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2003 Meeting Schedule
2002 Monthly Meeting Notes are here
Meeting Minutes and NotesDecember 2003 Meeting: Christmas Party{Since, the Secretary was unable to attend the festivities, other people’s notes were combined to form the meeting minutes for the EPICUG Christmas Party. Many thanks to Mike Molloy, Dorothy Gibbs, and Dick Webb for providing notes for the December minutes.} The annual EPICUG Christmas Party kicked off at 6pm with a fine selection of goodies supplied courtesy of FrontDesk, Inc. As usual, Lee and Sandy Lasson set up a fine spread of food and Sandy even brought home-made peanut brittle and chocolate fudge. Everyone enjoyed the food and socialized until about 7:15. After everyone was sated on the goodies, the club got down to the business of the day. Since the Treasurer was absent, there was no Treasurer’s report. The next report will be given at the January, 2004, meeting. The only business discussed was Owen Kent's computer. Elizabeth gave the group an update on Owen's surgery. He had his spinal fusion surgery on Monday, 12/8. The surgery was shorter than expected and Owen tolerated it well, coming off the ventilator and getting out of ICU sooner than expected. He returned home on Tues, 12/16. His recovery and return to school will take nearly 2 months. It will take a year for the fusion to fully heal. Mike gave an update on Owen's computer. The computer was supplied/built at cost (total of $819) by Warren Waldo of Park PC & Video (many thanks to Warren for his generosity in this project):
Mike Molloy and Lee Lasson loaded/installed/configured and tested the OS/software/hardware. Mike and Elizabeth delivered and set up the computer for Owen at his home. There will be some follow-on help/support in the next 2 weeks or so (getting stuff off his old computer, etc.) Owen is very interested in producing a video of his Make-A-Wish Foundation trip to Hawaii in October and sharing it first with EPICUG. There will likely be a town-wide benefit/celebration for Owen sometime in late January or early February. Everyone agreed that helping someone who needs it was much more satisfying for EPICUG than buying presents for ourselves. Barb Widrig suggested we raise our dues slightly so we can do even more next year. After the report on Owen’s computer, we started the "Funniest URL" competition. "Burger King song" (Winner) from Dan Fitzpatrick "Santa and the Reindeer song" from
Elizabeth Repola "Prime Number Generator" from Don Widrig "Help Desk" from Frank Palazolo "Eco-Alternative" from Richard Junghans (not present; very sick with pneumonia) "Santa Switch" from Mike Molloy (caution: very large download) "Exploding Whale" by popular request Dan Fitzpatrick won the contest by popular acclaim and was awarded a free membership for EPICUG 2004. After the URL hilarity died down, the white elephant exchange was on! It went very well and some of the presents were even useful! For example, George Gibbs won "the ultimate back-up system" - an electric pencil sharpener with a pencil! There was great laughter over some of the "antiques," and a "calendar maker" software box with the price of $1.88 from CompUSA still on it. There was also a drawing for some door prizes donated by Don Widrig. The winners were:
Actually, Dick and Virginia Webb and Barbara Widrig won the drawings but, since they already had this software, they donated the prizes back for someone else to win. Thanks, Dick, Virginia and Barbara! Click here to view some photos of the party (taken by Susan Ebert). Alas, all fun things come to an end and the party wrapped up and cleaned up at about 8:30. A good time was had by all. Merry Christmas! Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer
November 2003 Meeting: Gadget Fest!President Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:01pm. Mike introduced the EPICUG officers and then went around the room with the usual introductions. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of October 2003 stood at $871.60. There was no interest accrued since our account balance stands at less than $1,000. Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheets. Lee Lasson then spoke briefly about the upcoming EPICUG Christmas party to be held on December 16th. Lee reminded everyone that we will start one hour earlier, at 6:00 pm, so that we can have time to eat and socialize before the partying begins. Once again, all thanks to Lee and Mike’s company, FrontDesk Inc, for offering to supply the food and beverages for the party. Elizabeth Repola then took the floor and outlined the plight of one of the bright young "computer nerds" over at the middle school, Owen Kent. Owen has spinal scoliosis and is slated to go to Children’s Hospital for some remedial surgery to help correct the condition. During the surgery and subsequent (long) recovery period, Elizabeth suggested that Owen could use a computer to work on his video movies that he has been creating. Owen’s current computer is a 3-year old model that doesn’t have the horsepower for the types of projects that Owen would like to work on. After much discussion, the club felt that a better use of our funds would be to help out in situations such as this instead of buying ourselves lots of prizes for the Christmas party. It was also suggested that the Noon Rotary Club might be interested as well in supporting the acquisition of a new computer for Owen. Elizabeth is going to work with her Rotarian husband, Randy, to offer a "challenge" to the Noon Rotary such that both the EPICUG club and the Noon Rotary