Did you know that a house can be built using a giant 3D concrete printer? We will look at large and small 3D printers and some of their uses.

Many consumer printers are available with a build volume of about 10 inches cubed. Build it yourself kits are available for less than $200 but expect to spend a few hours putting them together and correcting your mistakes. These printers use plastic "thread" as "ink" and push it through a hot extruder to build up layers of material.

3D shape generation software can be used to generate shape files or you can get sterolithography (stl) files online. Slicer software is then used to define instructions to the 3D printer, typically in human readable gcode format.

Bob's 3D printer is a kit Anet A8. He uses the Cura slicer and is dabbling with FreeCAD and Blender to generate shapes. They have OSX versions for the Mac. Some printed products will be available for audience examination.

Bob's charts (pdf, 7.9 MB) are Here

Bob is a long-time member of MLMUG. He was Treasurer for several years and is currently Webmaster and Newer Users Special Interest Group leader. He retired from Lockheed-Martin in 2009 from a career in power systems (at GE) and aerospace engineering. Macs have been in the Barton household since Bob's wife, Karen, obtained a Mac Plus for desktop publishing in the 1980's.

Topic: Self-Driving Vehicles
The presentation will answer a number of questions, such as - Why do we need self driving cars? What is a self driving car? What are the levels of self driving cars? What is their history? Who's working on self-driving cars? What about Tesla cars? What progress are auto makers making? How and where are self driving cars being tested? What accidents have they been involved in? What are the technological obstacles to their widespread use? What are the other obstacles? What are their advantages and disadvantages? And what are the ethical issues?

Mark's charts (pdf, 225 KB) are Here

BIO:

Mark is currently MLMUG Secretary and has been Newsletter Editor since 2004. He also has been President and Treasurer and a Board member. He has many times been a presenter to both MLMUG and Macs@PACS, and has written more than 175 monthly columns for our Newsletter. Mark bought his first Apple computer in 1978 and currently uses a 2014 27" iMac as his main computer (bought from McMobile so he could move to Mojave and now Catalina), but finds he uses his iPad almost as often. He has been involved in leasing computers since 1968 and has been active in the leasing industry associations. His company was one of the first to lease computer software back in 1992. He is sort of retired, but is busier than ever.

Topic: The Best of the 2020 CES (Consumer Electronics Show)

This topic was originally scheduled for March but it was cancelled due to facility closure and isolation guidelines.

Todd Peters and Fran Rabuck will describe the best of the 2020 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) held in Las Vegas from Tuesday, January 7 to Friday, January 10, 2020. They will tell us about the breakthrough technologies for the next generation of innovations for the marketplace. CES has been providing the forum for innovators to introduce their hottest and newest tech gadgets for 50 years.

Todd and Fran's presentation via Zoom at YouTube (38 minutes) are Here

Stefan's video via Zoom, also at YouTube (6 minutes), is Here

BIO 1: Todd R. Peters (upper photo) is a dynamic IT Leader with vast experience integrating IT security and emerging technologies. He is business focused with proven track record of "delivering the results". He is skilled at managing vendors and contracts, in particular cloud services. Todd is a member of the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

BIO 2: Francis (Fran) Rabuck (lower photo) is a technology evangelist, explorer and trail blazer. He discovers trends, connects people, beta-tests things and then builds early prototypes of a mashup of ideas. He shares his findings in the classroom, workshops, presentations, articles and keynotes at a variety of international conferences. Fran is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for Agile Handover. Fran is a member of the Main Line Macintosh Users Group.

Do you have/use Microsoft Office and/or Apple iWork? These suites have text processing (Word and Pages), spreadsheet (Excel and Numbers) and presentation (Powerpoint and Keynote) applications.

This presentation will look at OpenOffice (Apache) and LibreOffice (The Document Foundation), two of the free alternatives to Office and iWork, that provide the basic three functions plus database, drawing and other applications.

Bob's charts (pdf, 18.1 MB) are Here

BIO:

Bob is a long-time member of MLMUG. He was Treasurer for several years and is currently Webmaster and Newer Users Special Interest Group leader. He retired from Lockheed-Martin in 2009 from a career in power systems (at GE) and aerospace engineering. Macs have been in the Barton household since Bob's wife, Karen, obtained a Mac Plus for desktop publishing in the 1980's.

Bob is a long-time member of MLMUG. He was Treasurer for several years and is currently Webmaster and Newer Users Special Interest Group leader. He retired from Lockheed-Martin in 2009 from a career in power systems (at GE) and aerospace engineering. Macs have been in the Barton household since Bob's wife, Karen, obtained a Mac Plus for desktop publishing in the 1980's.

The presentation will answer a number of questions, such as: Why cut the cord (disconnect cable and go to the Internet); how to do it (the 7 steps); negotiating with your cable company; what replacement services can you use; what are streaming services, what are the top 5, what are some of the other streaming services; what are Verizon Internet costs; what cable replacement and streaming services I use and what are the monthly costs; and, finally, what are my conclusions and suggestions.

Mark's charts (pdf, 792 KB) are Here

BIO:

Mark is currently MLMUG Secretary and has been Newsletter Editor since 2004. He also has been President and Treasurer and a Board member. He has many times been a presenter to both MLMUG and Macs@PACS, and has written more than 175 monthly columns for our Newsletter. Mark bought his first Apple computer in 1978 and currently uses a 2014 27" iMac as his main computer (bought from McMobile so he could move to Mojave and now Catalina), but finds he uses his iPad almost as often. He has been involved in leasing computers since 1968 and has been active in the leasing industry associations. His company was one of the first to lease computer software back in 1992. He is sort of retired, but is busier than ever.

Bonus: Audio from the 9/15/20 PMUG Zoom meeting with Dave Hamilton (1:34:35) is Here

MLMUG's Newer Users Special Interest Group meets from 10 AM to Noon on the 4th Saturday of each month. Go to the Home page for details.

Joe will be talking about his connected house and automation but wants to especially talk about 3D printing, his segway, his Tesla and autonomous driving, his connected smoker/grill, his drone and some other toys. Joe will connect with both his phone and computer so that he can present some videos and stream some live video via the phone as he walks around the house.

BIO:

Joe has designed numerous Internet Gateways for Fortune 500 Companies such as GE, NBC, Vanguard, Mellon Bank, Martin Marietta and Lockheed. His skills include Internet security and especially securing Internet application layer protocols.

Mark Bazrod prepared charts and led a discussion on using Apple's Keychain and iCloud Keychain.

Mark's charts (pdf, 792 KB) are Here

BIO:

See Mark Bazrod's BIO at the September entry above

MLMUG's Newer Users Special Interest Group meets from 10 AM to Noon on the 4th Saturday of each month. Go to the Home page for details.

Topic: How to use different Web technologies for different purposes

Creating Websites to Share Information: The Hopewell Valley History Project

We, and our organizations, have a bounty of digital information that would be nice to share online - if there were useful and efficient ways to do so.

For example, the Hopewell Valley History Project is a volunteer effort to collect, digitize, and share the history of the Hopewell Valley in Mercer County, New Jersey (HopewellHistoryProject.org). It is currently hosting some several hundred historic documents and several thousand historic images. That's a lot of digital files, and of very different types - documents and images, books and pamphlets, maps and aerials, images and panoramas. So the challenge is not only to organize all this material, but to present it in useful ways depending on its format and content.

In this talk, Doug will explore the approaches used on the History Project site to present different types of materials using various web technologies. While some of these do require custom programming, most use off-the-shelf web components that could be applied to your own projects. Or you may have other ideas to discuss.

Doug's presentation will utilize material at the website: https://hopewellhistoryproject.org/site-index/ .

BIO:

Doug Dixon is an independent technology consultant and writer, specializing in Web technology, databases, and digital media. He created and developed the Hopewell Valley History Project (HopewellHistoryProject.org), which is assembling digital copies of local historical materials. Previously, he consulted to the Aberdeen Test Center doing large data testing and visualization, and was a product manager and software developer at Intel and Sarnoff. Doug is a board member of the Hopewell Valley Historical Society, and is managing the HVHS website along with the Hopewell Public Library website.

Doug writes books and articles about new and cutting-edge technology, making it understandable and useful for real people. He has authored four books on digital media, published hundreds of feature articles, and presented over a hundred seminars and talks. Manifest Technology web site .

Through his company, Manifest Technology, LLC ,(www.manifest-tech.com) he consults and develops technical communications for military and commercial clients including Adobe, Intel, and Sonic Solutions. He makes his writing and presentations freely available on his web site. He also provides expert witness consulting services in digital media and DVD, technology and products, business and markets.