NOTES: COFFEE & CHAT

Tuesday 13th July 1999

The meeting was chaired by Ted.  It started at 10.05 am and was
attended by more than 35 people

Item 1
Thanks were given to Wolf. The budget is healthy.  It was generally
agreed the whiteboard was a great success and that it was hung in the
best position.

John had found an interesting web site
Http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/    which has an extra terrestrial
programme set up by the University of California, Berkeley. As there
is no computer large enough to analyse the data as to the presence any
transmissions  from  space, the idea is for volunteers to use their
spare computer time to monitor this information. This programme is
running on private funds. At present approximately 800,000 volunteers
are involved, so far they have given six and half million  work units
between them, which is 25,590 years of CPU time! 
Australia is number 7 on the world list with 16,000 volunteers.

The volunteer's computers only operate when the screen saver is on. A
side note is of interest. People are asked not to tell the press if
they receive any response from out of space but to report back to
University of California. While running the program shows an
interesting 3D graph of the processing. Unusual signals show up as a
peak larger than the rest.

John received an advertisement for a CD priced at $29.00 which
contained 5,000 books including The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The
King James Version of the Bible, etc. incidentally, a DVD could hold
100,000 complete books.

Item 2.

John also mentioned that there was a Commonwealth War Graves site (ex
U.K.) jointly funded by members of the Commonwealth is available. 
This gives details of burial sites for W.W.1 and W.W.2 together with a
Commemorative Page. John showed an example of information that could
be obtained.

Item 3

Members were advised that Microsoft Encarta 99 is available at $49.99
with a total refund available by mail while stocks of appropriately
marked cartons are available. Bar code and copy of receipt have to
posted in and a refund will be sent out after 6 weeks.

Ken mentioned that this scheme is also available for purchasers of
World Book and he has already received his refund.

At this point, 10.30 am Gordon arrived and was greeted with a hearty
cheer from the meeting.

Item 4.	PAGE 2
Ted gave details of the web site w.w.w.google.com. This is a search
engine which he used to get a map of Central Park in New York City.
The first web site advised that a map could be obtained by going in
person to the New York City Council at a cost of US$4. Further sites
came up with the NY Central park 'entertainment in the park section'
which gave a free map. He copied the map from the screen and obtained
a printed copy. He searched again and came up with a web site called
 www.terraserver.microsoft.com   which has free images from the
Sputnik satellite and the US geological survey departments satellite.
Ted obtained a satellite map of Central Park and zoomed up to a
flagpole shown on the map. The flagpole near the Metropolitan  museum
could be seen with a concrete base. The resolution was better than 3
metres for the separation of objects. The images are used to create
maps. 

Chess advised the meeting that if you have the Microsoft encyclopedia
cdrom called Encarta you can access the web Terraserver site, through
this programme. Another good search engine was www.profusion.com which
can do 8 searches at once. Mike and Chess discussed other web
sites.The web site www.mapquest.com is good, especially for anybody
planning trips and needing maps. Also if looking for maps of the USA
use the "Ask Jeeves" search engine. Also another search 
engine Altavista can be used to find just images.  Chess suggested
searching  Altavista with say  "images":new york city   to find any
available picture of New York City. John mentioned www.ask.com as a
good search engine

Item 5

Bob discussed restoration of old photographs and brought in two
examples from the Lake Cargellico area. 
The first example, was taken from a cracked and water stained
original. Bob took about 8 hours to restore this 10" x 8" print,
scanned at 200 DPI, in the final size of image to be printed. He used
Adobe Photoshop to remove the crack and the water stain. 
The result was a perfect picture showing a historic wool shed and
outside was a 12 bullock team and wagon loaded with 500 bales of wool.
The second photograph of an old homestead was taken from a better
print than the first example. After an hour's restoration work, Bob
produced another perfect photograph.

