YRARC General Meeting - Minutes 2015-10-06

Meeting held in the Sharon Temple (Temperance Hall). Called to Order at 19:30 by Chris VE3NRT. Total members and guests attending: 35

1. Welcome & Introductions – Chris VE3NRT
   
2. Adoption of Minutes from the general meeting, 2015/09/01 deferred until November.
   
3. By-laws – Chris VE3NRT. The current by-laws (#6) are being revised to update the wording, and the updated version will be circulated to the club membership. Then proposed revisions will be made to the by-laws. The target date for revisions is January 2016. Proxy voting to the changes will be allowed.
   
4. Treasurer’s Report – John VA3JI
   
   • September: Opening balance [available to members on request]. Expenditures: $15 plaques, $14 parking (for repeater maintenance), $240.69 post office box, $1.32 bank fees (PayPal). Income: $345 hanfest, $740 dues, $700 honouraria (for summer public service duties at Mt. Albert and the Aurora Street Festival.
     
   • October: Opening balance [available to members on request]. Expenditures: $280 hamfest grand prizes. Income: $429, $25 dues. Closing balance as at Oct 6 [available to members on request]
     
   • Moved to adopt the treasurer's report Barry VE3LLT, seconded Bill VE3QB. Carried.
     
5. Membership Report – Alf VA3BLE. To date 49 members have paid.
   
6. Public Service Report – Eric VE3EB. There were 2 recent events, Sharon Temple Illumination on September 11 and CIBC Run for a Cure on October 4.
   
7. EmComm Report – Don VE3IXJ. The EmComm group meets on the second Thursday of the month, and the next meeting will be on October 8 at the Newmarket Community Centre. The cross-band repeater worked well at the recent Mono Cliffs race in Dufferin County.
   
8. Repeater Committee Report – Steve VE3UT. The repeaters are in good shape and all are linked. The IRLP/Echo Link is down and Chris VE3NRT is in the process of replacing the the old computer with a Raspberry Pi.
   
9. Hamfest Report – Geoff VA3GS. The date of the Hamfest is Saturday October 31, with setup on Friday. Members are asked to sign up for this event.
   
10. Awards
    
    • Eric VE3EB and Steve VE3UT were jointly awarded the Harvey Bell award.
      
    • Bruce EVV was presented with a certificate of appreciation for 10 years work at the prize table.
      
    • Nick VE3NJV was presented with a certificate of appreciation for 10 years work at providing refreshments.
      
11. Other business
    Winter field day planning is beginning. See Steve VE3UT or Rick VA3VO for details.
    

Guest Speaker: Paul Delaney from York University spoke about Pluto the planet, now reclassified as a dwarf planet. His talk included many images of Pluto, ranging from older fuzzy images taken from earth, to highly detailed images taken close up from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

Astrophysics: Exploring Exoplanets

Professor Paul Delaney of York University has long (as in more than 10 years) been one of, if not our most, popular presenters at club meetings. His presentations always pay particular attention to the fascinating topic of exoplanets, where new discoveries are being made daily. Professor Delaney will be presenting at our October 6th meeting.

For those that want to know more and are willing to invest several hours a week to develop a deeper understanding of the topic, the Australian National University in Canberra is offering the course "Astrophysics: Exploring Exoplanets" through its association with edX, which is organizes access to courses of dozens of Universities, including MIT and Harvard which govern its operation.

The course itself is free, although if you want the certificate it is $50 US. It is wise not to underestimate the effort required to complete the course, though. It will take several hours of study each week. The course starts on September 15th, and follows a schedule rather than being self-paced. Course assistants are available on-line to answer questions.

In general, the courses offered by edX are very well received. Bob VA3IL recently took "Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python" (i.e. the Python programming language) and thought highly of it, although he found the assignments to be quite a bit of work (this course is probably at the high end of the workload spectrum, mind you). If you're interested in this course it started on August 26th so you likely have time to catch up.

Some other courses that were recently announced:

• Transforming Business, Society, and Self with U.Lab: Join the global movement to build a new economy by co-sensing and co-creating the emerging future (MIT)
• Solar Energy: Discover the power of solar energy and learn how to design a complete photovoltaic system (Australian National University)
• Discovery Precalculus: A Creative and Connected Approach: This is an inquiry-based exploration of the main topics of Precalculus. The emphasis is on development of critical thinking skills (University of Texas at Austin)
• The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours: Discover the literature and heroes of ancient Greece through the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, the tragedies of Sophocles, the dialogues of Plato, and more (Harvard)
• M&A Professional Certificate Part 1 – Concepts and Theories: An Introduction. If your goal is a career on a broker-dealer’s M&A desk (New York Institute of Finance)
• Principles of Electric Circuits: Learn sufficient techniques for analyzing and designing circuits (Tsinghua University)
• Introduction to jQuery: Learn how to use jQuery to simplify common tasks in JavaScript to quickly add interactivity to web pages (Microsoft)
• Music Production and Vocal Recording Technology: Explore emerging innovations in vocal production, audio engineering, recording, and mixing (Berklee College of Music)
• Science at the Polls: Biology for Voters, Part 1: Each year, as voters you are asked to make decisions on ballot initiatives on matters of biology, medicine, agriculture and the environment. Enroll in this course to learn how biology and your vote are connected (University of California: Berkeley)
• Terrorism and Counterterrorism: What is the danger of terrorism, and how can the world respond effectively? (Georgetown University)
• Electronic Interfaces: Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds: Learn by doing: analyze, design, and build electronic interfaces between sensors and a microcontroller to build a robot or your own creation in this hands-on lab course (University of California: Berkeley)

So many courses - so little time...

Signing up is simple, and I'm sure Prof. Delaney would be delighted to see some club members showing a higher level interest in the topic.