Past Meetings

Unfortunately, the OpenWRT customization presentation is being postponed. It will be rescheduled. Stay tuned.

* * *
This month's meeting will consist of some shorter presentations:

• Bob Jonkman and Chris Craig will describe the technology and workflow for the incredibly useful WatCamp tech event calendar.
• Kirk Zurell will show us the Guile module he wrote for managing the key retention facilities built into the kernel (!).
• Peter Melse will demonstrate his adventures using a Raspberry Pi 2 as a car computer.
• Andrew Cant will tell us about the Indieweb movement.

This month will be a smorgasboard of short presentations. If you would like to contribute a presentation please contact us.

- John Kerr will show some screencasts he made, and teach us how to make our own.
- Bob Jonkman is organizing a keysigning party. (Instructions for participants)
- Bob B will demonstrate ZBackup.
- Tim Laurence will show us how to identify performance bottlenecks in servers.
- Andrew Cant will demonstrate the static Indyweb.
- Paul Nijjar will give an overview of VLANs: What they are, why they are useful, and how to use them. (Slides, Slide sources)

Chris Irwin lived a personal experiment to synchronize his mail, with the following goals:

• Access mail from the commandline
• Synchronize between hosts, with no information totally local
• Use standards
• Minimal annoyance day to day
• Synchronize with Android

To accomplish this he uses a stew of utilities and libraries: mutt, notmuch, Khard, Khal, Todoman, iSync/MBsync, vdirsyncer, git, CalDav-sync, CardDav-sync, OpenTasks, Baikal and DavMail.

Construction note: Victoria Street is closed between Charles and Weber streets. If you are coming from the West side of Kitchener-Waterloo, you will want to find an alternative route to the building. If you can get to Weber you should be okay.

* * *
Omar Atwa, who is a grade 8 student, created a Raspberry Pi Water Irrigation System for his school's Science Fair. The project incorporates a moisture sensor, an analog to digital converter, and a relay, all driven by a Raspberry Pi to keep soil moist for a plant. He will be walking us through the details of what he did, and how he did it.

Khalid Baheyeldin will demonstrate his new Raspberry Pi development kit, and how he got started:

• Where to buy a kit?
• Using NOOBS to install Raspbian Jessie
• How to turn the Pi into a music player and internet radio player, including controlling it on the command line, from a phone app, and from the web.
• Writing a Python weather forecast app, including a tiny built-in web server.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

R. Brent Clements will continue his discussions and demonstrations of sound tools in Linux, including audio recording for music.

Due to the organizer being sick and having no stamina, we are deferring this session. Stay tuned to this space for rescheduling details.

Note: This may be the last refurbishing session for a while, so if you have been waiting to participate this is your chance.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

Tim Laurence will lead an interactive tutorial on setting up and using Docker. If you have a laptop, you can bring it and follow along.

Tim has made Docker preparatory materials available at https://github.com/timdaman/docker-tutorial. He writes: "Tell people to be prepared or else. ;)" which probably means he is not going to make time at the beginning of the evening for people to get set up.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

This month's meeting will feature two speakers. First, Raul Suarez will demonstrate how he mastered a DVD (?!) full of photos for his parents. Bob Jonkman will also demonstrate video editing with KDEnlive.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

Let's get together and talk nerdy to each other. Bring conversation topics, FLOSS problems you are struggling with, and demos to share.

Conestoga College is organizing an inaugural Linux Fest. It will feature a variety of speakers.
We will post more information as it becomes available.

It will be held on Saturday, 30 January 2016 from 9:00am-4:00pm in room 1E05 at the Doon Campus of Conestoga College.

Cost: $5.00 at the door

Schedule:

9:30->10:40: Bob Jonkman :: What is Free Software?

10:40->12:00: Randy Kolenko

12:00->1:00: Lunch (Pizza and Coffee :: A programmer's favorite meal)

1:00->2:10: Ed Barsalou :: IOT Talk

2:10-3:20: Colin J. Mills :: LFS Educational?

3:20-4:00: Bob Jonkman :: GNU social -- Participatory Demonstration. Bring your laptop/tablet/phone!

4:00-4:20: Closing remarks.

Organizer: Colin J. Mills (cjm)
E-mail: colin.j.mills96@gmail.com

Conestoga College, Kitchener Ontario Canada.
2nd Year Software Engineer.

"Don't patch bad code - rewrite it" -- P. J. Plauger

View and download the poster from Flickr! (CC0 by Laurel L. Russwurm)

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

Marc Paré offers us two presentations this month. He will discuss his usage of Mageia Linux (neé Mandriva neé Mandrake), a distribution geared towards ease-of-use.

He will also discuss the use of tax software on Linux.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

Bob Jonkman will tell us about GNU Social, the federated microblogging platform that started its life as StatusNet. If you bring a wifi-enabled device with you (laptop, phone or tablet) then you will be able to participate in the live demonstration.

UPDATE: Bob has made his presentation slides available.

Every so often a group of KWLUGers volunteers to rescue laptops donated to the Computer Recycling project at The Working Centre. For assorted reasons it is not viable for Computer Recycling to spend much time refurbishing these laptops itself, so we sort through them, select ones in reasonable condition, then install Xubuntu on them for resale.

You are invited to come help! You do not need to be a Linux nerd or a hardware genius to participate: if you can use a screwdriver, read numbers and follow instructions then you can be helpful. There will be lots to learn, but you can learn it as you go along. Linux nerds and hardware geniuses are also welcome to participate, of course.

To participate, please RSVP using the Contact Us functionality on this website. Because Computer Recycling is ordinarily closed on Saturdays, you will need special instructions to get into the building.

We will start at around 4pm and end around 8pm, but if you can only come later or have to leave earlier that's fine too.

R. Brent Clements will demonstrate some free software tools for sound creation and editing.

Brent knows his sound. Need a DJ for a dance or a wedding? Putting on a play or a show? Brent's your guy. In addition to being an audio artisan, he is also a free software enthusiast. Over the years he has collected a suite of open source sound tools. In this presentation he will share some of his toolkit, and show how to use free software for podcasting, music recording and/or sound production.

Raul Suarez will present user-oriented file synchronization. He writes:

In the past we have heard about rsync and own cloud and other mechanisms
that, among other things, can be used to keep data synchronized across devices.

I work on several computers at home. Recently I found that I had to
remember in which computer I left the latest version of certain documents.

I went from computer to computer until I decided I needed a way to
synchronize them.
I compared and evaluated several tools and finally came to the one that
worked better for me. In this presentation I will go through the different tools I investigated
so you can decide which one works for you.