Vol. 31 number 1 January 2014 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second (*first) Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm 2014: Jan 8, Feb 12, Mar 12, Apr 9, May 14, Jun 11 Beginner SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Linux SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Beer BOF (Wing SIG East), after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Liam Maguire's, 1705 St. Laurent Blvd. at Innes Rd. Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up… Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 Topic: Media Streaming 101 Speaker: Jeff Dubois Broadband internet service has transformed the telecommunication industry. With more and more content readily available on the internet, a growing number of individuals have moved away from traditional forms of subscription based cable/satellite service and, instead, adopted the internet as their primary source for audio and video content. "Media Streaming 101" will examine, in some detail, several factors to consider before rushing out and buying that first piece of the puzzle. Key points of the discussion will include network requirements, software, hardware, dedicated streaming devices, subscription-based services and, for the more daring, some of the current power software which continues to remain below the radar. Wednesdy, April 9th, 2014 Topic: Raspberry Pi (to be confirmed) Speaker: TBA ____________________________ February Raffle For the February raffle, we have a Belkin wireless keyboard. This quiet keyboard with comfort palm rests features 17 multi-media hot keys. It has a 2.4GHz USB nano receiver and will work up to 32 feet away from any PC or Mac with a USB port. For details, see http://belkinbusiness.com/products/f5k007 Tickets are, as always, a good deal at $1 for one, a great deal at $2 for three or the unbelievable bargain of $5 for ten! ____________________________ January Prize Winners Doug Poulter was the winner of our raffle at the January 2014 meeting of the OPCUG. Doug took home a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate courtesy of the Microsoft MVP program. Congrats to Doug and thanks to Microsoft for the prize donation. ____________________________ President’s Report for 2013 by Chris Taylor I am happy to report on another great year for the Ottawa PC Users’ Group. Thanks very much to our speakers, in order by appearance; Pierre Roman (Microsoft), Barton McKinley (Security, Eh?), Doug Drouillard (Knights Refurbishing Computers), Alan Plumb, Bert Schopf (Blackbird PCD), Hugh Chatfield (CyberSpace Industries 2000), Alan German, Ben Houston (Clara.io), Alan German (for a second appearance), Doug Drouillard (also for a second appearance), Pete Roberts, Jocelyn Doire, and Edward Lee (QNX). The topics were wide-ranging and always interesting. I would like to thank those who contributed prizes for our raffles; Chris Ellis from McAfee Canada contributed five copies of anti-malware products, Andrew Plumb donated a 3D printed object, the Microsoft MVP program came up with a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate and a LifeCam VX-6000, and I passed on a couple of prizes that came to me over the year – a Microsoft Arc wireless keyboard and a 1-year subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium. Thanks to the many people who bought tickets, we raised $805 on the ten raffles Our writers managed to keep Brigitte busy with the newsletter. Once again, Alan German was our most prolific contributor with an amazing 17 articles. I tried, but my 13 articles didn’t quite catch up to him. We also had articles from Jocelyn Doire, Gail Eagen, Jeff Dubois and Doug Poulter. I would encourage all to consider writing for the newsletter. It can be a lot of fun and is good for your karma too. The presentations at the Ottawa Public Library continued and were even more numerous than previous years. In total, the OPCUG gave 60 presentations at 17 library branches. One of the reasons for giving presentations at the Ottawa Public Library is to introduce the OPCUG to the community and encourage new members. We have offered a free 3-month trial membership to those who attend library presentations and, last fall, we extended those trial memberships to anyone. If you know of others who might like to join, let them know they can try it out for 3 months for free. In December, we held our silent auction with all proceeds donated to the Ottawa Food Bank. It was great fun, some people took home some bargains, and we raised a lot of money for the Food Bank. A big shout-out to Microsoft, O’Reilly, Jocelyn Doire, Pete Roberts, Alan German, Jeff Dubois, and Michel Doire, who contributed items for the raffle. We had a call from the National Capital Freenet this year asking for volunteers for their help desk. They can still use some more, so if you can donate some time, they will provide training. Send an email to the Executive Director at execdir@@ncf.ca We had one disappointing turn of events in 2013 – the museum started charging for parking. Many felt it was not really fair to charge for parking in the evening. The costs were not insignificant – $1 per half hour to a maximum of $6. Given our schedule, if people stayed for SIG meetings, they were sure to hit the maximum. The museum later dropped the evening parking to a flat $3. For those who find that still a little steep, there is free street parking available on Gladwin Cres (see http://goo.gl/maps/4ggzX). It is only a couple of minutes’ walk from there to the museum. Thank you to the Board of Directors as well as Mark Cayer (who tirelessly takes care of membership), Bert Schopf (who generously welcomes to the Board into his office for the monthly BoD meeting), and Jeff Dubois (who gave in many, many ways to help to the OPCUG in 2013). Without their hard work, the OPCUG would simply not exist. And thanks to all others for continuing to support the OPCUG in so many ways. I look forward to on-going success in living up to our motto Users Helping Users. ____________________________ Treasurer’s Report – 2013 Alan German The club’s financial picture for the 2013 fiscal year has both positive and negative aspects. Once again we ran a deficit for the year as a whole; however, we continue to carry a reasonable cash balance forward into the next financial year. The details of the financial statements and, in particular, some emerging trends, raise potential concerns and the Board of Directors is considering options to address these issues as we go forward. The asset picture for the past financial year is as shown on the following balance sheet: Figure 1. Balance Sheet for the 2013 Fiscal Year Current Assets 1000 Cash Account (TDCT) 2,912.48 1100 Investment Account (ING) 18,745.59 1200 Membership float 40.00 Total Assets 21,698.07 Equity Capital, December 31, 2012 22,392.66 Total revenue 4,152.04 Total expenses 4,846.63 Net income -694.59* Capital, December 31, 2013 21,698.07 While we spent almost $700 more than we received in income during 2013, our total capital balance continues to be well in excess of $20,000. However, our capital has declined over each of the past two years and an analysis of the details of the individual income and expenditure items indicates that this trend may well continue. The income statement for 2013 is shown in Figure 2. The individual income and expense accounts for 2013 are shown, together with their equivalents for fiscal year 2012 in order to provide a comparison. Figure 2. Income Statement for the 2013 Fiscal Year Revenue 2013($) 2012($) Variance 2100 Bank Interest (ING) 199.34 213.96 -14.62* 2200 Membership Income 2,400.00 2,700.00 -300.00* 2300 Raffle Income 805.00 1,128.00 -323.00* 2400 Merchandise Income 50.00 75.00 -25.00* 2500 Workshop Income 0.00 0.00 2900 Miscellaneous Income 193.70 5.00 188.70 2910 Donation Income 504.00 664.00 Total revenue 4,152.04 4,785.96 -300.00* Expenses 3100 PUB II Expense 1,072.68 936.12 136.56* 3200 Newsletter Expense 2,343.15 2,284.57 58.58* 3300 Office Supplies Expense 8.63 149.38 -140.75 3400 Bank Charges 59.40 59.40 3500 Barbecue Expense 832.55 711.13 121.42* 3600 Facility Rental 180.00 180.00 3700 Workshop Expense 0.00 0.00 3800 Merchandise Expense 392.22 95.94 223.28* 3900 Miscellaneous Expense 31.00 0.00 31.00* 3910 Donation Expense 0.00 664.00 Total operating expenses 4,846.63 5,080.54 Net income -694.59 -294.58 The variance column in Figure 2 shows the difference in any individual account between the two fiscal years. In particular, deficits in revenue and increases in expenditures are shown in red [editor note: “red” is shown with “*”] (red is “bad”; black is “good”). It is clear from the above figure, that the club’s finances, at least over the past year, are awash in red! The major declines in income items are in membership revenues and in raffle income. The Board is trying to increase membership in the club through initiatives like the library presentations and free trial memberships; however, clearly this process is not having the desired effect. In addition, it is becoming increasingly difficult to have vendors donate substantive raffle prizes, so there is a danger that this source of income may also be adversely affected in future years. The one bright light in the income picture is the increase in miscellaneous income. In large part, this represents the amount the club received (almost $160) from the E-waste event that we held in June. However, at this point, this was a one-time occurrence, and there is no certainty that such income can be relied upon in future. Expenditures on The Pub and on merchandise both increased substantially in 2013, while office supplies cost somewhat less. The amount included in the accounts for The Pub is actually under-represented by about $300. This is due to our cash accounting system, where charges for electricity to run the web server and the modem on a 24/7 basis have not yet been included in the accounts (these will appear in 2014). This effectively means that we “overspent” on The Pub by more than $400 for the year. However, this resulted from the cost of a new computer to act as our web server and, clearly, such expenditures occur infrequently. Increased expenditures on merchandise and miscellaneous items primarily reflect the purchase of items for use as speaker gifts. The Board believes that such expenditures