Club pitch in with a matching funds project to get a new computer for Owen. Dorothy Gibbs moved, and Lee Lasson seconded a motion that EPICUG provide up to $400 in a dollar-for-dollar fund-matching project with the Noon Rotary Club, The motion passed unanimously. Elizabeth and Mike Molloy are to investigate the best machine for Owen’s needs. There is some urgency to this project since Owen’s visit to the hospital is coming up soon. After that discussion, Lee reminded everyone that the Digital Imaging Special Interest Group (DISIG) will be meeting in the Hondius Room this Thursday, 11/20, at 7pm. Among other things, the meeting will examine some of the latest printing technologies. There are some awesome printers out there and it should be interesting. We then moved to the main part of the program, Gadget Fest! Don showed off his watch. It’s not an ordinary watch. It has a USB connector that allows you to connect the 128MB of storage in the watch to your computer. In effect, it’s like the popular key fob memory storage devices. Depending on the memory capacity, this watch sells for between $100 and $150. John Hazlitt showed his talking pedometer. It has all kinds of neat features including a music player that plays tunes in time with your stride. John reports that you can buy these devices for about $15. Mike Molloy showed us his Pocket PC PDA complete with a cellular phone accessory that allows you to access the Internet via the cellular radio. The basic PDA cost about $500 but prices are going down. The cellular plug-in sells for about $250. Mike also showed off a 256MB memory storage device and he reported that he uses it all the time to transport stuff to/from his client’s offices. In a vain attempt to tone down the geeks, Dorothy Gibbs showed off a staple remover that has an ergonomic design and removes staples without tearing the paper. Everyone wanted to know where the battery was! J Lee couldn’t bring himself to part with his actual gadget. Instead, he brought the shipping box for the gadget. It’s a multi-format DVD burner, the Sony model DRX-510UL. It’s an external drive and can be connected to a computer via either a Firewire connection or a USB 2.0 connection. The unit can read/write/rewrite all four of the major DVD standard formats, DVD±R and DVD±RW as well as the CD formats. After checking the on-line stores during Lee’s presentation, it appears that the external drive unit runs about $250 nowadays. Dick Webb showed off an interesting variation on the packaging of a modern PC. In effect, his PC is a high performance and ruggedized PC that is about the same size at two shoeboxes stacked on top of each other. It has an interesting cooling system that uses a liquid Freon piping system to carry away the heat from the CPU. The unit is made by a Taiwanese company and is called the "Shuttle." After quickly glancing around the web (more on this below), it appears that there might be other companies that have entered this marketplace. Dan Fitzpatrick showed off a Cisco ATA181 analog telephone adapter. In effect, this device allows you to connect your ordinary telephone to the Internet and use the Internet to carry your phone calls for free. Dan uses a company called Vonage to handle basic telephony services on the Internet for $24.94 per month. Don didn’t have anything to show but he talked about the "Mickey Pal," a new cloth toy in the shape of Mickey Mouse. The toy stands about 18 inches tall and can tell jokes and interact with the user. Its main claim to fame is that it has a built-in IR unit that can send/receive information whenever the Mickey Pal is in the Disney theme parks. It can tell the guest about upcoming events, waiting time lengths, etc. Don’s brother, Bill, who was attending as a guest, mentioned that the EPICUG meeting happened to fall on the exact 75th anniversary of the introduction of Mickey Mouse. Funny, Mickey doesn’t look that old... Dennis Carr referred to a new product known as the CellSocket. The CellSocket is a base unit that you connect to the existing telephone wires in your house. You can then remove your landline service and plug your cell phone into the Socket. Once set up, your cell phone, in effect, can now operate all of your extension phones in your house exactly as if the landline was connected. One of the big drawbacks that homeowners experience with cell phones is the lack of extensions in their house and the CellSocket resolves that problem. Click here to visit the CellSocket web site. On the subject of telephones, Dan mentioned that most of the large telephone companies now offer a flat rate billing system for long distance calls. If you make more than $25-$30 worth of long distance calls per month, it might be worth your while to call you provider and check into a flat rate billing plan. Vern Cole dazzled us with his new Dell Axim PDA. The basic unit, which cost about $500, was augmented with "pocket" versions of standard Microsoft Office software. Vern demonstrated a short PowerPoint presentation in which he created the presentation on his home PC, converted and downloaded the presentation to the Axim and then plugged the Axim directly into the EPICUG projector. To ice the cake, Vern had a tiny remote control that he used to run the presentation by controlling the Axim. Vern also mentioned that you could buy another accessory to convert the Axim’s output to a standard TV signal and show the presentation on a regular TV. Pretty neat, Vern! Dan then visited the ThinkGeek.com web site. Talk about toys! The site had all manner of fun geek toys. The crowd favorite was a glass ball called the Ambient Orb that is internally illuminated and changes colors on the basis of any number of different signals that it receive from radio waves. For example, it can monitor the Dow Jones Averages and change colors as the averages move up or down. Or, it can monitor weather reports, etc. The user can select form a wide variety of things to monitor with the Orb. Click here to visit the site. Dan finished the meeting with a demonstration of the iTunes program popularized by Apple Computer. This is a very user-friendly program that allows Mac or Windows users to download/play/store and manage tunes. This is part of Apple’s offerings for their on-line music service. You can learn more about iTunes and get a free download by visiting the Apple web site. As the meeting closed, everyone was very excited about the wide range of geek toys that were available. True, you might wonder why someone would spend good money on the Ambient Orb but that’s what makes life interesting! The meeting adjourned at 8:45. Respectfully submitted, Web sites visited or mentioned during the presentation:
October 2003 Meeting: Genealogy and Family HistoryPresident Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 6:58pm. Mike introduced the EPICUG officers and then went around the room with the usual introductions. Because of the topic for the night’s presentation, the room was packed! In effect, we were having a combined meeting of EPICUG and the Estes Park Genealogical Society. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of September 2003 stood at $847.60. Thanks to Ed Hull, president of the WestStar Bank, we are now exempt from the $10 service charge on accounts that are less than $1,000 so we didn’t have that charge on our statement this time. Yea! Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheets. Because there were a LOT of attendees who were unfamiliar with EPICUG, Don conducted a brief walk-through of the EPICUG web site and mentioned that these minutes are posted on the site after every meeting. Just to recap a previous discussion, Dick Junghans has signed up the Special Interest Group (SIG) for the fourth Thursday of every month in 2004 except for the special case of the third Thursday in November 2004. Various meeting times will prevail for the remainder of 2003. They are: September 25, October 23, November 20, and December 18. Then, in 2004, we will revert to a fairly regular schedule. The October SIG meeting is coming up this week and will continue its exploration of digital image processing. At tonight’s EPICUG meeting, Dick Webb brought along an astounding pair of photos that showed what could be done with digital retouching. The "Before" photo showed a picture of his house and had two ugly telephone poles in the picture. After Dick used Photoshop Elements to retouch the photo, the poles were gone! Nice job, Dick. Dan Fitzpatrick announced that the November meeting will be our popular Gadget Fest session. Folks are encouraged to bring their favorite high-tech "gadget" to the meeting and indulge in a bit of "show and tell." In past Gadget Fests, we’ve been treated to some amazing toys and this meeting should be no exception. With the business out of the way, the meeting program commenced at 7:20. The program was Genealogy and Family History. Our guest speaker was Margaret Kamigaki of the Longmont Family History Center and a teacher of Genealogy at Front Range Community Colleges. Margaret started her talk by passing out a variety of materials that were intended as reference and tutorial materials for a genealogist. Margaret introduced the topic with a short slide show that suggested the best way to start your own genealogy research was to build a foundation to work from. She suggested that the easiest way to start a family tree is to collect information on yourself and work out from there. She pointed out that there are two factors that cause many aspiring genealogists to fall by the wayside in the beginning: 1) You’ll invariably run into someone who has traced their family tree back to Adam and Eve and this will discourage you, and, 2) It’s very easy to get distracted with the overwhelming amount of side branches and detours your family tree can take. Her advice: Stay focused and persevere. Click here to review Margaret's presentation. Margaret then discussed several applications that will greatly help you to collect and manage your information. Two free programs are quite powerful and downloadable from the Internet at www.familysearch.org and www.legacyfamilytree.com. Commercial packages are also available such as Family Tree Maker ($29.95). Margaret chose to use Personal Ancestral File for her demonstrations at the meeting. This is a free application available from www.familysearch.org. She fired up the application and showed a variety of nice data collection features. Then, she switched to the report side of the application and demonstrated several impressive types of output reports and charts. A powerful feature of the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) application was the built-in tutorial and help lessons. PAF has a huge collection of easy-to-understand tips and "how to" articles. Many of the tips include a "Show Me" feature that actually runs a small movie that shows you exactly which buttons to click to accomplish a given task. You can switch back and forth between the tutorials and your actual data as the tutorial evolves. Neat! Once we became somewhat conversant with PAF, Margaret then moved to the Internet and began to explore some interesting