It has been some time since we last ran a slide show evening which we initially introduced to show off our projector.
The intention of the evening is for members to bring along their own photos and videos illustrating a topic of their own choosing to present for 10 to 15 minutes. Topics could include holidays, shows, days out, etc. it really is up to you! (I promise my talk won't be on kitcars this time too; Gareth)
If you can't bring your own computer, then if the presentation is on a memory card, USB stick, CD in JPEG, PowerPoint or OHP2 format we should be able to cope!
Gareth Woolridge (Chairman), Peter Dunn (Acting Secretary and Vice-Chairman ), Frank Watkinson ( Acting Treasurer and EAUG Liaison). Michael Peck, Paul Moore and Dick Williams .
Apologies for Absence:
None received.
Minutes of the last AGM.
Copies of the minutes of the previous AGM were made available.
Matters Arising:
Frank asked about the possible merger with the Mid-Suffolk Club. This will be covered in AOB.
The Minutes were agreed as a correct record of the meeting and approved by general consent.
Chairman's Report:(Attached)
The Chairman's report is reprinted here:
Another year has passed for the Iceni club, and while we are definitely few in numbers I believe our meetings are still proving to be enjoyable and informative for all. We have certainly been making the most of the expertise of our members, with "in-house" talks ranging from RISC OS to Linux, and from Netbooks to DTP.
In May 2008 Frank kicked off our year with an evening on Word Processing and DTP on RISC OS. Featuring the notable software applications, Ovation, Impression, EasiWriter etc. this talk introduced us to document production on RISC OS and how Frank has produced a number of booklets using the platform.
In June we had an evening on Wireless Networking featuring the ever present wireless LAN, but also Bluetooth, and a first for us at Iceni, a 3G USB dongle to provide mobile Internet access. We have since made use of this device on a number of occasions allowing online content at our meetings, although the signal strength and performance can be variable within the venue.
July saw us look at a number of Internet applications and technologies, under the banner of Web 2.0 . Here we looked at a number of modern sites including Ebay and Flickr, but also looked at how JavaScript and AJAX can be used to develop feature rich web applications.
August was as ever a Social Evening. On this occasion Frank organised a very successful evening at the Black Buoy in Wivenhoe where we were joined by members from EAUG and also for the first time in quite a while by Royal thanks to some volunteers for transport.
In September Michael gave an introduction to Office 2007 with its new interface and features. Unfortunately I was unable to add my piece on Office 2008 for Mac due to a family bereavement.
October saw us return to Linux for an evening where I demonstrated Ubuntu on a number of laptop PC's which I use both at work and at home. This was the first time an EEE PC was used at the club, at this time still running the standard ASUS Linux, but later replaced with Ubuntu-EEE which was subsequently demonstrated.
In November Peter kicked off an evening in which we all discussed our backup procedures. Something we should all do, but I'm also sure we have all lost some data at some point through our backups not being as they should.
December saw us return to the ever popular format of an evening of gadgets, where as ever a number of interesting devices were brought along.
In January 2009 Royal kindly arranged a social evening at the Tower Hotel in Dovercourt and was able to join us with easy access to the restaurant. A very enjoyable evening for everyone present and a good opportunity to catch up with everyone in the New Year.
In February it was all hands on deck again for a Computer Surgery evening with many issues to look at and try to resolve. The evening was mostly taken up with John's issues with Virtual-RPC on Windows Vista, but we certainly had fun trying to get this working, and it showed off well our cross platform knowledge!
Our final meeting before the AGM was in March where Michael and I (okay mainly Michael) introduced and demonstrated the public beta of Windows 7, due to be released at the end of this year as the successor to Vista. We were able to show this running on a native PC laptop, and also under VMWare on a Mac, where it ran well under both sets of conditions. Faster than Vista, and hopefully with some quirks ironed out, it is to be hoped this will be the Windows OS that brings stability back to Virtual-RPC too!!
