From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Jan 6 21:20:00 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2017 21:20:00 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Vagrant Workshop Message-ID: <20170107022000.GD4032@nb-heartburn.theworkingcentre.org> Are you feeling restless this new year? As if you have no home? Maybe it is time to experiment with vagrancy. This month, Justin Filip will help us get our hands (and feet?) dirty. He is leading an interactive, hands-on workshop on Vagrant, the virtualization tool that helps build repeatable, reliable development environments. To participate in the workshop, Justin asks that you bring the following: - A laptop that is "sufficiently powerful" for virtual machines (eg has virtualization extensions enabled, and lots of RAM) - Virtualbox installed on the laptop (available from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads ) - Vagrant installed on the laptop (available from https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html ) - A text editor you are comfortable using The nice thing about Vagrant is that it works with Linux as well as Mac OS and Windows, so you can bring whatever laptop you want with the appropriate software involved. The workshop will involve setting up a Ruby development environment, but you don't need to know about Ruby (or virtual machines!) to benefit. Participating in a hands-on way will help you get the most out of this workshop, but you are still welcome to attend. If you do not have a suitable laptop then maybe there will be opportunities to pair up with others who do. Justin says that the workshop will be action-packed, so we will be starting the presentation as quickly after 7pm as we can manage. In other news, KW Linux Fest is coming up on Saturday, January 28. It will be held at 200 Bathurst Drive in Waterloo, and will feature speakers throughout the day. The cost is $5. Sign up for the conference at http://kwlinuxfest.ca . After a few months hiatus (sorry) we are holding another Laptop Rescue Mission. This will be a week before KW Linux Fest, on Saturday January 21, at Computer Recycling (66 Queen Street South, Kitchener). It will run between 4-8pm or so. We will sift through donated laptops and get Xubuntu installed on them. As usual, everybody is welcome, and you do not need to be a Linux expert to participate (as far as I can tell, several non-experts have participated and enjoyed the experience). To participate, please RSVP to me so that I can tell you how to get into the building. Is public speaking one of your New Years resolutions? How about giving a talk for KWLUG? We have presentation slots available from February on. As long as the topic relates to free/open source software it is fair game. You could talk about: - Some FLOSSy thing you played with recently. - Some FLOSSy topic you are passionate about, or use regularly. - Some FLOSSy topic you would like to learn about, but which you won't get around to learning without a motivation (hint: preparing a presentation counts as motivation) Your presentation could be 30, 40, or 90 minutes long. We are a friendly audience, so are a good group to practice on. If you are interested, get in touch with me or the kwlug-disc mailing list and we can arrange something. And that's it for now. This month's meeting will be held at the usual location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener See http://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and pictures of the location. Doors open around 6:30pm, and setup helpers are always appreciated. There is parking at 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 Sun Feb 5 02:22:24 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2017 02:22:24 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: OSSIM, Let's Encrypt (Feb 2017) Message-ID: <20170205072224.GA1793@nb-heartburn> Let's meet! It is February, and nothing says "February" more than a KWLUG get together. This month we have two interesting techie presentations, starting around 7pm. Let's protect! Mark Steffen will discuss the open source intrusion detection system AlienVault OSSIM, an Security Information and Event management product suitable for small businesses and "paranoid individuals". OSSIM handles behavioral monitoring, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, and more. Let's encrypt! Jeff Voskamp has been running Let's Encrypt on his websites since the initiative began. He will give us an overview of what Let's Encrypt is, what it does, and some of his experiences working with it. Let's rescue! The next date for our Laptop Rescue Mission will tentatively be Saturday, February 18 starting at 4pm. You do not need to be a Linux wizard to participate, but Linux wizards are welcome. People from many backgrounds and skill levels have helped out in the past and enjoyed refurbishing laptops with Xubuntu. You can participate too! Contact me offlist to RSVP. Let's migrate! The KWLUG website and mailing lists will be switching hosts soon -- probably either this month or next. Our hope is that the transition will be smooth, but please forgive us any hiccups. If you are having problems with the KWLUG website or mailing lists once we have transitioned, please let me know by email. Let's bridge the digital divide! The fine folks at Hive Waterloo Region wanted to let you know about a few different initiatives coming up. Firstly, they are offering a large number of workshops over the next few months, which you can learn about at https://hivewr.ca/events . Secondly, they are running a membership drive until February 28. Membership is not free (it costs $25 annually for individuals) but you might want to consider it for you or your organization: https://hivewr.ca/membership . Finally, they asked us to help publicize their "Change the Ratio" event to be held on Wednesday, March 8 at the KPL. They made it clear that although this event is being held on International Women's Day, they welcome everyone and they hope lots of men, women and people of other gender expressions attend. The event is free of charge, and you can register at: http://hivewr.ca/events/change-ratio-waterloo-region/ . Let's conclude! The meeting will be held at the usual meeting location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street N (at Weber) Kitchener You can park in the thrift store parking lot. Find pictures and maps at http://kwlug.org/sjk . Doors open at 6:30pm and we are always pathetically grateful to have setup helpers. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Mar 4 16:58:52 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2017 16:58:52 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Rust (March 2017, take 2) Message-ID: <20170304215852.GA1217@nb-heartburn> (Apologies if you get this a second time.) This month's meeting is about Theo Belaire's adventures with the programming language Rust. The language is pretty trendy these days because like C or C++ it is suitable for systems programming where runtime performance is critical, but unlike the aforementioned languages it is not insane, and goes out of its way to enforce type safety and memory management techniques that reduce runtime memory leaks and program crashes significantly. Mozilla is using Rust to implement its next-generation rendering engine, and Theo is using Rust to write Linux kernel modules and realtime operating systems. In other events, the next Laptop Rescue Mission is scheduled for Saturday, March 18, from 4pm-8pm or so. As always, we welcome newcomers and people of all skill levels to help refurbish laptops and get Xubuntu installed on them. Message me offlist if you would like to participate. As the prophecies foretold, the Great KWLUG Webhost Migration will be happening this month. We do not have a transition date finalized yet, but it ought to be soon. Mailing lists and the websites are both being migrated to the new webhost. We hope there will be no serious disruptions, but you can check the website ( http://kwlug.org ) or maybe the Twitter ( https://mobile.twitter.com/kwlug ) for status updates. Speaking of the new website, there is a pre-release version of the website available at https://d8.kwlug.org . We are collecting feedback now. If you spot a problem, are really missing a feature, or have other feedback please get in touch: email me offlist or use the website contact form. We especially would appreciate people testing the website on different operating systems and browsers. The prophecies also foretold that our friends at Hive Waterloo Region would be holding their "Change the Ratio" event this month, on Wednesday, March 8, at the main branch of the Kitchener Public Library. Register for the event at http://hivewr.ca/events/change-ratio-waterloo-region/ . I do not know whether the prophecies foretold our meeting location, but it is again at St John's Kitchen: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener For photos and maps visit http://kwlug.org/sjk . For parking use the thrift store parking lot. For gratitude please help with setup, starting around 6:30pm. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Apr 1 16:38:24 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2017 16:38:24 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: OSSIM, A Brief History of Linux and Open Source Message-ID: <20170401203823.GC1208@nb-heartburn> Despite the publication date, this month's KWLUG meeting is no joke. The only one being April foolish around here is me, for not letting you know about our two amazing presentations earlier. Let's remedy that, shall we? Having recovered from his cold, Mark Steffen is hale and hearty and ready to tell us about Alienvault OSSIM, the FLOSSy core of a Security Information and Event Management system. Mark says this tool is appropriate for small businesses and paranoid individuals, and (VPN spirits willing) he will be remoting into his own OSSIM installation to demonstrate OSSIM's features and challenges. Also this month Jason Eckert will reprise his KW Linuxfest talk on the history of Linux and Open Source. He will recount historical events and trends with personal anecdotes of his experiences working with Sun Microsystems, Digital, Microsoft (!) and more. These presentations will begin at 7pm, after initial announcements. Also this month will be our next laptop rescue mission. We are scheduling this one the week after Easter weekend, on Saturday, April 22. If you read this far down the meeting announcements then you know the deal: we get together and get donated laptops ready for sale at Computer Recycling. A good diversity of people participate each month, and you should too! To register, please contact me or use the Contact functionality on the website. What's that? KWLUG (finally) has a new website. Both the website and the mailing lists moved to their new webhost on Indieserve Networks this month. If you notice glitches or problems, please report them using the Contact functionality. Next week there is a repair-a-thon at the Kitchener Public Library. After you register at http://kplca.evanced.info/signup/EventDetails?EventId=19395 you can bring your broken clothes or broken appliances or broken dreams and they will show you how to fix them up. Maybe they are looking for volunteers so they can fix broken computers too? April! April! On April we meet at the same place we always meet: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener Go to http://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and photos of the location. Drop by around 6:30pm and help set up for the meeting. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Apr 28 22:38:54 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2017 22:38:54 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Haskell and Functional Programming (May 2017) Message-ID: <20170429023854.GC1210@nb-heartburn> Have you ever wanted to Haskell? Maybe your programming is dysfunctional? Maybe you don't program at all, and would like to see what it is all about? Aden Seaman has a passion for functional programming and for the Haskell programming language, and he has been working hard on an in-depth exploration of these subjects. He will tell us what functional programming is, and how it differs from the imperative programming languages many of us use. He will compare different functional programming languages, and then dive into language features that make Haskell special. Don't be a lazy evaluator; come by this month and see what the fuss is about. On the kwlug-disc discussion list, KWLUG members proposed a few initiatives they would like to see happen: - Keefer Rourke noted that Sunday July 9 is the International Day Against DRM (https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm), and he was hoping that some people in the KWLUG community would like to organize something around this. If you would like to make something happen, contact Keefer via his web page: https://krourke.org - Andrew Cant and znoteer note that the annual Debian conference Debconf is being held in Montreal this August (https://debconf17.debconf.org/) . Andrew expressed interest in getting some people together to attend (road trip?) and znoteer invited people who are going to participate in the Open Day event (https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/open-day/) . You can contact Andrew via his website http://andrewsullivancant.ca/ , and to participate in Open Day submit a proposal on the Debconf website. In other news, KWLUG is looking for a new meeting location. If you have leads on accessible, preferably gratis spaces that can hold 15-25 people, please get in touch with me. This month's meeting will be held at SJK again: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener Park in the thrift store parking lot, and lock your bikes against the building. Show up at 6:30pm or so to help me set up, if you are willing. Find maps and pictures of the site at https://kwlug.org/sjk - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jun 3 02:41:28 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2017 02:41:28 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Saltstack, XMPP, IRC (June 2017) Message-ID: <20170603064128.GE1142@nb-heartburn> In this world of spinning up virtual machines on demand, the concept of configuration management -- specifying a server's configuration in some text-editable, version-controllable files and deploying them to new machines easily -- is pretty popular. Who knew? In the past we have had presentations on Puppet and Ansible; this month we will get salty. Nathan Fish has been working extensively with the Salt (aka SaltStack) configuration management system at his work, and he has lots of lessons to share. In addition, Bob Jonkman and Ronald Barnes have been working on some services for their KW VoIP group (http://kwvoip.ca) . As part of their infrastructure they set up XMPP, IRC and other services. They will explain the setup and use of these tools. As usual, these presentations will start around 7pm, after meeting announcements. The International Day Against DRM is coming up fast, on July 9. Thus far I am not aware of anybody organizing something concrete, but if people are interested then I can coordinate you. Please get in touch if you would like to make something happen. This month's meeting will be held at the same old meeting space: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener Check https://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and pictures. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jul 8 12:24:56 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2017 12:24:56 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Rust! (July 2017) Message-ID: <20170708162456.GB1154@nb-heartburn> Let's try this again. Some of you remember that we had to postpone March's presentation on Rust due to last-minute illness. The time has now come to get Rusty. Unlike last month's trendy Javascript framework, Rust remains relevant and intriguing. It offers a memory-safe, high performance systems programming language as an alternative to C or (ugh) C++. It is being developed by Mozilla with the goal of developing a new browser layout engine. Theo Belaire has used Rust to experiment with kernel modules and real time operating systems. He will discuss the language and tell us some of the things he has done with it. This presentation will begin at 7pm, after initial announcements. Do you appreciate systems administrators? If so you might be interested in participating in the annual Systems Administrators Appreciation Day dinner organized by Bob Jonkman. The dinner is scheduled for Friday, July 28 with the location under discussion. To learn more, visit http://bob.jonkman.ca/blogs/2017/06/28/planning-sysadminday-dinner/ Do you like local tech events in Waterloo Region? I have brought up the Watcamp calendar many times in these announcements, but here is a new twist: there is now an email list which produces a weekly event listing lovingly delivered to your inbox. If you like the idea of tech events but forget to visit the calendar (or subscribe by other means) then you should sign up for the newsletter: http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/watcamp-newsletter_kwlug.org We are still on the lookout for a new meeting venue. If you know of spaces that can accomodate 25-30 people, have reasonable access to transit/parking, and would be low cost or free for us to use each month, please get in touch. That's all I've got for this month. As always, if you have specific events that should be in this announcement, or you would like to schedule a presentation, please get in touch. This month's meeting will be held at the usual (for now) location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener There are maps and pictures of the site at https://kwlug.org/sjk . Doors open at 6:30pm for setup, and setup helpers are always appreciated. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Aug 12 06:06:45 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 06:06:45 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: FreeSWITCH/FusionPBX (Aug 2017) Message-ID: <20170812100645.GE1159@nb-heartburn> After successfully demonstrating both microblogging and XMPP for KWLUG, Bob Jonkman makes his triumphant return this month. Lately he has been working with the FreeSWITCH VoIP telephony system and its FusionPBX frontend. Amongst other things he has used it to set up conference calls for his customers. As in his other presentations, Bob will both describe FreeSWITCH/FusionPBX and offer a live demo for audience participation. Bring your smartphone, tablet or laptop and you too will be able to experience the pleasure of participating in conference calls with other people in the same room as you. Speaking of VoIP, did you know that there is a VoIP/telephony group that meets locally? It is organized by... Bob Jonkman. Their next meeting will be held August 28 at Egg Roll King. Visit http://kwvoip.ca for more information or to sign up for the group's mailing list. And that's it, I guess? Here's where we meet: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street N (at Weber) Kitchener Visit https://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and pictures of the location. The meeting starts at 7pm, and the doors open around 6:30pm. Setup helpers are always welcome. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sun Sep 10 02:24:56 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:24:56 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Shell Scripts, JOSM (Sept 2017) Message-ID: <20170910062455.GB1144@nb-heartburn> Is your life too perfect? Are things going too well? Tim Laurence has a suggestion for you: write some shell scripts. In a few simple lines of code you too can create works of shell art full of security holes and subtle bugs. During Monday's presentation Tim will share all kinds of tips and tricks we can use to ruin our lives via shell scripts, and if we are a good audience maybe he will tell us how to avoid ruining our lives that way. In a more uplifting topic, Andrew Cant would like to show us how to map things. Andrew has been playing with JOSM, the OpenStreetMap editor, and he will share what he has learned. These presentations will start around 7pm. After a slowish August events are picking up again, but I don't have anything in particular to plug. You can keep up with the latest events at http://watcamp.com, or get a newsletter of events mailed to you via the Watcamp newsletter: https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/watcamp-newsletter_kwlug.org Our meeting will be held at the usual (for now) location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener There are maps and pictures of the location at http://kwlug.org/sjk . There is bike parking at the side of the building and car parking in the thrift store parking lot. Doors open around 6:30pm, and setup helpers are welcome. Note that this month there will likely not be a cellphone number to call if you get here late, so let's hope the doorbell works (or you can arrive no later than 7:30pm or so). - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org . From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Sep 30 06:42:18 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2017 06:42:18 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Astronomy (Oct 2017) Message-ID: <20170930104218.GA1286@nb-heartburn> Look up. Waaaaay up. What do you see? If you are inside, you probably see a ceiling. If you are outside, you probably see light pollution. But if you are lucky, maybe you see mysterious points of light flickering in the sky. Recently, Khalid Baheyeldin was starstruck, and encouraged by his peers at KW-RASC (http://www.kw.rasc.ca/) has taken up the hobby of stargazing. As a FLOSSy guy, Khalid has been looking into Free Software tools to support his new hobby. He has discovered a range of capable tools out there: planetarium applications, drivers for telescope control, astrophotography, and more. In this month's presentation Khalid will lead us through the Free Software Astronomy universe, and show off some of the tools that have worked for him. This presentation will begin around 7pm, after meeting announcements. In other news, planning for next year's KW Linuxfest is underway. It is scheduled for January 27, 2018, and the organizers have a call for speakers open until November 1 of this year. If you would like to speak (or know of other people who are doing cool things in the free software world) then you should visit kwlinuxfest.ca . The Linuxfest team is also looking for organizing help, so if you would like to make this year's festival a success you should visit the website and say hello. This month's meeting will be held in the (for now) usual location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener Visit http://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and pictures. Rumour has it that the car mechanic parking lot (which some of you have been using) is under construction, but the thrift store parking lot should still be fine. Doors open at 6:30pm or so. Setup helpers are super-welcome. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org . From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Nov 3 23:57:59 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2017 23:57:59 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Distributed Filesystems with Ceph and NextCloud (Nov 2017) Message-ID: <20171104035759.GA1359@nb-heartburn> Do you like storage? Lori Paniak likes storage. Recently he and his henchpeople have been working on a project to provide hundreds of terrabytes of redundant storage spread across multiple locations. They use the Ceph filesystem to deliver an implementation of NextCloud at the University of Waterloo that students can use as a DropBox replacement. He will tell us about his adventures in designing and implementing this system. Oh man I don't even know what other event to plug this month. Night/Shift, maybe? That is not FLOSSy but it is fun, and there are lots of makery things to play with: http://nightshiftwr.ca/ Okay. Here is the meeting location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria St North (at Weber) Kitchener The meeting starts at 7pm. Setup starts at 6:30pm. See https://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and photos of the venue. You should come because it will be fun and Lori is a good speaker. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sun Dec 10 00:11:51 2017 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:11:51 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Curv, Mattermost Message-ID: <20171210051151.GA1197@nb-heartburn> For the last meeting of the year, we are celebrating the spirit of DIY. We have two presentations by people who are creating the world they want to live in. Doug Moen likes printers. He has been in the 3D printing scene for some time now, and now he is contributing to that community by creating Curv, a programming language for designing 3D objects. Instead of defining shapes by polygons, Curv represents shapes via mathematical equations, which give it high precision and the ability to render fractals and organic forms. Doug has been working on Curv for a while now and he says that it is close to release. He will be tell us about the project and give us a demo. Jonathan Fritz recently started working for Mattermost, an open-source alternative to Slack. You can host Mattermost on your own server, which makes it more difficult for a hosting company to lock you out of your archives if you don't cough up the monthly fee. Jonathan will also be telling us more about this project and give us an extended demo. In other news, Cory Doctorow came to speak last week and it was pretty good. I owe some of you an apology, however; I was debating whether to send a special email to the list last week and I did not do so, and I worry that some people who would have liked to attend the talk did not even find out about it. My apologies to you if you were one of those people. These presentations will start around 7pm. The meeting will be held at the usual location: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street N (at Weber) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/sjk for maps and photos of the location. There is free parking in the thrift store parking lot. Doors open around 6:30pm, and I always appreciate setup helpers. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org