30/06/2008 LotusBeer June 2008 - The afterwards bit

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Our extensive World Tour continues. After success at Mexico we went to Nepal courtesy of the Gurkha Restaurant in Palmerston Road. We weren't quite sure what to expect with it being in such a salubrious part of town but it turned out to be excellent choice (well done Pete). The general consensus was that it was good value for money and the food was excellent. Pretty quiet though which was a shame. We followed that up in May with a visit to the Green and Cafe 52. Much discussion is ongoing as to the part of the world that represents. I reckon it would need to be somewhere that has Rhubarb as it's national dish as rhubarb made an appearance in just about every dish that was on the menu. Tip for the future though - don't let Wild Bill anywhere near a pub before us. He got there a couple of hours early and was (as we say in Scotland) in fine form by the time the rest of us turned up. He compounded that by spilling a bottle of beer all over my trousis as we sat down to eat. He was forgiven however as that particular brand of beer was not exactly to my taste, so I got a new one earlier than expected. Once again an excellent night was had by all.

Now on to the June LotusBeer. Once again Peter came to the fore and suggested the Goulash in the Adelphi - so guess what country? The aforementioned Mr Buchan posted a blog advising the entire world where we were going to be and at what time. Unfortunately he left it until 2pm on the day so we didn't get any takers. However we did have one of our biggest turnouts ever with the usual suspects (myself, Bill, Peter) [Editor: Cough, cough, ain't you forgetting someone?] with some new faces Nicole and Stefan and even a guest appearance by Don fae the Cooncil who turned up by complete and utter accident and Sheila of our trip to Turkey fame. Not wishing to knock Bill's Blog which is a regular source of entertainment for us geeks but Don fae the Cooncil is a relative of some sort to our member in good standing Billy Bob Buchan yet he obviously hadn't read the Blog. Anyway it was nice to see Don ftC again and member in good standing Billy Bob Buchan has been instructed to make sure that his family members are suitably advised in the future (and not just his immediate family). So we had a few Scots, an Irishman, a couple of English folk and a Slovakian (I think) for our continuing World Tour.

Keith has volunteered to put up a map on the LotusBeer website (http://www.lotusbeer.com) which shows the countries we have visited like those visitor maps you see on proper sites [Editor: Done]. What I think is really encouraging though is how far around the world we have got without visiting India and China. I think that only a few years ago we would be struggling for suitable restaurants by now I reckon though we must have a good few months left in this yet though. Pete has suggested that we break down the regions of India and China to make the tour last even longer. However without really thinking about it we have still to go to Italy, Greece, France, Spain Japan Thailand and Australia before we have to take on the Chinese and Indian Regions so that is us booked up for the rest of this year no worries.

Much quaffing of amber nectar (and some white wine stuff by the women) followed along with the usual stories and various exaggerations and perhaps even some lies thrown in for good measure. Stefan god bless him was hanging on B B Buchan's every word as the groupie he most surely wants to be (I give it a couple of months until he knows Bill as well as the rest of us.....).

Hot topics included whether or not 1 was a Prime number. I donned my best wannabe Geek Hat and tried to argue with Keith about why phone cameras take such crap pictures. Keith reckons he won but as I am writing the minutes I am going to claim victory temporarily until of course the Geek king (the Programmer formerly known as Keith Smillie) edits this little offering [Editor: As any fule kno, it's all about the size of the hole and the waveyness of the light].

The other main discussion I got into was trying to explain to Nicole the difference between a Minister and a Vicar. I found that quite worrying as her dad is a Vicar so I have to assume she slept in late on a Sunday quite a lot.

TPFKaKS and I discussed the possibility of setting up LotusBeer Chapters or Branches depending on which side of the Atlantic you're from. Obviously there will not be any rules except that you have to post the date of your next meeting. Anyone who comes from more than 300 miles away get's their food paid for. TPFKaKS was quite worried about this development but I reckon it would be a stottin idea. Interestingly BB Buchan got a response on his Blog saying that an Irish Branch may be in the offing - we'll be watching the development of that one with interest.

TPFKaKS has taken the King's Shilling since our last MoM were published and is now in a position of semi responsibility. Do they know what they have done? Keep an eye on Keith's real website http://www.domiclipse.com for further developments of his Repton and Anaximander applications. Will they make him his fortune. we're all hoping yes cos then we will get him to pay for the LotusBeer meetings.

And so at a time when I would rather have been going home (about 9pm I think and I'd been out since 4) we decamped from the PoW (Prince of Wales) and headed for Goulash in the Adelphi. You will note how brief the minutes are from this point on as things started to get a bit....well.... hazy. The owner (I assume it was he) was in good form and quite an entertaining guy. I almost felt sorry for the diners already there as the Geekfest descended on their Oasis of calm. We had a mixed set of starters. Peter reckoned that all that was was various breads but Keith, Nicole and I have to hold our hands up and admit that the starters were not succeeding in getting past us. I don't know what everyone else had but obviously the thing to have was Goulash. After all if someone calls their restaurant that they must have a fair idea of how to make it. The owner came and gave us some hot chilli sauce and warned us not to put too much of it on the Goulash. Pete and I, displaying the sort of caution we have become renowned for, split the sauce between us. Why do people who drink do that? I don't think it will be giving too much away to admit that it certainly perked the goulash up a bit! Luckily there was a nice bottle of Bull's Blood there to keep the temperature of my mouth down to marginally below that of the surface of the Sun.

I have to come clean here and admit that I can't remember if we had any sweet or not - perhaps someone else can remember? [Editor: No sweets]

Excellent night was had by all - already looking forward to next month when we will be going to ...........

[Editor: Once our esteemed project manager, note taker and all round memory man went to bed the rest of us wandered off to some pub or other. After getting kicked out we wandered off to some other pub. When that pub closed we made our way home. Upon being approached by some pimp and kindly refusing his wares, Keith then spent about 30 minutes comparing and contrasting philosophy, natural philosophy and religion until a small oriental guy and suggested that he go back to work.]
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25/06/2008 LotusBeer June 2008

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Aberdeen's premier gentlemen's club for those involved in Lotus Notes, Maximo or (cough) Sharepoint will be holding court at the Prince of Wales pub to be followed by a virtual visit to Hungary via the Goulash restaurant on Market Street.

Time and date of the meeting is today the 25th June 2008 at about 5 o'clock but, with the sort of day I've been having, it could well be closer to 4:30. All are welcome, man or woman, friend or foe. Rumour has it that Bill might be giving away signed photographs of himself.

Agenda:
  • Laugh at Keith's ridiculously short hair.
  • Bemoan the lack of greenness in Bill's hair.
  • Drink beer.

A picture named M2
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20/02/2008 The Original and Best

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It has come to our attention that we have our first imitator. Flattered as we are, we are also suitably and expensively outraged!

The following immediate actions have been taken:
  1. Trademark the LotusBeer brand.
  2. Engage the services of Messrs Sue, Grabbit & Run to issue cease and desist notice to the aforementioned, pale imitation.
  3. Demand £10 million in damages or an invitation.

So that you, our dear reader, are not confused, here's a visual guide to the differences :

The Original and Best
A picture named M2

Pale Imitation
A picture named M3
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20/02/2008 Minutes of LotusBeer Feb 2008

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Okay - here we go - a quick round up.

Meeting was convened at 18:30 at the Wallace Hall.  Delegates were invited to admire the art on the walls and a quick look around the Zenocean Office (headquarters of ZIT - Zenocean IT services).  A lightening tour of the Bogs, Kitchen and the Server farms followed before Keith got down and dirty on Johns very slow PC.  Before all of that though we broke open the real object of the evening - beer.  Bitter & Twisted, Deuchars IPA and Magners were on offer and Stella was added to the fare when Wild Bill arrived.

Keith loaded up and demonstrated 2 of the 3 add-ins he has developed. It was 2 out of the 3 because the 3rd one appeared to have installed but it was lost without trace.

The best of these applications (my opinion) was the one that instantaneously loaded up all the Servers on our system and displayed them graphically [Editor: The soon-to-be-released Repton plugin which visualises replication topologies].  There appears to be a couple of glitches in it but it works really well and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Bill started to show us the latest Notes stuff along with a 30 second tour of Lotusphere.  This took a while as almost nothing worked!  Okay maybe a slight exaggeration but there seemed to be a lot of delays.  On the plus side though we saw clips of the Clangers (cue much whistling), Roobarb and Custard (cue much nah nah nah naaahh, nah nah nah naaahhhh, nah nah nah na, nah naaahhh) and other stuff.

Off then for the Lostusbeer comes to Mexico at a suitable local restaurant (La Bamba) which I have been known to frequent in the past.

Arrived to find various scantily clad ladies (god bless them) celebrating something or other.  As I was the first to arrive I made sure I got the proper facing seats (just to keep an eye on them you understand)The assembled company then started to discuss another favourite topic - ███ █████ ███ ███ discussion of the █████ ████ - █████.  This led to the line of the night when one of the company admitted that he liked ███ ████ but "I am concerned about the seediness aspect of it (█████) [Editor: Censored].  Wow look at that! (looking at one of the aforementioned ladies in a Nurses outfit)"

Latest name for the group?  RGA (Randomly Generated Acronym).  This has now been added to MANGA, and NESSIE (which doesn't actually stand for anything but hey we're making this up as we go along) and others that I can't remember at this point.

Then the discussion moved to cuisines of the world and how Gurkhas came from Nepal (not Burma Pete).  It has been decided to carry out a Lotusbeer travels the world sequence.  It started out last month with Lotusbeer goes to Turkey, Lotusbeer goes to Mexico last Wednesday and proposals for the next country were discussed.  I think we have decided on a Lotusbeer goes to Australia (via Marykirk)

After several beers (Mexican), 2 jugs of Margaritas and a round of Mexican Blowjobs Keith hadn't had enough so had a large Tequila on the side.
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25/01/2008 Sheila Buchan's Closing Speech in full

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Here is the full text of Sheila's LotusBeer 2008 closing speech.

"The Turkish delight is mine, all mine and you're not having any."

Truly inspirational and well worth every glass of red it cost to get her. If we can't get William Shatner for the next meeting we'll definitely have her back.
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25/01/2008 LotusBeer 2008 Roundup

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Courtesy of our esteemed secretary, John, here is a roundup of everything you missed 'cos you were poncing around in Disneyland. Bet you wish you'd been at LotusBeer, right?

Attendees:

John Lindsay

Pete Zebedee

Keith Smillie

Sheila Buchan (no relation but apparently also from the NE AND shared a flat with BB - god help her......)

Gordon Cuthbertson (part)


Apologies:

Bill Buchan (alternative engagement - pretty useless excuse I would say)


John was saved from having to make the "Why my Lotus Quickr doesn't work" speech by heroically making it work about 30 minutes before the meeting was due to convene.  Apparently upgrading from 6.5 Server and Team Workplace just didn't cut the mustard.  Removed all reference to the old Quickplace and the old 6.5 Server and then completely reinstalled the whole kit and caboodle following the instructions instead of his usual cavalier "E:\Setup.exe - Return" approach.  Another thing that MAY have been a factor was accepting the default locations specified by the various programs.


Pete's Calendaring and Scheduling is working well as evidenced by the fact that he turned up on the right day and (pretty well) the right time.


Keith completely failed to steal any of Bill's Whisky partly because Bill wasn't there but mostly because he got toasted on Artois Bock and followed it up with most of 2 bottles of Merlot and some Turkish (I think) Red before arbitrarily electing himself as President of the MANGA (my latest offer as an acronym which stands for Maximo And Notes Group Aberdeen.  I quote from Wikipaedia as to the reason I think it is appropriate:


In Japan, manga are widely read by people of all ages, so that a broad range of subjects and topics occur in manga, including action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce, among others. Since the 1950s, manga have steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry, representing a 481 billion yen market in Japan in 2006[9] (approximately $4.4 billion dollars). Manga have also become increasingly popular worldwide. In 2006, the United States manga market was $175–200 million.

