Our main site www.SWLAPCUG.com is finally
up and running. It is now based on phpBB,
which
should be both more secure, and easier to administer than the
Joomla code
on which the site was originally built.
It will take time to bring the new site up to the level of features
which we had before, but the forums are coming together very nicely,
and other features, like the newsletter downloads have also been
implemented. We encourage everyone to register and start to
participate. Remember, this is your site, so tell your club officers
what you feel needs to be implemented. You can comment in the
"Suggestions" forum on the www.SWLAPCUG.com site (preferred), or you can leave a comment on this site.
Now that our official site is starting to come together, this site will probably serve only as a temporary backup, so don't expect frequent updates.
What features do you feel are most important to our website? My opinion is that the Forums are the number one feature, followed by Downloads (of newsletters, articles, etc.). Other features may be nice, but not critical. A discussion/recommendation of software programs with links to the original software homepage, however, is an obvious and recommended forum topic. Even after the new site is up and running, it's always possible to enhance it, so speak up.
Club News
- Corinne has emailed the last newsletters, but for those who have problems with the attachments, the newsletters are in the Downloads page, and are now posted on the main website (available for club members only).
- The October 2010 meeting was the last one at the Parish Library.
- We held our first meeting in the clubhouse at Village Green
Apartments in Lake Charles in November, and it worked out great!
- Meetings will still be on the second Monday of each month, but will revert to our old starting time of 6:00 p.m., with the main presentation/ discussion at 7:00. We will be able to stay as long as needed, with the anticipated wrap-up by 9:00 p.m.
- Directions to the new meeting place were emailed, but in case you missed them, a copy is in the Downloads page, as well as on the main website.
- The December meeting will include our traditional "Chinese Gift Exchange" for club members. Each person that wishes to participate (and we hope that is everyone) will need to bring a wrapped gift ($10-15 range), preferably computer-related. The club will also furnish several doorprizes for club members, including one "Grand Prize". You do not have to participate in the gift exchange to be eligible for the doorprizes.
- There was a sign-up list at the November meeting for what food or drink item(s) you will bring to the December meeting, but if you missed it, please contact either Corinne or Lane. As usual, we all look forward to some delicious snacks, along with the fellowship and gifts.
Articles
Here are a few recent articles from my homepage:
About me
I have been involved with personal computers since I bought my first Commodore Vic-20 with a whopping 5KB of memory, no hard drive and no floppy drive. OK, it did have a cassette drive... you could set it up to load a program and have time to go eat lunch while it was loading!
Prior to that, I had used a large Honeywell mainframe computer at college. It took up a room larger than my house, had to be environmentally controlled, and was constantly served by a swarming team of white lab-coated servants. My programs were typed on "punch-cards", wrapped in rubber bands, and submitted to the servants. Several days later I would get the results, and if I had made any errors, would figure out what was wrong and retype the offending cards. Of course that was often a large stack of cards.
We have certainly come a long way since then, and my PocketPC (or even my cell phone) are more powerful, convenient and accessible than either the Vic-20 or the mainframe.
Anyway, in the intervening years, I have built, repaired and used more computers than I care to even attempt to remember, and have worked with numerous operating systems, including DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista and Windows 7, numerous Linux distributions, and even the occasional Mac, although my Mac experience is too little to claim any level of proficiency.
I have programmed in BASIC and FORTRAN and have written batch and scripting files to accomplish tasks that I wanted to automate or make easier. I have also learned HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript to put together some websites. I DO NOT, however, have any higher-level programming experience, such as C++, etc. That is on my to-do list, but is so far down my ever-expanding list that I doubt I will ever get there.
I would be happy to help you with your computer problems. Please visit my Mr. Fix-It website.
I am an active member of the SWLAPCUG, a fantastic computer club in the southwest Louisiana area, and serve as one of the website administrators, occasional article writer for the newsletter, club CD chairman and architect, and co-leader of both the Q&A SIG (Question & Answer Special Interest Group) and the Beginners' SIG. Please feel free to visit our site, and I hope you may be inspired to join our group.
Thanks for stopping in.
Tom