Jack is paying us a visit once again. He always gives a superb presentation, so please come along and support us. A lot has happened in the RISC world this year and Castle Technology have been a key player in this. I'm sure Jack will have something special to say about the plans for IYONIX and RISC OS, we might even get a sneak preview of Wakefield!
The formal meeting minutes will be issued later. The Chairman's report is printed here.
Chairman's Report
Another year has passed for us at Iceni since the last AGM, and my election as chairman. We have produced a varied agenda of topics over the last 12 months, which I hope has been of interest to everyone.
In May 2004 we held an evening on gadgets, which was a hands-on meeting where members brought along a gadget to demo to the group, varying from an antique acoustic gramophone to the latest in handheld GPS receivers.
June 2004 saw myself giving a demonstration of DV camcorders, and basic video editing on Mac OS X, including titling, various effects, and adding music to the final footage.
In July, Richard Brown from OreganoUK joined us as our first outside speaker of the year. Sadly I was unable to attend this meeting, but the latest version of Oregano2 was demonstrated, and the future direction of web browsing on RISCOS was discussed.
In August we held our summer meal at the Crown in Manningtree, which was once again well attended and a very enjoyable evening.
September saw Paul and myself give a "Networking and Wireless" talk. This included a demonstration of a simple wireless network, although the discussion on wireless equipment and data encryption opened a can of worms that may warrant revisiting in future.
In October, Tarquin Mills joined us from the Norwich club, to talk about the "Inclusive Web" based on an alternate set of DNS servers and domain names.
In November Paul presented to us his "Windows Tips and Tricks", which taught us a few things about anti-virus as well as tips on managing Windows.
In December we held a Retro evening of computers, gaming, and other gadgets, which was well attended, and encompassed old Acorn machines, emulation of old Coin-Op games, and an old mechanical calculator amongst others.
January's social evening was once again at the Crown, and needless to say was very enjoyable for all, my thanks to Peter for his efforts in arranging both of our social events this year.
In February, Joe Taylor visited the club to demonstrate AppBasic. I found this evening very informative for creating simple WIMP applications, and a very interesting talk.
Tony Lister, who provided a demonstration of scanning slides using a Nikon Coolscan, and a RiscPC, rounded off the year at Iceni in March.
A sound year financially for the club, and with such a wide range of topics, I am sure we have catered for most interests, although we are always keen to hear of suggestions for topics from our members.
My thanks to all our presenters over the year, both our "in house" expertise, and those who have made the journey to visit us. I am sure you will all join me in thanking the committee for their continued efforts on behalf of the club.
Gareth
The whole Committee were willing to stand again and were re-elected en bloc.
The formal part of the evening was followed by a talk by
We were very please to have Paul visit us once again.
Paul's talk was based on two recent articles from his Living with Technology magazine.
The first covering was ways to obtain very cheap (free) phone and broadband access and the second on the uses of Google.
Paul began by giving a plug for Archive, Living with Technology, Mousemats especially now with wrist rests and CDs of both magazines. He pointed out that LWT had a subscription of a set number of issues and the frequency of publication, roughly bimonthly. A new subscription of 6 issues was available for £15 and therefore lasted about a year.
He then, having heard about our gadgets evening, showed us his credit card sized toolkit with screw drivers, pen, scissors, penknife,tweezers,pin etc. which he had found very useful.
Gives broadband at 512kB for 11.75 inc VAT per month with first 200M download free thereafter 4MB/p. Capped at £23 inc VAT. Successful if don't download much data. Email £7.50 extra per annum for 30MB mailbox. Webspace extra £10 /MB per annum.
Even cheaper for low users than Metronet at 5p/MB for usage. These two are about the same cost for 200MB per month. Metronet is cheaper after this.
They charge 2p/min for calls to US and Canada but inland UK calls are free. Apparently a Dutch company - very low overheads. Payments made via credit card DD and permission has to be given to sell your details to advertisers to register an account, but Paul doesn't think he has had any extra advertising since using them. These low cost carriers are apparently using spare capacity on different country's networks so even a short UK call is an international call with consequent speech delay. Dial 18866 01603-xxxxxxx for Norwich for example.
US calls free.
These are charged at 8p/min by BT but some of the cost going to the company involved. But if you use this website you can discover their standard number instead and with 18866 it will cost nothing.
Clara net have a "unlimited free trial" accounts. Go to www.clara.net and sign up for an account by going to Home > Services > Home Access > Free trial. Also includes 10MB webspace and multiple email addresses. The only charge would be for the 0845 number.
For more details on the above see Paul's article in (LWT 2 (6) pp 30 - 36, March 2005)
Paul next spoke about how useful he has found Google to be following an article in LWT by Barry Smith. (LWT 2 (6) pp 16 - 24 , March 2005). Modern search engines are extremely fast and efficient but their results can be improved in various ways.
Google is not case sensitive so misspellings still present the user with what they were looking for. Also sometimes it will ask 'Did you mean "...." giving the correct spelling.
Some words can have common misspellings and some web pages include both so that the page is still found.
To find 700g in ounces just type " 700g in ounces" and Google will respond with
700 grams = 24.6917734 ounces (I tried it Ed.)
Use the word define: before a phrase will give a definition.
intile: Will search for the following word in titles. allintile: looks for all of the following words in a title.
Similarly to intitle but for url searches.
Various ways to restrict the breadth of a search as in site:uk for uk only sites. Also in combinations as site:ac.uk, site:gov.uk or site:edu.de.
Restricts search by not including a particular word as in goldfinch -american
This is used for "a word like..." e.g. site:company.co.uk ~phone
There is more being added to Google all he time just browse around "advanced searches" and "more" at the top of the page (Ed.)
A good talk packed with anecdotes and useful tips. Thank you Paul.
If you want more you'll just have to subscribe to Living with Technology and Archive. I can promise you a good read. (Ed.)
Spurred on by Tony's talk your editor has been able to equip himself with a Nikon Coolscan III now thanks to a bit of work on ebay. I'm just finding out how to configure the SCSI card on the PC to get it to work. I've also got WiFi working on my Zaurus with my network. I'm glad our AGM passed successfully and that as a Club we can look forward to another interesting year.
| Date | Topic | Speaker |
| 4th May 2005 | IYONIX and RISC OS | Jack Lillingston (Castle Technology) |
| 1st June 2005 | "Firefox for RISCOS, and more!" | TBA |
The Committee have recently met and discussed the future programme covering a range of topics including:
If you have a particular computing area which you would like to hear about or would even like to present yourself please let us know.
We are also interested if anyone knows of a good alternative Social venue to the Crown at Manningtree in the North Essex area.
Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. As you can see we are hoping to have a few more talks with outside speakers this year. We will give more details as soon as they are available.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8NP , for a map and other details please see the website. http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com
Continuing our publicity for EAUG events their next meeting will be:
| 10th May 2005 | AGM Followed by the Text Editor competition! |
| 14th June 2005 | "e-Commerce". Speaker TBA |
For details of the above see the website
http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall,
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/ven.htm
or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/ppl.htm
See you soon!
Frank.
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
P.S. My insurance company have added my computer cover away from home with no extra premium required, yours might do the same.(Ed.)
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the new website. Our website URL has changed to
http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com as a virtual domain,
it can also be reached using http://www.btinternet.com/~icenicomputerclub
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk