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26th February 2010 Report by Bill Cooney
Ken opened the meeting in his customary breezy fashion, welcomed ‘First Time Faces'
and mused on the upcoming move to the new premises in Warragul Rd, asking for any
expertise to assist in that undertaking.
Kelvin Cording and Bill Dair handled the Q/A segment in the absence of our usual
expert - no real hardship as they are normally prominent at the Ripper Hardware
(hands on) group meetings.
A questioner with a iPhone problem was advised to go to the Apple store for positive
help, another having Skype drop out problems brought up the suggestion to turn off
the video to assist weak signals and a computer which crashed in a Movie to DVD
action was probably the victim of a corrupt file in the procedure.
A quick survey revealed that FireFox was the most favoured browser.
Clive Chatfield gave a short synopsis of his 2nd literary opus, a mystery novel now in publication and worthy of
your support.
Charles Adams then took the mic. To entertain us, in his own unmatched style, with
some comments on a range of topics covering the new Intel i5 quad core chips, ABS
Brakes, a clip about the evolution of Numbers and a few comic clips from eMail attachments
received.
Rob Bretts was our main presenter with a very comprehensive demo of a Free program
called "My Virtual Home". Rob had used the application in the planning of his
own new house and showed us the very wide range of features available for laying
out and sizing the plan view which could then be furnished with beds, cupboards,
fittings etc. and floored or carpeted to taste. A click then displayed the plan
as a 3D view which could be rotated for various angle views, the wall colours chosen
and shown and a ‘walk through' of the house and rooms simulated. Rob was master
of the program and the demo was warmly applauded.
A very stimulating day and Thanks to all who contributed
22nd January 2010 Report by Bill Cooney
Ken Thomas opened the meeting in fine voice, almost blasting attending members out
of the room such was his welcome. Ken also shouted himself a new toy over the break,
in the shape of a new computer which includes Windows 7, a Blue Ray burner and 2.5
Tbytes of hard disks!
Graham was not present for the usual Q/A segment so this popular period was very
ably covered by George Skarbeck who gave us a very encouraging and timely advice
that the operating system was the last thing to be concerned about and an upgrade
to the ‘latest and best’ was not only unnecessary but could be counter to production
and efficiency - “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
A question about XP programs not running in Win 7 prompted the suggestion to download Virtual
PC from the Net and install the XP system as well to enable use of the stubborn apps.
Bill Dair gave us a demo of Bargains on Line which he introduced with a very funny
clip called Pigeon Impossible and a song clip about Memory Cut-out, which struck
home to many present. For bargains he recommended sites Zazz One
Day, Catch of the Day, Merchants on Ebay, Overship, Get Price and Trading Post.
Pay Pal was endorsed as a payment agency. Personally, I have
a separate “Debit” account to which I transfer the money necessary for the purchase
at the time and use the card - otherwise it remains empty.
Ian Bock rounded out the day with a demonstration of the excellent program - Fast
Stone Viewer, the latest of which, version 4.0, has just been released.
It is a freeware program, available also in a portable version to load on to a
flash drive etc. and Ian showed some of the huge array of features it contains.
These include a 91 page PDF file explaining them all, very effective
editing tools, slide show capability, batch conversion and renaming, an amazing
Red Eye Removal tool and others too numerous to cover here. Check it out!
Thanks to all who made this a remarkably interesting day
23rd October 2009 Report by Terry Whitehead
Ken Thomas was to his usual best, giving as good as he gets. He
warned us not to expect a raffle at the 'Break-up' at Volcano Joes this year.
We've got to save up for Windows 7!!
Next cab off the rank was Dr Graham Ackland with his Q/A segment.
One of the members was having trouble with Windows 7. He wants
to remove a boot. The response was - forget it - can't be done-
you can try, but you would probably finish up with no hair!
Graham bought himself a 64gb flash drive from City Software presumably reduced from
$300+ to $179. George Skarbek also bought one recently, he found
it to be quite a bit slower. On the plus side, apparently there
is a 3 year warranty and a 60 day return.
Also covered was the setting up and the cost of VOIP?. It all comes
down to what sort of a deal you can get. There are many companies
out there, each offering 'the best contract for you'. Good hunting!
By the way, for those with families overseas, the savings can
be quite substantial; something like three cents a minute call charge.
Charles Tivendale was our next Presenter and he took us into the world of computer
graphics. Called TRUE SPACE, it will transport you far beyond the
world of reality; according to Charles, there are heaps of tutorials available on
the internet. Enquire through a company called CALIGARI.
For those of you who are into games, this might be the one. Move over Pixar!
After the coffee break, Bob Traynor gave us an insight into a product called "Good
Sync". Bob explained it as a Data Backup process, not the entire drive or partition,
just to do selective backups or synchronization of back-up versions/locations -
e.g. HDD and flash drive, flash drive and lap-top and etc. It also
has the capability to do an FTP synchronization to a home page, web site, cross
networks and different USB media to name a few. The program has
the ability to detect the volume label on a flash drive so as to avoid drive letter confusion
with multiple drives. To get more information, contact Secure-Tech
in Boronia, Victoria; or search for the software name, "Good Sync."
