OldNews2012
Technical Meeting/Social: Thursday December 13th
December is too chaotic for hosting both a technical meeting and a social, so we'll do something geeky. K-LUG and PCIG will go hang out at Hobby Goblins for board and card games. Bring yours if you have some to share, they'll also have a few of the personal games of the staff available to introduce us to.
We'll list an official start time of 6 pm since that's the time of our normal technical meeting, but you're welcome to show up early if you want. And while they officially close at 8 if the store is unpopulated, they said if we're playing nice we can plan to stay until 9.
We're allowed to bring (or order in) food, and beverages. We'll take up a monetary collection towards pizza, and order at ~6:15, don't be late if you want in on the food. Some pop (in re-sealable containers) will be provided. If you bring your own beverage, please do so in resealable containers. Treat contributions are welcome, please be considerate of food that won't damage the games (directly or by making for very messy hands).
But note you've actually got to turn north on East River Road NE before making an immediate left into their parking lot (they share lots with Little Bob's Auto Body Center).
"November" Social: Thursday December 6th
Helping ABC with their computer distrubtions for kids. Normally we'd be more involved in the back room parts earlier in the process doing refurbishment installs etc, but that's the help they need this evening.
5:30-7:30 pm.
They'll be doing set-up, individualized assistance, and strike. The event officially runs 6-7 pm, that first half hour is needed for orientation, the set-up, etc, so please be approximately on time.
Where : ABC building near main post office
1911 14th Street Northwest Rochester, MN 55901
Lunch: Thursday November 15th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday November 8th
Mike Fallenstein has arranged with BestBuy for a BestBuy rep (Luke Mattheisen) to come talk to us. He will talk and demo mobile phones, including probably the iPhone 5 , the new Windows 8 phone, and the new Blackberry.
I'm sorry to announce we've had a LAST MINUTE change in agenda for tonight's K-LUG meeting. Our BestBuy mobile phones rep is not available, nor was he able to get a replacement from among his colleagues. We didn't have any other speakers with finished presentations waiting in the wings, so we're going to go with a hodge-podge.
We'll have socials brainstorming, volunteer requests, discussion of options for the PCIG website, brainstorming on hacker/Maker space, updates on Shapeways and other 3D printing, and whatever else you want as discussion topics. If we're feeling like we need a more technical topic or the other "stuff" has wrapped up quickly, we can round-robin a discussion of our favorite phone/tablet apps. Yes, there will still be treats.
Hopefully we can get the mobile phones speaker rescheduled to sometime early next year.
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Saturday October 27th
Pumpking Tossing at Gamehaven Scout Camp. Based on last year's experience, I suggest a 10 am start time (full schedule is in one of the links below). If we don't get the timing right, we'll take a walk before/after along the nice trail there (some geocaches there, if you don't already have them).
Details are here:
http://www.gamehavenbsa.org/news.php
http://www.gamehavenbsa.org/documents/2012PumpkinChuckinRulesReg.pdf
http://www.gamehavenbsa.org/documents/2012PumpkinChuckinHandbill.pdf
Lunch: Thursday October 18th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Social: Saturday October 13th
Photowalk at Oxbow/Zollman Zoo, led by Jon T. Followed by lunch aftewards for those interested. The full details are here, but here are some key details:
-10 am - bear feeding at the zoo
-11 am - a hawk or owl will be brought out of the cages for closer seeing/photographing without bars.
-A walk on some of the park trails will follow. People may go out to lunch together afterwards (Mantorville's Hubbell House?).
This is not a dog-friendly event, as they are not welcome at the zoo nor on the trails.
Technical Meeting: Thursday October 11th
Mike Fallenstein has arranged with BestBuy for a BestBuy rep (Colin O'Driscoll) to come talk to us. He will talk and demo about tablets. For those of you wondering what happened to the other mobile items (phone), that's been pushed back to November because they believe they have a full 1.5 hours of presentation easily on each topic.
Colin's BestBuy title: Apple Expert, Tablet & PC Specialist
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Sunday October 7th
Wander the corn maze at Northwoods Orchard, just outside of Douglas. $5 for the adults and "older" kids for the larger corn maze, $3.50 for "younger" kids in the little corn maze (1 adult can follow the kid around for free), and coming back from the adult corn maze you can sometimes grab a short tractor ride for free ($1.50 for the full farm tour). You can also purchase apples, gourds, pumpkins, etc, if you needed some fall supplies, and there's a small animal farm to entertain the kids with too. Yes, bring your friends and family. The kids maze takes ~15 minutes, the adults maze ~1 hour.
1:30 pm start time, to hopefully give everyone time to finish with their church obligations and not show up with an empty tummy.
