[plug] Thanks to Daniel and Artifactory; Future Talks; Other Events; Projects; Housekeeping; Feedback

[James Bromberger]

Dear all,

Sorry for the length of this email, there's a few things to communicate.


  Artifactory

PLUG had a good turnout last night at Artifactory's workshop in Osborne
Park, where *Daniel* gave an introduction to hacker spaces and what
equipment they have acquired. People had a poke at various pieces of
kit, and played the Arcophone mk II, pictured (original Arcophone video
at [1] below).  Many thanks to Daniel and the other Artifactory members
who attended to show off their creations (including the electric motorbike).

The change of venue brought out a few new faces who hadn't been able to
make it to Christchurch previous months, and PLUG attracted a few more
financial members (as did/may Artifactory)! Thanks to everyone who came
along.


  Future talks

Next month, on *Tuesday 12th of April *2011, long term PLUG member
*Harry McNally* will talk about some work he is doing to get a dormant
Radio telescope dish moving on the top of the UWA Physics building. The
project had languished and UCC were offered the job of reviving it. The
talk covers using an Arduino board to control the high power stepper
motor driver boards. The embedded software is based on a software
framework called Quantum Programming (QP) which allows a design to be
defined as state machines using UML state charts. The code is dual
licensed so it is available under the GPL (and at no cost) for projects
where GPL is an appropriate distribution license. The venue isn't yet
100% confirmed, but we're trying to get to the UCC/Loft Area in Cameron
Hall at The University of Western Australia. Many PLUG people will know
of UCC (www.ucc.asn.au) as one of the older Perth hacker hang outs,
perched high above the Ref tavern in Cameron Hall for over 30 years. 
The calendar on the web site will be kept up to date.

To our future presentations, we're having an IPv6 presentation by *Carl
Gherardi *in Fremantle on May 10th, and later in the year a presentation
by Indulus Bernstein at IBM. If you have a talk/presentation inside you
that you'd like to share with everyone please email committee your
proposal, and the month(s) that suit you to give it.


  Other Events

However, before we get to next month's talk, we have a *Quiz night *on
*Monday the 28th of March* - just over two weeks away - at *The Moon &
Six Pence* in the city. We've booked the back room ("/The Stables/") and
have several rounds of fun questions - some Linux focused, some more
general. Nothing too hard, so don't be afraid to come along and join
your other like minded Linux community friends on a table. This event is
/*FREE*/, you can bring anyone you wish if you think a /partially
/Linux-focused Quiz would appeal to them. We will hopefully have a few
prizes for our brainiest table, and possibly some for our not so über
brainy tables! This is not a professional quiz night - it's a bit of
amateur fun on the otherwise scheduled /PLUG in the Pub/ night! So set
your expectations low, and come along to have a laugh. :)

As to other activities, *Nick Bannon* is organising a *workshop event
*is on the brink of being scheduled, where you can bring your PC along
with your Linux issues you're experiencing, and sit down with a group of
people to help try and nut out a solution. You'll also be able to bring
along your PC and have someone help install Linux on it. I'll let Nick
fill in the details on this as soon as they are finalised.

PLUG is also looking for a few volunteers: one person (or a small team)
for co-ordinating the PLUG monthly presentations, and one person for the
coordination of /Software Freedom Day/ (in September) - plus volunteers
who would like to help out on the day. If you're not aware of Software
Freedom Day, check out http://softwarefreedomday.org/, and watch the
videos at http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Resources; including the
Stephen Fry video from a few years back when GNU turned 25 years old.

For all of these events, please mention them to your friends who may not
know about PLUG.


  Projects

The AV project, to create a one-room live streaming video studio based
around open source software and cheap commodity hardware is under way on
the PLUG AV mailing list. The first workshop day is probably going to be
announced in the next week after the acquired VGA to DV capture device
(/TwinPact 100/) arrives from the US. The project will start with a mix
of some donated equipment, and when a working prototype is together,
we'll look to improve and replace the borrowed pieces. One of the goals
is to stream the monthly PLUG presentations so that people unable to
attend can still watch (and possibly participate via IRC or other
means); and as a training exercise for any future video projects that
may require this.

Others have suggested running Bug Squashing days, and possibly you have
a project you'd like to work on with other PLUG people. If so, let the
committee know and we'll help you with whatever we can. PLUG has some
limited funds to assist and we'd love to help you help PLUG. We also
have the ability to put grants in to Linux Australia for some of their
excess funds from LCA (the AV project plans on doing this).


  Housekeeping

After several years of PLUG committee not having the signatories on the
PLUG account actively involved with PLUG, we've brought this under
control. The four office bearers now have access (on a 2 to operate
basis) to the PLUG Bank Account. We're looking to reinstate PLUG's own
PO box for traditional dead tree correspondence (incorporated bodies
need a postal address), which means we're having to apply for an ABN for
PLUG. All of this is taking time to organise, and may look like nothing
is happening to the rest of the membership. Tim is working on an upgrade
to Drupal version 7 on the web site.

If you are interested in helping write pages on the PLUG web site;
please email committee. We had a bit of link spamming happen from some
bots, so account privs are now more restricted by default. However we'd
love to give anyone access to add content if they have the time - just
let us know.

My thanks to the rest of committee; we've been meeting twice a month
(once face-to-face, once on IRC) to try and sort through a bunch of
issues on the agenda to try and bring these events and initiatives to life.


  Feedback

We have a range of members, and I'd like PLUG to appeal to all of them.
If you have something you don't like about PLUG, or suggestions for
things PLUG can do, please let me and the committee know. My mobile
number is at the end of this email for a reason - you can call me.
Otherwise, email and occasionally IRC (#plug on irc.gimp.org). I'm also
interested in what keeps the majority of the subscribers on this mailing
list - 340+ people - not joining as PLUG members for the small sum of
$10/year. Please let me know your thoughts. If you've read this and
would like to join, fill in
https://secure.plug.org.au/members/signup.cgi, and then send your $10
($5 for concession/student/unemployed) to our account
(https://secure.plug.org.au/about/bank-account) with you name as the
reference.


Well, many thanks for reading this far!

  James


[1] The Arcophone mk I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WfszpzNAmw

-- 
Mobile: +61 422 166 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to

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