The stuff in bold is mine and I think details pretty much what we discuss on our Thursday nights i.e. anything and everything.  As an example last night we discussed the Coen Brothers new film "No Country for Old Men".  The Jury is still out on this one - I saw it on Tuesday.  I also recently saw Charlie Wilson's War which is best film released in January 08 so far.....  Keith regaled us with a synopsis of some animated film of fairy tales from some european country or other [Editor: Fimfárum 2]. The state of farming in UK today.  Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Stonehaven, the smuggling of the Scottish Crown jewels (historical drama, action and adventure), the footy (sports and games), how farmers do business by their word, Lotus Notes / Quickr, Intellisync, (business and commerce).  We didn't cover Science Fiction / fantasy but as can be seen from previous MoMs Doctor Who and Heroes have been extensively discussed.

So how about it - MANGA?? (█████.███ is available as a domain name) [Editor: actual domiain name censored so nobody tries to squat on it]

Anyway carrying on - Gordon at least turned up and managed to sink a cider before going off to play some sport or other (and people say that there aren't any real athletes these days.....)


High spot of the evening though was the unexpected attendance of the aforementioned Sheila Buchan who was cajoled into being our Keynote Speaker.  She then proceeded to wow us with real technology (an I-Paq I think) when we blogged Bouncy Billy Buchan using the free (I think) Wireless Hot Spot in the Globe which was the lately nominated location of choice.

You will note from this point that things become a bit vague.....


John had a mini rant about Lotus.  The gist of it was that it is all very well highly technical people getting a moderate stiffy about the latest greatest Eclipse this or Java that.  However this misses the entire point of what has to be delivered - An easy to use application that allows the end user to do what he needs to do.  Lotus Notes / Domino / Quickr and all the rest is "facilitating software" it is not an end of and by itself.  It has to be easier to use so that people can use it to develop applications "on the fly".


Zeb came up with a stoating idea which can't be discussed here as he is obviously looking into it as a commercial possibility.  He was on a bit of a roll as he also suggested the Nargile [Editor: Turkish restaurant]  to have something to eat.  It was brill.  John has volunteered (I think I was volunteered actually) to fund the next one as Zeb paid this time.  That being the case I thought I would give you all a choice - what is it to be - Burger King, MacDonalds or KFC?


A trip to the Power Buoy will be arranged when work resumes on it to allow the group to see the thing.  Meantime it is for sale - offers on a Postcard please to Ernst and Young (Administrators).


[Editor: Here is a picture of part of the buoy. So, if you're in the market for 650 tonnes and 3.6 MW of fully autonomous buoy, get down to Honest John's soon. Buyer collects. On a personal note, I have one of these in my back garden and they are a great 'focal point' as well as being practical.]

A picture named M2

Zeb floated the notion of actually formalising things a bit more within the group.  It was at this point that KS went off on one electing himself President AND insisting John turned up in a skirt next time as the Secretary.  I'm pretty sure we got Zeb elected as something but like I say it was a bit vague at this point [Editor: Apparently Zeb has been elected as the head of the Provisional Wing of the Revolutionary LotusBeer Brigade (Belfast Chapter)]. John can make the Wallace Hall available for meetings if we ever actually want to show stuff properly on a screen.  We can get beer in as well so we are not missing out on the Piss Up part of the evening.


That's it for now - I think I covered most of the stuff discussed but I bet I'm wrong.
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25/01/2008 Lotusbeer 2008

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Welcome to Lotusbeer 2007 2008


"Sod the conference, we're going down the pub!"


Central Aberdeen's premier conference for anyone involved in Lotus Notes or Maximo is being held at the prestigious Howff pub on Union Street... and possibly in Soul and O'Donohues and ending up at Sizzlers world famous kebab shop.

The conference starts on Thursday 24th January at about 18:30 GMT and ends when we get kicked out.

Tickets are free but we can only get about 6 people round a table so we might need to push two tables together.

This years speakers:
  • John will be explaining why his installation of Quickr doesn't work.
  • Pete will be explaining the latest advances in Calendaring & Scheduling, including how to tell the difference between Wednesday and Thursday.
  • Keith will be stealing Bills whisky using Java and XML.
  • Bill will be making excuses about being at some other conference. Yeah, right...
  • Gordon will be showing off his new football boots and wondering why he's running round a field in sub-zero temperatures when he could be down the pub.
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LotusBeer's been to...


We have virtually graced this much of the world with our culinary presence...

2% of the land area
3% of the population
0% of the sea

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