Hutt Meeting for 10th December, 2007

For the final meeting of the year, David Edwards is once again the presenter, although the topic for the evening is far removed from the Microsoft XBox discussion of last month. This time, David will talk about "Windows Unattended": the creation of a CD that will do everything associated with the maintenance of Windows XP automatically for you.

If you are interested in this, make sure you attend the meeting. As an additional incentive, there will be Christmas cake and grapejuice available.

Meeting for Wednesday, 21st November

If you came along to the meeting last month and saw Part I of "Triumph of the Nerds" you will know that Part II (showing tomorrow night) and Part III (at the December meeting) are not to be missed.

See how the modern computer industry developed, how one company changed it forever and how the industry fares today.

This will be followed by a Brains Trust, so have your questions ready for the experts.

Hutt Meeting for 12 November, 2007

On Monday at Moera, David Edwards has offered to demonstrate a modified XBox he bought for his son. This should be a fascinating evening, offering something a little different from the usual, so come along and join in the fun.

Change to the 19th September meeting at St Giles

I have been informed that Ian Heppleston has another engagement this coming Wednesday so John Hand has agreed to talk about Brother’s Keeper in Ian’s absence.

During the evening, John Little will still visit the Genes Reunited website.

Meeting at St Giles on 19 September, 2007

Another evening devoted to genealogy, where John Little will again visit Genes Reunited and Ian Heppleston will talk about Brother’s Keeper, a genealogy program he regularly uses.

For all keen genealogists, this should be an meeting full of interest.

Hutt Meeting on Monday, 10th September 2007

John Hand and John Little will discuss aspects of genealogy as it applies to computers at Moera on Monday. John Hand will discuss some of the software written for family tree record keeping, such as the popular Personal Ancestral File and Brother's Keeper, while John Little will visit the Genes Reunited website and show how helpful such a site can be in broadening one's awareness of more distant relatives.

If you are interested in your ancestry, this should prove to be a stimulating evening.

Wellington Meeting for Wednesday, 15 August, 2007

This meeting is a surprise package so come along and find out what it's all about.

Hutt meeting for 13th August, 2007

Unfortunately, nothing official has been planned for this month (we did have a speaker in mind but did not provide him with sufficient notice), so I thought we would continue from where we left off last month. I will bring along the club’s laptop and Woosh modem etc so bring along any video clips or DVDs you think might be interesting. Alternatively, you might have found some websites interesting and would like to share the experience with others.

Wellington and Hutt meetings for 18th and 9th July, 2007

Yes, it’s that time again – the AGM! You don’t have to worry about being elected to the committee, as all the current members are standing again. Of course, if you would like to assist, feel free to put your hand up!

The remainder of the evening is going to be a little different from the usual demonstrations. Bring along your DVDs, video clips or whatever to display and let others join in. If you want to lend any discs to other members, that’s up to you. Make sure you keep a record of what’s been borrowed and by whom. If you want to make copies of discs for people, you do it without the approval of the NZPCA, particularly if it is copyright material. Again it’s up to you as, technically, you could be breaking the law.

Regardless of that, the evening should be a lot of fun so do make sure you’re there.

The Hutt meeting will be very similar to the meeting at St Giles (after the AGM business has been completed there, that is). Bring along your DVDs, video clips etc to demonstrate what you find informative or amusing.

Meetings for Monday 11 June and Wednesday 20 June.

Those of you who are keen on programming will enjoy these two meetings. Arthur Harris has been studying Python for some time now and will speak about the language at both Moera on the 11th and St Giles on the 20th.
One of the really nice things about Python is that it is free!
Both these evenings promise to titillate your programming tastebuds, so don’t miss them! Even if you've never contemplated programming before, you might be pleasantly surprised at just how easy it can be.

Mind map showing meeting topics

The mindmap shown below is an experimental "proof of concept" to see how well this kind of embedded feature works. Feedback appreciated.

The original mindmap is at http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/730107

Update! Wellington Meeting for 18th April, 2007

The topic for the April NZPCA meeting at St Giles will be different from previously notified.

Brent Wood has very generously agreed to come along and share his experience.

Brent works for NIWA, and uses Open Source software extensively. The presentation will cover GIS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS) and data presentation with discussion about how Open Source software enables activities that would be impractical using expensive commercial software; there may also be some discussion of other Open Source software, Linux and OpenOffice as time permits. If you are interested in hardware, Brent will be bringing a Shuttle PC along, this is your chance to see one running and put to practical use.

Brent may have some LiveCDs of the software he uses for the demonstration to give away for those interested in persuing these topics further. The presentation will not be technical and will be quite informal so you will be able to ask questions.

It is important that members show support for guest speakers by attending. Brent is a very interesting speaker and you should not miss this meeting.

Wellington Meeting for 18th April, 2007

The meeting at St Giles for this month is centred around another brainstrust evening, so bring along all your computer problems and have them solved on the night by Roger and his team.

Hutt Meeting for 16 April, 2007

Debbie Noon, from IBM, is going to give a Powerpoint presentation on "Web Adaptive Technology" at Moera next Monday. There will be a short video on the subject as well. If you are not sure what it is all about, come along and find out.

Wellington Meeting for 21 March, 2007

Alan Royal will talk about blogsites and podcasting from a personal perspective this coming Wednesday at St Giles. This should be a most interesting presentation, so don't miss it.

Hutt SIG Meeting for March 2007

The next Hutt SIG meeting is Monday 12 March 2007. Details are here.

With the recent release of Microsoft's new OS (Vista) many people are considering whether to upgrade, especially as to take advantage of the new features of Vista, considerably upgraded or even new hardware may be required.

This is a good time to consider the alternatives to Windows. The meeting will focus on the current state of Linux, and will cover running versions of Linux on old hardware, as well as the very latest cutting edge desktop technologies. There will also be a demonstration of some of the ways to use existing Windows applications with Linux.

This topic will only be covered at the Hutt SIG (and almost certainly won't be repeated at the Wellington meeting), so make an effort to attend this meeting, or you will miss some possibly quite useful information.

You will see things that you probably never thought possible - guaranteed to be interesting!

'Contents may Settle in Transit'

Two pieces of DDR400 memory, as delivered in a box 250x250x200!

Recent Changes at Megabaud

Observant NZPCA members may have noticed changes to our website at http://www.computers.org.nz. This is a 'Blogger' web log, hosted by Google on Blogspot.

Since December 2006, Google has migrated many blogspot web logs (including ours) over to their new system. I'm glad that this happened over the Christmas break, because the migration was far from seamless; in fact for many people it was a total disaster. We were lucky - our site was available throughout the whole time, but could not be edited for more than a month. Some people lost their entire website contents, and for most people this was a serious exercise in frustration. Web 2.0 and hosted services are all very convenient, but this kind of experience shows the downside to it all.

The new system has several new features The new templates have some quite nice 'widgets' that make it easy to add RSS feeds, images, lists and the like, so that the site will always have new content added automatically; something to look forward to on your daily visit to see what is happening.

Apart from changes behind the scenes that ease administration, the biggest feature that visitors will notice is the inclusion of 'labels' (AKA tags, categories etc). This allows content to be arranged according to keywords, so all articles that are tagged 'Hutt SIG' will appear at the link: http://nzpca.blogspot.com/search/label/Hutt SIG for example.

We also now have more RSS feeds incorporated - you can easily locate the most recent Megabyte online, this is updated automatically with no intervention whenever a new Megabyte is uploaded. There is another RSS feed that displays links that may be of interest to visitors.

Not all of the RSS feeds are directed into the web log - there is now a feed out so you can be reminded of meetings without needing to visit the site at all. Just point your RSS feed reader to http://nzpca.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default and you'll always know what is happening. This feed replaces our previous feeds which will be phased out.

There a couple of outstanding items that need attention, if some NZPCA member would write a brief post to put under the 'About the NZPCA ' link, that would be much appreciated. There is also a lot of oustanding information required for the 'Contacts' link - please add or update your information if you can. Details can be emailed to usually@mail.com

Hutt and Wellington meetings for February

For the first two meetings of the year, Roger Currier is going to discuss the Google search engine and how it can be customised to do specific tasks more efficiently. This is a more complex subject than many of us realise, so come along to one of the meetings and next time you want to find out where to gather information about a particular topic via Google, you will know precisely what to do.
The Hutt meeting is on this Monday, 12th February, while the Wellington meeting is on Wednesday, 21st

NZPCA Meeting Locations and Details

NZPCA meetings are held monthly, except in January. Currently, meetings are held both in Wellington and Hutt City.


Wellington:

The Wellington monthly meeting is held on the third Wednesday of each month. Meetings are held in the St Giles Church house, corner of Kilbirnie Crescent and Vallance St. Entry is from Vallance St, and there is some parking behind the house. Meetings start at 7.00pm; President's address from 7.30pm, with a presentation or other event starting at 8.00pm. Meetings usually finish around 10.00pm. Click on the map for more details.

For those interested in hardware, there is a very busy Hardware SIG that meets every Wednesday starting at 11.00 am. The Hardware SIG room is located on the right hand side of the church and towards the rear. Access is from the front.

Hutt:

The Hutt SIG has meetings on the second Monday of each month at the Moera Community House, Randwick Crescent, Moera.

Meetings usually start around 7.30pm, with a presentation starting around 8.00pm.

Click on the map for more details.

See you at this month's meetings!