CCC
26 May meeting
report by Ian Smith
My dad picked
me up at 15:50 from my flat in Hounslow. Each
month on CCC night I get a lift to
Peter West's house in Ealing, who then gives
me a lift to the club. We arrived at Peter's
house about half an hour later.
I
had a cigarette while sitting on Peter's wall, ready
to knock on his door. His son Alex West came
round the corner and said he'd call Peter. Alex
would be travelling with us to Cheshunt and
then travelling on to his house in Ely. On the
way back from Ely, Alex would then pick us up
after the club had ended.
The
journey to Cheshunt was uneventful but busy
if you're the driver. The North Circular's not
one of the kindest roads in London, damn busy
actually! On arrival we unloaded the computer
gear and realized we were quite early and the
first people to come.
Peter
had his Atari Falcon with him to continue on
some German to English translations. I had my
Asus notebook, onto which I've just loaded Mandrake
Linux 9.2. Peter's car was full so I couldn't
bring my Falcon.
Very
quickly familiar faces started to arrive at
the community centre where the club is held.
Fred and Peter were the first to set up their
systems and get going. At the same time as us
in the main hall next door are
dancing classes. Don't
let that put you off though if you want to come,
all you can hear is the organ music.
After
booting up my notebook I got down to some reading
about using Unix/Linux commands in the terminal
emulator that comes with KDE, which is the default
GUI with Mandrake. I'm still new to Linux but
there's something amazingly satisfying about
using a shell. You feel like you're in the film
War Games or something.
The
two Pauls arrived from the café next door where
they had been eating their evening meal. Paul
Bywaters surprisingly
didn't have any gadgets to show us this month.
When I came a couple of months ago he had a
brand new MP3 player. Most months he has some
new hi-tech.
James
Haslam was next, he had brought his Falcon in
preparation for the next JagFest. He was running
demos which he hadn't seen for a long time.
Some were very impressive, isn't the Falcon
a great machine!
![[Photo: James Haslam with his Falcon]](images/ccc01.jpg)
![[Photo: Peter West and Mark Branson]](images/ccc02.jpg)
Mark
Branson had his super machine CT60 Falcon, complete
in a case which was specially shipped in from
the USA. Apparently
at the NEC Micro Mart show on the retro stand,
people were interested about this PC case,
rather than it being an Atari. It's a shame
really that many have tunnel vision in this
respect. I suppose that's one of the reasons
why a lot of people for their modern computing
needs, choose Windows rather than Linux or Apple
OS X, both of which I use as well as Ataris,
and I can safely say are tons better than the
Microsoft product.
Speaking
of PC's there were a few at the club this month.
The club isn't exclusive when it comes to computers
or operating systems, although I believe it started as an
Atari club, and there are always Ataris there.
![[Photo: Fred and his PC]](images/ccc03.jpg)
![[Photo: More PCs]](images/ccc04.jpg)
The
evening went well and there were ten of us in
all including Paul Gibbs the treasurer who had
to leave early. It's funny as it's only three
hours out of a month, but the time is thoroughly
enjoyable and something
to look forward to each month. So if you're
free and you can make it to the Wolsey Hall
in Cheshunt why not give us a try. We're here
last Wednesday of every month or check out the
web site for more information.
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