As ever I have enjoyed working with everyone to organise and present the club's events this year and my thanks go out to everyone who was suggested a topic, presented an evening, and participated in the often lively discussion that inevitably occurs!
My thanks also to Frank and Royal together with Peter for publicity in arranging our two excellent social evenings. We have tried new venues this year, and I'm pleased that Royal felt able to join us once again.
I feel I should also mention in my report to you this year that we mark a year since the sad passing of our dear friend and Treasurer Tony Lister. I'm sure his presence has been missed by us all over the last 12 months and it is important we remember him, and all he did to ensure we were on a financial footing that enables us to continue even now.
As ever a plea for volunteers and help in running the club. We are a small club now and the Committee meetings really only occupy a few hours a year.
Aside from the Committee we also need your help in planning our topics for the subsequent club year. If you would like to present a talk one month, or even have idea for something you would like to hear about, please do let us know.
I look forward to another year of Iceni with you all!
Gareth
Acceptance of the report was proposed by Frank as being a very erudite account of the year's activities and seconded by Paul and approved by general consent.
Treasurer's Report:
This was presented by Acting Treasurer Frank and agreed to be a correct record of the state of the club finances. Current balance is £101.34 above Tony's principle of keeping a minimum balance of £100 in the account. Acceptance Proposed by Peter and seconded by Gareth and agreed by general consent.
Election of Officers and Committee:
The Acting Secretary Peter stated that no nominations had been received prior to the meeting.
Chairman: There being no further nominations our existing Chairman Gareth Woolridge agreed to carry on as Chairman. Proposed by Frank and seconded by Michael and was duly re-elected.
Chairman: Gareth Woolridge
Vice Chairman:
Michael was proposed as Vice Chairman by Peter seconded by Frank. Since he was willing to stand he was duly elected by general consent.
Vice Chairman: Michael Peck
Treasurer:
Frank agreed now to be Treasurer rather than Acting Treasurer was proposed by Gareth and seconded by Paul and was duly elected by general consent.
Treasurer: Frank Watkinson.
Secretary:
Similarly Peter agreed now to be Secretary rather than acting Secretary and was proposed by Gareth and seconded by Michael and was duly elected by general consent.
Secretary: Peter Dunn
Frank Watkinson also agreed to continue with the role of (EAUG Liaison).
AOB:
1.We agreed to update our bank signatories following the election of our officers.
2. We discussed some further memorial to Tony, our previous Treasurer, and it was agreed that a card and flowers would be presented to his widow, Ann Lister, during August. Frank agreed to organise this.
3. We had further discussions on a possible merger between Mid-Suffolk Computer users group and ourselves. Peter said that after contacting the other club recently he had discovered that they had moved from Barham Church Hall to a new venue in Ipswich and had solved some of their financial problems. They may not be still interested in a merger. We should decide whether we wanted to merge and what pros and cons there might be, and how such matters as our constitution, finances, venue, form of future meetings and topics would be handled. We had now moved our club meeting night to later in the month so that we could more easily meet up.
It was agreed as an action that the Secretary should now make further contact with them and arrange to visit them on their club night if they were agreeable.
There being no further business the meeting closed at 9.00 p.m.
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The formal part of the evening was followed by a demonstration of installing Eeebuntu on the EEE PC Netbook by Gareth
Gareth has been running Ubuntu EEE on his EEE PC 701 for some time after wanting a more typical Linux experience on his netbook, together with easy access to a larger number of software packages. Ubuntu EEE has recently been renamed Easy Peasy as it is not an officially endorsed Ubuntu project.
Eeebuntu is another Ubuntu based distribution for the EEE PC and Peter decided he would like to try this out on his EEE PC 901.
Both distributions can be downloaded as a CD Image, or USB stick image. For the demonstration we used a CD and Gareth's external USB CD/DVD drive. The CD drives are quite inexpensive, this one was about £15 new from Ebay.
In order to boot the CD you have to enter the BIOS on the EEE PC and update the boot order to give the external USB device priority. Once this is done the CD is booted directly in preference to the on-board Linux.
Eeebuntu is based on the 8.10 Intrepid Ibex release of Ubuntu with Netbook Remix, a user interface customised for small screens together with extra drivers and utilities for the EEE PC hardware.
The CD first boots to a Live CD desktop. This gives a full desktop albeit running quite slowly from the CD. This gives an opportunity to try the system before committing to an installation, and also contains the icon to run the installer application.
Upon running the installer you first choose language, keyboard layout and time zone information. It was noted after selecting London/UK that the clock was an hour fast, and we concluded the installer expected the hardware clock on the computer to be GMT, whereas the EEE PC was most probably in BST.
The next screen allows you to partition the internal system "disk". In the case of an EEE PC these disks are flash based memory, and appear as SCSI disks to Linux. Peter's 20GB EEE PC actually contains a 4GB flash chip (the same as Gareth's 4GB EEE PC) and a 16GB extra flash drive. To preserve the current data and standard Linux distribution while Peter is evaluating Eeebuntu we opted to repartition the 16GB flash drive to create space for the Eeebuntu partition.
The resizing process was unfortunately quite time consuming, which meant the rest of the installation and demonstration was quite rushed. Once the partitions were created and formatted, the installer unpacked the compressed packages from CDROM and installed to the on-board flash drive.
The final installation step was to create a user and password for the system, the system was then rebooted after ejecting the CD.
Upon booting the system presenting the Linux GRUB bootloader screen. This had options to boot both Eeebuntu and the original EEE PC version of Linux providing the ability to dual boot.
We were then able to take a quick look around Eeebuntu and the Netbook Remix interface. The usual OpenOffice and Firefox are available as default, along with instant messaging and accessories applications etc. The system uses the standard Ubuntu package repositories on the Internet so the 20000+ packages from Ubuntu are all easily available via the Synaptics Package Manager.
Unfortunately due to time we had to end the evening at this point. Hopefully Peter will report back on the experience at a future meeting.
With the release of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jacalope there is a Netbook Remix based version of the standard Ubuntu available. We may see how well this runs on EEE PC Netbooks in future as well.
Gareth
I would like to echo Gareth's words in his report about meeting topics and being prepared to give talks; and since we will be holding a Committee meeting soon to it would be helpful to have information as soon as possible. This also applies to Newsletter articles.
Peter
If you would like to present a talk at any meeting it would be very useful to the committee to have a ready prepared talk in case someone is ill or has to be away at short notice on the date of a meeting. So here is our current list.
| 2009 | ||
| May 20th | Slide show evening | All |
| June 17th | Anti Spyware, AntiVirus and Registry cleaners | Peter et al |
| July 15th | TBA | |
| August 19th (Prov.) | Social Evening TBA |
We are hoping to include some talks by outside speakers.
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.users.btopenworld.com
The first visit is free and subsequent visits for non - members is £2·50. The membership fee is £20 due from the AGM date in April, but may be reduced for those joining late in the year.
Continuing our publicity for EAUG events.
19th May Note: (3rd Tuesday) "AGM + Internet Service Providers"
9th June "Emulation"
There is now a full list of meetings up to the end of the year listed on the website.
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mtg.htm
Tea/coffee/biscuits usually available.
Visitors pay 2.00 GBP for the evening, which is deductible from the
normal joining subscription if you decide to join at a later date.
See the Membership page of the website for more information:
http://www.eaug.org.uk/mem.htm
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.
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
This has now re-badged itself as the Ipswich Computer Club, since it now meets at the AV centre in Leslie Road Ipswich on the first Tuesday of the month. I haven't made direct contact with them yet but will do so to see if they are interested in a joint meeting. It would appear since they have limited space for their meetings that any thoughts of a merger now are off.
For information on this group we have added a link here
http://www.ipswichcc.co.uk They have now a brand new website although they don't have a link from their old website.
They also state that they have now a full membership.
Peter
"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.)
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.users.btopenworld.com as a virtual domain,
it can also be reached using http://www.btinternet.com/~icenicomputerclub
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk