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PREVIOUS MEETINGS OF INTEREST

Monday, July 3, 2006
By Ray Scott  

Dick Haack, one of the newer members recently purchased DAK Preamp and program to record his cassette tapes to a cd. This months meeting was a presentation on how to connect the preamp to a cassette and phonograph player and the computer. With a few simple settings you can put analog signals (tape or vinyl music) into the computer as digital signals. Dick then did a real time demo with a scratched vinyl record that had pops and static. First he used the preamp to add a digital file to the computer and then he used the program to remove the static. The recording is now clean and and ready to be put onto a cd. Dick's goal is to preserve his collection of cassette tapes. If you would like more information come to our meetings.
         Then we had a general discussion regarding Microsoft Word and Excel program document formatting.
         We all had a laugh as Larry showed some posters on the screen in which he had inserted Duane's face. Being the good sport that he is Duane laughed the loudest.
         There is always something to learn at our meetings. For over a year now I have wanted a calendar program that would open on start-up and sit on my desktop ready for use at an instants notice. Dick has one on his computer and this gave me the incentive to search the Internet for one. I found quite a few. Most of them are commercial programs but some are free. I now have two freebies and one inexpensive ($20.00) program that I am reviewing. More on these later.
         I tend to add and delete programs from my computer and this seems to have caused some real problems with shutdowns. I would get a ton of error messages saying that programs had not closed and asking if I wanted to close them. I suspected that the problem was with the registry. This is a database for your computer that tells it how it should act. But the registry is not a part of the operating system to be fooled with by just anybody. Unless you are very careful you can cause some serious problems. I am reviewing Registry Mechanic, a program to clean the registry and make it more efficient. It seems to be helping but is not perfect. But then what is.
         For the comfort of the summertime movie fans the B-Bug meeting room is now air conditioned. This will especially make the Wednesday afternoon matinee more comfortable.
         The next B-Bug meeting is Monday, August 7^th. Ed Zipp will be back sharing his knowledge of MS Excel. He gave a very good presentation on digital cameras the last time he was at the club. If you would like to learn more about NS Excel mark your calendar for this date.  

Tropics residents are invited to attend our meetings on the first Monday of every month at 6:30 to 8:30. The first half hour is for general discussion and assembly, the regular meeting is7:00 to 8:00 and the last half hour is continued discussion for those that want to stay.

Monday, Aug. 7, 2006

                        Ed Zipp was back to share his knowledge of Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program. His topics included how to change the color of cells and fonts as attention grabbers, adding formulas to cells and then putting borders around the cells. Ed also showed how Excel can intelligently make data entry easier. For example, if you enter the month of January in one cell and the month of February directly below it and then highlight those entries and cells below Excel can automatically enter the rest of the months of the year. This will also work with numbers. Data can be entered in rows or columns in this way. Ed demonstrated the ease with which Excel can make graphs and the variety of graph styles available.
                        Lance uses Excel to find numbers in a game that he plays. Caroline and Fred use it at work. I use it to find the total time of music selections to be recorded to a cd from LP's and tapes. The possibilities are unlimited. The easiest way to start is to open a template and modify it to your needs. Excel has a few templates but you can find many more by clicking on File/New then on Microsoft's URL for Excel templates. Ed will try to answer any questions you have if you e-mail him at: zipp_me@yahoo.com.
                        We had very good attendance at our meeting. I was surprised by how many of us use Excel.
                        This month I will report on a calendar program named Alarm Me that only puts an icon on your desktop. To access its features just double click the icon and a box pops up with a list of eight utilities that you can use. Three of these are; Schedule Shutdown, Timer and Settings. Their names are self explanatory and may not be used often. The rest I believe will be used more often. These are; 1: New Alarm for scheduling important dates and meetings, 2: Add Birthday for those important dates, 3: View/Edit  to edit all items, 4: Address Book and 5: Diary. This is a handy program. Several times while at my computer I needed to get a phone number, street address or e-mail address. All I had to do was open the program, click the utility I wanted and I had access to the information I needed. This program doesn't add a calendar to your desk top but it is very useful and doesn't take up much space. You can download Alarm Me free by going to: www.qytec.com.
                        To raise funds the computer club has some inexpensive 15” to 19” monitors for sale. These monitors have been donated by various people and organizations and are in good working order. If you are interested please contact one of us below.
 

Monday, Sept. 11, 2006
By Ray Scott

There was no prepared agenda for tonight’s meeting so we had a question and answer period and then a general discussion. Topics were e-mail programs, Internet Explorer 7 (beta), the difference between standby and hibernation and Open Office suite of programs. Also discussed was the possibility of getting DSL internet at the B-Hive.
    This month’s calendar is named KABE CALENDAR. Kabe Calendar adds a nice three-month calendar (last, current and next) to a small area of your desktop. The current date is highlighted by a rectangle. Schedules and repeating events may be set up and highlighted with circles, X’s and triangles. The user can use one of the shapes and one of four colors to indicate different types of events. The user can color the date number without a shape around it.
    This program was probably developed in Japan, as some of the terminology for setting event schedules is not intuitive. I think the user would quickly get used to it though.
    You can’t beat the price, free. If you want to try it go to:

http://homepage3.nifty.com/KENCH/ . Be sure to type the URL exactly as shown.

Monday, Oct. 2, 2006
By Ray Scott

This months meeting was shorter than most but covered a lot of ground. Larry started out with a computer game called A Second Grade Computer Test. There were six frogs and seven lily pads. The empty pad was in the center with three brown frogs on one side and three green frogs on the other side. The idea was to move all the frogs to the opposite side. Thos game was designed to prove that I am not very good at games. Alma finally accomplished the great feat on her second try.
    After that Larry had several topics to discuss. The first was XP Tricks: Changing the mouse pointer icon, changing the look of the desktop using XP or classic views and using a desktop keyboard in case you have problems with your keyboard.
    Second, desktop: Changing mouse clicks from double to single clicks, changing the file view in folders, using web graphics as backgrounds and getting files to open quicker.
    Third, installation problems: How to repair installations that have gone bad.
    The remainder of the meeting was used up with a question and answer period.
    The last calendar I will report on is the one I like the best. It is not free as the other two were but it costs only $20.00. You can try the full-featured demo for a month or more.
    This calendar looks good sitting on your desktop. There is an appointment list at the top right and a task list at the bottom right. The main calendar is large and easy to read. You can have only the current showing or combinations of previous/next and current. Setting up recurring events is very easy as is the tasks list. In addition to recurring events you may make notes, alarms, contacts and add a photo to your contacts. There are too many features to make a complete list in this article. I am happy that I spent the money.
    The name of the calendar is Active Desktop Calendar. You can get it at: www.xemico.com/adc/. 

Monday, Nov. 6, 2006
By Ray Scott

            We had a very good turnout to witness our first night on the Internet. I want to thank all those people that helped set up the antennas and make the connection. If I tried to name them all I know that I would leave someone out but you know whom you are.
            Joe was making the final connection as the meeting began. He had to add more memory to the old computer that we use and download and install some programs before we were up and running. For our first venture on the Internet Joe took us to Google Maps. He showed how the wireless connection was made from Duane’s house to the B-Hive Computer Clubroom. Then we looked at other possible straight line connections Joe then gave a short explanation of how the Internet works.
            Joe then gave a demonstration of how to see that favorite TV show, that you missed, by downloading past programs.
            Decembers meeting will be on the 4^th. The topics covered will be:

             Sharing tips and tricks (we encourage all members to share their knowledge.) We will also have a discussion for planning the future direction and meeting agenda of the B-Bug Computer Club. Now that we are on the Internet it will much easier to help those with difficult questions or problems by looking up solutions from the experts.

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