I’ve added a sidebar to the blog showing off some interesting books from my library. LibraryThing.com has an interesting proposition: post your library online and share your book lists with others, tagging included. The Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee Linux User Group is maintaining their list of library books for loan on Library Thing, so I thought I’d try it with a barcode scanner/keyboard wedge I picked up at Hosstraders over the weekend. Looks like Library Thing is a cool application. I see Rick Borup is already posting FoxPro books up there, and I added my Hentzenwerke collection as well. Check out their tag cloud and the ability to subscribe (via RSS, of course) to tags, other people’s lists, topics, etc. Looks like fun.
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Dartmouth / Lake Sunapee Linux User Group Meeting, May 4th, Resara Enterprise Linux
On the DLSLUG mailing list, Bill McGonigle announces: “The next regular monthly meeting of the DLSLUG will be held Thursday, May 4th, 7-9PM, at Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L01. All are welcome, free of charge.
Agenda:
7:00 Sign-in, networking
7:15 Introductory remarks
7:20 Resara Enterprise Linux
The guys from Resara Networks will be presenting their product, Resara Enterprise Linux. “Resara Networks is a leader in Linux thin-client technology. Resara Enterprise Linux has bridged the gap between thin clients and PCs by providing centralized administration, but not sacrificing the standard capabilities of PCs. With Plug-and-Play installation, customers do not require prior Linux experience or new training to easily deploy Linux on their network.”
8:30 Roundtable Exchange – where the attendees can make announcements or ask a linux question of the group.
Please see the website for links to directions.
New Hampshire Python SIG tomorrow night
On the Python announcement list, Bill Sconce posts: “The next meeting of the Greater New Hampshire Python & Milk/ Cookies SIG will be tomorrow night — Thursday, April 27th, at the Amoskeag Business Incubator, 7:00 P.M. (the usual place, the usual time).”
“Also, we have a special program. Paul Koning, who had never used Python until recently, will tell us about his first, “getting to know Python” programming experience. Something just a little bit challenging: rewriting PDP-11 TECO.”
“It should be an interesting evening, especially to hear about what went well (or not) in learning a new language in such an environment. Can you imagine writing TECO as your exercise to learn C++? (And of course, now we have TECO for Linux. And for the Mac. And for everything else wherever Python runs.)”
“We’ll also have our usual Q&A, and Python trivia. Because several people asked us about Python at LinuxWorld last week we’ll include some material for newbies. (Please be thinking about that – should we have a newbies segment EVERY meeting?)”
WHO: New Hampshire Python Special Interest Group
WHERE: Amoskeag Business Incubator, 33 South Commercial Street, Manchester, NH
Travel directions
WHEN: The fourth Thursday of each month at 7 PM, holidays allowing
WHAT: Paul Koning, TECO in Python, General Python Q&A
Hope to see you there!
Dartmouth Lake Sunapee Linux User Group tomorrow: Jonathan Linowes on Xaraya
Date: Thursday, March 2nd 7:00-9:00PM
Place: Dartmouth College, Carson Hall, Room L01
Presenters: Jonathan S. Linowes
Topic: Xaraya
Xaraya is an extensible, Open Source web application framework written in PHP and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Xaraya delivers the requisite infrastructure and tools to create custom web applications that include fully dynamic multi-platform Content Mangement Solutions (CMS). Xaraya’s modular, database independent architecture introduces tools that separate form, function, content, and design with on-the-fly extensions allowing greater control and versatility.
Jonathan will present an overview of Xaraya, its architecture, core modules, and extension modules, including a brief demonstration how to get started developing web sites using the Xaraya platform. Examples will be used from current live web sites.
Jonathan is principal of Parkerhill Technology Group, a strategic management and web development firm, and has over 25 years of entrepreneurial and technical experience ranging from small start-ups to multinational corporations. He holds a Masters degree in Media Technology from MIT, and serves on several boards including the Software Assocation of NH (SwANH), Amoskaeg Business Incubator in Manchester NH, MIT Enterprise Forum of NH, and North Country Council CEDS (economic development strategy). Jonathan lives in northern Grafton County on a retired dairy farm with his wife and 4 young children.
Speaking of great GNHLUG meetings….
… as I mentioned GNHLUG’s next quarterly meeting, DLSLUG organizer Bill McGonigle posts the audio, slides and video from the last quarterly presentation, featuring Doug McIlroy, an instructor at Dartmouth and a retired manager from AT&T Bell Labs where he worked with Kernighan, Ritchie and other lights of the era. Thanks to Bill for the hard work of taking sub-optimal audio and video and preserving this very special presentation!
Slides are in OpenOffice format. Audio is a 64 Mb MP3 file, Video is a 348 Mb MP4 file suitable for playing with VLC or QuickTime. Thanks to the Internet Archive for hosting the video!
Do LUGs matter? Yes!
Slashdot asks Do LUGs Still Matter?, pointing to an article by Joe Barr, writing for NewsForge. The answer for all UGs hasn’t changed: User Groups matter if they matter to you. If there’s something you want out of a LUG and you’re willing to put some effort into a LUG, amazing things can happen. Everyone knows of a LUG that’s faded: there’s a natural rhythm to LUGs like all organizations. A leader with fire in his/her belly drives the group to new heights, burns out or gets distracted, and the group declines. A new leader may emerge or the group may fade away like the Cheshire Cat, leaving nothing but an empty web page or two.
The Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group is on another power climb, not its first, nor hopefully its last. Active volunteers are running chapters in Nashua, Peterborough, Hanover, Concord and Durham. A Python Special Interest Group shares many of its members and the groups resources and gives us a presence in Manchester as well.
In the past year, member of the group were present at Linuxworld Boston, the Software Association of New Hampshire InfoeXchange annual conference, the Hosstraders ham radio swapfest, the McAuliffe annual teacher’s conference, and Software Freedom Day.
LUGs can matter as much as you want them to.
DLSLUG: Bill Stearns on LVM
Bill McGonigle posts: “The next regular monthly meeting of the DLSLUG will be held: Thursday, December 1st, 7-9 PM at:Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L01. All are welcome, free of charge.” Bill Stearns will present LVM – Logical Volume Management.
“Bill Stearns has trained folks on LVM professionally for a nationally-renowned training organization and packages some LVM utilities. He’ll give us the 1.5-hour overview version of what LVM is and how to make it work.”
I noted on a recent install that Fedora Core 4 uses LVM by default. This is a session well worth attending. Bill’s a great presenter and I’ve never failed to pick up some new tips.
DLSLUG/GNHLUG Quarterly Meeting, 3 Nov 2005
What a great meeting last week! Forty-three attendees made this the most attended Greater New Hampshire Linux User Groupquarterly meeting of the year.
Thanks to Doug McIlroy for a fascinating presentation on his memories of growing up with the computer industry. Doug ran the department at Bell Labs where Kernighan and Ritchie came up with C, studied at MIT with WhirlWind, and had many fascinating adventures along the way. Doug put on a great show featuring significant and memorable milestones and wonderful anecdotes. Several people took notes, audio and video recordings. We hope to see something on the Dartmouth – Lake Sunapee LUG site soon!
Thanks also to Bill McGonigle for arranging and emceeing the meeting. Bill started with the usual announcements about the group, thanking PTR/Addison Wesley for providing some books to raffle as well as paying for the delicious refreshments. Bill had been contacted by a survey firm claiming to be looking for cases of Linux cost of ownership situations other than those that have been popularly reported. Bill expressed some scepticism on the legitimacy of this information and asked to contact him if you want to look into it. A raffle after Doug’s presentation gave away a couple of Addison-Wesley books and some RedHat promotional DVDs.
Bill Stearns announced the results of the project to bring some networking gear to Pass Christian schools following Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of their schools, and pointed to a link with pictures. Great job, Bill!
At the end, I spoke for a few minutes on the on-going effort to gather feedback for the development of by-laws and the registration of GNHLUG as a non-profit organization. Reception was generally positive. Several attendees offered to send along by-laws for their organizations, so we can examine what others have done.
Finally, we announced the next quarterly meeting. We’ll be joining with the New Hampshire Chapters of the ACM and IEEE for a presentation by Rik van Riel showing off spamikaze, an automated spam block system. The meeting will take place at Robert Frost Hall in the Walker Auditorium at Southern New Hampshire University. Note the unusual time: the main presentation is 5 Pm to 6 Pm, to allow evening graduate school students to attend. Hope to see you there! Thanks to all who attended!
PySIG in two weeks: Jython
The Python Special Interest Group (“PySIG”) of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group meets the fourth Thursday of each month at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester at 7 PM.
This month, the meeting will take place on Thursday, 27 October 2005 and will feature a presentation on Jython by KentJohnson.
“Kent is soliciting suggestions for specific topics (on the PySIG mailing list). In the meantime here’s a synopsis about Jython in the large from the project’s home page: http://www.jython.org/docs/whatis.html. Jython should be of interest to anyone who uses or wants to know about either Python or Java. I particularly like the “typically 2-10X shorter” part, having worked on Java projects in a former life…” — Bill Sconce, PySIG coordinator
Audience Participation Night at DLSLUG
Bill McGonigle, Chapter Coordinator for the Dartmouth – Lake Sunapee Linux User Group posts:
- Date: Thursday, August 4th, 7:00-9:00PM
- Place: Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L02
- Presenter: The Membership (that means you!)
- Topic: Nifties!
“It’s Audience Participation Night at DLSLUG – time for you to get up and do something. We’ll each take a turn at the projector showing something Neat or Nifty. It doesn’t matter if it takes 2 minutes or 20 minutes to explain, just get up there and show us something. We all know something Nifty that’s worth showing. We’ll have a linux laptop to use, or connect remotely to your own. The meeting will run until we run out of Nifties, or we run out of time.”
“It can be anything from a utility you just discovered to a neat piece of hardware we should know about to a worthwhile service on the ‘net or maybe something you wrote that saves you hours of time. If you’re new to Linux that doesn’t matter – there must be something Nifty about it that got your interested – what is that? Found a good Linux/Unix book lately? Linux is about sharing, and this month it’s your turn.”
Hope to see you there.