genealogical web sites. Her first site was at www.familysearch.org. The site does not accept information on living persons, so it is only useful for finding ancestral information. This is a site that contains a staggering amount of information and has a powerful genealogical search engine to help you find stuff on the site. Margaret suggested that you’d be wise to review the Tips section before using the search engine so that you’ll better understand how to efficiently find stuff. She also suggested that you should use the Exact Spelling option sparingly, if at all, when using the search engine. By not using the option, you’re more likely to find what you need even if the names have variations from the "standard" spelling. To demonstrate the power of the search engine, Margaret searched for information on her great grandfather, George Swainston. Sure enough, there he was. In addition to the biographical information on him, the site also displayed some very nice reference data on the people who actually submitted the data. This would allow you to contact the submitters directly if you wanted to discuss matters. Margaret then went to another site, www.rootsweb.com. This is a site that allows free searches of ancestral data but the information may be somewhat limited. For additional fees, you can connect to a related site, www.ancestry.com, and conduct more detailed searches over a much larger information base. Since there are some many genealogists and genealogical applications, the hobby felt the need for interchanging information by using a standard interchange format. Thus was born the GED file format, commonly known as "GEDcom files." Margaret used an export feature to export ancestral data from the web site into a GED file. Then, she showed how easy it was to import the file data into PAF, thus adding to her collection of personal ancestral data at the push of a button. Dan then took a technical detour to show the basic structure of a GEDcom file, which turns out to be a fairly straightforward text file. Dan pointed out that any text editor could be used to edit the interchange file but no one seemed to know why you’d want to do this since it was far easier to edit the data in your genealogy application and re-export the altered data. It’s a geek thing, I guess… Margaret then showed off a powerful feature in PAF that causes all of the data records to be reviewed by PAF and potential errors in the record are pointed out. For example, if a person shows a marriage date that seems outside the normal age range (e.g., marriage at age 3), the record will be flagged for your consideration. Another slick feature in PAF was the ability to select an entry, click on the entry, and go directly to that entry in the www.familysearch.org web site. This is a very fast way to jump from your personal ancestral data to some master source data for purposes of confirmation, etc. One of the potential drawbacks to some of the Internet-based information is that some sites charge a fee for the data. Margaret pointed out that an easy way to sidestep the fee is to simply come to the Family History Center and use the free facilities at the center. The Family History Center is at: Family History Center Another free source of ancestral data is based on an all-volunteer group that supports the www.USGenWeb.com web site. The site has an astonishing compilation of data, arranged by state and county. The data also includes a large collection of images of original source records such as census data, etc. Of course, another popular way to find ancestral data is our old friend Google. Click here to review our previous EPICUG presentation of Google’s many features. Margaret used Google to re-find George Swainston information on many ancestral data sites. Margaret warned that Google invariably brings up a staggering amount of potential web sites and it’s easy to get distracted. She cautioned us to stay on track and not get lost on the Internet. She also pointed out the evanescent nature of the Internet and suggested that, once you find something useful, you should immediately print out the page since it may not be easy to find the page again later. One big problem with all of this ancestral information is how to determine the validity of the information. After all, this is the Internet and it’s easy to collect incorrect information. Margaret suggested that all data needs to be independently confirmed, if possible. Also, the ability to update or correct information is only beginning to evolve at the various web sites. In other words, you’ll have to work at correcting information that you find to be defective. The audience was curious about the matter of finding information that is based on ancestors who lived in foreign countries. This is a common issue since everyone’s ancestors inevitably came from somewhere else. Margaret suggested that you will find all sorts of helpful foreign information (and help with interpreting it) at the Family History Center. In addition, the www.familysearch.org web site has tools that allow you to look for foreign information. We briefly used the site to explore information in Germany and it’s likely that this might be a useful way to look for more information. Google may also be of use here but the automatic language translation features are thought to be relatively useless. Margaret pointed out that the Family History Catalog has over 3.5 million images captured on film and these records can be simply searched and copies ordered for a small fee. This is a good way to examine the original source material such as census data, church records, etc. The catalog of files is updated daily as new material is captured and Margaret suggested that revisiting the catalog periodically might show new material that would be helpful to you. There is also the non-Internet approach to genealogy. Margaret showed two books that she recommends for people to use when starting the hobby. The books are: 1) Finding Your Roots Online by Nancy Hendrickson and, 2) Online Roots by Pamela Boyer Porter. By now, the audience was overwhelmed. The obvious question arose, "What is your favorite program to do genealogy?" Margaret’s answer was:
