From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Feb 5 01:05:48 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 01:05:48 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: ZoneMinder, FusionPBX, and more (but not PHP) Message-ID: <20110205060548.GB9703@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> You know what cures the February doldrums? Neither do I. But changes can sure make our lives interesting, and this month's KWLUG meeting promises to be dynamic -- so dynamic that I am not sure what all the meeting topics will be! I know a few things, though. Firstly, due to some unforseen circumstances, Khalid won't be delivering his PHP presentation this month. But fear not! We will be rescheduling this meeting topic for later this year. Even if you were drooling with anticipation about the PHP presentation, you may well find that this meeting has lots to offer: - John van Ostrand will demonstrate ZoneMinder, a Linux surveillance system that controls cameras, analyzes data and in general allows you to build your own personal Panopticon. - Kiwi Ssennyonjo will demonstrate FusionPBX, a web front-end for the up-and-coming telephony solution FreeSWITCH. (You thought that Asterisk was the be-all and end-all of Linux telephony? Think again!) In addition these two confirmed presentations you might also witness: - John Kerr presenting on "Law Librarian Linux Desktops". I am not sure exactly what this means, but it sounds fun and alliterative. - John van Ostrand demonstrating Firebug. If he does not demonstrate this excellent web debugging tool in February, he will be doing so in March. - Me blundering my way through apticron and apt-dater setup, two useful tools that can help you keep many Linux machines up to date with security patches easily. There will not be enough time for us to run all these presentations during the meeting. Keep an eye on the website for updates -- or show up at 7pm and be surprised! You might also be surprised that our website got a facelift this month. John van Ostrand put in some heroic work to upgrade our website from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. This is surprising because John did such a good job of maintaining the look of our old website. If you notice things that are broken on (or suggestions for improvement to) the website then please pass them along. Speaking of passing along, this month's FLOSS Fund nominee is git, the powerful revision control system Chris Frey presented last July. Even though I am not a programmer, git has made my life better, and it may have made yours better as well. You can learn more about the project at http://git-scm.com/ , and if you are not at the meeting you can contribute to our donation by contacting me. Speaking of contact, Calgary LUG member Dafydd Crosby sent us a message that he is conducting a survey of LUG users. Whether you are a regular meeting attendee or you have not participated in a long while, you might be interested in sharing your thoughts. Visit http://www.lonesomecosmonaut.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=94921&newtest=Y&lang=en to participate. Although many things in this impermanent life change, there are some things you can count on. Our meeting location isn't one of them, but this month we are still meeting at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N (Corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener There are maps and photos of the location http://kwlug.org/node/709 , lots of bike parking along the side of the building, and a moderate amount of car parking at the thrift store parking lot. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Mar 5 04:24:37 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 04:24:37 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Firebug, Clutter, LVM Message-ID: <20110305092437.GK6506@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> What? A story? I don't think so. It's well past your bedtime, kiddo. Fine. One story and then you go to bed. Deal? Deal. Once upon a time there were three KWLUGors. Their names were Isidore, Martha and Florian, and although they were friends they fought a lot, because they were interested in different things. Isidore was a sysadmin freak, Martha a mobile developer and Florian a webhead. Sometimes two of them would get enthusiastic about a topic -- Martha and Florian enthused about January's Ruby on Rails presentation, for instance -- but often they disagreed about which KWLUG meeting was the best. Then they attended the March 2011 presentation, and found that there was something that suited each of them: Isidore got to learn from Tim Laurence's presentation the Linux Volume Manager -- a set of tools that allows you to easily grow and shrink partition sizes on live Linux systems. Martha looked forward to Darcy Casselman's presentation on Clutter, the graphical toolkit library that makes it easy to create dynamic interfaces for smartphones, netbooks and desktop systems. And Florian found himself engrossed by John van Ostrand's demonstration of Firebug, an amazing website debugging tool that makes figuring out webpage design and rendering issues a lot easier. Having found topics that appealed to each of then, Florian, Martha and Isidore didn't have to fight as much, and also they attended some pretty fine presentations. The end. There. Now go to sleep. Hey! Pulling the covers over your head and reading programming manuals is not the same as going to sleep. Now sleep before I give your allowance to the LibreOffice Funding Challenge. The LibreOffice project -- a fork/spinoff from OpenOffice.org not under Oracle's control -- held a challenge (http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/) to fundraise 50,000 Euros in 33 days so they could establish The Document Foundation in Germany. By popular demand, KWLUG chose this product as its March FLOSS Fund nominee, and even though the Document Foundation met its funding goal in eight days, they are still collecting funds to cover development, infrastructure and operating costs. I am sure they would appreciate your allowance to help them keep LibreOffice strong -- and don't think this is an idle threat. I happen to know exactly where to find the KWLUG meeting and FLOSS Fund can: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at the corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener What? Now you want to go to the meeting? Well, okay. But if you want to be attentive from 7 to 9pm on Monday, you'll need your rest. Good night and sweet dreams. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Apr 1 21:50:27 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 21:50:27 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday; OpenVPN Message-ID: <20110402015027.GO8110@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Remember back when computers were fun? The Internet was new and you could find Pee-Wee Herman fan pages in hand-edited web directories and you could leave your server open to finger requests (imagine! A worldwide telephone book!) and you could send e-mail halfway across the world and maybe even correspond with strangers! It was awesome! Now you can't even surf the net in a coffee shop without someone getting all Firesheep in your face (thanks for that, you guys. My facebook friends really appreciated me declaring myself a "winy looser"). Okay: I know there wasn't even Internet at the coffee shop back then, but let's not let facts get in the way of nostalgia. Things were good in the Good Old Days, and now computers are dangerous and untrustworthy. Fortunately, Lori Paniak is here to make computers fun again. Although he won't undo Google or eliminate spam (at least not this month), he will show us how we can use OpenVPN -- software that allows us to make secure connections to other networks. You can easily configure OpenVPN to connect networks together, to connect a home machine to work, or to connect your laptop at the coffee shop to your home router so that you can log into social networking sites without snooping eyes. He'll give us the details during his presentation, which will begin at 7pm. In FLOSS Fund news, our April nominee is Firebug, the web development debugger John van Ostrand demonstrated during his great presentation last month. You can learn more about Firebug at http://getfirebug.com/ , and if you want to participate in the donation despite not being able to attend the meeting then contact me and we will make connections. In other local news, this Saturday (April 2), Darcy Casselman will be hosting the KW cell of the 11.04 Ubuntu Global Jam. The Jam will consist of an informal conference about contributing to Ubuntu, followed by some people getting down and boogeying away some Ubuntu bugs in the upcoming release. The event will be held at Kwartzlab starting at 2pm, and you can learn more at http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/776/detail/ In Bill C-32 news... Bill C-32 is dead. The latest attempt at a copyright bill died table thanks to the upcoming federal election. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm, but in the meantime you can question your candidates about copyright and free software and make sure that candidates know free software should be on the agenda. In website news, the KWLUG website will have some short downtime so that we can apply some security updates. This may happen after the meeting on the evening of April 4, or it could happen on April 11. In announcement-closing news, our meeting will be held at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N (at the corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener There is lots of bike parking along the side of the building, and some car parking available at the thrift store parking lot. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Apr 30 05:47:09 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:47:09 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: App Inventor Toolkit, Linux Security Message-ID: <20110430094709.GA8866@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> They laughed at me. They all laughed. Delusions of grandeur, they called it. They saw just another spindly-armed computer klutz, fighting for half an hour to figure out how to exit vim and get back on the command line, and they laughed. Little did they know. I was watching, and learning. Fernando Duran's KWLUG presentation on Linux security started me up the path to watching for their vulnerabilities, for thinking like an attacker. Brian Nickle's presentation on the Google App Inventor Toolkit opened my eyes to a world of drag-and-drop programming, of building programs for mobile devices without needing to wrestle with a command-line text editor. >From May's FLOSS Fund nominee[0], it dawned on me that a phone didn't need to stay a phone, that code and creativity could transform a phone into a remote control. It did not to me until later that remotes could control the ones pressing the buttons, too. But I learned. Steadily, I learned. The Saturday earlier I installed Ubuntu 11.04 [1], had Narwhal cake, and played FLOSS LAN games. Frivolous? That's what