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Saint Louis Unix Users Group

The Saint Louis Unix Users Group (SLUUG) is an IRS 501c(6) designated not-for-profit professional association dedicated to education and communication among computer users. SLUUG members include many Linux and UNIX professionals, Networking experts, System experts, hobbyists, and students. Also, many who are interested in Unix, Unix-like Operating Systems, Linux, BSD and other Free Open Source Software (FOSS) applications, products, projects and services.

We have met continuously since we incorporated in July 1992. All of our meetings are free and open to the public. There is no individual membership fee.

15 May 2025 Only ~ Face to Face

Just an unofficial social gathering, without any presentations
.

Monthly Technical Presentations

Connection instructions will first be sent to our mailing lists and then linked here .

We will open the remote session at about 6:00 PM, Central Time, so that you can join early to test your microphone, screen sharing and video camera .

Then we start at 6:30 PM with our BASE introductory level session ( often focused on personal computing ); which may include either amazing graphical packages, blinking lights, command line wonders, demonstrations of useful applications, displays of newly discovered web sites, major resolution of long standing anomalies, quantum discoveries, smoke and mirrors, superb tutorials, or shifts in both time and space.

Sometime after 7:00 PM we attempt a quick welcome, introductions, announcements, current events of interest, and a general CALL FOR HELP (Questions and Answers) segment.

Sometime after 7:15 PM, we may take a short break before our MAIN topic ( often focused on enterprise computing ),

  • NEW In what order or sequence are the meeting events held? SLUUG_Meeting

    • Where!

    • Online Sessions only.
    • NO PHYSICAL MEETINGS until further notice.
    • These sessions will use ZOOM remote video service.

    When!

    Wednesday, May 14th, 2025

    From 6:30PM till 9:00PM Central Daylight Time (CDT) UTC-05

    We will open the remote session at about 6:00 PM CDT, so that you can join early to test your microphone, screen and video sharing.

    Next scheduled meeting dates

    What!

    Something fundamental, introductory, instructive, short, simple or small.

    BASE Topic: Bypassing AT&T eMAIL Blocking

    Presenter: Lee_Lammert

    Some ISPs like to play with your email (for some justication) by blocking outbound traffic on normal ports like 25, 587, et al.

    For many of those customers, it does not make a difference; For others, however, we NEED to get email out to report system status (e.g. status of daily backup cron jobs)!

    Tune in to see how to bypass those restrictions and get reliable email from those servers!

    NOTE: This is **NOT** a solution for SPAMmers trying to broadcast junk, rather it is for targeted emails providing status information to a central location.

    Then something more advanced, detailed, important, new, profound, significant, timely or useful.

    MAIN Topic: Voice Technology

    Talking to Yourself and Your Computer

    Presenter: Craig Buchek

    Ever since Craig was 16 (1987), Craig dreamed of controlling his computer with his voice. It is nearly 40 years later, and he's not much further along in making that dream a reality. Lately he's been giving it some more effort. Still, the journey may provide us with some valuable insights, along with some curmudgeonly rants.

    This will be a two part series, wherein we will explore where we are with speaking to computers.

    In this first part (May 14), we will cover dictation, voice control, and text-to-speech. This first presentation will survey the current state of our technical abilities. We will experiment with a few dictation apps, both proprietary and Open Source. We will look into voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, and accessibility features that make tech more usable for everyone. Our main focus will be hands-on exploration of two main alternatives for controlling the computer with our voice: Apple Voice Control, and the cross-platform favorite, Talon. For fun, we will even fire up a vintage text-to-speech app to see how far we have come.

    The second part of the series will explore using voice with Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) and coding. It will be presented at our Saint Louis Linux Users Group (STLLINUX) session on 22 May.

    Possible Future Topics

    SLUUG Annual Meeting and Elections

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, a required annual meeting was held 12 February 2025.

    Attending any two SLUUG sponsored meetings in calendar year 2024 qualifies you as a voting member. Ballots for February 2025 elections are now available for secret balloting. An absentee ballot could be printed for mailing to us. You might be able to use a LibreOffice Writer ballot file that could be printed and mailed to us.

    Your ballot must reach us for counting by our BOARD well before 3 March 2025 (the next STEERCOM meeting).

    Attending any two SLUUG sponsored meetings in calendar year 2023 qualified members to vote. Mail in balloting was held thru out February 2024. That resulted in Ken Johnson and Sean Twiehaus being elected to our Board of Governors. James Conroy continued as Chairman of the Saint Louis Linux Users Group.

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, the next required annual meeting will be held 11 February 2026.

    Other independent, loosely affiliated SLUUG sponsored Special Interest Groups:

    Click here if you do not see past presentations listing

    Contact SLUUG if you have a presentation you would like to have considered for selection.

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