From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Jan 1 20:46:12 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 20:46:12 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: LaTeX (NOTE new location) Message-ID: <20100102014612.GC10810@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> NOTE: This month's meeting will be held at St. John's Kitchen in Kitchener. There are some important details you need to know about this location, so please look at the location information at the bottom of this e-mail. It looks like our meeting locations will be in flux over the next few months, so be sure to check where each meeting will be held (either on the website or in these announcements). You'll certainly will want to have the right location information in mind this month, because January's meeting is all about the pleasures of LaTeX. Specifically, LaTeX is a "word processing programming language". It allows you to write your documents using structural markup, but permits you to fine-tune typesetting precisely when required. Its ability to typeset complicated mathematics effectively made LaTeX a big hit in the physics, computer science and mathematics academic communities, but it has since been extended in many ways. You can now use LaTeX to typeset chess games, KWLUG presentation slides, crossword puzzles, and many other kinds of documents. Kyle Spaans will show us some of the basics and help us discover its richness. Also at the meeting we will be spending some time introducing another possible home for KWLUG: First United Church. This month's FLOSS Fund candidate is Project Gutenberg, which has been providing e-books of public domain texts for 39 years now. They have released over 2 million free (as in freedom) e-books that are used around the world. See http://www.gutenberg.org for more information. If you would like to contribute but can't make the meeting, please contact me and we'll make connections. In other news, Rob Day may be teaching the following course in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Administration in March: http://www.novell.com/training/courseware/ts_proj_info.jsp?pid=29884 He is gathering prospective students now. If your corporation is looking for Linux training, contact Rob via his website at http://crashcourse.ca . As you may have noticed, Raul Suarez has been blogging on the KWLUG website about the different aspects of his remote connections presentation last month. Check it out on kwlug.org . If you are new to Twitter (or other microblogging services like identi.ca) and would like to learn how to use it effectively, you might be interested in a workshop being held on January 23. For more information and to RSVP, see http://ideastransform.ning.com/events/practically-speaking-using . John Kerr is putting together a physical newsletter about Linux and Free Software. He hopes to distribute these to coffee shops, dentists offices, and other places where people might pick them up and become interested in Linux. If you would like to participate in this effort, contact John at his rogers.com address, username jkerr0102 . Location Information -------------------- This month's meeting will be held at St John' Kitchen in Kitchener: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street N (at the corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener There are some maps and photos (which show the proper side entrance to use) here: http://kwlug.org/node/709 Doors will open around 6:30pm or so. As I mentioned before, for security reasons we have to lock the doors at about 7:15pm. However, if you come later you will still be able to enter: there will be a sign on the door with a phone number you can call. There should also be a working doorbell -- it is better to use that than to skip the meeting, but because of the disruption calling the phone number is preferable. There are a small number of parking spots (the parking for the Worth a Second Look thrift store, which is in the same building). There is also a pay lot diagonally across the intersection at the VIA rail station. There is plenty of bicycle parking onsite, if you are brave/insane enough to cycle in January. The GRT bus #18 stops at Victoria and Weber, and the site is not too far (maybe 10-15 minutes walking) from Victoria and King (which is serviced by the #7) or even the Kitchener transit terminal. If you have any other questions about the location please e-mail me. - Paul From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jan 30 01:30:46 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:30:46 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Automated Installation (NOTE LOCATION) Message-ID: <20100130063046.GF15998@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> NOTE: This meeting will again be held at St John's Kitchen. See the bottom of this e-mail or http://kwlug.org/node/709 for more information. Well, it's 2010 now. Although some of us despair to live in The Future, I guess it is not all bad. We have video-phones now, and vacuum-bots, TVs that are as flat as watercolour paintings, slidewalks, food pills and jetpacks. Sometimes The Future feels more like Neuromancer than the Jetsons, it is good to know that at least some of us are living the dream. While the rest of us struggle with Linux installs like it is 1999, Eric Gerlach deploys new servers by plugging them in and pressing a button. Six minutes later, he has a spanking new machine ready for his number-crunching infrastructure. In this month's KWLUG meeting Eric will show us the magic behind the curtain. He will talk about PXE booting, Debian/Ubuntu preseeding, fast local mirrors -- everything you need in order to configure your own production-line. Along the way you are sure to learn a thing or three about how Linux installers really work. This presentation starts at 7pm. This month's FLOSS Fund nominee is Linux Mint, a distro which attempts to build a distribution that is even more polished and easy-to-use than Ubuntu. To learn more visit http://www.linuxmint.com . If you would like to donate but cannot make the meeting get in touch with me and I will contact the Secret Cabal. Speaking of which, did you know that in The Future people talk directly with space satellites? These bold adventurers have harnessed the power of Space to beam location information to their commlinks. Then they make maps with the data. You too can live in The Future this Wednesday, if you visit http://www.meetup.com/Waterloo-OSM/calendar/12427012/ and sign up. Here is the meeting location! St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener We hope to have the doors open at around 6:30pm if we don't get double-booked again. For security reasons we have to lock the door at around 7:15pm or so; after that time there will be a number you can call or a doorbell you can ring -- look for a sign on the door. There are pictures, maps, and parking information about the site at http://kwlug.org/node/709 , including a picture of which door to use. - Paul From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Feb 27 20:47:34 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:47:34 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Regular Expressions Message-ID: <20100228014734.GE27961@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> NOTE: This meeting will be held at St. John's Kitchen. See http://kwlug.org/node/709 for directions. You know how it goes. Instead of getting your meeting announcement done you're chasing samsara, surfing through singles ads and source code, when this line hits you like a curling rock to the gut: 1,$s/\(\p\+\) \(\S\+@\S\+)/<\2> "\1"/cg A few minutes later you get pummelled by re.search(r"\d{2}/\w{3}/\d{4}", l) or maybe m/^m*(d?{0,3}|c[dm])(|?x{0,3}|x[lc])(v?i{0,3}|i[vx])$/i "Toto," you say. "I don't think we're on match.com anymore." Or so you think. Once you start spending time with scripting languages like Perl or Python, command-line utilities like grep, or even text editors like vim, you'll find yourself running into such expressions regularly. They are a valuable tool, and at this month's KWLUG meeting master matchmaker John van Ostrand will reveal their mysteries. This presentation will start at 7pm. This month's FLOSS Fund nominee is the OpenBSD project. Although this is not strictly a Linux project, OpenBSD has probably made significant contributions to your distribution. In addition to OpenSSH, OpenBSD also conducts code audits that help make all kinds of software components more secure. If you would like to contribute to this month's nominee but cannot make the meeting, contact me and we can make arrangements. In certification news, John van Ostrand is looking to make a few more matches -- he is looking for people interested in writing Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certifications. If he gets enough interest, he will arrange for an examination date to be held locally. You can find out more about the LPI certifications here: http://www.lpi.org/eng/certification/the_lpic_program If you are interested you can contact me or talk with John directly: john at the domain netdirect.ca . This meeting will again be held at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener There are helpful pictures, somewhat helpful maps and parking information on the KWLUG website: http://kwlug.org/node/709 . Once again we will have to lock the doors by 7:20pm or so, but if you come later there will be a doorbell to ring and/or a cellphone number to call. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Apr 10 15:37:31 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:37:31 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: KVM, Qemu, libvirt Message-ID: <20100410193731.GB23076@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Whoops! The month is almost half-over and we almost forgot to have our meeting! Some people would have been fine with replacing our meeting with a webcast, Second Life session or chatroom chat, but I am not one of them -- face to face shindigs have qualities that are not so easily virtualized away. No doubt I am a dinosaur, though: the hot computer trend these days is to virtualize everything: desktops, servers, even network switches. So when you hear about KVM and virtualization, you might be forgiven for wondering why we would want to virtualize Keyboard-Video-Mouse switches, and why we would have an entire meeting around KVM switches. Have we finally gone too far? Probably, but in this context KVM does not refer to hardware, but another virtualization solution like VMware, VirtualBox, or Xen. Like these other products, KVM (along with its friends Qemu and libvirt) allow you to create virtual machine so you can run many instances of your favourite (and not-so-favourite) operating systems at the same time. Unlike some of the alternatives, KVM is completely open source, ships in the Linux kernel, is relatively small, relatively easy to use and does not require custom guest binaries to run. Chris Irwin likes it, which is why he will be telling us all about it this Monday, starting at 7pm. This presentation will be friendly to those completely new to virtualization as well as those who may have experience with other virtualization platforms. In other news, there's a new site that is trying to list all tech events in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph (good luck). That site is http://watcamp.com , and it does have quite a few good events. In router news our very own Richard Weait will be giving a talk on "Hacking Your Wireless Router" for the WWITPro group on Monday, April 26 at 7pm. The event is free but requires registration: http://www.wwitpro.com Rumour has it that the evil geniuses at KWartzlab are holding a release party for Ubuntu 10.04 . Details are sketchy but it looks like the shindig will be May 1. See http://kwartzlab.ca/events/2010-05-01/lucid-lynx-release-party for details. We have a topic request for kernel compilation. If you are interested in doing this topic (maybe a 20 minute intro in June? Otherwise a longer presentation) then please get in touch. I'm sure there's more but it is sunny out and I want to go look at pictures of sunshine on my computer. So why don't I tell you that this month's meeting will again be held at St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N Kitchener (at Victoria and Weber) There is some free parking at the "Worth A Second Look" thrift store parking lot. There are maps and pictures on the website. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Apr 30 22:51:13 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:51:13 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: MySQL sequel! Squeal! Message-ID: <20100501025112.GB7923@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> I suppose it's possible that you have never used MySQL. Maybe you have never used the Internet before, and somebody handed this meeting announcement on a printout. Certainly you have never visited the KWLUG website. Certainly you did not attend Khalid's excellent talk on the LAMP stack in July. But I suppose it's possible you have never used MySQL. What's that, Marigold? You have used MySQL as a user, but never have developed or administrated it in any serious way? Then you are in much better company. It's a good thing we have Khalid around to show us the ins and outs of MySQL databases. In this anticipated conclusion to his LAMP trilogy, he will go into some detail about both technical (setting up tables, different engines, backup and replication of databases) and social (oh no! Oracle bought Sun!) aspects of this incredibly popular database. If you want to understand this widely-deployed open source infrastructure a bit better, this month's presentation is for you. As usual, it will begin at 7pm. I have some sad news on the FLOSS Fund front: this month's nominee is OpenStreetMap. That's not the sad part, though. OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org) is a widely loved project in KWLUG land, and its efforts to produce a quickly-updatable, freely-available map has been appreciated in many corners (including Haiti during the earthquake relief effort). The sad part is that the FLOSS Fund is on its last nominee, and it needs your help in replenishing its stock of worthy FLOSS projects. If you have a project to nominate you can post it to the kwlug-disc list, post it on the website or mail it to me. You can also mail me if you would like to contribute to the OpenStreetMap donation, and I will get you in touch with the Powers That Be. If you are a fan of Ubuntu and/or cake you might be interested in this next bit of news: the long-term release of Ubuntu (nicknamed Lucid Lynx) was released this week, and the Waterloo Region Ubuntu LoCo team is so happy that they are throwing a big party. The party is Saturday, May 1 (oh no! that's today!) at 5pm at KWartzlab. See more information here: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/81/detail/ Once again, our meeting will be held at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener Empirical studies have demonstrated that there is sufficient car parking in the thrift store (Worth a Second Look) parking lot. There is also plenty of bike parking along the wall. And there are maps and photos of the site on http://www.kwlug.org , a website which you can access by asking that friend who gave you this printout for help. - Paul P.S. Setup helpers are always welcome to help get the room in order before the meeting. We try to be at the location by 6:30pm for setup. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Jun 4 20:53:48 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 20:53:48 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Compiling Kernels, Choosing Distros, DSL wiring, Screen Message-ID: <20100605005348.GA27296@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Clearly, the world is going crazy. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Strawberries in May. Catastrophic offshore oil leaks. The list goes on and on. This month, we at KWLUG have joined the crazy parade. This month's meeting features not one, not two, but FOUR presentations to blow your mind: - Rob Day will show us how to compile a kernel. - John van Ostrand will explain how to work with telephone wiring with respect to DSL internet. - Richard Weait will answer the question: "What Linux Distro Should I Use?" - I will show off GNU Screen, which can make your command-line life less painful. And if that wasn't crazy enough, we have a FLOSS Fund nominee this month! It is called gPodder, and it's a pretty slick program for downloading podcasts. After the nominee was announced I switched to it for all my podcasting needs, and I'm a convert. See http://gpodder.org for more info, and get in touch with me if you won't be at the meeting but would like to contribute to the donation. Speaking of insanity, we've been trying to expand our help options at the LUG. In particular, we would like to make it easier for new Linux users to get help with their problems. With that in mind we have created a brand new mailing list (kwlug-help) and a resource page on the KWLUG website (http://kwlug.org/gethelp ). If you have been finding yourself stuck and/or overwhelmed by the traffic on our other discussion list, this may be a resource for you. People are nice on the new list, and they promise not to call you crazy or dumb if you don't phrase your question perfectly. Also speaking of insanity, our federal government has taken advantage of the nice summer weather to slip a new copyright act called Bill C-32 into parliament while we are enjoying our vacations. See http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/crp-prda.nsf/eng/home for the official government position, http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5086/135/ for Univerity of Ottawa professor Michael Geist's analysis, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1RDyN7JTg for a YouTube video that shows some of the reasons copyright matters (but note that this video was created in response to the last iteration of this bill, C-61). Amongst other things, it looks like this new bill will make it effectively illegal to play DVDs using open source software. Despite the "format-shifting" provisions, you won't be able to legally transfer a DVD to your video iPod either. If you are interested in taking action around this issue, you can contact me and I will get you in touch with some KWLUG members who are organizing around this bill. There is also lots (and lots and lots and lots) of discussion about this on the kwlug-disc mailing list. (Of course, you can study the bill on your own and write a response to your MP as well.) On a lighter note, I wanted to plug a rather crazy series of talks being hosted by KWartzlab: 5+5 talks, version 2. This is a series of 5 minute talks by a number of local artists and makers. It will be held Tuesday June 29 at KWartzlab, starting at 7pm. See http://kwartzlab.ca/events/2010-06-29/55-v2 for more information. Here's our totally sane meeting space for this month's: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener There's car parking at the Worth a Second Look parking lot, and bike parking at the side of the building. Crazy! - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jul 3 04:30:48 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2010 04:30:48 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: git! Message-ID: <20100703083048.GI1713@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Stop me if you've heard this one before: once upon a time, a bright youngi[0] Finnish programmer defies expectations and good sense by deciding to write a major piece of software from scratch. He writes it, humbly names it after himself[1], then releases that software to the world; in response, world (or at least a certain nerdy subset of the world) embraces the new project with open arms. Soon the software is usable by mortal humans, and before you know it it has become a standard in its field; its proponents loudly proclaiming its virtues, and its detractors quietly plotting strategies to stay competitive. Of course, I'm talking about the git version control system. Version control helps you track and manage changes to files. Although this sounds rather abstract, keeping track of change is useful in several different contexts. This month Chris Frey will share some wisdom about using git to take advantage of what git has to offer. As usual, this presentation will start at 7pm. I guess it is appropriate that we are celebrating the VLC media player as this month's FLOSS Fund nominee; the bill C-32 brouhaha reminds us what a gift this excellent open-source media player has been. You can learn more about VLC at http://www.videolan.org . If you would like to contribute to the donation but won't be making the meeting, get in touch and we can make arrangements for you to contribute. I'm sure there are many more announcements to make, but nobody told me about them and you've probably stopped reading already. Maybe I'll fill your e-mail with announcements next month. (Amongst other things a petition is in the works.) Here's where we meet: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (Corner of Weber and Victoria( Kitchener There are maps and photos on the website. As always, helpers are welcome to help set up (hopefully we will have doors open for 6:15pm). - Paul [0] 35 is still young, dagnabit. [1] Yes, I know. But he didn't fight the folder name. Or he didn't win, anyways. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Aug 7 17:56:03 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2010 17:56:03 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Programming for Linux Message-ID: <20100807215603.GF13689@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Oh my. It's August already. There's only five months left to get through our New Years resolutions! I'm sure that you have been making good progress on them already -- you're saving money and eating right and exercising and spending more time with your loved ones -- but no doubt there's that one resolution that's sticking out like a sore thumb, the same resolution you have been making year after year since 1998: getting started with programming on Linux. Will yet another year race by without you fulfilling the dream? You don't want to be lying on your deathbed filled with regrets. Well, this year can be different, and Raul Suarez is here to help. This month's KWLUG presentation is all about tools and environments that are available for Linux, and how to get started with their use. Raul says that it is not an introduction to programming itself (although there will be some codeless programming and desktop automation tools), but rather an overview and practical comparison of the tools that are out there and the resources available to learn them. He will also have DVDs filled with development goodies on hand to distribute and burn. Although it might be a little late for me to write this now, Raul says that you should invite friends who are interested in development to the presentation. Even if you are already doing some Linux development, you might well pick up a few new tools from this presentation, which will start at 7pm (after our introductory announcements, I guess.) If donating some money to the OSU Open Source Lab was also on your New Year's resolution list, then I have good news for you. The OSU OSL is the FLOSS Fund nominee for August. Among other things, the Open Source Labs provide hosting and infrastructure for CentOS, the Apache project, Drupal, Gentoo, kernel.org, MeeGo, OpenClipArt, Xiph.org and a lot of other projects you probably use. If you would like to contribute to the donation but can't make the meeting then get in touch and we can make arrangements. This month's meeting will be held in our new usual space (which in fact we have been using since January...): St Johns Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at the corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener There are maps and photos on our creaky website. Car and reindeer parking is available in the Worth A Second Look thrift store parking lot; bike parking is available along the side of the building. If you would like to help set up the space it would be much appreciated; we will start setting up around 6:15pm. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Sep 10 22:31:46 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:31:46 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Privacy in Canada Message-ID: <20100911023146.GA1005@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Don't look now, but I think you're being watched. You know that website you're surfing? Your ISP probably knows about it. Your medical records? They may well be in an unencrypted USB key in some person's wallet. And that software with the innocent-looking 37 page EULA? It's phoning home. Surely they can't get away with this? Surely this is a free (if moderately socialist) country, and you have a right to privacy? Right? I don't know, actually, which is one reason I will be attending this month's KWLUG talk: Kyle Spaans knows The Rules, and he'll share them with us. He will also enlighten us with some practical ways we can improve our personal privacy, including the Tor privacy network and PGP/GPG privacy tools. As part of this meeting we will hold a keysigning party, and if you act quickly then you can participate! There is a summary of how to get started here: http://kwlug.org/node/772 which I will reproduce below. But you have to get Keymaster Chris your signature BEFORE the meeting to play. Having a capable home router can help keep your home network private from snooping eyes, so maybe it is appropriate that this month's FLOSS Fund nominee is OpenWRT, a Linux firewall distribution you install on your router. OpenWRT lets you maximize the potential of your router hardware, and easily let you install extra packages that further increase your security and privacy. You can read more about OpenWRT at http://www.openwrt.org , and if you can't make the meeting Monday but are interested in donating, contact me and I will hook you up with the shadowy secret cabal, which keeps its membership so private that even the members don't know they're members. Somewhat alarmingly, this is the last FLOSS Fund nominee we have left in the nominee queue! That means that we would very much like your FLOSS Fund nominees (and that if you nominate you probably won't have to wait too many months for your nomination to come up!). You can nominate a project by posting to the kwlug-disc mailing list, by contacting me, or by posting your nominee on the KWLUG website. It is, of course, September, which means that Software Freedom Day is coming up. Thankfully, it's not on Talk Like a Pirate Day this year. Instead, it will be held on Saturday, September 18, and you're invited to the celebrations. There will be talks, demos, some giveaways, and lots of technical installation support available. This year's party will be at Kwartzlab, on Saturday the 18th from 2pm - 7pm. You can check out http://kwartzlab.ca/events/2010-09-18/software-freedom-day , and you can get posters to distribute here: http://kwlug.org/files/sfd-2010-poster.pdf In political news, our political leaders may think that the furor over the proposed Copyright Act bill C-32 has blown over and been forgotten, but they're wrong. If all goes well we will have some petitions you can sign to express discontent with the Technical Protection Measures/Digital Locks aspects of the bill for you to sign, if you are so inclined. If you are interested in signing but can't make the meeting, let me know. ========================== Whew. Here are some keysigning party instructions: Chris Frey (cdfrey at the domain foursquare dot net) is the KeyMaster for this party. As part of the process, you will e-mail him your key. Here are his instructions for getting started, with some e-mail address obfuscation: 1. Generate new key: gpg --gen-key (Accept the defaults, they are pretty good) 2. Look at your shiny new key: gpg --list-keys 3. Export it to a file: gpg --armor --output /tmp/my-public-key --export Replace ID with the first ID of your key. For example, my key looks like this in the --list-keys display: pub 1024D/DC6371D5 2006-12-02 [expires: 2011-12-01] uid Chris Frey (cube) sub 4096g/C2855553 2006-12-02 [expires: 2011-12-01] So my ID is DC6371D5. 