The South West Show is dead – long live The South West Show

Feb 262012
 

This year’s RISC OS South West Show almost didn’t happen. Paul Middleton of RISCOS Ltd, the show’s organiser for the last few years, revealed recently that he normally waits for the Webbington Hotel, the show’s usual venue, to reduce the prices of the rooms in which the show can be held – and it seems even more recently (early January, according to Archive 23:4, p4), Paul said that he wouldn’t be organising another show. Richard Brown of Orpheus Internet soon stepped up, with Andrew Rawnsley and R-Comp joining him to make sure we still had a show in the South West.

Considering that neither had any experience of actually organising a show, and that they only had a very short time in which to do it in order to ensure the show took place at its normal time of year, they should both be applauded for their efforts: Both visitors and exhibitors alike seem to have found the show an enjoyable and successful one.

Including me! Continue reading »

Bristol RISC OS Users 2nd Meeting

Feb 282011
 

Following the success of the first meeting of members of the Bristol RISC OS Users mailing list, a discussion list formed to support the possible rebirth of a user group for the area, a second meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday 16th March, 2011, and is therefore an ideal opportunity to discuss anything of interest from the RISC OS South West Show, which takes place on Saturday 5th March, 2011. Continue reading »

Bristol RISC OS Users announce an initial informal meeting

Jan 202011
 

Following on from discussions that began about a year ago and which led initially to the creation of a mailing list to bring together RISC OS users in and around the Bristol area, an initial meeting has been announced for those users – so if you are a RISC OS user in that area, the date to note in your diaries is Wednesday 26th January, 7:15pm for 7:30pm, and the venue the Air Balloon pub in Filton, Bristol – which is very easy to find. The following is the announcement that has been posted to comp.sys.acorn.announce:

Continue reading »

RISC OS London Show 2011 announced, SW Show confirmed

Nov 292010
 

Following a successful show in 2010, ROUGOL – the RISC OS User Group of London – have now announced the date and venue for the RISC OS London Show 2011. Taking place on Saturday29th October, 2011, the show will again be at the St Giles Hotel, Feltham. Photos and videos of the 2010 show can be found on the media page of the show website.

The South West Show, the date for which had only been mentioned as hearsay, does appear to be going ahead when suggested – Saturday 5th, March 2011, at the Webbington Hotel, Loxton. Discussions with some of the other show organisers during and around the times of their respective events revealed a common awareness that one of the main mistakes they had been making was not publicising their shows enough – so it is somewhat disappointing that I have seen no official announcement of this show, and only discovered that it had been confirmed when glancing at the Wessex ARM User Group site while seeking out Robin Hodson. This is, after all, the next show in the RISC OS calendar.

South West Show 2011 – provisional date

Oct 212010
 

According to Jim Nagel of Archive Magazine in a post to the the Bristol RISC OS Users mailing list, he received news today that a date has been pencilled in for the South West Show in 2011 – 5th March. No further details are available as yet, and given that Jim used the words ‘pencilled in’ this date is presumably not definite and could be subject to change.

The South West Show has traditionally been held in mid to late February, at The Webbington Hotel, Loxton, and although Jim didn’t mention the venue, that is where it will most likely be held since it is such an easy location for exhibitors to get to, being just off the A38 and very close to the M5.

Logo ideas for Bristol RISC OS user group

Jan 302010
 

Updated 31/1/2010 with a fourth idea and altered to use a vector based acorn.

Updated 1/2/2010 with a new version of idea 4, but with better colours, and a few others.

Following the initial comments made earlier this week about the possibility of starting a new Bristol based RISC OS user group if there is enough interest, Trevor was able to find a copy of the old BARUG (Bristol Area RISC OS User Group) logo:

Bristol Area RISC OS User Group Logo

Bristol Area RISC OS User Group Logo

To my mind, there are a small number of issues with this. First and foremost, it’s a bitmap which means it can’t be easily re-sized (upwards) without a loss of quality. Somebody, somewhere probably does have it in a vector based format – but it matters not, because of the remaining issues. The second is that it uses the word “RISC” instead of “RISC OS” – the former term encompasses a great deal more than just RISC OS (although the flaw with both is their apparent exclusion of, say, 8bit users of old Acorn kit). And the third most obvious issue is the use of the acorns to represent the towers of the Clifton Suspension Bridge; representing the bridge encompasses a well known Bristol landmark in the design – which is great, given that it’s a Bristol based group – but the acorn is somewhat out of date in that it associates the group (and RISC OS) with Acorn Computers Ltd, who are long gone. There may also be trademark issues with the use of the acorn.

Continue reading »