Issue 44: Jun 2004
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | CT60 First Impressions
- | Bird Box
- | The Falcon Project
- | CCC
- | One Year Of CT60
- | HATZ: Party In The Middle Of Nowhere
- | CT60 Essentials
- | Developer Talk
- | SuperVidel Graphics
Review
- | Fast Falcon
| 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! 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. 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.
Useful link
Cheshunt Computer Club http://www.cix.co.uk/~derryck
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