4. Email the file my-public-key to me. (i.e. to Chris) 5. Show up on September 13, with your fingerprint printed out on a sheet of paper, and ready to read it out loud. gpg --fingerprint Example: gpg --fingerprint dc6371d5 pub 1024D/DC6371D5 2006-12-02 [expires: 2011-12-01] Key fingerprint = 7D71 47F2 3F61 B0E1 5F3C 68A4 819A 39D8 DC63 71D5 uid Chris Frey (cube) sub 4096g/C2855553 2006-12-02 [expires: 2011-12-01] At the meeting you will have to read your fingerprint and have others vouch for your identity. Some people do this via government ID; other people think this is not sufficient. ========================== Finally finally, I should probably tell you where this month's meeting will be held. (It's no secret.) St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street N Kitchener (at the corner of Victoria and Charles) There are maps and photos of the location on the website, sufficient (?) car parking in the Worth a Second Look thrift store parking long, and sufficient (?) bike parking along the side of the building. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Oct 2 16:45:15 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2010 16:45:15 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: XBMC Home Entertainment System Message-ID: <20101002204515.GG30536@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Oh. Winter again[0]. Cold days. No exercise. Too much candy and carbs. Why fight it? Let's just sit in front of our home entertainment systems and get fat. Yes, this month's KWLUG presentation is about My... wait a minute. It's not about MythTV at all. It turns out there are many other home media entertainment options out there, and this month Adam Glauser (who stays fit and trim despite winter) will tell us about one of them: XBMC . Adam will show us how to install and configure the system, how to make it work with content from the Internet, and even how to make it work with MythTV. Adam has Big Plans to make his presentation a Multimedia Extravaganza, and if we can figure out how to hook up the cables then maybe it will be. This fun will start at around 7pm. Good news: we have a FLOSS Fund nominee for this month. It is called "davmail", and it is a survival tool for those of us trapped behind oppressive proprietary mail systems. davmail is a gateway that turns the proprietary protocols spoken by Microsoft Exchange to standards used by the rest of the world. You can read about it at http://davmail.sourceforge.net , and you can participate in this month's donation either at the meeting or by getting in touch with me, so that I can hook you up with the shadowy XBMC-configuring cabal. Bad news: we are going to be out of FLOSS Fund nominees in December, so your suggestions and nominations are still welcome. We could also use more presentation requests and offers, particularly for some shorter presentations we will hold in March. In other news, the shadowy Waterloo Region Drupal User's group wants you to know about Toronto DrupalCamp, happening October 15 and 16 in Toronto: http://2010.drupalcamptoronto.org/ There are lots of these neat events happening (such as the SoOnCon happening in Waterloo RIGHT NOW) but I dropped the ball in announcing them last month. If you have special tech events to announce then send me a note and I will see about including them in these e-mails. Okay. That's it. Here is where we meet: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener You can park your cars and couches in the thrift store parking lot, and your bikes alongside the wall at the entrance. Maps and photos are on the website. - Paul [0] "Autumn" is a myth perpetuated by the mainstream media and our shadowy robotic overlords. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Oct 30 00:56:35 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:56:35 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Socialization! Message-ID: <20101030045635.GA4831@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Uh oh. Hallowe'en is quickly approaching, and with November 1 comes that most horrifying of seasons: the Xmas season. For two straight months we will be bombarded with Santanic imagery, have endless popstar variations on Christmas carols piped into our ears, and have to deal with Christmas cheer -- including, of course, parties. After ten months of sitting in a computer screen, are you prepared foe those cheery/awkward Christmas dinners with all those biological relatives? Will you be able to handle the small talk at the annual office party? Are you socialized enough to get along with others for more than 140 characters? Fortunately, KWLUG is here to help. By popular demand (?), we will once again be running a KWLUG social night. This is the perfect opportunity for you to ease into human-human interaction in a friendly and supportive environment. You can brush up on your small-talk skills (or maybe your Smalltalk skills) and pick up useful tidbits you can use in future conversations. There may be some people showing off demos at the meeting, and you should feel welcome to bring something cool as well. There will be some grub and refreshments courtesy of NetDirect, and you can feel free to bring munchies if you want. You can also bring a computer or project that you would like assistance with -- these social gatherings are good opportunities for informal help and installfests. Best of all, you can use this event as proof that you have a social life, because once again there will be a key-signing party! If you have a PGP/GPG key that you would like to get signed by other attendees, you can. You can also start building your web of trust by building a key before the party. Party animal Chris Frey has some (moderately contentious) instructions posted here: http://kwlug.org/node/772 . You probably want to make sure you get your key to Chris by Friday. We will be having a FLOSS Fund nominee at the party: PCLinuxOS, a community-oriented distribution that aims look fabulous and be radically simple to use. You can read more about the