Dorchester — Oct 21st 2008

John chaired the Dorchester meeting on October 21st, at which the 15 members present were offered two presentations.

The first, by Mick, described how it is possible for a very reasonable annual fee, to obtain a personalised e-mail address which you can keep for life, and which still can be used irrespective of how many times you change your internet provider (ISP). Companies such as Easily Ltd or Fasthosts deal with Nominet, who control UK domain names, and provide a service to the public on their behalf. The process of checking that a domain name has not already been registered by someone else, and then registering it oneself, and arranging for e-mails to be forwarded to an ISP e-mail address is straightforward, and a number of e-mail addresses can be registered within each domain purchased.

Steve gave the second presentation on Phun, a freeware 2-D Physics graphical simulator which can be downloaded from phunland.com. This enables many interesting simulations and experiments to be set up, and allows liberties to be taken with Nature, such as turning Gravity on and off. There is a good library of scenarios which have been developed by users and which can be found at funbox.net. Some of these scenarios, including the nuclear reactor, and the Fibonacci series analogue computer, were demonstrated, and, in advance of Guy Fawkes' Night, projectiles were also launched into space with and without gravity and air resistance.

Good use was also made of the Colliton Club Bar, and the meeting closed with the usual question and answer session.

Comments

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Vera Jukes said…

Please may we have a further instalment sometime of Steve's Phun?
Wonderfully entertaining and educational. Thank you Steve.

Vera
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