Scott Doty has been working with video encoding with Linux and MythTV to record Television and Video with Linux. He will offer us a review of what he has done and inform us on what he has found to work very well, and what to avoid. This should be an excellent resentation for beginners through advanced users. (ME: remember to bring in your DVD/VCR.)

Kyle Rankin and M.E. will provide a co-presentation to work with video encoding, and include some “neat tricks” with mplayer.

Details:

Please note that this InstallFest is NOT at O’Reilly and Associates. It will instead be at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park. Please see below for information on the exact location and directions.

What is an InstallFest and who can come?

Instead of putting all of the usual “what is an InstallFest” info in this and future announcements, we have a link up on our website as to what a NBLUG InstallFest entails and how to participate. If you point your browser of choice to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/, you’ll be presented with all the info you ever wanted to know about what goes on at an InstallFest, and how you can get the most out of attending one.

Anyone is more than welcome to attend. If you need help or just want to hang out and talk, you are more than welcome to show up. They are always totally free; you might want to bring a few dollars for pizza, however.

How do I sign up?

We will again be taking signups for this InstallFest, so please be sure to visit that URL if you plan on attending. People who signup and reserve a time slot, are first in line. We’ve found that by taking signups, we can help more people in a timely fashion. We can also make sure that enough helpers are available for those wanting help. If you need help at the last minute, you can still just show up and we’ll probably be able to help you, but it really helps us if you register first; preferably a week or more in advance so we have a chance to beg for more helpers if we need them.

What if I want to offer to help?

If you’re interested in helping out, please contact installfest@nblug.org; if you’ve successfully installed RedHat (or Mandrake or SuSE or Debian or FreeBSD or OpenBSD or YellowDog or …) before, you can probably help out. We can even use a bit of help from somebody helping people bring their heavy equipment in. Besides, it’s fun to come hang out with all the geeks. ;)

For helpers, the schedule is a little different:

8:00AM - Breakfast (optional) at an undisclosed (undecided) location. 10:00AM - Room open to helpers for setup 10:30AM - Installs begin (event start) 4:00PM - Installs should be done by now. 4:30PM - Installs must be done by now. 5:00PM - Room closed; alarms go off, doors lock, police show up.

We always need helpers, and we can usually use more helpers than we get. It’s a good way to “give back” to NBLUG and it’s a geeky good time.

(If you’re interested in helping out but can’t do an InstallFest, please consider giving a presentation in December or January or consider taking over as President; contact speakers@nblug.org about speaking or president@nblug.org about taking over as President)

— Location and Directions —

The InstallFest will take place on Sonoma State’s campus. We will be using room Schulz 1121, which is in the Schulz Information Center (aka, the Library). Directions and information on parking follow.

Here are some maps and directions that SSU makes available on their site:

http://www.sonoma.edu/university/maps.html

— Master index of all interesting direction-related info.

http://www.sonoma.edu/university/maps/schulzinfoctr.html

— Nice map of the campus with the library (Info Center) highlighted

Parking tips from Mike & Dustin:

http://www.nblug.org/location.html

— Similar to the map above, but Mike has highlighted the parking areas, and also drawn a path to get to the right part of the library from Cotati Ave.

Parking on Saturday is free. You may park in either Lot D or Lot J. Note that any lot that is marked as residence parking is OFF LIMITS at all times unless you have a proper parking permit.

If you need to park close to the building to bring your equipment in, there is 30 minute parking on the West side of Schulz and on the East side of Schulz there are two 15 minute spots. Once you drop your equipment off, you should move your car to one of the other lots mentioned above.

Handicapped parking is available in the reserved lot areas, and on the West side of the library near the library loading zone. Handicapped parking is labeled.

Bill Kendrick will offer us a presentation on using the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). If you have never seen the GIMP, or want to know how to take advantage of some of the more powerful features of it, come and enjoy this presentation.

Presentation should cover introductions to the following applications by the associated members: xv (Ron W.: Confirmed.) xmms (Troy: Confirmed.) xine (Kyle: Confirmed.) mplayer (Kyle: Confirmed.) Laptop-net (Kyle: Confirmed.) bc (Andru: Confirmed.) Gaim (Troy: Confirmed.) OpenOffice (Troy: Confirmed.)

Items not taken: (may be covered later in another presentation) Xchat (NOT COVERED THIS MEETING) kismet (NOT COVERED THIS MEETING) gpg (NOT COVERED THIS MEETING)

Bios: (Still waiting for some speakers to submit brief bios)

Andru: Andru works for SSU as Operating System Security Specialist. He has been a member of NBLUG since the very first meeting. He has used Linux for nearly a decade, and it is his operating system of choice. He often lurks in the mailing list, but when he answers a question, he often has something useful and clever to offer. He will discuss “bc” and uncover useful features that you may not have considered useful unless you saw them in action.

Jake: (bio to be added after submission)

Kyle: Full-time Sysadmin for The Green Sheet, Inc. — a local financial services publication. Kyle is finishing up a B.A. in Computer Science part time. He has been a member of NBLUG since January of 2003.

Kyle has been using Linux since his first Redhat 5.1 install at the beginning of 1998 and has been using Linux exclusively as a desktop OS since 1999.

Ron: (bio to be added after submission)

Troy: First introduced to Linux in 1995 or so on the beloved and overworked nermal.santarosa.edu. Switched to Linux on the desktop for fun and work in 1999. Finds booting other OS’s less necessary with the advent of native Linux games such as RTCW, Unreal Tournament and Frozen Bubble.

Most of us get spam, and many of us who get spam don’t want it. So, what do we do about it? Come hear a panel of NBLUG members talk about various methods that can be used in Linux to help decrease the amount of spam that makes it to your inbox.

Eric (Acting NBLUG VP) is presently employed at SRJC and has found several methods for filtering spam. He has experience with such tools as Procmail, SpamAssassin and others.

Frank Ball (Active NBLUG Board Member) works at Agilent. He has found help in avoiding spam with customized ipchains/iptables rules as well as employments of other tools.

M.E.(Acting NBLUG President) is a student of Computer Science who has found sanctaury with procmail and spamassassin.

This is our normal monthly meeting at the normal scheduled time and place. The “Acting President of NBLUG” will jabber on about installing and upgrading a kernel by building it from source. “Why?” will be covered, and general procedures to make the process easier will be included. He hopes to make this an intermediate level presentation.

WHAT: NBLUG InstallFest
WHERE: Sonoma State Campus Schulz Info Center, Room 1121 (see below for specifics)
WHO: Anyone wanting help in installing Linux onto their computer
URL: https://nblug.org/installfest/
WHAT DO I DO: Go to https://nblug.org/installfest/ to signup!!!!
WHEN: Saturday, April 19th, 2003, 10:30AM - 4:00PM

Please note that this InstallFest is NOT at O’Reilly and Associates. It will instead be at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park. Please see above for information on the exact location and directions.

An InstallFest is a free workshop where volunteers can help you to get Linux onto your computer. For more information, follow the links above.

This is our normal monthly meeting at the normal scheduled time and place.

This is a Special Event in an unusual location. This is the same building as our InstallFests, but in a room on the second floor. Sorry, but no food allowed.

The movie runs for about an hour and a half, and we plan to start it right at 2:00PM, so plan to show up around 1:40PM.

We plan to show the high-quality special edition DVD version of this film on a large projection television, but, depending on shipping speeds, we may be forced to show a lower-quality version instead. If we have the special edition by then, and if enough people are interested, we may also show some of the extras after the main event.

REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.

On June 1, 2001, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”

Microsoft fears GNU/Linux, and rightly so. GNU/Linux and the Open Source & Free Software movements arguably represent the greatest threat to Microsoft’s way of life. Shot in cinemascope on 35mm film in Silicon Valley, REVOLUTION OS tracks down the key movers and shakers behind Linux, and finds out how and why Linux became such a potent threat.

REVOLUTION OS features interviews with Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda. To view the trailer or the first eight minutes go to the ifilm website for REVOLUTION OS.

http://www.revolution-os.com/

The LNX-BBC is a mini Linux-distribution, small enough to fit on a CD-ROM that has been cut, pressed, or molded to the size and shape of a business card.

LNX-BBCs can be used to rescue ailing machines, perform intrusion post-mortems, act as a temporary workstation, and perform many other tasks that we haven’t yet imagined.

http://lnx-bbc.org/