A change in month bought a change in the weather, it was
sure nice to see a nice day for a change. There were 15 of us
this morning and again, it turned out to be an interesting
meeting.

        Emil Joseph has advertised his SIG on the internet and
advised the first meeting would be held this Thursday night 6 Aug
at the PCUG Centre at 7.30 pm to discuss matters of mutual
interest. Emil also advised that he has now got a large
file(2.8)mb called Wordchat. Probably bit like IRC, except you
are required to take on the character of an animal, say a cat or
fish, a platypus or llama, and enter the "cyberspace" as such.
        He will advise progress on this program. Another program
recommended was the update of Indexer from the author's home
page, far superior to the original, giving click able home pages.

        Geoff Mierish gave a talk on Text Assist. This program he
found on a CD Rom that was bundled with his computer, was a
Creative Labs production, and was totally ignored until a fit of
boredom lead him to play with it.
        It was a fantastic program that fairly cleverly read text
files and converted them to voice, and a number of voices were
available, further more, the pitch and speed of the voice could
be varied. It was ideal for checking out speeches, both in timing
and content. Highly recommended.

        Ken Meadows gave a talk on PC Plus, a magazine he found
in 1989 while in the UK. Although he now has given away his
subscription to the mag, he buys them from time to time for the
CD Roms that come with it. He produced a great collection of CD
Roms and gave samples of the rather high quality shareware and
freeware that comes with the CD. He recommended browsing at the
local news agent to read the back cover to see what was
offering,and often some gems of programs were available for the
price of the magazine.

        Don Nicol presented his thoughts on Life, the Universe
and Everything. His main concern was that there is a lot of hype
on the good of computers, but very little on the bad of
computers. This produced a lively discussion on technology, loss
of jobs, Luddites and even this gem that back in the 16th
century, a clergyman had invented a better way of making
stockings, but was berated by QE1 for threatening to put so many
stocking makers out of work!
        Don was exhorted to place his thesis on the BBS, or even
send it to SixteenBits for a wider discussion.

        Some one had a problem with SHARE.EXE and the number of
hooks. To get a program to work the number hooks was set at a
100, where the default was 20. Does leaving the number of hooks
at 100 affect any other programs. A bit of a mystery.

        Gloria mentioned that the luncheon was a success, and
thought another social function along the same lines could be
held in six or so weeks time.

        The meeting finished at 11.30 for individual coffee and
chatting.



 Cheers         Owen

 Fidonet        3:620/243
 e-mail         rcook@pcug.org.au

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