OldNews
Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday August 11th
The August meeting will be a two subject meeting Mo Holahan will present Google Sketchup and how to create 3D buildings in Google Earth Tim Schumann will present info on Bitcoins and how his bitcoin server is making out. The meeting will be Thursday August 11th at 6pm
RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 1926 College View Road SE, Rochester, MN 55904
Here is the scoop on the Google Sketchup portion of the meeting:
Sketchup has become a popular 3D modeling program for everything from origami to professional architectural rendering. Currently available in free and pro versions from Google, the program has continued to evolve since its initial release in 2000 by @Last Software founders Brad Schell and Joe Esch. This presentation will focus on the free version 8. We'll introduce the basic geometry construction tools and demo features such as components, materials, styles, fog, shadows, scene animation, and the use of Ruby scripts to customize and extend Sketchup's capabilities. We'll visit Google's 3Dwarehouse to download models, and geo-locate a building on Google Earth. Whether you dream of turning your personal fabrication vision into a 3d prototype or just want to virtually rearrange your living room furniture, see if Sketchup might become a useful part of your toolset.
Lunch: Thursday July 24th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday July 14th
Speed Talks Something new for K-LUG, Speed Talks are a no preparation required, quick talk on a favorite App, Website, Hobby, Gadget, Upcoming Event or whatever currently has your interest. We'll limit the time to 5-10 minutes each and just open it to whoever has a topic to share. We'll have a pc hooked up to the projector, or you can bring your own if you like. This should work out well as we had a short similar session on favorite android apps after one of our recent meetings.
-> When: Thursday July 14th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 or nearby
Planned Social: June TBD
We ended up without one.
Lunch: Thursday June 16th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday June 9th
Andy Tolbert and Chris Lohfink.
Wireless Device Connectivity with ZigBee – An overview of the ZigBee specification and demonstration of using an XBee Module with an Arduino and a Digi Ethernet/XBee Gateway to interface with the Arduino from the Web. The demonstration will include examples of controlling the Arduino via XBee in addition to monitoring device state.
If you have any other agenda items, please submit them to Tim as he'll be running the meeting.
Disc Golf Social: Thursday May 19th, 6:30 pm
Disc Golf at UCR. This is a new course to us and we didn't find hole #1, so we're just going to meet outside of the UCR sports complex and near the football/lacrosse field, at the NE corner of the parking lot, see the map.
If the temporary holes have been removed due to the end of the school year we'll revert back to the East Park disc golf course, map.
If you haven't played before and would like to borrow a disc that's usually not a problem, although it helps if we know you're in that situation.
Lunch: Thursday May 19th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 12th
Our May meeting is scheduled to be information about a new robotics league starting up in Rochester. Rochester Tabletop Robotics League is a "tabletop" robotics, all the robots should therefore be small and relatively inexpensive. Peter Shabino will describe this league and even demo a quick and easy robot he built from a $9.99 Walmart remote controlled car. See his website.
If you have any other agenda items, please submit them to Tim as he'll be running the meeting.
-> When: Thursday May 12th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 or nearby
Lunch: Thursday April 21st
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Social/Service Opportunity: Tuesday April 19th (during Earth Week)
There will be an opportunity to participate in Rochester's Litter Bit Better. By doing trash clean up in coordination with LBB, the trash bags and hauling of trash are taken care of for us, we only have to actually put the junk and the recycling in the appropriate bags. Family and friends are welcome, this activity will also advertised to groups such as geocachers and the mentoring organization of Bolder Options. Talk to Tina for more details.
6:30 pm at Zumbro West Park, it's area 422 on this map. Here's the geocaching.com posting.
Social: Sunday April 17th, 2 pm
Rockets + kites! That way we can play if there's no wind, lots of wind, basically anything other than a rain/snow storm. This'll be at 2 pm, at Century High School in their field.
Technical Meeting: Thursday April 14th
Brent Vrieze will present a demo of Asterisk PBX software, using third party software requiring little manual configuring. He's provided the following description:
"PBX in a Flash (PiaF) is an easy to install (super easy) Asterisk distribution that can be set up in an afternoon on either a virtual machine or an old beige box collecting dust. Asterisk is an open source PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone system that PBX in a Flash puts a web based GUI of there the top of to make management and upgrading extremely easy in comparison to 2 years ago.
If time permits I will show you an add on package to PiaF called Incredible PBX that using some free SIP phone providers and Google Voice will give you FREE, as in beer, phone service with a local number to anywhere in the US and Canada."
-> When: Thursday April 14th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 or nearby
Planned Social: March TBD
Recent suggestions include:
-Artemis, a multiplayer spaceship bridge simulator for Windows
-SOLAR DEATH RAY!!! to burn stuff, like this.
But nobody's stepped up to lead these, let Tina know if you're willing to organize.
Lunch: Thursday March 17th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday March 10th
Dennis DeLorme will present on a paper tape reader.
"Want to move those 100's of bytes of data you put on paper tape back in
your misspent youth to 21st century media? (Any time spent with paper
tape was misspent.) Bring your paper tape and a flash drive to the K-LUG
tape fest On March 10. I will briefly describe the set up and then will
be ready to do transfers. I can transfer data as hex, binary, or binary
with the parity bit ignored. For 7 bit character data binary with parity
bit ignored is probably the preferred method."
Also:
-PCIG final nominations and elections
-Girl Scout cookies and pi/pie in an early celebration of pi day
-Jon T will bring his hacked pandigital Android ereader for a show and tell afterwards (no demo, just to show off)
-> When: Thursday March 10th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 or nearby
Also, if you won't be attending the school district's only date/time for community input sessions on their superintendent search (same day at 7 pm), you can still contribute to the local school district by filling out their superintendent search survey by Thursday. Why can't you do both the input session and K-LUG? You can, if you leave K-LUG early, sessions are:
What: Community input sessions for new Rochester superintendent
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Where: Gibbs Elementary School, 5525 56th St. N.W. OR Kellogg Middle School, 503 17th St. N.E. OR Willow Creek Middle School, 2425 11th Ave. S.E.
Social: Thursday February 24th
We'll be viewing the Linux documentary "Revolution OS". It runs ~1.5 hours, so we'll start at 6 pm. RCTC's Heintz Center, in or near our normal meeting room HA107. To try to make this a more "movie-like" atmosphere, please bring your own (non-alcoholic) beverage if you wish, and a quiet snack to share.
Lunch: Thursday February 17th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday February 10th
Steve Severson has volunteered to present on Android apps at IBM and/or rooting an Android.
-> When: Thursday February 10th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107 or nearby
Social: Friday January 28th
We'll be bowling at Byron Lanes. Please try to be there at 6:45 so we can get through the ball/shoe obtainment process and hopefully figure out if we need any more/less lanes before it gets too crowded. Our reservation is for 7 pm, we've got 2 lanes at the moment.
Costs for bowling are $2/person/game, with shoe rental being $1. They have a full bar, and on Fridays they also serve pizza, if anyone is interested in a snack before or after the games.
This is a family/friends-friendly event, please let Tina know if you have young children coming so we can ask in advance for a bumper lane to be set up if necessary.
Lunch: Thursday January 20th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
"Technical Meeting": Thursday January 13th, 6:00 pm
Next Meeting - Dennis DeLorme ZigBee Protocol and XBee wireless Communication modules demo.
-> When: Thursday January 13th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA109
Room HA107 (or HA109 depending on construction issues)
Also Elections! Please submit your nominations for president, vice president, and treasurer.
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