Item 6
John reported that he cannot regularly keep the icons on his computer
small. He has unselected large Icons without success. Chess said
overriding can be achieved, and that the instructions would be in the
manual. John suggested that he "Change the Desktop Appearance" with
Control panel, Display, Effect and unselect Large icons (Windows 98). 

Item 7

Alan, called for Committee Member nominations for the PCUG.  Forms are
available in the July Edition of Sixteen Bits magazine, page 24.
Alan also thanked Daryl for sending him a new diagnostic programme
called 'Dr. Hardware' which can be used on Windows 95 and 98 this is a
German shareware programme, priced at US$28 see the web site
www.drhardware.de

A copy of a book called "Internet Explorer" with the compliments of
Microsoft has been received by Chess and can be made available to
members. Recommended retail price for this book is about $ 100.

Item 8

Wolf asked how he could save Adobe PDF Files. It was suggested by
Chess to use Windows Folders, hold down the shift key and press save.
Also Word 2000 has on the menu "Save as PDF" file.

Item 9

Chess said he has bought a Sound Blaster 'Live Value' sound board at
$129.00 (with software on 2 CD's at $29). He said the music comes
alive, the sound is great from the four speakers. In fact his house
was jumping. He has written an article for Sixteen Bits with all
relevant details, which will be published at a future date.

Item 10

Peter has problems reading a Claris Works Email attachment. A
discussion ensued and one solution suggested by Chess was to try
Quickview to read it and ask the sender to use text.

Item 11

Mike said he received an advertisement for a free video designed to
introduce seniors to the Internet, this is a US programme, web site
www.microsoft.convseniors  John said he has bought the programme and
it is being sent to him, he will use it to teach senior students at
the Library.

Mike also has helped edit and index a 350 page book The Social &
Cultural History of Medicine in N.S.W. He use microsoft word but
photographs were diifficult to place in the text. Indexing was not
easy because of different but similar words were separately indexed.
The book is now available  as a PDF file on Mike's home page.

Item 12

Ken discussed using the program Adobe PageMaker  for desktop
publishing and an interesting exchange of information on the subject
followed. Quark was suggested as a good desktop publishing program.

Item 12

Gordon says he has got Tony's machine working, removed the floppy
drive and tested it on his machine, but now he cannot get power back
on his own machine which. Unfortunately, it had the minutes of an
important meeting.

Gordon also advised us he now represented Quality Office Equipment, of
10 Collie Street, Fyshwick, tel: 6280 4940 and photocopiers of quality
were available prices from $1,000 to $54,000,

Gordon also wished to remind the members that the first meeting of the
Internet SIG is on Tuesday 27th July 1999 from 7pm to 9 pm at the PCUG
Centre,

Item 13

Rod had problems with IE5 and Outlook. John said Outlook is more for
business use and Outlook Express is better for home use. Chess said
Outlook is unstable and can cause loss of addreses.

Item 14.

John has 2 copies of IE5, asked if hc can copy these over the top of
IE4 and it was agreed this could be done. Chess told the meeting the
Windows 98 Second Edition contains 1E5 and this can be obtained from
Microsoft on tel: 13 1284 cost $13.95

It was generally agreed that when buying a new computer it was
important to obtain all manuals, CD-ROMs of Software and a copy of the
Operating System from the dealer at time of purchase. Otherwise it
will be difficult to fix it in the future. Another point raised was
that it was essential to have the dealer 
run your machine while you watch, before taking delivery.

Item 15

Anne said she was advised to have her PC upgraded in 1997 because it
was noisy, however the noise is now worse. John suggested using the
vacuum cleaner on the fan to suck dust away. Gordon built a machine
and took the fan off the chip and the noise stopped. Many members said
that they had experienced noisy machines.

Item 16

David warned members to make sure their receipts had the name and
address of the dealer when buying at the markets. Jim had a problem
when buying at the market with a dealer not willing to give his name
and address so he went to another dealer who was happy to give a
stamped receipt. 

The meeting closed at approximately 12 noon.
MJ

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