28th August 2009 Report by Bill Cooney
Ken welcomed new faces to the group and urged members to take advantage of the warming
weather and come to meetings in greater numbers and to think seriously about offering
as presenters at future meetings. It is enormously interesting to hear of the interests
and see the work of other people in the group, so please, share your pleasure!
Graham Ackland again headed the Question/Answer segment where the first query was
‘how to print a catalogue of songs in a zip file on a CD?' There was rather a dearth
of answers – mostly suggestions to make a Screen Capture from a file manager. There
was some mixed discussion on Viruses and the merits and variations of Anti-virus
programs and many other matters of interest.
Roger Wragg entertained with a fascinating demo of how he uses his Samsung Video
camera to record images and sound in the low light environment of Club meetings.
Roger uses "Vegas" for the editing and conversion of his presentations
into .wmv files. He explained how there is a considerable amount of
preparation in the setting up of camera, tripods and the attendant cabling and the
preference for HD camera over the little Handicams etc. &nIt also helps
if the speaker supplies a copy of the notes of the planned presentation. &n
Well done Roger.
Dave Botherway opened his talk about Win 7 with a cleverly devised clip featuring
Baby Rappers! He then went on to trace the evolution of Windows
from Version 1, through 3, 95, 98 up to the imminent version 7, pointing out some
salient features and weaknesses which seem to have been changed for the better in
the latest generation. There is no inbuilt internet client in Win
7 and Dave recommended the use of the free M/s Transfer Tool when upgrading from
XP Vista etc. to help in the transfer of Data to the new operating System.
If you are contemplating an upgrade, you could make the process much easier by catching
one of Dave's excellent and knowledgeable presentations on the subject.
Ken opened the meeting with a special welcome to people attending for the first time. Graham Ackland bravely fronted up again for the Question/Answer segment. This must be the prime part of our meetings for it always seems to generate an enthusiastic response and Graham handles it expertly, answering most queries from his own store of knowledge and experience.
This month aired problems with Optus download hiccups and access to some sites; a query concerning Zone Alarm and other Firewall behaviour. some stubborn updated drivers; and a query about RSS readers, info and Ebooks (This latter will be the subject of a future meeting presentation). A member reported trouble with a program ‘clean install' and was advised to try using CCCleaner to remove all traces of the previous version before re-installation
Major Keary gave us a presentation about the Care and Feeding of Fonts, illustrating the most common in use and comparing the ‘readability' variations in their use. Specially mentioned was the importance of ‘white space' in the construction of documents.
Bill Dair demonstrated the programs "Audio Recorder" and "Spider Player" both of which are on the August Monthly Disk. Bill recorded a sample from the ABC ‘stream' with the utmost ease using the recording program and saved the file to a hard disk then replayed it with Spider Player – like "Audacity" only simpler. Bill also took us beyond the Search Engine of Google and highlighted some of the many good things to be found there.
Michael McKeon who spends his other time playing in, and arranging music for, a premier Jazz Band took us into the magical world of "Sibelius" - a music annotation program. There are seemingly unlimited features for the transcribing and interpreting of music scores for all kinds of instruments in this software and Michael demonstrated them using the inbuilt ‘Help' videos and his own experience based comments. All in all it was a very fully packed meeting.
26th June 2009 Report by Bill Cooney
Following Ken Thomas's introduction and welcome to the meeting Graham, Ackland presented
a BBC documentary from Click.com about some of the Internet Nasties which beset
users of that space, beginning with Botnets and their insidious formation in unwitting
and unknowing personal computers and how they are used to generate Spam.
For more details Click Here!
Another tool of these networks is to shut down (or threaten) a targeted site by flooding
it with literally millions of ?hits' and so bring about a ?denial of service' to
that site. Be sure your Firewall and A/Virus programs are up to scratch to prevent
being ?Hijacked' to a Botnet.
Graham continued then with his Q/A segment, always popular and covering some queries
about the vagaries of MS Word; the RTF format which is like PDF in that it can be
read on any computer; a Patch from M/Soft, to enable saving created documents as
.pdf files; and programs for making .pdf's editable in Word .
Fred Miller showed and commented on a short film about the world's water crisis,
and the unnecessary evils of Bottled Water - not so much the water as the mountains
of discarded containers and their innate toxins. Fred is ?anti' flouridation of
water but I am not sure that this is'nt one of those cases of the ?greatest good
for the greatest number' decisions - benefits Vs dangers so to speak!
Dave Botherway stepped up after the tea break with another of his excellent presentations
- this one began with a history of the Net's development and extended into more
of the dangers lurking therein for the unwary Social Networking users. This covered
sites like Skype, Utube, Facebook, Twitter (for twits?) and the like, wherein users
unwittingly leave information about themselves all of which can be correlated to
form a fairly comprehensive profile, making them vulnerable to evils like identity
theft, cyber-bullying, unwanted peer pressure, published information (true or false)
and other unpleasant misuses of that information. Very timely and a bit scary too.
Thanks to all who contributed to the great day.
Webmaster Don Osborn, ably assisted by Malcolm Smith.
Both can be contacted through
here.
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