RSVP'd that they're going to be there. And/or, if you have IBM campus privledges, you can attend PCIG's presentation on VMware on Thursday August 10th.
Social: Thursday July 27
Join us for a round of shoe throwing at East Park, 6:30 pm. If people have better equipment to bring/share, we can hopefully upgrade from shoes to golf disks (if you missed the last social and are confused, we're playing frisbee golf). Lightening or hail, stay home. Otherwise we play rain or shine.
Lunch: July 20
Lunch, 11:30 in the Galleria food court, next to the Chinese restaurant. We will be inviting the Mayo open-source-discussion email list participants to attend as well.
Technical Meeting: Thursday July 13 **Note location change**
Ruby on Rails by Jose de Leon. Ruby is an open source scripting language and Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that makes developing web applications easy. Jose will demo an application he has written in Ruby on Rails and will discuss the International Rails Conference (http://railsconf.org/) he recently attended. This is a joint meeting with PCIG. Construction continues in the computer lab wing, so this meeting will occur in HA104.
Gimp Challenge I: due date: July 8
Now that we all are skilled in the art of "The Gimp", Chris, Kevin and I thought we should have some fun with it. The challenge is to pick your favorite two hated (or loved?) celebrites and Gimp together an image depicting a Celebrity Boxing style match. Who will it be? Gates vs Linus, Bush vs Clinton, Steve Fox vs The Gimp Circle Method? Start with one of the images suggested on the GimpChallenge Page or find/create your own. Images should be posted in gimp format (so we can see your tricks and techniques) and png format (cause we are lazy). Images are due July 8th so judging can occur prior to our meeting July 13th.
If you need an account to the wiki so you can post your picture, please send an email to the list. Include the user name you wish to have.
Lunch: June 15
Lunch, 11:30 in the Galleria food court, next to the Chinese restaurant.
Technical Meeting: Tuesday June 13 **Note location change**
Baring snowstorms or any other emergencies, Robert Nix will present on The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP). There is summer construction in the computer lab wing, so this meeting will occur in HA104.
Social: Tuesday June 6
Ice cream social to be held in a park near Steve Fox's, 7 pm. For more details and to sign up for the ice cream related item you'll bring, see the SocialMeeting page.
Lunch: May 18
Lunch, 11:30 in the Galleria food court, next to the Chinese restaurant. Look for geeks.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 11
Chris Abbey will present on SSH.
Lunch: April 20
Lunch, 11:30 in the Galleria food court, next to the Chinese restaurant.
Technical Meeting: Tuesday April 11
Dennis DeLoreme on his !Supercomputer Cluster.
Lunch: March 16
Lunch, 11:30 in the Galleria food court, next to the Chinese restaurant.
Technical Meeting: Thursday March 9
Due to a death in the family, there will be no GIMP presentation. Instead please bring topics for discussion.
To be rescheduled: Robert Nix's presentation on using Gimp, the image editor.
Technical Meeting: October 11th
Bob Techentin is giving a tcl/tk presentation. Minutes
Technical Meeting: September 9th
Luka Bajzer will be presenting the Ruby programming language. The first part of the presentation will focus on the history and features of the language, where to use it and where not to use it. The second (optional) portion of the presentation will be a more interactive format.
Technical Meeting: August 9th
Luka Bajzer will be presenting the Ruby programming language. The first part of the presentation will focus on the history and features of the language, where to use it and where not to use it. The second (optional) portion of the presentation will be a more interactive format. Reschedule due to bad weather.
Social Meeting: August 4th
We're going to X-Games (downtown Rochester on Broadway) to play some LAN games.
Challenge and Puzzler: Round 3
The third Linux Challenge and Puzzler has been posted. Tina Wood and John Steenbergen won the second round. Good luck!
Technical Meeting: July 14th
This will be a joint PCIG/K-LUG meeting. Gary Rolfs from PCIG will be presenting an introduction to Python programming.
Meeting Minutes Available
The meeting minutes that Kevin Neff has been kind enough to take have now been posted.
Presentation Available
Dennis DeLorme's LCD initialization and operation presentation is now available.
Challenge and Puzzler: Round 2
The second Linux Challenge and Puzzler has been posted. Tina Wood and Kevin Arhelger won the first round. Good luck!
Technical Meeting: June 14th
Dennis DeLorme will give a presentation on LCD initialization and operation.
Challenge and Puzzler: Round 1
The first Linux Challenge and Puzzler has been posted. Good luck!