they thought. I needed to bike to the KWLUG meeting [2] to work off the Narwhal cake, but that only made me stronger. They don't laugh at me any more. - Paul [0] http://www.gmote.org/ [1] http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/814/detail/ [2] http://kwlug.org/locations -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jun 4 04:15:26 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 04:15:26 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Social Night Message-ID: <20110604081526.GC14244@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Ahola, betties and barneys. This may be the one month I don't get to fret about Winter (hateful Winter!) so why not celebrate with a social event? Okay. Maybe that is not the most convincing argument for having a celebration. How about a keysigning party? Rumour has it that there will be a mondo keysigning fest, following the instructions here: http://kwlug.org/node/772 Still wondering whether to catch the wave? How about some boss demos and discussion, generated by the membership? How about some munchies (assuming people bring munchies, I guess -- you're welcome to, but there is no obligation). How about an impromptu Installfest, or some discussion/tips/assistance on Linux-related problems that have you ragdolled? Whether you're a squid or a silver surfer, you'll find something to keep you engaged. One idea that might amp you up is the impromptu rummage sale that has developed over the past few days. Steven Blatchford (sblatchford at gmail) posted a spreadsheet of computer equipment he wants to give away: http://goo.gl/RRxMH . If you e-mail him before the meeting, he will bring the goods to the party. It sounds as if other KWLUG members might bring in computer parts to swap and donate, and you can participate too! (Leftovers will be going to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre.) Will we have a FLOSS Fund nominee this month? For sure: the nominee this month will be ZoneMinder, the fierce monitoring software John van Ostrand demoed a few meetings ago. You can learn more about Zoneminder at http://www.zoneminder.com, and if you can't make the meeting you can get some ka-ching to the project by contacting me directly. It turns out that ZoneMinder is the final nominee eligible for donation, which is bogus! You can right this wrong righteously by nominating a smokin open source project for the Fund. You can e-mail me your nomination, post the nominee to our website, or mention it on the kwlug-disc discussion list. There's an "Open Source Economics" talk happening on June 9. Maybe it will be gnarly or maybe it will be weaksauce, but if you're interested then check this out: http://sigopensourceeconomics.eventbrite.com/ In other news, if you are an Ubuntu user you might want to check this survey: http://people.ubuntu.com/~maco.m/survey.html You'll find the party happening at the usual beachhouse: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at the corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener There's parking for your muscle beaters in the Worth a Second Look parking lot, and you can lock up your rhino hunters along the side of the building. There are maps and photos of the location here: http://kwlug.org/node/709 Chow, brodies - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jul 2 02:04:08 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 02:04:08 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Ubuntu Community Canada, FreeSWITCH/FusionPBX, apt-dater Message-ID: <20110702060408.GN6511@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> In some alternative universe, we would not be having our KWLUG meeting this money. The Americans would have won the War of 1812 and we would be celebrating our independence on Monday. USA! USA! Alas, the Americans did not take Upper Canada, so to ease the disappointment you can come to July's meeting and enjoy three snack-sized presentations: - Defender of the Crown Darcy Casselman will tell us about Ubuntu Community Canada, an initiative to bring together Canadian Ubuntu users. - Superpatriot Kiwi Ssenyonjo will follow up his interesting presentation about the FreeSWITCH open-source PBX with some recent developments in FreeSWITCH and its graphical frontend FusionPBX. - Villainous traitor Paul Nijjar will show you how to keep multiple Linux systems up to date efficiently using apt-proxy-ng, apt-dater and apticron: a set of tools probably written in Europe or something. The presentation hijinks ensue at 7pm, as usual. Our FLOSS Fund nominee this month is HeliOS, a community project in Austin Texas which rebuilds computers, installs Ubuntu on them and redistributes them to local youth. The project lead has been devoting a lot of hours to the project, but his family is facing a health crisis now, and this month's nomination attempts to thank him in a financial way for what he has given to the community. You can learn more about the HeliOS project here: http://heliosinitiative.org/index.html and read the blog post that inspired this nomination here: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2011/06/when-minor-and-devestating-are-used-in.html In related news, our FLOSS Fund queue is empty! If you have a project that is doing good work, please nominate it by posting the nomination to the kwlug-disc mailing list, e-mailing it to me, or making the nomination on our website. A tutorial video by KWLUG member John Kerr made the popular website OMG Ubuntu this week. You can see the posting here: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/06/launch-more-than-one-instance-of-a-program-in-ubuntu-on-another-workspace/ And that's it, except for letting you know where you can find the meeting: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N Kitchener (at the corner of Weber and Victoria) There are maps and directions on the KWLUG website, plenty of bike parking on the side of the building, and a few spots of car parking in the Worth a Second Look parking lot. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Aug 6 03:32:50 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2011 03:32:50 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: BigBlueButton, RealLife Mobile Messaging Message-ID: <20110806073250.GO30463@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Are you feeling isolated and lonely? Are you desperately craving more human interaction than a mass e-mail can offer? Maybe it is time to quit staring at your computer monitor and interact with other living, breathing human beings. Wait a minute. What am I saying?! Living, breathing, human beings are scary! But staring at your computer monitor at walls of text lacks that social touch. Is there nothing in between? Raul Suarez may have the answer. It's called BigBlueButton, and it's a slick teleconferencing/webseminar package that allows you to see and hear other people without leaving the safety of your computer desk. BigBlueButton supports voice and video participation, slide sharing in a variety of formats, visually share the interactions on a computer desktop, and more. Or maybe you are more interested in communicating with others behind the safety of your smartphone. In this case, Norman Young's presentation might be of interest to you. He ported an app called "RealLife Mobile Messaging" from Maemo to Android, and in addition to showing off his handiwork he will share some of the many lessons he learned along the way. If you are looking to transfer Linux development experience to the Android environment, this might be the presentation for you. Of course, to see these presentations it would be helpful to physically attend the KWLUG meeting, and there might be other living, breathing human beings. But don't worry; other than the break and the after-meeting at Zeke's, you can pretend that nobody else is there. Just stare at the presentation slides and listen to the soothing tones of our presenters, and you (in which I include "I") will be fine. Maybe you're the type of person who finds Wikipedia too social. Or maybe you're looking for a lightweight multiplatform note-taking personal wiki application. In this case you might be interested in this month's FLOSS Fund nominee: ZimWiki. You can read more about ZimWiki and see it in action at http://zim-wiki.org/ . If you are looking for a bit more meatspace interaction in your life, there are a number of events coming up that feature LUG members: - On Saturday, Aug 27th in Ottawa, KWLUG member Richard Weait will be presenting "OpenStreetMap and Open Data" at FOSSLC2011, the "Software Developer's Haven" conference. Some guy named Stallman got higher billing than Richard, but that's surely a typo. Learn more about the event here: http://fosslc.org/drupal/sc2011 - Software Freedom Day is coming on September 17, and LUG members are helping organize the event again this year. If you would like to give a short talk, help support the installfest, make a donation or help in some other way contact me and I will get you in touch with the organizers. - If you're up for a trip to Vancouver, KWLUG member (alumnus?) Rob Day will be presenting "A Beginner's Guide to Kernel Programming" at the LinuxCon North America. Assuming you are eager to brave the snow and bitter winds, our August meeting will be held at the usual location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North Kitchener (at the Corner of Victoria and Weber) There is car parking at the Worth a Second Look parking lot and bicycle parking along the side of the building. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Sep 10 07:09:52 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:09:52 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Security Message-ID: <20110910110952.GE9916@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Canadian Thanksgiving is not until next month, but as far as I am concerned this is the peak of harvest season. In the fields and in the markets you will find ground cherries and tomatoes, eggplants and peppers and the last of the peaches. In the classrooms you will find new crops of students who have not yet had their enthusiasm crushed out of them. And in our community you will find a cornucopia of interesting computer events and meetings going on. There is of course our KWLUG meeting this Monday at 7pm, which is all about computer security (in particular cryptography). Tim Laurence is an engaging speaker who makes text-based slides come to life, and his explanation of security principles is sure to be theatrical. If that is not enough security for you, on Tuesday the 13th Fernando Duran is helping organize the second quarterly Kitchener-Waterloo Security Unconference: http://www.watsec.com/unconference . It will begin at 6pm at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo. Today (Saturday the 10th) the Kwartzlab people are holding a "Kwartzlab Junkyard" event from 1pm-7pm. See http://www.kwartzlab.ca/2011/09/kwartzlab-junkyard-tomorrow-check-out-our-junk/ for a sampling of their wares. In an unusual development, the KWLUG meeting (on the first non-holiday Monday of the month) and the Drupal User Group (on the third