February 2023 - nmglug - lists.coactcloud.com

this evening in person at Violet Crown!
by Mark Galassi 16 Feb '23

16 Feb '23

Dear nmglugers, This evening I'm planning on showing up in person at Violet Crown; I look forward to seeing you! I'll also connect to the videocon chat from there.

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applications open for the Institute, deeply rooted in software freedom
by Mark Galassi 16 Feb '23

16 Feb '23

Dear nmglugers, This is particularly of interest to us: the Institute for Computing in Research, and the pipeline leading up to it, teach students to do research using free/open-source software tools. TL;DR - please encourage any students you know to apply for summer research at: https://computinginresearch.org/summer-research-internship-program-2023/ (I am also attaching a flyer) Slightly longer story: The Institute for Computing in Research pays high school students (finishing 10th, 11th, 12th grade) to do research in the summer. We pair them with an active researcher in their field of interest, and purchase equipment that they then keep. We have opened up applications for summer 2023, and we hope you can urge your motivated students to apply. We seek students with diverse interests: humanities, social science, science, the arts, ..., and we have mentors who work in all those areas. We hope you can pass the link and flyer for the summer 2022 internship to your students and look forward to receiving their applications! Full information is at: https://computinginresearch.org/ A final note: we also offer the Research Skills Academy, focused on the non-computational and non-quantitative aspects of research. We would love to have your students join us there: https://computinginresearch.org/research-skills-academy/

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Meeting notes from 02/02/23
by Ted Pomeroy 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

NMGLUGers, We had a good meeting with 5 in attendance via jitsy. In no particular order I will jive some notes: Converting MacBks: we noted this can be frustrating. I have worked with the desktop products, but not the laptops. I found Rods Books most helpful https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ is the link to the rEFInd pages. This is Rod's boot manager (not loader) that helps to allow booting of external media. the use of blacklists is a problem built into the products in question. At this point I have given up on doing any attempts in this area. The proprietary parts and bridges built to frustrate the repair and conversions leave little leeway for progress. Buying a laptop at a good price: I purchased a laptop for under $100 on Ebay. My process is to think about repair and use. I wanted a multi-core, multi-thread processor, at least 4 GB ram and an accessible HDD. I found a refurbished Dell Latitude and it was delivered with 8 GB ram and a slightly newer version than listed. No webcam, hefty at about 5 lbs., but portable around my apartment or to a cafe. Others recommended an Asus VivoBook 14"; a currently available machine at retail outlets. I confess, my personal approach has been to rehab machines 10-5 yrs old for price reasons. I have also helped others repair/extend life of their hardware on a budget. Several seniors are using Ubuntu or LinuxMint with my help and occasional interventions. Thunderbird Mail Reader: Mark suggested that lack of support and general cumbersome settings makes most mail readers difficult for basic users. I agree, but I have one user who prefers Thunderbird to web/browser login to mail. I did not mention it but too many older users rely on the computer to save passwords, so they can forget them. Difficulties do arise from this. As a somewhat promiscuous user of various hardware I have noticed that my web-based email will alert me when I log in from a new machine or visit someone and use an alternate OS. They certainly are keeping track of these details and letting me know. On February 16 the plan is to meet at Violet Crown in Santa Fe. At least two of those present agreed to be there. Mark your calendar for this date if you can attend. In-person meetings are more fun. Thank you, Ted P

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Mtg Thurs, 02/02/23 1730 MST
by Ted Pomeroy 31 Jan '23

31 Jan '23

NMGLUGers, Our webpage shows that this week is a "virtual" week. I will try to attend and can report on a little work I did to sort our six laptops and what success I had with old and very old laptops. I will also be using a laptop, not my desktop unit this week, to test my choice of another older, but very useful machine. I am running LinuxMint 21.1. This is a "user friendly" edition, and it is just that. I have two or three users on this OS and one or two with Ubuntu 22.04. I try to share the freedom. Alas I am also helping at the Luisa Sr. Ctr. and another OS is the City's choice there. I answer basic and not so basic questions. For those who use a cellphone for email and then want to print it can be a bit challenging to master the intricacies of permissions and tracking by the email providers. Thank you, Ted P.

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