C C C C N E W S L E T T E R
CENTRAL COAST COMPUTER CLUB
Santa Maria, California
VOLUME XVIII: NUMBER 11 NOVEMBER, 2003
NEXT MEETING: November 18, 2003 6:00PM KNOLLWOOD VILLAGE 4012 S. BRADLEY
PRESENTATION: Charles Barney on "Digital Images: Resolving Resolution"
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| CONTENTS |
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(1) Officers, Helplines, S.I.G.s
(2) President's Corner Charles Barney
(3) Special Interest Groups Trissel, Isenson, Malicki
(4) Election Time
(5) Web Wanderings Gil Smith
(6) Review: Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0 Charles Barney
(7) Review: Partion Magic 8.0 Ray Isenson
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OFFICERS HELPLINES
President Juno
Charles Barney 937-1240 Gilbert Smith 925-3743
cbarney@lightspeed.net colgil1@aol.com
Vice President Windows 95/98/ME/XP & VoiceControl
Richard Holmes 938-0622 Amy Malicki 925-5780
holmesr1@juno.com amymal@juno.com
Secretary and Book Librarian Hardware & Windows XP
Barbara Godwin 934-9885 Ray Isenson 937-6938
yung.bag@verizon.net risenson@juno.com
Treasurer AOL
Gerry Miller 934-1396 Frank Maciel 922-2318
2741 Banyan Way frm8198@aol.com
Santa Maria CA 93455
Gmiller@pronet.net
Disk Librarian Visual Basic
Sharon Allen 928-2209 Gerald Miller 934-1396
sallen4060@aol.com Gmiller@pronet.net
Publicity Help With Any Problem
Bill Corning 934-0775 Fred Adams 934-1128
foster95@juno.com wd64acj@netzero.net
Newsletter Editor
Dick Trissel 937-7572
rtrissel@juno.com
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (S.I.G.s)
Novice (6:00pm) Hardware (6:00pm) Systems (5:45pm)
Amy Malicki Ray Isenson Dick Trissel
amymal@juno.com risenson@juno.com rtrissel@juno.com
CCCC Membership is $15 for twelve months ($20 family). For this you
receive:
Monthly newsletter
EXTRA4C E-mail Messages
Access to the clubs software library
Disk of the month (usually for $1)
Helpline support
Monthly presentation
Valuable door prizes
Question and answer sessions
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CCCC Page 2 November 2003
PRESIDENT'S CORNER
by Charles Barney
Upon returning to the clubhouse after two months away (fresh and rested
from vacation) I was pleased to see nearly 60 folks in attendance at the
October 21st meeting. And all these despite a World Series game being
broadcast simultaneously!
Nominations were announced for the 2004 officer elections and I'm happy to
say that there are names on the ballot for each position. As you may know,
I have declined to run for a fifth term. I'd like to thank the Nominating
Committee members Ray Isenson, Gil Smith, and Ken Stiffler for their great
work.
Our guest speaker was Mark Haley of Analytical Software, Inc. Mark's
company produces multimedia CDs and DVDs on a variety of subjects. The
samples that we were shown included national parks, Japan, Britain, bird
watching, foreign language studies and text-to-speech. Although interesting
up to a point, the presentation was, unfortunately, much too light on the
information portion and heavy on the sales pitch. Sorry about that folks.
Door prize winners included Cliff Rush - Satin Gloss Photo Paper, Carol
Rich - PowerQuest Drive Image 2002, Charles Currey - CD Marker Pen Set,
Carter Jones - Quicken 2003 Deluxe, Ken Baur - Therapeutic Stress Ball,
Allen Alderson - Britain DVD, and Frank Lemmon - Microsoft Links 2003 Golf
Sim. The no-shows were Robert Davis, Joe Magnusson, Eugene Johnson, Loyd
Gay, David Lowry, Russ Connors, Roy Grisso, Ray Isenson, Fred Adams, Willa
Wiley, and Duane Peterson. Vic McLaughlin declined.
At the November 18th meeting, the election will take place for next year's
officers. Be sure and bring with you or mail-in your completed ballots. The
speaker will be Yours Truly on "Digital Images: Resolving Resolution." You
might think of it as a preview of my SIG planned for next year. Hope to see
you all there. - Charles
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CCCC Page 3 November 2003
SYSTEMS S.I.G. by Dick Trissel
The usual Systems Special Interest Group will meet in the Pool Room.
________________________________________________________________________
HARDWARE S.I.G. by Ray Isenson
Hopefully, there will be a Hardware S.I.G. in the Library Room.
________________________________________________________________________
NOVICE S.I.G. by Amy L. Malicki
The Novice S.I.G. will meet in the main room and the subject will be
WINDOWS XP. We will talk about "What's New", like Task Panes, Smart Tags,
Error Prevention and Recovery. Also some new things you can do, for
example: create Group Taskbar items, slide shows, and enable Automatic
Windows XP and Anti-Virus "updates".
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CCCC Page 4 November 2003
ELECTION TIME
The first inside sheet of the newsletter is a pull-out ballot. Use it to
vote for the CCCC officers for the year 2003. Bring the filled in ballot
to the 18 November general meeting.
The following names are those nominated for the officer positions for
2004. Indicate your acceptance of each proposed name by checking the box
on the ballot in front of the individual's name, or write in an alternative
name in the space provided.
Please bring your ballot to the November meeting and deposit it in the
ballot box. If you can't attend the meeting, follow the instructions on
the back of the ballot and mail to:
Ken Stiffler
5321 Redwillow Dr.
Santa Maria CA 93455
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PRESIDENT:
[ ] Spencer Stimler
[ ] ______________________________________________(write in)
VICE PRESIDENT:
[ ] Bill Corning
[ ] ______________________________________________(write in)
SECRETARY:
[ ] Barbara Godwin
[ ] ______________________________________________(write in)
TREASURER:
[ ] Gerry Miller
[ ] ______________________________________________(write in)
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CCCC Page 5 November 2003
WEB WANDERINGS
By Gil Smith
SO YOU WANNA.COM?
So you wanna learn how to do something, or know something, or try
something. This is the place to find out how.
So you wanna. . . buy a laptop, meet people in your neighborhood, or be a
human guinea pig? Get some clear and direct tips on how to get started and
what to do. Maybe you want to work for the CIA or fake an appreciation for
art. It's here too.
There are also more useful items like how to buy a DVD player, organize
your closet, or ask for a raise. If you wanna do something, chances are
you can get some ideas on how to start at this site.
http://www.soyouwanna.com/
HOLY FIRE
For centuries at the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, a flame comes
out of the tomb of Christ on Orthodox Christian Easter (called "Pascha").
The first mention of this miracle was in the fourth century and it
continues to happen every year since.
You can read history and stories about the Ceremony of Holy Light and this
annual miracle. There are also pictures, video, and stories from people
who have witnessed this miraculous event.
http://www.holyfire.org/eng/
ALL THE WORLD'S MAPS
Need a map for a trip? Need a map of a country for your vacation? This is
the place to get your maps. How does it work? Choose a map from the drop
down box and then click the Launch Map button and ta-da you have a
directory of sites to choose your map from.
Better yet you can even get maps of specific cities within that country.
There are tons of maps on this site, and it's very well organized. Go grab
yourself a map and enjoy.
http://www.embassyworld.com/maps/maps.html
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CCCC Page 6 November 2003
REVIEW: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ALBUM 1.0
by Charles Barney
If you take pictures regularly with a digital camera or perhaps have
scanned a number of family photos into your computer, you probably have
found that as the more your collection grows, the harder it is to keep
track of all those images. Personally, I have a few thousand digital images
archived on CDs and on my hard drive. Even with descriptively named folders
and dutifully labeled disks, it has become much more of a chore to view my
collection and locate specific files than I had ever bargained for.
To our aid comes Photoshop Album from the graphics pros at Adobe! Album is
an easy to learn and use program that provides a multitude of tools which
enable the user to acquire, organize, find, edit, use in creative projects,
and share their pictures with others. Due to space limitations here, I will
only attempt to tell you about some of the more useful features.
Getting your pictures into Album is a snap. Just direct the program to
search disks, folders or your entire hard drive and it builds a catalog of
your pictures, displaying them in easily viewed panels of thumbnails called
the Photo Well. A feature that really impressed me was when I inserted a
reader containing the compact flash card from my digital camera into the
computer's USB port, the program automatically started, showed my pictures
on-screen and asked what I'd like to do with them. I selected to transfer
them from the media card to the computer's hard drive and place them in a
newly created folder named after the current date. I used this feature
several times recently while on vacation, taking along my camera and
laptop.
Organization is probably Album's strongest point. Pictures can be sorted by
date, import batch, source location, and color similarity. The unique
Timeline strip above the Photo Well displays bars indicating relative
numbers of images according to year and month. By dragging a pointer along
the Timeline, the images corresponding to the selected periods are
displayed in the Photo Well. Alternately, the Calendar View offers a more
intuitive way to search by date.
Further organization is achieved by the use of Tags, which are descriptive
bits of information that you attach to your files. Album provides the basic
categories of Tags named People, Places, Events, Other, and Favorites. You
can create unlimited sub-categories within the basic ones. Tags are placed
by dragging and dropping on individual or groups of images. Now you can
search your entire collection for just photos of Aunt Meredith, fishing
trips, grandkids--well, you get the idea.
If you want to burn copies of your picture files to CD-Rs for offline
safekeeping or maybe give to a friend, using the Archive command
accomplishes this handily. After selecting files to archive, Album tells
you how many CDs are needed, prompts you for a descriptive name and pops
open the drive for you to insert a disk. I tried this with several pictures
that were stored on my hard drive and the whole process actually took less
time than my regular CD burner software.
Although never intended as a replacement for its big-brother Photoshop,
some common quick edits can be handled by the Fix Photo feature. Editing
tools include rotating, cropping, red eye removal, brightness and contrast,
lighting and color saturation; all with before and after views of the
photo. Alternately, you can send a picture to another editor of your
choosing.
Printing is perhaps the ultimate destination for most digital photos and
Album handles this task with aplomb. Working along with your printer's
software, Album offers a number of layouts based on the images you select
to print: Individual Prints with as many different ones that will fit on
the page, Picture Package with multiple sizes of the same photo on a page,
and Contact Sheet that prints pages of thumbnails which can include
captions and file names.
Of course you will want to e-mail your best photos to friends and family!
Album allows you to do just that directly from within the program. To avoid
the perils of e-mailing full-sized files from your multi-megapixel camera,
Album has a really nice feature to adjust the file size with presets for
pixel dimensions and quality. Your friends with dialup Internet connections
will love you for it. Set up your recipient list in the Contact Book and
Album invokes your default e-mail program when you get ready to send the
pictures as attachments.
If you're willing to spend a little time and effort up front, Adobe's
Photoshop Album goes a long way toward taming your wild jungle of digital
images, along with allowing you to do some really useful and fun things
with your pictures. After all, isn't that what it's supposed to be all
about?
Note: At the time of this writing, Adobe was just releasing version 2.0 of
the program, which promises many new enhancements and a few bug fixes.
Photoshop Album 2.0, Adobe Systems Inc., $49.99 suggested retail price.
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CCCC Page 7 November 2003
REVIEW: PARTITION MAGIC 8.0
By Ray Isenson
Most new computers, as delivered, have a single partition on the primary
hard drive. For the convenience (and cost savings) of those assembling the
computer, every bit of software on the computer is lumped together into
this single partition like a tossed salad! From your point of view, as the
user, this is terrible. You have minimum management control of the drive,
the backing up files and generated data is almost hopelessly complicated
and adding a second operating system for trial or system upgrading is
extraordinarily difficult. File searches are made unnecessarily time
consuming. All of these nuisances and more can be reduced through recourse
to simple drive management. For years, PowerQuest Corporation's "Partition
Magic" (PM) has been the queen of hard drive management programs.
The beauty of PM, to the novice or experienced computer user, always has
resided in its ease of use. The program starts with a bar graph type
presentation of the hard drive, showing used and unused portions and other
information. A list of possible operations is displayed, from which the
user chooses what is desired. The presentation then changes to show what
the drive will look like, posts the selected operations, and offers a
listing of operations pending. Only then, if the user agrees that's what
is wanted and clicks on an "Apply" button, does the program begin to make
the requested changes.
As to the litany of possible changes, additional partitions can be created
or deleted, enlarged or shrunk. A wizard can be engaged to assist in
adding another operating system. Everything in a partition may be copied
to another partition or drive if the target is at least as large as the
source. Beyond that, changes can be made in the nature of the file
allocation tables; i.e., FAT to FAT32 or to and from NTFS and much more.
PM is an incredibly comprehensive tool and should be a must in the utility
library of even a casual computer user. A partition can be split and data
files (not programs) selectively moved to the newly created partition;
facilitating frequent data back up.
The latest version of Partition Magic, PM-8, retains all of the
capabilities and features of its predecessors while adding a few more.
What could be a prize winning addition is a three minute, audio visual
introduction to the information structure on a hard drive and the "tools"
offered by Partition Magic to treat with the structure. The video is
designed for the user to whom these concepts might otherwise be a mystery.
It is accessed through the "Help" button on the menu bar and is available
when ever the main screen is open. Previous versions came with a printed
text of over 140 pages. This has been replaced by a much smaller printed
manual. But extensive on line textual material to aid in program use, if
needed, has been added.
In order to cope with latest generation of super sized hard drives; PM-8
can handle partitions of up to 160 Mbytes, twice the limitation of its
immediate predecessor. As well as working with the normal internal drives,
with some limitations it can treat with external drives attached to the
computer through USB2 or "Firewire" connections. It isn't intended for use
with removable media devices such as ZIP drives or CD ROMS.
Included in the PM-8 package are two associated programs, "Boot Magic 8"
and "Data Keeper 5.0". The former is used for multiboot computers, to
allow the user to select among the installed operating systems; e.g.,
Windows ME or Windows XP at instant of booting up the computer. The latter
serves to give the user automated backup of saved data files to a second
location as they are being saved. The backups can be recalled as folders
or original files. Detailed descriptions of the instructions are contained
within the program's help files. Each of these associated programs must be
installed separately although they are delivered on the same installation
CD.
Installing the programs couldn't be made easier. When the "desktop" is
showing on the computer monitor, placing the CD into the player quickly
results in a display that presents options for installing one or another of
the programs or offering access to an information text. From here until,
for example the approximately 46 MByte PM8 is installed, the user merely
selects from among different options; such as "typical or custom"
installation. For each choice a selection is suggested. Normally that
suggestion should be accepted.
During installation of PM-8 and BM-8 the user is advised to create
emergency boot disks. These disks are useful, not only for emergencies,
but also for routine computer maintenance; once the user is familiar with
the respective programs. Three floppies are required. Merely following
simple instructions as displayed on the monitor will result in their
creation.
As a special offer to members of recognized computer user groups, members
may purchase the PartitionMagic 8.0 package at a special price of $39 (plus
S&H) by ordering from the secure web site at [www.ugr.com/order]. You must
indicate your user group's name (Central Coast Computer Club) and the
special price code of UGEVAL1003 with your order.
PartitionMagic v8
PowerQuest Corp.
P.O Box 1911
Orem,UT 84059-1911
Sales (800) 379-2566, SRP $70.00. (see special UG price above).
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