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BARUG News

July 2005

I'm very pleased to tell those who were not present that the EGM/AGM was successfully re-run at the June meeting. The EGM was asked to approve some changes to the Constitution as follows:

a. the position of Chairman, previously limited to a 2 year tenure, has been placed on the same basis as the rest of the Committee (ie. elected annually)

b. the quorum numbers have been reduced to take account of the smaller size of BARUG relative to 2001, when the previous levels were set.

c. a small number of other changes.

Other significant events at the AGM: the Committee was re-elected en bloc, with the exception of the Treasurer who asked to stand down. I am very grateful for his work to Graham Stuart, who volunteered as Treasurer two years ago when BARUG was in dire need, and to Chris Hall, who has kindly volunteered to replace him. The annual subscription remains at £7, and is due now: please bring cash or a cheque to the July meeting.

The July meeting will be held at the usual venue and time on Wed 27 July. The guest speaker is to be David Snell, the author of ProCAD+ (the advanced technical drawing package) and WebWonder (the website creator). As guest speakers are getting ever harder to obtain, please make every effort to come and listen to what a very skilled RISC OS author has to say. Even if you don't own ProCAD+, there will be many useful lessons to be drawn (no pun intended!) which could be applied to other packages. As well as a tutorial on the use of ProCAD+, David has said he will take questions on either of his programs.

Little news this month: perhaps the most dramatic is the apparent disappearance of Microdigital, the producers of the Omega computer. As very few of these machines ever made it to the market (I wrote off my own deposit years ago), and many of the planned features were evidently not implemented, I doubt many tears will be shed. Microdigital's apparent demise - not helped by their policy of not talking to the Press - follows that of RiscStation, and leaves Castle as the unchallenged master of the RISC OS hardware arena. Perhaps the new A9 will challenge this when it is eventually made available to the RISC OS public at large?

See you on the 27th....

Steve