Peter had arranged this at the Wooden Fender after a suggestion Anne had made.
Paul
We had a good attendance at our party and Gadgets evening although John was unable to come through sickness.
Paul began the evening by showing us his Telescopic Walking Pole which is extendable to 5ft. It also incorporated a removable handle giving access to a camera tripod bush, so that it could be used as a monopod and was very light for air travel.
His second gadget was a lens cap holder which attached to a camera strap for safekeeping of the lens cap when removed from the camera. These are very in expensive.
Gadget 3 from Paul was a specialised kit for impacting
pins into walls for picture hanging called a Takker and consists of a gun and sets of plastic headed metal pins strong enough to hold up to10kg loads in plaster walls. Seen on the left in the photo with picture hanging accessories. Paul's last Gadget was a "Hard Wall Takker, seen on the right hand side in the photo, which is a heavy duty version of the Takker which includes a drill for perforating hard walls and ceramic tiles such as in a bathroom or kitchen. Cost about £9.99 for the standard one and £22.49 for the Hard Wall Takker kits for refills are £3.99 each. Both are very quick to use.
Peter wanted to show his gadgets next because this year, as in previous years, he had brought a culinary gadget, which this time was a pizza cutter along with a freshly cooked pizza Mozzarella (Dr. Oetker) so that we could all join in and have something to eat. The cutter uses a wheel so that the topping can be cut without disturbing it too much whereas a knife usually makes a mess. There is also a slice for lifting pizza and and slider for pushing it onto the plate, although Peter reckons all you need to do is tip it up.
2 Digital Coin Jar.
Peter's second gadget was a digital coin jar which counts in 
either Sterling or Euro, although only one currency at a time because this is set up initially after inserting the batteries. He had a selection of different coins to show how it worked. Before coming he had thought that he could pretend he had no money and the others could then all try it out by putting money in, but decided they would probably not fall for this. The jar has a screw top and money may be removed from the jar. When doing this the amount removed should then logged and subtracted from the total count to give the correct contents figure. An alarm goes of whilst the jar top is unscrewed! Obviously you can cheat ... but what's the point! It works by measuring the coin diameters, and Peter thought it would be useful for counting old copper 1p and 2p coins.
3 Bluetooth speaker. 
Peter's third gadget was the KS Pocketboom Bluetooth speaker shown here available from Maplin £19.99 which is rechargeable via USB and can either be connected via Bluetooth or else via an Aux-in socket. Using Aux-in suspends Bluetooth which will resume when the Aux-in connection is removed. After pressing the switch to "on" a quickly blue flashing light is seen. When Devices are paired the quickly flashing blue light slows. It does have a rather load beep when operated though which is a bit annoying. Charging the Lithium battery for 1.5 hrs gives 3hrs use. It also incorporates a microphone and can be used as a hands-free unit.
Duncan introduced his Gadgets with the DAB /FM portable digital radio shown here on the left. Rechargeable.Very neat. Polaroid branded. He had a problem with the output volume too low on DAB, the output on FM was O.K..
Duncan's second gadget was a SATA drive caddy which has all the required power and data connections in the base. Very useful for backing up from an old drive ; works on 2.5" and 3.5" drives. ~£25.
Michael then described his gadget which was the latest Lollipop Android release.
The photo shows the startup screen. This version allows changes to the notifications to perhaps allow only priority interruptions. Also allows multiple users. He thinks it is a lot smoother than previous versions which is good for older hardware. It still has quite high screen resolution 2650 by 1840.
Peter wanted to replace his Scroll Excel II tablet which keeps locking up on applications. Although BBC iPlayer would work well the ITV player was useless and only ran for a few minutes before grinding to a halt. Sounds like a buffering problem. Good makes for Tablets were Nexus 9 and Samsung Galaxy
Michael's second gadget was a new Lexor 64GB pen drive running on USB3.0 with Microsoft bit locker drive encryption which was free to use.
Gareth had been very busy at work and only managed to arrive quite late from London but had managed go home to bring his hand whisk for frothing drinks, but we weren't offered a demonstration! However he claimed a frothy drink was produced in 30 sec.
Gareth had to replace his laptop after his bag strap broke and had bought an HP255 (?) with 4GB RAM 750GB HDD AMD Processor (?-slow) with Ubuntu Gnome 14.4 for 169.99, the Win 8.1 version was another £42.
Altogether a very pleasant evening with some refreshments. There were as usual a lot more topics raised during the course of the evening. It ended with all the gadgets being photographed
Peter
| ICENI Future programme 2014/2015 | ||
| 2015 | ||
| January 21st | Winter Social Evening - Venue "Wooden Fender" see emails | All |
| February 18th | Mac Evening | Gareth |
| March 18th | Windows developments (Windows9?) | Michael |
| April 15th | AGM + extras | All |
| May 20th | Social Media | All |
Meetings are now on the Third Wednesday of the month unless otherwise stated.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website.
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Currently both visitor fees and membership fees are in abeyance until the next AGM .
We are continuing our publicity for EAUG events , however their website has not been updated for a year now. So if you wish to know information please phone one of their contacts.
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mtg.htm
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
Drinks usually available.
See the Membership page of the website for more information:
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)
Our website has had to be moved since BT is no longer giving free hosting to customers and Peter was running the old website on his account. So Gareth has been fortunate to register a web address of our own and has generously hosted it on his own woolridge domain. All our old website data has been ported to the new site and a redirection placed on the old address. The old site will disappear some time soon.
If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website.
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk