Summary of TTCS Meetings held in 1999

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Summary of TTCS Meetings held in 1999

Meetings were held at the Brass Institute #117A Henry Street, Port of Spain (next to Spectakula Forum), courtesy of Francis Pau.
Meetings were held at the Frank Stockdale building at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, courtesy of Curtis Mike.
The computers used for the meetings were provided by Pcw and/or Dave while refreshments were provided by Francis Pau.

Saturday 24th April 1999 – discussion of future plans

No formal presentation but rather a get-together to discuss our future plans.

Saturday 12th June 1999 – Meeting with Mr. Don Slater; first look at Infoline Intranet server

The Society hosted Mr.Don Slater, a senior lecturer from the University of London, England. Mr. Slater is a sociologist who, together with anthropologist Danny Miller is conducting research about the development of Internet access and uses of the Internet in Trinidad and Tobago. Members in attendence were able to both ask questions about the on going research and contribute their opinions on the various technical and social issues.

At the conclusion of the informal discussion with Mr.Slater, Pcw and Dave demonstrated how to log-in and use the Linux intranet server.

They have gotten the server to do the following:

  • accept dial-in calls as well as allow logins through a second computer connected via null-modem cable.
  • Razor was able to dial-in with Win95b and use Netscape Communicator to access the web server. The server has also been tested with Win3.x and DOS
  • set up the nameserver so that you can type “http://www.ttcsweb.co.tt” and get the main page of the web server which is also running
  • set up POP3 email and SNTP mail uploads with attachments. The mail server is mail.ttcsweb.co.tt
  • FTP server which supports REGET (if you lose the PPP connection you are able to log back in using a FTP client and resume the download). Anonymous FTP has also been enabled (that is, you can use a browser instead of a dedicated FTP client to download files).

By the way, our GNU/Linux server demonstration machine was a i486-133Mhz system! 🙂 Ideally, it will replace the Infoline BBS

For more information about Mr. Don Slater, you can visit his webpage athttp://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater

Sunday 22nd August 1999 – Digital cameras

Dave demonstrated the capabilities of an Epson PhotoPC 700 digital camera and talked about digital cameras in general, including a discussion of the two major memory formats, CompactFlash (which the Epson camera supported) and SmartMedia.

Several photos were taken outside the Brass Institute. These photos were transferred to the computer and software was used to create a Quicktime VR as well as a 360 degree JPEG.

Sunday 26th September 1999 – discussion of Y2K readiness; GNU/Linux apps

Among the items discussed at the meeting:

  • The Year 2000 problem as it relates to Trinidad and Tobago. Read the TTCS article “Year 2000 problem
  • The sudden closure/disappearance of New Hope Computing (“800-MYPC”).

Dave and Pcw demonstrated the KDE, for GNU/Linux and demonstrated two graphical apps :