The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Kingston Centre met
The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Kingston Centre met last night, Tuesday May 21st, 2013 in MacCorry Hall Room B201 at Queen’s University.
We were bumped from our regular room in Ellis Hall Room 324 by construction occurring on the floor for the remainder of the summer.
There were also about 100 high school enrichment students outside the room trying to make as much noise as possible.
For about a year now we have been using anymeeting.com to broadcast live, and record, the meetings for members. We did the same again last night using a small netbook, a logitech C270 webcam with microphone) and a wired network connection. Anymeeting.com had a new software plugin to help share the screen. Firefox v21 did not get past the “starting session” three times, so we aborted that and went to Google Chrome (even though we have had issues with it in the past). Google chrome worked!
Every time we attempt this broadcast/record, something is different, something has changed, etc.
It seems we may never get to a proven, stable, static system. We get close, we attempt to improve the audio and then the latest news.
This is the last meeting that we will be able to record. Anymeeting.com has changed their business model and in order for us to get the recording option, we would have to pay approx $216/year.
The existing service does not quite meet our needs, although we have lived in hope that it would improve, that we would get our hardware and software working 100%, etc.
For 10 events a year it does not seem worthwhile.
Now it seems we will have to search out yet another system/service/method.
Back to the meeting itself:
Notices
Susan Gagnon: notes about the new National RASC bylaws and proxies; The Elbow Lake Observing Session,
Presentations from: Terence Dickinson (L&A Dark Sky Viewing Area), Rick Wagner (beer cam astronomy), Hank Bartlett (dominican republic astronomy images), Kevin Kell (torus mounting project phase I Sat May 25th and Kingston LED streetlight replacement imaging project), Mark Kaye (Comet Panstarrs and crescent moon) and more notes about the upcoming David Levy Tour from Susan Gagnon including dinner plans, Kim Hay on the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve Proposal and our last meeting of the summer on Tuesday June 27th
The meeting adjourned at 9pm and all in all it was a good meeting with a good turnout of 20 people, many of which we have not seen in some time.