[Bradford] Notes from June's Meeting

[Alice Kaerast]

At last night's meeting we discussed OpenVPN, Truecrypt, Bitcoin and
Tomboy Notes.

The slides from the talk on OpenVPN are available from Github, but
probably don't make any sense on their
own.<https://github.com/kaerast/OpenVPN-Presentation>.  We covered the
use-cases for OpenVPN, along with discussion on problems setting it up
people had encountered and tricks and tips.  We also quickly installed
a server on the night, so hopefully people feel more comfortable
setting it up now.

Brian showed us how to use Truecrypt, right from the basics.
Truecrypt is a cross-platform tool for encrypting filesystems.  He
showed us how to setup an encrypted vault, and we discussed setting up
encrypted partitions, cross-platform compatibility issues and
security.  We briefly covered how it compares to other disk encryption
tools, but there is scope for a wider discussion around that.

Brian also showed us Tomboy Notes, which follows on from the article
he has written for the Bradford CVS newsletter.  Tomboy Notes is a
cross-platform application for storing information which can then be
shared across multiple computers and also mobile devices.  We very
briefly mentioned alternatives such as Dradis.

Olly's talk on Bitcoin generated lots of interest, and we discussed
the technical and political issues around Bitcoin.  Websites shown on
the night included Bitcoin Market Charts -
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/ where people watch the value of
Bitcoin.  http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ Which is a popular mining pool and
Britcoin https://britcoin.co.uk which is probably the best place to
buy and sell bitcoins in the UK right now.

We also had a short quiz and a clear out of Alice's spare parts cupboard.

There was an interest in hearing talks on media (especially video
editing) in Linux as well as Git and Github in the future.  A 20
minute talk or discussion on either of these topics would be
appreciated.

Finally, a couple of dates for your diary:

Leeds Hack - 6th August http://leedshack.com/ A weekend of creating
things and learning new skills.

Haworth Jelly - 15th July http://www.bradfordjelly.co.uk An afternoon
of coworking at a cafe in Haworth, designed to encourage collaboration
and skill sharing.

-- 
Alice