[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Arduino projects, Text File Formats (June 2021)

[Paul Nijjar]

Now that the end of this awful pandemic is finally in sight, it is a
great time for the "Pandemic Hobby" phase of our humble user group to
manifest itself. As this pandemic has dragged on, many people have
turned to unusual hobbies -- sourdough, crossstitch, home renovation
-- to pass the time and fend off the anxious dread of daily existence.
Many KWLUG members have also adopted pandemic hobbies, and now some of
our presenters are sharing their passions with the world. In some
sense this trend started last month when Michael Hitchens presented
his music-making hobby with LMMS, and this month's speakers continue
the arc.

For his pandemic hobby, Brent Clements took up Arduino projects. He
uses the low-cost microprocessors to hook up all kinds of buttons to
all kinds of blinkylights, so that when he presses buttons the
blinkylights change. Ordinarily we think of pressing buttons to change
blinkylights "using a computer" (an activity many of us have had quite
enough of during this stay at home order) but it is completely
different and more fun when you are wiring up components to
breadboards. Brent will tell us a little bit about getting started
with the Arduino, and lead us through some of his fun projects. 

Tim Laurence's pandemic hobby is somewhat different: text formats.
When the wide scary world gets too complicated and depressing, Tim
turns to YAML and JSON and INI and other file formats to calm him
down. As a longtime sysadmin/DevOpsy guy Tim has been spelunking
configuration file formats for decades now, and in his presentation he
will introduce us to some of the strange and wonderful specimens you
might encounter in your computer configuration adventures.

As usual, these presentations will begin around 7pm, after meeting
announcements.

Speaking of meeting announcements: in July we will be holding our
inaugural KWLUG Trivia Night, where we present tidbits of Linuxy (and
FLOSSy) facts and exercises to stump each other. But in order for this
to work we need tidbits! Do you have some neat factoids or techniques
to share with the group? If so get in touch so we can figure out how
to put this night together.

In other news, Mikalai Birukou has a petition he would like to bring
to your attention: https://action.openmedia.org/page/83751/petition/1 .
Apparently the CRTC reversed a 2019 decision to lower wholesale
internet rates for third-party ISPs (Teksavvy, etc), which (the
petition predicts) will make those ISPs less competitive. The petition
complains about this decision and advocates for it to be reversed.


Even though the end of the pandemic is in sight, for now we continue
to hold our meetings online: 

https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug 
There is no passcode.

- Paul

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Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org