[wplug] [wplug-announce] May announcements + events

[Stephen R Phillips]

1: <thier is no 1>

2: The meeting would be the 3rd saturday of the month (conflicts with another meeting I have) anyhow I hope all of you enjoy your PI (pun ... oww).

3: Greetings ladies and gentleman I've been lurking for a bit.
4: ANCIENT linux user here (not age just I remember using slackware before linux reached version 1 is all). 

5:I have 2 beagle boards, fun machines, bit pricey to launch with a rocket though (ahem) great to work with the DLP projector dev kit. Unfortunately didn't have network toy (which ment using an apple UsB for one {that worked beautifully the first time}).
6: currently running Gentoo ( and Mandriva on an old machineneed to boot the old machine on occasion just for fun I guess). 
7: anyone look at the beagle bone black? Opinions?


Anyhow I've been looking at the PI as a gift for my mother. She's been using Ubunto and 'vinders XP' alternatingly. She keeps infecting her machine with her web browsing habits (sigh). So I figure a PI can exist without the worry of loosing important data (you know things like the entire family genealogy ... etc.) again.

The PI looks useful for a web terminal, is their a variant of Gentoo for it? (honestly I haven't looked) Debian I am aware of (great distribution by the way) and of course ubunto. I am aware of the ability too render MPEG2 video and MPEG4 data. Are the ogg codecs availabel for it? It was a bit difficult for the mplayer version of the beagle board to get such things in it (not a good discussion topic I suppose). 

I don't see an angstrom distro (is yocto available?) on narcissa so I'm curious about what works best on the PI.I prefer to have a case (for this person) so the PI is a better choice (simply for unit survivability) and a supply with a 7 port USB should be good. (just need keyboard mouse bootable linux distro and a USB hard drive and all should be well in the world).

I think I said hello in there somewhere. (sigh) too much on the brain sometimes.

Stephen



====UPCOMING EVENTS====

==GUM: Raspberry Pi workshop==

May?s WPLUG general user meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, May 18th at 
Carnegie Library Brookline. 

Some of you have questioned the need to pay for meeting space. Well, CLP Brookline is 
willing to let us meet at no cost as long as we don?t serve refreshments. If we do, there?s a 
$30 cleaning fee. If all goes well, we may make CLP our regular meeting location.

There will be three Raspberry Pi mini-workshops. At the end, we?ll give out coupon codes 
and/or discount links for the non-gratis products and services used. WPLUG Chair Pat 
Barron will also be giving away a free Raspberry Pi to a lucky attendee!

My mini-workshop will cover how to turn a Raspberry Pi into an XBMC media server. We?ll 
install the Raspbmc distribution, go over basic XBMC usage, and touch on sharing protocols 
like DLNA that can be used for streaming content to the Pi. I may also talk about 
SABnzbd/SickBeard/Couch Potato if time permits.

Pat will use two Pis, a Model A and a Model B, for two separate demonstrations. Some of 
the ideas he?s considering include using the Pi in a model rocket, making the Pi into a 
music player, and installing an IR receiver and setting up LIRC.

We invite you to bring a Raspberry Pi of your own so you can follow with us. Here?s a basic 
shopping list: