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MUUG Monthly Meetings for 2025-26


Please note our brand new meeting location: Winnipeg Senior Citizens Radio Club, 598 St. Mary's Road, 2nd Floor

WSC is located at 598 St. Mary's Road, 2nd Floor, a block South from the St. Mary's / St. Anne's fork, on the West side beside the Miller's Meats. It's in the old fire hall, so you really can't miss it! Look for the red doors.

There is no elevator, so attendees will have to be able to climb a flight of stairs. Apologies to anyone requiring accessibility.

There are a limited number of parking spaces for WSC around the building. If you arrive early you'll probably snag one. If not, there is parking available on the nearby streets, such as Mager Dr, or the streets off of St. Mary's such as Blenheim or Clonard Ave. Be careful not to park in nearby private parking lots unless otherwise indicated.

MUUG meetings also take place online (typically using BigBlueButton) for those who can't be there in person. Meeting link will be provided on the home page, prior to meeting start time.

September 2, 2025: Kopia

Alberto Abrao presented and demoed Kopia, a "Fast and Secure Open-Source Backup Software" solution. Kopia provides GUI and CLI on multiple platforms (Windows, macOS, and - of course - Linux), to make encrypted, compressed and dedup'ed backups to the cloud storage of your choice.

October 7, 2025: RTFM: ncdu

Brad Vokey presented and demoed ncdu (NCurses Disk Usage), a powerful, interactive, and fast disk usage analyzer for Unix/Linux systems. It provides a text-based user interface (TUI) based on the ncurses library, offering a more user-friendly and visual way to explore disk space consumption compared to the traditional du command.

Brad's presentation covered the man page, various command-line options, including the very useful -e option (to load file meta-data such as file modification time), and various key commands within the TUI (such as "d" to delete selected files or directories).

November 4, 2025: RTFM: /bin Diving, Deutero-leanin'

We kept it simple and interactive this month: a double /bin dive. Trevor Cordes walked us through the fun. We started with a deep dive into mkisofs (and its fork, genisoimage), used to generate ISO-format file system images, which can be burned to CD's. A secondary lean-in to the /bin pulled out ngettext, which got us tangled into the weeds of locales and message databases for multi-language support. An online attendee also recommended the sponge command, which soaks up its input then squeezes it out to a file, similar to tee, but without standard output, and (most importantly), with a delayed write (allowing overwrites of a file read earlier in the pipeline).

For those new to the idea, /bin diving is a segment where we select a command at random on the spot and everyone gets to work out what it does and what it's good for. Collaboration and improv at its finest. It always ends up being interesting and you're guaranteed to learn something new!

And for those puzzled by the topic title, it's a paraphrased reference to a 1979 song by The Pretenders, which included the line "Bein' driving, Detroit-leanin'." (And "deutero" is a greek prefix meaning secondary, as in a secondary or repeat lean into the bin.)

AGM

Plus, this month's meeting was the MUUG annual general meeting, which included the election of the MUUG board of directors for the 2025-2026 year (by acclamation).

December 2, 2025: Round-Table, Show & Tell, and Pot Luck

As 2025 draws to a close, MUUG continues the now 14-year-old traditon of turning the December meeting into more of an informal, social event. Kevin Abedi has graciously arranged to let us use Skullspace, at 374 Donald St., as our venue again. We will have our usual round-table session, as well as a few show-&-tell items presented.

Bring your favourite gadget! We will have the usual (brief) round-table session, some time for mingling, eating, and drinking, maybe followed by a couple short gadget show-&-tell presentations, and then more time for mingling, eating, and drinking.

This will be an in-person pot-luck snack event! Members are encouraged to bring their own food to sample and share with others. (Finger food works best.) Feel free to bring your own special drink as well - just remember that we don't have a liquor license!

But please, stay home if you are sick.

We will also attempt to simulcast the live round-table and short presentations over BigBlueButton for those that can't attend in person for any reason, whether snow, or sleet, or illness.

Where to Find the Meeting:

Skullspace, at 374 Donald St. We will be in room 200. Please note that this location is not mobility accessible. There are 3 flights of stairs and it is 1.5 stories up.

There is no Winnipeg Jets home game on December 2nd so close downtown street parking should be plentiful and easy to find.

One of the best blocks for street parking is Notre Dame after Hargrave. There are also several commercial parking lots in the area including right behind the Skullspace building.

The F8 bus route has a southbound stop (#10667) on the same block of Donald, in front of the Yellow Dog Tavern. It's also reasonable to walk from stops on Graham, Portage, Smith, King, and Notre Dame.

Doors will be open starting at 7:15 pm with the meeting starting at 7:30 pm. After 7:45 pm the doors may be locked so you will need to call the Skullspace number (204-480-4092) and we'll answer and come down to let you in.

Food Bank Donations Requested

As in previous years, we are combining our pot luck event with a food drive for Harvest Manitoba. Any member who donates at least $1 or brings at least 1 food item will be given an entry into the door prize!

Just like last year, any cash donation made to Harvest Manitoba at this event will be matched dollar for dollar by Bradford Vokey (up to a total $500 limit)!

Last year MUUG members donated $128 (an appropriate power of 2) which Brad had to match for a total donation of $256 to Harvest Manitoba. Let's all chip in to make Brad donate more!

Top 10 Most-Wanted Food Items

1. Canned Fruit       6. Pasta Sauce
2. Canned Soup/Stew   7. Rice
3. Canned Tuna        8. Peanut Butter
4. Canned Vegetables  9. Baby Formula/Food
5. Pasta              10. Instant Oatmeal

Help promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board, or linking to it on social media.

January 6, 2026: TBA

February 3, 2026: TBA

March 3, 2026: TBA

April 7, 2026: TBA

May 5, 2026: TBA

June 2, 2026: TBA

July 2026: MUUG 2026 BBQ

August 2026: No meeting this month

Please note our brand new meeting location: Winnipeg Senior Citizens Radio Club, 598 St. Mary's Road, 2nd Floor

WSC is located at 598 St. Mary's Road, 2nd Floor, a block South from the St. Mary's / St. Anne's fork, on the West side beside the Miller's Meats. It's in the old fire hall, so you really can't miss it! Look for the red doors.

There is no elevator, so attendees will have to be able to climb a flight of stairs. Apologies to anyone requiring accessibility.

There are a limited number of parking spaces for WSC around the building. If you arrive early you'll probably snag one. If not, there is parking available on the nearby streets, such as Mager Dr, or the streets off of St. Mary's such as Blenheim or Clonard Ave. Be careful not to park in nearby private parking lots unless otherwise indicated.

MUUG meetings also take place online (typically using BigBlueButton) for those who can't be there in person. Meeting link will be provided on the home page, prior to meeting start time.

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