 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Getting to Know our Groups Relocation of Some Meeting Venues Noel Peters noelp@melbpc.org.au |
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Digital Imaging and Music SIGs
These groups both meet on the second Thursday evening of each month at Dorcas Street. In recent months the popularity of Digital Imaging that Ernie McCarthy and Lyn Goodall run with the enthusiastic help of Lawrie Weston and others, has caused an overflow situation in the smaller upper level room where they meet. Yahya Abdal-Aziz, convener of the Music SIG has kindly agreed to do a swap from the larger, main SIG room that Music has occupied since we came to Dorcas Street.
There are twelve comfortable chairs in the upper room that also doubles as our committee room, making it an ideal location for listening to fine music, discussing digital composing programs and the host of other things that this interesting SIG does. It is understood that this has nothing to do with Yahya's decision to move.
The relocation of the Music SIG's Midi keyboard and the associated sound system has also required two new high fidelity speakers to be installed upstairs to avoid disturbing those permanently wired into the main room.
As leaders using the main room will be aware, a fast, new 1.9 GHz AMD Athlon computer that includes an ATI video capture card and a Creative Audigy Sound system primarily for faster video editing, has been purchased to replace the existing 300 MHz Pentium machine. A caddy mounted hard drive is now being made available for each SIG using that room. These drives have been set up with Windows 98SE, plus the necessary drivers and Internet access via the Melb PC network.
There is also a personal drawer allotted in the room's security cabinet to house each SIG's own hard drive. Software specific to a SIG, presentation material, and cords etc that individual groups use, can also be accommodated there. This may avoid the frustration that occurs when an item needed for a meeting has gone missing and particularly having discrete drives eliminates the loading and unloading of drive images and programs before and after each meeting. This arrangement has been working well over the last eighteen months for groups using the top floor room.
SIG leaders can obtain the key to their respective security drawer from the office and install or transfer their preferred software to their new drive.
The individual SIG hard drives fit into the top caddy location on the new machine. A second caddy position is provided, but only to house the Video Editing SIG's separate video capture drive.
A progressive change over to the new machine during August will allow the existing machine to be freed and set up in our scanning resource area outside the upper SIG room, with a 2400 dpi Canon film/slide/flatbed scanner for use by all members.
Clarion SIG
This is a specialist group. Members study and use the Clarion software development tools and meet on the fourth Wednesday of each month from 7.00pm to 10.00pm. They will now also meet in the top floor room for their July and subsequent meetings.
I am away overseas for a while. In my absence Melb PC committeeman and swap meet coordinator David King, e-mail theking@melbpc.org.au, and the office staff will help with any queries you may have.
Reprinted from the August 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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