[SGVHAK] Thursday meeting recap: 8/1

[John Kim]

Hello,

I wish Ubuntu got a little more love there. Oh well, but Dave's computer was a thing of beauty. I really enjoyed lockpicking yesterday. I never thought I'd pick five locks in an hour, slow as I was. And thanks John W for a hands-on on the sweet Nexus 7 2nd gen and a ride to and from the Madre station! 

John C's use of Raspberry pi as a file server, managing it from his blackberry, was a revelation. So many uses for that little guy.

It was great meeting all of you. See you guys again next week!

Lan Dang <l.dang at ymail.com>이 씀:
>
> Hi all,
>
>We met at Dave's workshop this week.  Here's what you missed:
>
>There were several things going on during this meeting.
>
>We saw Dave's tank, which he'd been 3D-printing parts for, mostly put
>together.  It is huge, and moves quite nicely on its treads.  His 3D
>printer was there as well, but we were too distracted by other things
>to take advantage of it.  Maybe next time.
>
>John W. (Tux-Lab) worked on assembling his delta-design 3D printer. 
>The parts were cut out of clear acrylic, and I have to say it looked
>very pretty.   I can't wait to see it complete and in action.  
>
>Mic found some new folks to teach lockpicking to.   John C. and John K.
>were there; they are relatively new to the HAK.
>
>I think Mic and James were trying to install Linux on the MK802 mini
>PC, the computer that looks like a thumb drive.  The problem is that
>even though the device goes by a particular model number, it doesn't
>mean that the it's using the same chipset inside.
>
>The main event, of course, was putting together Dave's new computer.
>
>How many folks does it take to put together a computer from scratch?
>
>Well, we had a peak of 9 people at Dave's workshop this week.  It was
>John C., John K., Michael, Mic, and I helping Dave assemble the
>computer.   Michael took charge of the Linux install, but he had to
>leave early..  Steven took over the Linux installation with John C.
>grabbing the ISOs and making USB-bootable images via the Yumi
>Multi-boot USB creator.
>
>
>Dave got a really nice mid-tower case, an ATX MSI motherboard, and an
>i5 processor.  There was also a power supply.  I think it took us less
>than an hour to assemble the computer.  We let Dave handle the delicate
>(and potentially expensive) insertion of the processor into the
>motherboard.  Everything fit together really nicely.  The board was
>well labelled and the case even came with cable ties.
>
>We hooked it up to a wireless keyboard/mouse combo and a TV through
>HDMI.  The BIOS was impressive.  Is it still the BIOS these days, or
>something else that handles the pre-OS stage?  Regardless, it had a lot
>of fancy options, and there was mouse support!  
>
>And then it was time to install the OS, and that's when things went
>downhill.  We tried to run a CentOS Live DVD and got a kernel panic.  I
>think there was a keyboard issue with Ubuntu Desktop.
>
>We had to swap out the keyboard and mouse for a USB model.  I think
>Ubuntu Desktop worked fine after that, but Dave wanted to try a Red Hat
>flavor.  We tried removing and changing out various peripherals to get
>past the kernel panic, but I think we gave up and went with Fedora
>instead.  The only problem was that Fedora didn't like the Linksys wifi
>dongle,  so we had to borrow a Linux-compatible one (EDIMAX) from James
>to get Internet access.  I had a wifi dongle (TPLINK) that was reputed
>to be Linux compatible, but the rev2 model inexplicably is not and
>requires the manual installation of a driver.
>
>Sorry about the vagueness regarding the Linux install.  That's when I
>decided to go off and do other things.  Don't tell the LUG I said this,
>but this is exactly the reason I use a Mac at home.  I do not like  
>worrying about Linux hardware compatibility issues.
>
>I don't think the computer was done by the time we headed out to a late
>dinner, but it was in a good enough state for Dave to work with.  We
>had dinner at Carmine's, which was pretty quiet on a Thursday night. 
>Good food and good conversation.
>
>Lan

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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