Directions are here, in general coming from Rochester that's
Valleyhigh Dr. NW (County Road 4) toward Byron;
North on County Road 3 to Douglas;
West 1/2 mile
North on 75th Ave. NW
Lunch: Thursday September 20th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Planned Social: September TBD
Due to scheduling, we're the counting post-technical meeting disk golf as our September social. There will be many socials in October, please join us for one.
Technical Meeting + Disc Golf: Thursday September 13th
BestBuy had to bow out. Our substitute is Jon G on Perl. This is planned to be a short presentation, followed by anyone interested heading over to East Park (walk) or RCTC's main campus by the sports stadium (very short drive) to play disc golf.
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social #2: Friday August 24th
6 pm. Skyline Raceway for miniature golf. $5/person, cash only. They also have gokarts and "panning".
Social #1: Sunday August 12th Thursday August 16th
Rockets and kites!
Noon. Rescheduled due to rain to Thursday August 16th, 6 pm
At the Century High School field, on the north side of the building.
Bring your rockets and your kites, your family and friends. Kevin Arhleger has volunteered to be our Launch Master again. Rockets if it's not windy, kites if it is - last year we managed to skirt the line and do both, this spring it was rockets only.
Details from the Launch Master:
Rain, tornado warnings, acts of god (frogs, locusts, etc.) are all cause for cancellation.
I'll play it by ear for rockets, if the wind speed is above 15mph our field won't be big enough.
If you have a rocket make sure to have:
- rocket engine, smaller is better--our biggest launch took half a mile to come down I recommend A and B engines if you want your rocket back
- igniter
- wadding, most engine packs come with it (look for the ones that do)--this helps prevent your parachute cord from melting mid flight
- Hobby Lobby sells rockets (kits and complete rockets) as well as engines. They're not open on Sundays. Tim volunteered: There is a [http://www.hobbylobby.com/weekly/coupon.cfm 40% off coupon] at Hobby Lobby in case anyone needs a new Millennium Falcon, antimatter fuel, e10 engine or something
- Everything Hobby has a wider selection of engines as well as igniters and wadding if you have old engines you would like to use. They're also not open on Sundays.
Lunch: Thursday August 16th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday August 9th
Kevin A will present on DEF CON.
DEF CON is one of the oldest continuous running hacker conventions around, and also one of the largest. Kevin has attended several times and just got back from this year, he's eager to share his experiences. He says this year (DEFCON 20) was the biggest ever! At his presentation, he will talk about the conference, and computer security in general. Questions will be welcome, come prepared.
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Thursday July 26th
Disc golf! 6 pm 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.
Lunch: Thursday July 19th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday July 12th
Robert Nix will present on Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer...very low cost $25 or $35, HD output, USB connections or keyboard. GPIO input...We'll have a couple systems on hand to demo and inspect (Debian and XBMC). See more at http://www.raspberrypi.org or see it in person Thursday!
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
And here are Robert's slides
Lunch: Thursday June 21st
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Planned Technical Meeting: June TBD
Speaker needed, please let Tim or Tina 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.
No presenter stepped forward, so we'll have a social instead.
Social: Thursday June 15th
Replacing our speakerless technical meeting with a social. Standard day and time (Thursday June 15th, 6 pm), at Skyline Raceway for miniature golf. $5/person, cash only. They also have gokarts and "panning".
Lunch: Thursday May 17th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday May 10th
Acu Ilie Dorin will return with a presentation on Bioinformatics.
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Acu provided this summary.
Title: Open Source Based Applied Bioinformatics
Presenter: Acu Ilie Dorin Ph.D.
Summary:
Aproximately two hundred billion cells divide daily to ensure tissue replacemet and turnover essential for our health and longevity. The division and function of each of ~ 6 X10^13 cells that make our body, are carefully and tightly regulated through intricate and redundant signaling networking. However, due to inherent genetic and/or environmental factors, the basal rate of biochemical and cellular aberations increases, and leads to aging, disease and death. Today's clinical practice and biomedical research generates unprecedented amount of potential valuable data, to be used in discovery, innovation or medicine. Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field whereby biology, medicine, computer science, mathematics and statistics are integrated with the sole purpose to bring rhyme, reason, meaning and functional context to the newly generated data, which can then be integrated into models and practice for an optimal life style or personalized medicine.
Using Debian GNU/Linux as main operating system, I am going to present a brief practical overview of few major Open Source bioinformatics applications such as EMBOSS (European Molecular Biology Open Source Software - in-silico gene and protein processing, MEV (microarray gene profiling), ImageJ quantification and analysis of 2 and 3D images) and Pymol: biomolecular crystal structure analysis(Pymol) and others. For more informations you can visit http://www.acucorporation.com/index.php/Training/Applied-Bioinformatics
Social: Sunday May 6th
Kites + Rockets
1 pm at the Century High School field, on the north side of the building. Bring your rockets and your kites, your family and friends. Kevin Arhleger has volunteered to be our Launch Master again. Rockets if it's not windy, kites if it is, last year we managed to skirt the line and do both.
Details from the Launch Master:
Rain, tornado warnings, acts of god (frogs, locusts, etc.) are all cause for cancellation.
I'll play it by ear for rockets, if the wind speed is above 15mph our field won't be big enough.
If you have a rocket make sure to have:
- rocket engine, smaller is better--our biggest launch took half a mile to come down I recommend A and B engines if you want your rocket back
- igniter
- wadding, most engine packs come with it (look for the ones that do)--this helps prevent your parachute cord from melting mid flight
- Hobby Lobby sells rockets (kits and complete rockets) as well as engines.
- Everything Hobby has a wider selection of engines as well as igniters and wadding if you have old engines you would like to use.
Social: Thursday April 26th
Disc golf! 6 pm 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.
Lunch: Thursday April 19th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday April 12th
Tim Massaro will present on 3D printing.
"Fun with 3D Printing, Shapeways.com
Remember the replicator from Star Trek where personnel could press a button and out would pop food, spare starship parts or other everyday objects? Well technology is not ready yet to allow us to manipulate molecular structure at this level, but 3D Printing is the next best thing. 3D printing involves using a machine that looks like a proprinter on steroids, the machine takes a design file and through an additive process builds a three dimensional object. 3D printing is now accessible enough so that nearly anyone can design a 3D object using drawing software such as Google Sketchup, upload the design to a site like Shapeways.com, submit credit card information and receive a physical 3D copy of their design in the mail. I know because I recently took the time to do just that. This month, come learn a bit about 3D printing and have a look at my first creation, a Caesar Cipher Decoder Ring."
6 pm, RCTC Heintz Center's HA107.
Social: Thursday March 30th
Disc golf! 6 pm at RCTC. If you don't have your own disc that's fine, but it helps if you let us know in advance if you'll need to borrow one.
Lunch: Thursday March 15th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: Thursday March 8th
We'll be field tripping to the Premier Bank building downtown, for a presentation on KVM. The details:
Open Source Virtualization and Cloud Computing with KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)
PRESENTER: Acu Ilie Dorin Ph.D.
TIME : Thursday 8 March 6:00 PM
LOCATION:
ACU Corporation
421 First AVE SW Suite 305 - Rochester MN 55902
Third Floor on Premier Professional Building
Park Free (after 5:30 PM) on the Back of the Premier Bank Professional Building -
Enter on the Back Entrance Follow the Signs to ACU Corporation
Also, PCIG elections.
Social - Dinner and a Movie: Friday February 24th
We have some options.
If there's enough snow, there will be a cardboard sled challenge on Saturday February 4th, as part of WinterFest. This is being organized by Gamehaven Boy Scouts, we could spectate at Willow Creek Golf Course. This year's flier is available at http://www.gamehavenbsa.org/documents/CardboardSledChallengePoster2012.pdf . (Last year's flier is available here). It looks like 9:45 am would be a good time to arrive, to see the sleds before they are raced/demolished.
The Cardboard Sled Challenge was cancelled due to lack of snow.
Dinner at BB's Pizzaria at 6:15 pm. The exact movie schedule for Chateau (East Circle Drive, near Shopko N) isn't released yet, but there should be ~7-7:45 pm showings of various movies that are potentially of interest, including Ghost Rider and Star Wars Episode 1 (3D).
RSVP's to Tina for dinner would be appreciated so we know how big a table to get, although hopefully we've chosen a restaurant where if you suddenly find yourself in need of dinner and company on Friday night you can still join us. Reservations as of Friday midday are for 7 adults and 2 high chairs, under "Tina".
Lunch: Thursday February 16th
11:30 am, Apache Mall food court, near B&N.
Technical Meeting: February 9th
Matt Bruzek on BackTrack.
BackTrack is a Linux operating system that contains a unique collection of tools for security experts and penetration testers. The presentation will cover an overview of the system and some of its features.
-> When: Thursday February 9th - 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
-> Where: RCTC Heintz Center Room HA107
Also, PCIG nominations.
Lunch: Thursday January 19th
11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N.
Social: Friday January 13th
We'll be bowling at Byron Lanes. 7 pm. This is a family/friends-friendly event, hope to see you there.
Technical Meeting: Thursday January 12th
Our own Kevin Arhelger will reprise his 2008 presentation, telling us about Defcon 19 (2011).
Short demo by Lad Roering on Windows 8 (development version).
Also, K-LUG officer elections (president, vice president, treasurer) and PCIG nominations.