Although we are no longer in full lockdown there are still uncertainties and restrictions. So for the present we are continuing to hold out meetings online.
I hope you are all keeping safe and well and will be able to join us online. Contact Gareth ( or to iceni@woolridge.org.uk ) if you don't think you are on our meeting list of participants for online meetings if you are interested in joining in; since he is sending out the links prior to each meeting. There is nothing to download or install and we still meet on the third Wednesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. via Jitsi.org Video conferencing.
Peter
Unfortunately as both Gareth and Michael are going to miss this meeting we have had to change the programme for this meeting since neither wanted to miss the originally scheduled meeting on Virtualisation presented by Steve. Therefore we have swapped the October Computer Surgery with the June Virtualisation evening in the programme.
So if you have any technical problems which we may be able to help with please join us for this evening.
This was our AGM and was followed by a discussion on the Cloud.
The formal write up of the AGM will be issued before the next AGM but this report will summarise the proceedings. It will be a bit longer that future reports since several of you missed the AGM.
Unfortunately recording was unavailable from Jitsi that evening. Although the Secretary has his audio recording.
As this meeting was held online again we were able to screen share the Chairman's and Treasurer' reports which will be attached to this Newsletter.
Chairman's Report
The Chairman's report was approved as detailed account of the club's year.
Treasurer's Report Summary
The Treasurer said that our finances had changed little since the last AGM and our balance was now £91.86. and no subs had been collected last year but there could be a token amount of £5 per head this year.
The accounts were approved as an accurate statement of the club's financial position.
Matters arising led to a discussion of our possible future real meetings but we did not know an accurate position for Bourne Vale. Since several members quite liked to not having to travel to meetings and could communicate well online we gave consideration to the possibility of holding some meetings online even after Covid restrictions had ended.(We hope they do). We thought we should see if we were able to have a Social evening in August and consider returning to Bourne Vale in September.
ACTION: The Secretary would find out the position in August.
ACTION: The Treasurer will decide when to request subscriptions this year.
Before the election of Officers there was an extra item on the Agenda for a discussion of the Role of Secretary as Peter had said that he wished to stand down. In the event no one wished to take on the role but as we did not want to abandon the Newsletter altogether Peter has agreed to continue, although with the following provisions to help reduce the burden of the compiling meeting summaries.
Election of Officers:
As in previous years the Secretary had received no nominations for the election and it was agreed once more to re-elect the Committee en bloc unopposed since all were now willing to stand again.
Hence the posts remain as follows:-
| Chairman | Gareth |
| Vice Chairman | Duncan |
| Secretary | Peter |
| Treasurer | Michael |
AOB
None.
The meeting ended at 8:50 p.m.
Big players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are offering storage, compute, load balancing, clustering... etc.
Gareth spoke about the Cubitt shared swarm which allowed people to share out their storage as private peer to peer space. https://www.cubitt.io It cost £306 for 1TB space or £253 for 500GB one off payment to obtain a special device USB drive, which is attached to your system. You can store your files in the system with claimed 100% security since they are distributed encrypted over all other users, They in turn save encrypted files to your device. You can access your files from anywhere at anytime.
We did not see this is as being much of an advantage and was a costly way to get secure storage.
Most of our members were using Cloud services like Google and Dropbox for photo storage. Although Google were now going to charge for photo storage with no free amount.
NextCloud was another service which Gareth used and our meeting recordings were saved there.
There was also some off topic discussion on radio codes on car radios when the battery flattened during Covid neglect.
If anyone would like to present a talk please let us know. As always there is scope for adjustments as we go through the year and we are hoping the Covid restrictions will have eased and we can have the social functions. Once the restrictions allow in-person meetings it has been suggested that we alternate our meetings between online and in-person as it has been quite convenient for several of us to avoid going out but still attend a meeting. Gareth suggests this may need a decision at the AGM.
Peter
| ICENI Future programme 2021/2022 | ||
| 2021 | ||
| June 16th | Computer Surgery | All |
| July 21st | Operating System Updates | All |
| August 18th | Social Evening TBA (if allowed) | All |
| September 15th | Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Microbit | All |
| October 20th | Virtualisation | All |
| November 17th | Slides and Video | All |
| December 15th | Gadgets and Party | All |
| 2022 | ||
| January 19th | Social Evening | All |
| February 16th | Photo and Video Editing | All |
| March 16th | Home Networking and Network Storage | All |
| April 20th | Apps and App Stores | All |
| May 18th | AGM + Extras | All |
MEETINGS WILL NOW BE HELD ONLINE BUT STILL ON THE THIRD WEDNESDAY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. FURTHER DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
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
Membership fee currently £15, visitors free.
"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 URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website. If anyone would like a copy of our old newsletters on CD this could be arranged.