Seniors meet on Friday at Sydney PC User Group

Seniors - Friday Group

Friday Seniors SIG Report June 2009

Good Morning Folks,

Our numbers were down a little last Friday... mind you it was a very cold day and also a few of our group were doing R & R in various places, even Vietnam!

Housekeeping... I mentioned during the meeting that I will be away for the July Friday SIG... Allan Matthews has offered to lead it with the help of many of you who I know will contribute with content, won't you? I will, or should, be back for the August SIG on Friday 14th. Summarising: the next Friday Seniors SIG is Friday 10 July 2009 at 10:00am with Allan, followed by the Comms SIG with Terry & Bob at 1:00pm. The next Tuesday Seniors SIG with Graham Grant is tomorrow Tuesday 16 June 2009 followed by Terry's Genealogy at 1: pm. See you there.

Membership Drive... Again, we will have a stall at the Computer Fair at the University of NSW Roundhouse from 10:00am - 3:00pm on Sunday 28 June. John Lucke will be there at about 0900 setting up the stall. Come along and give him a hand! Also have a look at all that is offering by the other stall holders.

Q & A Lots of questions/problems on Friday, which is good; some were provided answers and others are still pending!

"In Thunderbird email client, it was noticed that the profile backup files had been altered to .zip files which had not occurred before during two years of use." We went through all the 'usual' possibilities with nothing definite until the following site was perused as a result of a Google search: http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/support.php It 'sort of' indicates these files may be compressed during the backup operation.

"Computer freezing frequently" We gave David lots of possibilities and this site covers them well: http://www.admin-ezine.com/computer_freeze.htm

"The 'Start' button is obscured by any active window." This problem can be due to quite a few things and we discussed these at length; the following websites are helpful: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300913 http://www.eng21.com/img/pop/popup.html

"Mydoom virus keeps returning to my system no matter what I do to eliminate it." This site offers a free removal tool: Mydoom removal tool

We talked about StarBurn and I quote from their website: "StarBurn is a powerful tool for CD/DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD grabbing, burning and mastering." It supports Various CD/DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Burners:

- Create Data Backups
- Keep Original Discs Scratch Free
- Create Custom Compressed Audio Compilations
- Create Custom DVD-Videos
- It is easy to use and has a free version which is available from: StarBurn One strange aspect of it is it will not progress to the burning stage on my Asus laptop! It works fine on my desktop! Anyway have a look at it.

I mentioned that I read an article in the 'Money' supplement of the Herald relating to 'locking-in' capital losses in share transactions. This is fully explained on the site: http://www.delisted.com.au/default.aspx Interesting stuff.

'Bing'... This is the new search engine from Microsoft which is now available in beta. Have you had a look at Bing? Colin Bolton gave us a good run-through 'Bing' on its own and then used the following site for a comparison between Bing and Google : http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/
Both Colin and I think Bing is much more specific with it's answers and they are up at the top. At this stage I will stick with the old Google but will definitely give Bing a 'fling' now and again. I wonder if in the future we will use Bing as a verb? "I Binged so and so today"!! Thanks Colin.

Microsoft OneNote... for some years this program has been very popular particularly among sales & marketing people etc. It is an idea processor, a notebook, and an information organizer. It helps you:

- Make sure you don't lose important information
- Organize scraps of information
- Gather and refer back to notes from lectures
- Collect research from the Web or other sources and annotate it
- Keep track of what you need to do next and not miss anything

I used to use a DOS note-taking program called 'Tornado' which became 'Info Select' in Windows 3.1. See this site for it's history: http://www.miclog.com/company/about.htm

For OneNote's history see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote I 'demoed' the program mainly through videos which can be viewed here: onenote video and this is a pretty comprehensive tutorial on it: http://media.cla.auburn.edu/english/cs/OneNoteBasics.pdf During my little play with 'OneNote' I came across the term: 'XPS Files'. I did not know what they are, but I found out from here: http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/xps

There was lots more and you guarantee to get all of it if you attend... be there; bring a friend!

Stop Press: On Saturday at our Committee Meeting we approved the purchase of a new computer with everything including 'Fries'!! Also a portable projector screen. Once we have the specifications sorted out it will happen.

Cheers,

Bill Parry

Hello and Welcome

Editing content with CushyCMS is very easy. It is rather like composing an email in "Rich Text" mode where you can add text, lists, links and images without any knowledge of HTML coding. You can also copy large chunks of plain text like this - "Hello World" - and paste it into this dialogue box. It's all too easy! JohnL 23/05/09

Oops. Looks like I somehow deleted all the previous comments. Sorry about that! I had actually been working with a back-up copy on a flashdrive. I had been cleaning up lots of faulty code that gets generated over time so that I can get all my pages to validate to the xhtml standard . Seems I uploaded the wrong file. Such is life.

Sydney Airport

Just to recap, this page was/is being used to trial CushyCMS as a practical method of updating text, links and images to selected pages by certain "Editors". Previously, a number of members had submitted a variety of comments, links and pictures without too much effort so that is a good sign.

Please feel free to try this editor to upload your comments, favourite links and photos along with your initials to let others know about your experiences, good or bad. jl

Bob B - Mon Apr 13

Not to worry, John. Just tried validating this page (in Opera just right-click and select Validate -- very easy really), and got the following as the first of six errors:

Sorry, I accidently deleted the image while updating my "office" files. I'm a slow learner.

((( Normal Picture Transmission has now been restored -- Bob )))

You probably had an active link on the logobox, but then deleted part of it...

Thanks for that Bob.
I missed that one as it was in the php inserts folder - now fixed. One problem when validating the live web pages is that the hosting server attaches a stat file outside the html page files, always giving two errors. You can see the stat file by viewing the page source. This does not happen when validating from my page files.

By the way, when testing again, I found the Programming page could not validate because of "ascii" errors. After a lot of trial & error I discovered it was the following code causing the problem. Once removed is was OK. As far as I can see, the code was redundant.

Cheers, jl

Hi Bob,

You were too quick for me. I have just validated all nine SIG pages plus the HOME and MAIN meeting pages using the validator included in HTML-Kit. I have also been using Opera to check "style outlines" which is excellent. Thanks for the Opera validator tip which I wasn't aware of.

This time I checked for "Editors" comments before uploading and over-writing what was already there. I hope I'm learning.

Guess whose grand-daughter has the latest tricky iPhone? jl

Bob B - Wed Apr 15

The **[a name="somewhere"][/a] is usually the target of a local jump -- [a href="#somewhere"]Go To Somewhere[/a] from somewhere else. It might be needed.

Maybe they just need the other half of the link be present, to be happy. However, it caused me a good search as the "Can't Validate" message gives no clue to what the problem is. Another good learning exercise!

Very strange that your Host Site puts stuff (especially [script] and [noscript]) outside of your [body] and [html] tags. That certainly doesn't help the Validator.

I notice that in the Seniors Tuesday page you have the [ul] unordered list inside the [p] paragraph. No, no, no. End the [/p] paragraph just above it, then start a new [p] paragraph afterwards. That will help the Validator. Anything to keep the Validator happy !

Thanks again Bob. I had done this on other pages but missed that one. I'm surprised it got past the validator.

** Pretend the square brackets, above, are angle brackets.

Looks interesting ... and fairly easy to use. In about one month, cell phone nirvana will be upon us with the arrival of the Palm Pre, next-gen iPhone, and possibly the BlackBerry Storm. I just pasted some text from an email. Thats useful. WW

Bob B - Sun May 24

Just trying some text in other fonts:

Helvetica - Bold, Italic. Helvetica looks good at this size. Italic "a" a different "a"...

Arial - Bold, Italic. Not too bad either.

Verdana - Bold, Italic. Slightly larger and quite readable -- Italics also readable.

Sans-serif - Bold, Italic. Quite readable if a little compressed.

Trebuchet - Bold, Italic. Also quite readable.

All with subtle differences, with Verdana probably the best (in my opinion).

Bob B - Sat Jun 27

Try a search on this site (http://sydneycomputerclub.net84.net)

Note: The content above here is editable using CushyCMS only.

Friday Seniors SIG Report May 2009

Good Morning Folks,

We had about twenty members at our SIG on Friday and once again we discussed lots of interesting "stuff"...particularly during our Q & A!!

Housekeeping... The next Friday Seniors SIG is Friday 12 June 2009 at 10:00am followed by the Comms SIG with Terry & Bob at 1:00pm. The next Tuesday Seniors SIG with Graham is Tuesday 19 May 2009 followed by Terry's Genealogy at 1: pm. The next Digital Photography SIG is Friday 22 May at 10:00 with Peter Collard...yes he's back!

I will be away for a month from 20 June and I would like to get a volunteer to do the Friday SIG on 10 July...just drop me an email and let me know. We need a facilitator and a few people showing us something...spread the load.

Membership Drive....Where we are? ....Again we had a stall (free of charge) at the Computer Fair at the UNSW Roundhouse on Sunday 10 May. I was there with Elaine Rush and Roger Foulds and we had quite a few enquiries which we now have on our Newsletter list. However the general attendance at the fair was down because: a) it was Mother's Day; and b) the weather wasn't too good! We can have a free stall at the next fair on 28 June if we wish and all three of us thought it would be worthwhile doing.

Q & A.... We only had (I think) three questions (or was it only time for three questions!) but they led into so many "peripheral" issues (as can happen)!!

Malcolm Robertson raised the question of what can be done to protect private files on the HDD's of our computers when we have to leave them with computer "techies" to have work done? I am reluctant to leave my computer at the "shop", however the occasion could easily arise when I might have to. Like Malcolm I am concerned about personal information such as bank account details etc.

We discussed encryption and password protection possibilities and there are quite a few programs which will do this, some of which are free or have a trial period. I Googled "password protect files + folders" and got many results one of which I am going to test: "WinencryptLite" available from: winencrypt. Both MS Word and Ms Excel have provision for password protection of files....have a look at this website for "how to do it" in Office 97 to 2003: word-excel-protect and the same provision is available in Office 2007: Click the Microsoft Office Button (top left corner), point to Prepare, and then click Encrypt Document. It is so easy, but try it on a test document first!!

This question raised issues of how safe is internet banking and how safe is information in emails? We had lots of discussion on these two aspects of security. I use the internet banking facility and I accept my bank's double security offer of an independent password forwarded by SMS to my mobile phone for all transactions involving anything other than transfers within my accounts. I understand most of the banks do this. I am comfortable with this.

My understanding of email security is that there is none!! One should not include in emails personal information such as bank account details etc. There are stacks of websites that deal with email security and the two below (they are cousins!!) are quite comprehensive in most things to do with email including security. Have a look at them...keep scrolling to get to the security aspects in the first one. I have left the web addresses below "au natural" so you can see what you are getting.

If anyone knows more about this please either let me know so I can forward it on to our members, or show us at a SIG or even at our main meeting. This is serious stuff!

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware...I demonstrated this anti-malware program which was recommended in "Windows Secrets" newsletter of 16 April 2009 with these comments from an anonymous Microsoft employee:

"I work for Microsoft technical support, and 90% of the calls are due to spyware infections, so we ask customers to download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. They have a totally free version. It's the one we use for clients. It's so effective, I feel confident the PC you're using to read this has infections. Are you surprised? Even if it's just minor adware, it's an infection still.

"If it weren't for Malwarebytes.org, I'd be spending more time per call and asking customers to reload Windows more often, because finding one infection could take forever. The application is painless to install, isn't too bulky, and requires no reboot after install. The application is a winner all around. "The Internet is full of scams. It's shocking to see it day in and day out."

The free version of Anti-Malware works fine. If you want all the bells and whistles it will cost you U.S. $24.95. Download it from this website: http://www.malwarebytes.org/index.php ...and click on the "Download free trial version" button.

USB Connections.... I had occasion a few weeks ago to check out this very popular connection and recently I had few enquiries on it so I dug up some of my "research".

The USB 1.0 specification was introduced in 1994 12Mbps. (USB 1.1)
The USB 2.0 specification was released in April 2000 480 Mbps
The USB 3.0 specification was released in November, 2008 4800 Mbps !!

Maximum useful distance USB 1.1 maximum cable length is 3 metres (9.8 ft) USB 2.0 maximum cable length is 5 metres (16 ft). Maximum hubs connected in series is 5. Maximum devices connected in total is 127. USB 3.0 will be available late 2009 and will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0. The following websites give some interesting and comprehensive information on all three "flavours":

Internet Explorer 8 ....at the April main meeting Jeff Alexander from Microsoft mentioned IE8 in passing, so I installed it the next day. It is very fast and has many new features which this site will show better than I can explain. Unlike many of you I was happy with IE7, and I can say I am very happy with IE8. I gave a brief demo of it at the SIG, but have a more leisurely look here: IE 8 Tour

That's about it folks; see you at Graham's seniors SIG on Tuesday, followed by Terry's genealogy, and don't forget Peter's digital photography on Friday.

Cheers,

Bill Parry