1. Apologies for Absence
2. Minutes of the last meeting
3. Matters arising
4. Chairman's Report
5. Treasurer's Report
6. Election of Officers and Committee
7. AOB.
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club. If you are interesting in joining the committee or have suggestions
for things you would like to hear about over the next year we would welcome
all input at the meeting.
Following our AGM Gareth will be giving an overview of the forthcoming
update to Mac OS X 10.9 codenamed Mavericks to be released this autumn.
Our summer social event last month was held at the Boathouse in Dedham, a
venue we haven't visited in quite some years now but a lovely evening was
had with excellent food. Gareth and Sophie, Peter and Sheila and Michael
were present from Iceni, with Gerald and Sarah joining us from the EAUG.
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A most enjoyable evening catching up with friends.
Gareth.
John started off our evening with his laptop running with both Ubuntu and
Windows. The default boot option was to boot into Ubuntu but John would
prefer it to default to Windows Vista. The laptop was using the grub
bootloader from Linux to boot both Operating Systems so Gareth took a look
at the config file for grub and the variable GRUB_DEFAULT=0 looked to be
the culprit, as Ubuntu was the first option in the boot menu. John knew
that Windows was the 5th option, so counting from 0 we changed the config
to GRUB_DEFAULT=4, crossed our fingers and rebooted with success.
John also brought along his RISCOS laptop - a Raspberry Pi with a Motorola
Lapdock. The Lapdock connects to the Pi with USB and HDMI externally and
powers the Pi. CJE supply a USB power/data lead with an inline switch to
turn power on and off. The Raspberry Pi has a USB hub attached and 2 USB
sticks, one for Data and one for extra programs, with RISCOS booting from
an SD Card.
Opening the Lapdock and powering on the dock and then the Raspberry Pi
yielded the expected RISCOS boot process and quickly a very high resolution
desktop, the display native resolution being 1366x768. John had many apps
and lots of data and photos installed and with ShareFS he can exchange
files with his other RISCOS machines.
With the Pi running via the battery in the Lapdock John has managed to get
5 hours run time in testing so far.
When he first got the "LaPi" installed he had a lot of problems with power
glitches and corrupted cards caused by the delicate connections and leads,
but he had since got these replaced by CJE and was now reliable. There was
also an issue with the keyboard being designed for Android phones not
RISCOS, so no Break to exit failed apps. John installed a keymapper and
mapped F10 to Break to work around the issue.
John also had an SD Card with Rasbian installed, which is Debian Linux for
the Pi, and by swapping cards was able to boot the system into Linux. This
is useful for times when WiFi is needed, when in hotels for instance, as this
is not supported by RISCOS, although the wired ethernet port works fine for
RISCOS use.
John is currently using Midori as a browser in Linux, which is a similar
level to Netsurf so was looking for a lightweight browser with Javascript
as reports are that Firefox is very slow.
Peter and Gareth had their Android tablets with them on the evening which
we were able to compare. Gareth's tablet is a Nexus 7 from Google which
has the latest Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version of Android while Peter's was
running the older Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.x release. Peter's tablet is
expandable with SD Card but Gareth's was not, it also featured a HDMI port
for playback on TV which was not available on the Nexus 4.
Since the meeting Gareth has looked at Midori and I believe it should be
possible to get Javascript in this, as it can support Flash, Java etc.
provided the external plugins are installed and is used as the default
browser in a number of Linux desktops. Gareth will install the version
available in Ubuntu and investigate further. Also while the Nexus 4 tablet
does not have a HDMI port, a cable is available for the USB/charge/dock
port to connect to HDMI TVs and monitors.
We hope you have all had an enjoyable Summer and are keen to join in our Autumn programme of evenings.
Peter
| 2013 | ||
| September 18th | AGM and Mac Evening | Gareth |
| October 16th | Raspberry Pi, Linux and RISCOS | All |
| November 20th | Video Editing | Peter et al |
| December 18th | Gadgets and Party Evening | All |
| 2014 | ||
| January 15th | Winter Social Evening - Venue TBA | All |
| February 19th | Windows Evening | Michael |
| March 19th | Computer Surgery | All |
| April 16th | AGM + | 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
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.
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
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:
They have now moved to the St. Andrew's Computer Club at Britannia Road, Ipswich.
They have a full programme on the parish website
(http://www.ourstandrews.co.uk), We may be able to make new contact with them to arrange something in common.
"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