November 08 Meeting Synopsis

Dramatis Persona

Mike

Ghoti

Spode

Karl

Julia

Peter

Sharon – physical delurker but known to us all

Dan

Paully

Guillaume

Toni

Oly

Wayne – relapsed lurker re-delurking

Dan - network engineer at Mapleston Noakes and evil filterer of t'interweb ;-)

Jim

Shish

Introductions including name, distro and site you'd like to visit be couldn't because of the content filtering.

Talk 1 – Pxe booting by Fish

Fish took us through the basic requirements of setting up a pxe boot system and why we might want to do it. Interestingly his talks slides were built into the actual pxe boot screens.

Those interested could then have a bash at pxe booting their machines in DSL, freedos or the Debian installer.

Brownster then showed us all his lovely big cock

Next up was the introduction to the day and outline seeing as how some numpty forgot to do it at the start of the meeting.

Talk 2 – Between Silk and Cyanide - Gpg talk by julia

A brief history of encryption from the karma sutra via Bletchley Park to the present day. General information about what gpg it is and why you should use it.

This sparked a number of debates with the final conclusion that all emails from banks should be signed so that phishing scams become a thing of the past and that all emails to Mikes mum should be encrypted so that no one tries to rob his house when he's out.

Talk 3 - Openstreet Map

A few basics on the Openstreet Map project – What? Why? And How?

Then came the logistics of dividing into teams and finding parking and food/ brew shops for those that needed it.

It all worked out fine and several hours later small, suspicious, teams of very wet, very cold people were to be seen wandering around the cul-de-sacs and woodlands of Maidstone.

The teams managed to collect some data and reconvened at Dans house were,one kernel regression later, 11 people tried to sit round a table made for 8 and enter information into a GUI designed by CLI user on a 12 inch laptop. We'll have to wait until Thursday to see if it was all worth it.

Geek-a-Masala-world-tour-Maidstone-edition

We had a bit of time to kill before the curry and so decided to take a short stroll to a local beverage retail outlet. Unfortunately for some Hanrahans was a bit further then our guide remembered, and also no longer called Hanrahans. Still can't win them all.

After a couple of pints we had however managed to fix most most of the worlds pressing concerns. Including how to make JOSM a lot better and how to reprogram the worlds financial system to deal with the new VAT rates.

Then onwards to the excellent Mughal Dynasty restaurant. Friendly food and tasty staff for all!

Thanks to Mike for his part in seting up the day and a really big thanks to Jim, Dan and Mapleston Noakes school for hosting us in their superb facilities. We hope to see you again soon.