[Wolves] Re: Wolves meetup summary

[Steve]

wow! what a summary! Nice one james :-) 

A couple of points - 

>Their various computers, which range from humble 486s to newer Pentium
>II-based models are being configured to run the Linux-Mandrake
>(www.mandrakesoft.com) distribution (chosen due to its
>beginner-friendly reputation), operating as thin clients (X Terminals?).
>The lab should be connected to the Internet. (????) 

I think only the older 486s are going to be used as thin clients, and we're going to be connecting to the internet through ADSL. The router is going to be a 486 
running smoothwall, and we have around 6 workstations set up, mainly PI or PII , 64 MB ram, running mandrake 9 (which has very much improved 
configuration tools) and using a combination of -  KDE for eyecandy and either blackbox or XFCE for speed - as windowmanagers.
Whilst more machines would be nice, i reckon 6 is about enough to show what linux can do. We're also planning on installing Icecast 
(http://www.icecast.org/) to experiment with streaming, also of interest may be the 'frequency clock - Free Media System' 
(http://www.frequencyclock.net/index2.html) which features a 'program database, timetabling system + a customised streaming media player' .

I also really like to investigate the AAlib project (http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/index.html) which james mentioned in his post about command line usage, 
specifically i like the ascii video streaming offshoot (http://ascii.dyne.org/)

In terms of multimedia software has anyone used Pure-data http://www.pure-data.org/ ?  Apparently "Pd" stands for "pure data",  "Pd is a real-time software 
system for live musical and multimedia performances"  and  "Pd is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio and graphical processing. It 
resembles the Max/MSP system but is much simpler and more portable"

There you go.The Redundant technology initiative are getting some people in to do workshops on it so if anyones interested i'll post up any links to results.

>They are looking for advice on software to support PHP-based community
>web sites, "blogging" sites and such, all of which should be fairly easy
>to customise to their more specific requirements

I've used a system called Userland ( http://www.userland.com/) to manage content for some websites - its set up on a friends computer, and it uses easy to 
edit html templates with macros to manage content, and also impliments css well for the presentation side of things. Its very slow though  - to see what i mean 
visit http://www.myprotova.com/lowtechbrum for the A2RT blog, or go to http://www.myprotova.com to spawn a new slow site of your own. Anyway and it 
costs money apparently and doesn't run on linux , so we are looking for a free and open source alternative for content management. I've had a quick play with 
postnuke, but i'd be interested in seeing if there's a very quick way simplifying the look and the navigation of the site, so groups who arn't experienced at either 
html or php can quickly get into posting up text and images without all the other baggage.

>Richard
>-------
>As a result, Richard would now like a copy of the latest version of
>Linux-Mandrake (9.0?). Could someone do the honours with a CD burner
>please.


I'd be happy to do this richard - if you're willing to drop by brum in the day or evening. 


>Open Source vs. Microsoft
>-------------------------
>  - Bombardment of government organisations with freebies in order to 
>try
>    to dispel the risk of a high-profile switch to Open Source software.
>    This has recently occured in India, which was honoured by a visit 
>and
>    large charitable donation by William H. Gates III himself. 

I think i mentioned the other night that a group in Delhi have been in touch with us, they're called Sarai (http://www.sarai.net)  and describe themselves as a 
new media initiative. They do a wide variety of interesting things including talks/screenings/exhibitions as well as linux workshops , and using open source in 
the local community. Their website is well worth a look  apart from the dodgy flash circles, and they also publish a yearly book called the Sarai reader which 
they say "is structured around a specific theme, and will feature scholarly articles, essays, reviews & criticism, interviews and photographic essays.The Reader 
will be inter-disciplinary and will invite and commission writing by practitioners, academics, activists and artists working" 
They've sent us several copies of the latest book, so when we get them, if anyone wants to peruse let me know.

Anyway , good to meet you all
speak soon
steve