are reasonable if we are to continue to attract external speakers to provide interesting presentations at our monthly meetings. It’s interesting to note that our “barbecue” (actually Pizza-Q) expenses for the year were higher than those for the previous year. We ate more pizza in 2013 despite having less members. (This is not a healthy situation on a number of fronts!) The one area where we spent less in 2013 than in 2012 is on office supplies. This reflects the fact that we purchased membership cards in 2012 in sufficient quantity for use over several years. One further item of note is that the financial picture for 2013 is also skewed by virtue of the donation income and expense (highlighted in yellow in Figure 2). Normally, these amounts would be a wash on the income statement since the associated income is immediately flowed out as a donation expense. However, in 2013, although a cheque to the Ottawa Food Bank was issued, this had not cleared the bank as of the end of the year. Thus, once again, because of our method of cash accounting, this expense is not registered in the accounts for 2013. The net effect is that we appear to have an additional $504 in income for the year and this then reduces the reported deficit for the club’s net income. Had this cheque been cashed in 2013, our net income would have been in the red by almost $1200 ($1500 if we were also to include the outstanding electricity charge). Thus, the bottom line is that, effectively, the club had a significant net loss in revenue during the past year. Furthermore, the trends of decreased membership and raffle income may well continue into the future, as may expenditures on such items as speaker gifts. In looking at the opportunities for cost savings, the Board has identified the expenditures relating to the newsletter as a primary target. These include the costs of printing the hard copy newsletter, and of distributing it by postal mail to those members who do not subscribe to an electronic version. At more than $2300, the expenses relating to the newsletter represent almost 50% of our total annual expenditures! Even worse, postal rates will increase by 35% in 2014. We could reduce our newsletter cost to zero if every member were to opt for an electronic version (PDF or TXT) to be delivered by electronic mail. However, currently, more than 50% of the membership still opt to receive printed newsletters. If you are one of this group, will you do your part to assist the Board in reducing our expenses? Subscribe to the electronic newsletter right now. Send two E-mail messages, one to listserve@@opcug.ca with subscribe newsletterpdf in the body of the message, and a second to mark.cayer@@opcug.ca indicating that you no longer wish to receive a hard-copy newsletter. If everyone will undertake to subscribe to the electronic newsletter, perhaps next year’s treasurer’s report will be a lot more positive! ____________________________ Product Review How to Create a Bootable CD with no CD! Alan German If, like me you have a netbook (or similar computer) with no CD-drive, creating a System Repair Disk for Windows 7 might seem to be quite a challenge. Windows will happily provide you with the option to do so. Simply navigate to: Control Panel – System and Security – Backup and Restore – Create a system repair disc. The challenge will be in responding to the next prompt that indicates: “Select a CD/DVD drive and insert a blank disc into the drive”. With no CD drive available this going to be tough! Furthermore, what you need is a bootable USB drive, not a bootable-CD. However, don’t despair, two free utility programs – TotalMounter and Rufus – can come to your rescue. Firstly, download and install TotalMounter. This software acts as a virtual CD/DVD drive. We will use TotalMounter to capture the Windows repair disk image as an ISO file. We also need to download Rufus, a utility program that will burn our ISO file to a USB memory stick, creating a bootable disk. There is no need to install Rufus as it is a stand-alone EXE file. The first item of real business is to create a Windows Repair Disk as a virtual CD. Run TotalMounter, click on the “Mount” icon, and select “Mount Virtual CD/DVD-RW”. In the pop-up window the default values for the two radio buttons (“Create a new file, size” and “CD 650 M Bytes”) are appropriate for our purposes. Use the “Browse” button to select a folder where you wish to store the virtual CD as a file, and give this file a meaningful name (such as windows_repair_disk). Click “OK” and TotalMounter is ready to create a virtual CD. Now, click on the Windows’ Start button and navigate to Control Panel – System and Security – Backup and Restore. In the left side panel, click on “Create a system repair disk”. The target drive should be displayed as something like DVD RW Drive (L:), where the drive letter will correspond to the virtual CD drive created by TotalMounter. Click on “Create disc” and Windows and TotalMounter will combine to create the file windows_repair_disk.iso in the target folder of your hard disk. At this point, we run Rufus. In the drop-down menu under “Device”, we select the target USB drive. The parameters for the partition scheme, file system, and cluster size associated with the USB disk will be displayed but we don’t have to do anything about these. We can give the USB drive a meaningful volume label should we so choose. Under “Format Options”, a check mark will already be placed against “Create a bootable disk using”. We want to click on the disk icon at the end of this line in order to browse for and select our windows_repair_disk.iso file. This will change the default “…using: FreeDOS” to “…using: ISO Image”. Press the “Start” button and Rufus will build the bootable drive. Finally, close Rufus, and the target USB drive is now bootable as a Windows Repair Disk. Using these two free utilities, creating a Windows Repair Disk is extremely simple. However, I would strongly suggest that you should undertake this process now – that is before your system crashes, will no longer boot – and you need to use the repair disk. At this stage, it’s a little too late to follow the above instructions. You now have no CD – and no OS! Bottom Line TotalMounter (Freeware) Version 1.5 KernSafe Technologies http://www.kernsafe.com/product/totalmounter.aspx Rufus (Open Source) Version 1.3.4 Pete Batard, Akeo Consulting http://rufus.akeo.ie/ ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Member participation is encouraged! If you would like to contribute an article to Ottawa PC News, please submit it to the newsletter editor (contact info below). Deadline for submissions is three Saturdays before the General Meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the second Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meetings are 7:30-9:00 p.m. and Special Interest Groups go until 10 p.m. Fees: OPCUG annual membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ Bulletin Board - PUB II (BBS): http://opcug.ca/default.htm Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/opcug President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: Gail Eagen, gail.Eagen@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 613 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, Brigittelord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, PR@@opcug.ca, 613 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, 613 489-2084 Webmaster: Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster2@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Wayne Houston, privacy2@@opcug.ca Special Events Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Beginners' SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Linux / Open-Source software SIG: (vacant) Note: We added an extra "@@" to the emails to reduce spam. Parking: Ample parking is available for a flat fee of 3$ after 5pm, paid in advance. Payment methods includes coins, VISA, and MasterCard, and the proof of payment must be left in the car and be visible in the front windshield. We will refund the parking fee for our speakers. For those who don't mind a couple of minutes easy stroll, there is free parking just before the museum along Gladwin Crescent. (c) OPCUG 2014. Reprints permission is granted* to non-profit organizations, provided credits is given to the author and The Ottawa PC News. OPCUG request a copy of the newsletter in which reprints appear. *Permission is granted only for articles written by OPCUG members, and not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ Newsletter by email: To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "subscribe NewsletterTXT" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. To cancel e-mailing, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "unsubscribe NewsletterTXT" or "unsubscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes). To change your e-mail address, cancel using the old e-mail address and re-subscribe using your new e-mail address. Cancelling the Paper Newsletter: You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an email to Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca asking to cancel the delivery of the paper version of the newsletter (or ask him in person - Mark is usually at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings). Announcements Mailing List: To subscribe to the Announcements List send an email to listserve@@opcug.ca, leave the subject blank and in the body of the message put "subscribe announcements" (without the quotes). Within a couple of minutes you will receive a confirmation message from the list server. OPCUG clock/calendar/calculator and mug: Check out the clock/calendar/calculator and thermal coffee mug sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG clocks are $20. Reuse, recycle: Bring your old computer books, software, hardware, and paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings, and leave them at the table near the auditorium's entrance. Please limit your magazines to publication dates of less than two years old. If you don't bring something, you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest, so look in on this area. Please note: If you bring anything for the recycle table, you are responsible to check on your way out and if the items you brought are still there, you must take them home with you.