Category: Meetings

July: Some Git with a Radio

Date
7pm, Wednesday, 08 July 2020

Git

Speaker: Joseph Calkin

Joseph will talk about why Git is useful for version control. How it compares with SVN and how to use it.

Expanding Horizons

The Intersection of Amateur Radio and Computing

Speaker: Giovanni Moretti – ZL2GX and Graeme – ZL2GZ

Amateur radio is a hobby of exploring the limits of radio, electronics and digital technologies. Once licensed, you’re allocated a worldwide-unique callsign and can operate (and build) radio equipment capable of international and space-based communication.

Being an interest centred on electronic communication, there’s naturally a strong overlap with computing, with Arduino and Raspberry Pi and Linux being widely used. There are many facets to the hobby ranging from the seriously technical through to providing communications support for search-and-rescue (SAR), Civil Defence and Amateur Radio Emergency Communications (AREC).

In this talk, we’ll will give an overview, including how you can:

communicate internationally from your backyard (without the Internet or cell phones)
use both voice and digital modes on-air
design and build radio transceivers and antennas
send signals 2000km using just a Raspberry Pi and a micro-transmitter.
use Linux to link into international Internet-linked DMR and DStar (digital mode radio) networks
become involved in the ongoing efforts to build a regional radio-linked TCP mesh network

Should any of these pique your interest, we’ll finish by outlining how you can become licensed.

Continue reading “July: Some Git with a Radio”

Jitsi June: Thursday the 11th Meeting

Hello, Palmy Linux User Group members!

As the world slouches slowly back towards normalcy in the wake of COVID-19, the PLUG is looking forward to resuming in-person meetings at our usual venue, hopefully sometime next month—both the lockdown and renovation work have complicated our access to the Milson Community Centre, so we won’t be able to meet there this month.

However, club President Nick Skarott has set up video conferencing software for our usage, and we are planning on holding a virtual meeting for anyone interested on Thursday the 11th of June, at 7:00pm. We’re unlikely to have a specific agenda, but the software (Jitsi Meet) supports screen sharing, which seems to work well, so if there’s something you’d like to demonstrate for the club, you’d be most welcome to do so—or, just come along to say hello to some familiar faces.

There are a few ways to connect to Jitsi; Nick has produced a helpful PDF. It works from either a mobile phone and a laptop. If you don’t have a working camera and/or microphone, that’s OK; you’re most welcome to come along and observe anyway. There’s also a text chat in the window, if need be.

The URL for the meeting will be: https://jitsi.tunadigital.nz/PLUGJune2020

Either way, the committee is looking forward to seeing you all again, and resuming our meetings in short order—in a hopefully rather more settled world!

October: Password managers and AV1

Date
7pm, Wednesday 9 October 2019

PASSWORD MANAGERS

Speaker: Tom Ryder

Re-using the same passwords on multiple sites causes a lot of security problems, but humans aren’t good at remembering a large number of passwords. Part of a good solution is a secure password manager. Tom will demonstrate a few Linux-friendly options, including his own favourite, password-store.

AV1

Speaker: Nick Skarott

AV1 is another in a line of freely available patent free video codecs. But despite the fact other free codecs exist like VP9, adoption of this codec outside of YouTube is next-to-non existent. What makes AV1 different to the point that has streaming giants like Netflix and Twitch to all the big hardware vendors like Intel, AMD and Nvidia joining the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia)?

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September: Streaming & Proxmox

Date
7pm, Wednesday 11 September 2019

Streaming on Linux

Speaker: Nick Skarott

Proxmox Virtual Environment

Speaker: William Bell

William will be talking about Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) and how it’s made running an adaptable and secure server easier than other options he has tried in the past. He’ll give a quick demonstration of how to use its basic functionalities and a suggest ways to set it up to make things faster and easier to manage.

Continue reading “September: Streaming & Proxmox”

August: Anacron, Inkscape, & Blender with Wacom

Date
Wednesday 14 August 2019

Anacron is not cron

Speaker: Stephen Worthington

Most of us have used cron to schedule something. But often what we thought was cron was actually anacron, a completely different program with a different purpose.

Inkscape & Blender

Speaker: John Flower

John will share his experience of teaching his twelve year old niece how to use Inkscape and how that led to the company he works for (Trophy Specialists & Engraving Ltd) using it to assess suitability of job applicants. He’ll also demonstrate a Wacom tablet using Blender.

Continue reading “August: Anacron, Inkscape, & Blender with Wacom”