Thursday) are happening the same week. This Thursday three members of the University of Waterloo Drupal team will discuss their gigantic project to move the university's webspace to drupal. See http://groups.drupal.org/waterloo-region for details. Then there is Software Freedom Day, which is to be held next Saturday from 10am-4pm. This event will feature talks, demos, and installfest and CD giveaways. It is geared towards a general audience, so if you know people who might be interested in Linux and other FLOSS but are not highly-technical (or if you are interested in free software but have not really gotten into it much) then please invite them along. This will be held at the Working Centre's Queen Street buildings from 10am-4pm, and you can get more info here: http://www.theworkingcentre.org/sfd Also of interest to non-experts is an initiative to organize a "Linux and Free Software Literacy" course through the KW FreeSkool. (Disclaimer! I am involved with this.) A tentative course outline is here: http://kwfreeskool.wordpress.com/linux-and-free-software-literacy/ If you or somebody you know would be interested in participating, please contact kwfreeskool at gmail.com . Here is a teaser for our October meeting: it will be a social event, but it will be a pretty special one -- KWLUG is approximately 10 years old, and we will be celebrating our 10th anniversary. That meeting will be October 3. I guess I should also tell you about our FLOSS Fund nominee. It is a little program called Inkscape -- a vector program that is great for designing posters, logos, and other SVG art. You can donate to Inkscape at the meeting, or you can contact me and we will figure out how you can contribute to the donation. As usual, our meeting will be held at St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St North (Corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener There are maps and photos of the location on our website: http://www.kwlug.org . Although transit access is not fantastic, 97 Victoria is a fairly short walk from King Street. There is car parking at the Worth a Second Look parking lot, and bike parking along the side of the building. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Oct 1 00:59:43 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 00:59:43 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: 10th Anniversary Social Night Message-ID: <20111001045943.GE932@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Well, it's October, and that can mean only one thing: WINTER. Here comes another 11 months of... What? You've heard this intro before? Oh. How about this: Aren't you tired of being stuck behind a computer screen all the time? Wouldn't some indirect human company be... Oh. Okay: Remember back when the Internet was simple and fun... Oh. I'll admit it: after 10 years of meeting announcements it's tough to avoid repeats, and it wasn't as if the idea pool was that deep to begin with. That's right: KWLUG is 10 years old. Actually, it is a bit older: as far as we can remember, we held our first meeting in September, 2011. To celebrate being half the age of the Linux kernel, we're having another social night this Monday. But don't think you have to be grizzled to celebrate: whether this will be your first meeting or your 121st, you're welcome to come out. If past social nights are any indication, this meeting will feature a relaxed atmosphere and lots of conversation (much of it tech-focused, but not all of it). If you have a neat gadget or software application to demo, you'll be sure to find an interested audience. You can also bring in a computer for an impromptu install- or supportfest. And if nothing else, there are rumours of cake. This might be an especially nice reunion meeting if you have not been to KWLUG in a while. The party will get started at 7pm. Because it is a social night, we won't have a FLOSS Fund nominee this month. (We have found that social nights are bad FLOSS Fund nights.) If that is not enough partying for you, it looks as if Kwartzlab is hosting the Ubuntu 11.10 release party on Oct 15. See http://kwartzlab.ca/events for more info. If that is not enough user group fun for you, it looks like there is a user group aimed at nonprofits starting called NetSquared, with a strong nonprofit focus. See http://www.dagnova.ca/blog/netsquared-waterloo-region/ for more information and a user survey. If that is not enough education for you, the KW Freeskool is still in the process of organizing the "Linux and Free Software Literacy" course I plugged last announcement. It looks like the course will be held on Tuesday evenings. Since I am teaching the course, I know for a fact that there needs to be 10 registrants for the course to happen, so if you have been thinking about getting some basic Linux literacy then now is a good time to make things happen. If you are interested (no obligation) then send me an e-mail and I will arrange to get you a registration survey. (Despite this being a Freeskool course, you don't need to be a radical leftist anarchist hippie to participate.) See http://kwfreeskool.wordpress.com/linux-and-free-software-literacy/ for the syllabus. If that is not enough futile political protest for you then you might be interested to know that our favourite copyright bill has been renamed to Bill C-11: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Docid=5144516&file=4 If that is not enough meeting announcement for you then here is our meeting location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St N (corner of Weber and Victoria) Kitchener You can park your Mardi Gras floats and ocean liners in the Worth A Second Look parking lot, and your fixies and roller skates along the side of the building. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Nov 5 02:09:46 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2011 02:09:46 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Bulk Video Editing; Open Source in the Developing World Message-ID: <20111105060946.GP21135@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Dear Blabby, Somehow my parents found out that I am computer literate. Now they want me to edit all their home videos into polished masterpieces! Each video takes me hours and hours to go through. I am losing videogame time over this, and my Guild is getting upset with me. What should I do? - Kindred Indentures Nerdy Offspring Dear Indentured, You should go to this month's KWLUG meeting. Raul Suarez will be showing off some tricks and tools for batch video editing, including "recipes" for mencoder, ffmpeg and imagemagick. Maybe seeing his presentation will speed your video editing up enough that you won't have to have that awkward honest discussion with either your family or your Guild. Sincerely, Blabby Dear Blabby, Wasn't Ubuntu supposed to be about bringing the benefits of Open Source to Africa? What are the impacts of Open Source in the developing world? - Unconsciously Beleaguered Under Nightly Uncertainty Dear Beleagured, You should go to this month's KWLUG meeting. Rodrigo Gonzalez will deliver a short presentation -- perhaps the first in a series -- about this very topic. Sincerely, Blabby Dear Blabby, I want to give some money to an open-source related cause, but I have no idea how to do it! Please help part me from my dollars. - Generously Able To Enrich Software Dear Generous, You could give your money to this month's FLOSS Fund nominee: FreedomBox. This project aims to "enable private conversations online" by building and collecting software for the social network that people can run on their own computers. To learn more about FreedomBox you could visit http://freedomboxfoundation.org . You can make your contributing by attending this month's meeting, or by contacting Paul at paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sincerely, Blabby Dear Blabby, I learned something about Linux or open source software and I want to let everybody know. But I don't where I might find a friendly audience who would be receptive to a talk. Please won't you help me? - Terrible At Locating KWLUG Dear Locating, I am sure that KWLUG would be interested in hearing you speak. You could give a 20 minute presentation, a 45 minute one or one that is an hour and a half long. There are slots available from January onwards, so this is a particularly opportune time for your question. Sincerely, Blabby Dear Blabby, Where are these KWLUG meetings you keep talking about? - Practically Livid At Nonsense Titles Dear Livid, St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (Corner of Victoria and Weber) Kitchener The meeting starts at 7pm. There are maps and pictures of the meeting location on the website: kwlug.org Sincerely, Blabby -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Dec 3 05:30:38 2011 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 05:30:38 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: pfSense 2.0 Message-ID: <20111203103038.GG29618@pirg.uwaterloo.ca> Everybody needs a good firewall. Ordinary firewalls make you fiddle and fuss on the command line! One mistake and you lock yourself out! What a mess! With the revolutionary new pfSense distribution, setting up firewalls is a breeze! Use the pfSense dynamic web interface to organize your firewall rules. Just click... click... move... and you're done! The script kiddies stay out and your remote users get in! But that's not all! Use the pfSense distribution to manage OpenVPN clients! Give your guests isolated network credentials with the pfSense captive portal! Graph and track network usage with built-in graphing! Plus, backing up is quick and easy! Stop setting up subnets by daisy-chaining routers. With pfSense, you can split up your network using multiple interfaces or VLANs! Tired of giving equal rights to all operating systems on your network? pfSense makes operating system bigotry easy! Just associate OS fingerprinting to your firewall rules. Click... click... move... done! Other firewall solutions from Cisco or Juniper can cost you hundreds of dollars! But you can order the new pfSense 2.0 release for $0 plus shipping and handling! You'll also receive access to the pfSense repository of addons and plugins for free! Turn your router into a FreeSWITCH telephony platform! Authenticate clients with FreeRADIUS! Stop root worms with DenyHosts! You get all of these features for $0. In addition to your pfSense you will receive the KWLUG FLOSS Fund Guide, filled with amazing ways to make a donation (if you so choose) to jXplorer, an LDAP browser written in Java. Learn more about jXplorer at http://jxplorer.org But that's not all! Order soon and receive a second installation of pfSense for free -- just pay shipping and handling! Get a copy of pfSense for a family member or friend, or link two instances of pfSense together with CARP for high availability! Order on Monday at 7pm! Operators named Kiwi will be standing by! To order, go to the KWLUG meeting on Monday: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North at Weber Kitchener http://kwlug.org for maps and location info - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org