project at http://www.pclinuxos.com/ , and you can make a contribution to the project either at the meeting or by contacting me, who will forward your request to the Shadowy Cabal. In other news, our friends at the Drupal User Group will be holding their monthly meeting on November 18. This month's presentation will be on "Ethical SEO," and will be presented by KWLUG member Glenn Cooke. Glenn gave a similar presentation at KWLUG a few years ago and it was so awesome that I would have been forced to kick myself repeatedly if I had missed it. I'm just sayin'. See more information here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/101959 Whether you are a Linux newbie or an oldbie, come party with us at our usual meeting location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St North (corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener There is car parking in the thrift store parking lot, and bike parking along the side of the building. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Dec 4 00:46:43 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 00:46:43 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Debian Infrastructure Tools Message-ID: <20101204054643.GA5740@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Greetings, brothers and sisters, and welcome to your new lives as Devoted Ecstatic believers in Ascendant Nerdvana. By attending this announcement e-mail you have taken the first step on the Nerdvanic Path. As you enjoy your complimentary glass of Kool-aid let us examine the structure of Monday's orientation meeting. Beginning at 7pm Brother Andrew will reveal to you the revealed secrets of package management and the One True Infrastructure. His teachings will reveal how to seek out packages, install and integrate them, and purge them when they are no longer useful. Brother Andrew will reveal the hidden truths beneath the surface, offering glimpses into the secret world of debconf and diversions and dpkg and APT repositories. He shall reveal the Truth, and the history of the Truth, and the mindstate that drives the One True Infrastructure. I see that you have taken many different roads to the Nerdvanic path. Some of you are neophytes to the One True Infrastructure, or to Linux in general. Others have dabbled with splinter distributions such as Linux Mint and Ubuntu. Several of you are seeking refuge from the heresies of fraudulently erroneous demogogues of RPM apostasy. Maybe some of you are spies hoping to corrupt the revealed secrets for your own vile purposes. No matter. Even you will be moved and convinced by Brother Andrew's teachings. You won't want to live any other way. On the topic of life changing revelations, this month's FLOSS Fund nominee is XBMC, the home multimedia centre revealed to us by Brother Adam just two months ago. You can revisit the truths of XBMC by visiting http://xbmc.org , and you can donate at the meeting or by addressing me using electronic mail. Stop stumbling in the darkness. Join us in downtown Kitchener: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener Do not be fooled by the innocuous exterior. You may park your motor-vehicles in the thrift store lot, and your safety-bicycles along the side of the building. - Brother Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Dec 31 20:17:10 2010 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2010 20:17:10 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Ruby on Rails Message-ID: <20110101011710.GC23693@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Surprise! January 3 is not a statutory holiday! Apparently, certain public employees of KWLUG may designate the Monday as a day off, but if you are one of the nonexistent people in this situation, why bother? Even you will want to make an exception, because during this month's meeting Ralph Janke will show off Ruby on Rails, a web-development framework that took the world by storm a few years ago. Ruby on Rails allows you to create complex yet maintainable websites quickly and easily. This presentation will start at 7pm. Our first FLOSS Fund nominee for 2011 is Audacity, a sophisticated multiplatform audio editor. You can learn more about the project at http://audacity.sourceforge.net , and if you are so inclined you can make a donation either at the meeting or by contacting me. I have it on good authority that KWLUG members have used Audacity to edit recordings of lectures, sermons and all-candidates debates, as well as to put together podcasts and instrumental music so beautiful they are no doubt pirated on filesharing networks all over the world. Speaking of which, did you know that way back in November, Kitchener-Waterloo MP Peter Braid was named to the legislative committee for Bill C-32, the bill to update the Copyright Act in Canada? Did you know that C-32 has passed second reading and will likely become law in the new year? Interesting times! I should probably tell you about all the other fine tech events that are happening locally, but I don't know what they are. Fortunately they are listed on the WatCamp events calendar: http://watcamp.com/calendar/ . The site provides iCal and RSS feeds. Now you can keep your social life busy by attending tech events, instead of sitting at home feeling lonely and unloved. That's a win, right? Anyways, this month's meeting will be held at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St North (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener There are maps and photos of the location on our website. There is some car parking available in the Worth A Second Look parking lot, and for those crazy enough to cycle in January, ample bike parking along the side of the building. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org