On that note, Margaret ended her presentation. It was a terrific look into the wonders of genealogy and everyone had a most informative evening. The meeting adjourned at 8:45pm and we astounded the Library staff by ending early! Respectfully submitted, Click here to review Margaret's annotated list of useful genealogy web sites. Web sites visited during the presentation:
September 2003 Meeting: Bring Your Own Trick/TipPresident Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:00pm. Mike introduced the EPICUG officers and then went around the room with the usual introductions. We noted a new face and encouraged him to join up. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of August 2003 stood at $835.60. Of that amount, we incurred a service charge of $10.00 since our account is now below the threshold of $1,000, incurs no interest, and is liable for the bank service charge. As a result of direction from the membership at last month’s meeting, Don went to the bank president and asked for a waiver on the $10 charge. It was granted and will be effective on the next month’s bank statement. Thus, hopefully, this is the last $10 charge we will see. Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheets. Dick Junghans has signed up the Special Interest Group (SIG) for the fourth Thursday of every month in 2004 except for the special case of the third Thursday in November 2004. Various meeting times will prevail for the remainder of 2003. They are: September 25, October 23, November 20, and December 18. Then, in 2004, we will revert to a fairly regular schedule. Dan Fitzpatrick announced that the October meeting will be devoted to Family History. He asked for people who are interested in the topic to help him with the meeting plan. Mary Scott, who was not present, was suggested as a knowledgeable person whom Dan should talk to. With the business out of the way, the meeting program commenced at 7:25. The theme was Tips & Tricks. Lee Lasson led off the meeting with his "tips for safe computing." His tips were as follows:
Don then pointed out that an extension of Lee’s last tip should include the notion of regularly checking ALL of your application software to see if there are any updates or improvements available. Nowadays, a lot of application software permits free upgrades of the software by simply visiting the manufacturer’s web site and hunting around for update possibilities. Don reported that almost all of his software has taken advantage of these updates. After Lee’s presentation, the question arose as to what the implications were of the updating. Wouldn’t it seem likely that your updated computer now has software fixes that are not present on the original installation disks? In other words, are we talking about backing up the updates? Mike Molloy then launched a short discussion of backup techniques to cover this question. We also took a quick look at the Windows XP System Restore feature as a partial answer to backing up the system updates. The short answer is that backup is a HUGE topic in its own right and we need to schedule a future program to cover the topic. Dick Junghans then directed us to the Ad-aware web site as an alternative to SpyBot. Unfortunately, things didn’t work too well so we never got to see Ad-aware in action. However, magazine reviews that compare SpyBot and Ad-aware show that these two program have similar functions but they yield slightly different results. If you’re REALLY paranoid about spyware (Don, are you listening to this?), you should probably download and run both packages to get the maximum cleansing of your system. Dan Fitzpatrick then offered some Word tips and tricks. His first tip related to dragging the toolbars around the screen so as to make the menu items more convenient to your working style. There are lots of menu options, some of which may be more or less interesting to your needs, and moving the toolbars around can make them more (or less) accessible for you. Dan then gave an extremely quick overview of the Style mechanism in Word. This allows you to make bulk customizations of the documents you are preparing. This generated considerable interest in the audience and it was decided that we should have a future program dedicated to using Word more efficiently. Moving right along, Dan then showed the Outline editing and display techniques buried in Word. This is probably one of the least understood and advertised features. On the other hand, there are lots of neat Outline features that would be especially helpful for users who are creating long and complex documents. Once again, this topic should be covered in more detail in a future Word session. Dan ended his presentation with a short explanation of the differences between using the Return key and Shift+Return. Mike Molloy the discussed his latest experiences with a new kind of spam filtering technique that uses a Bayesian probability system to "learn" about your spam and filter out future occurrences of it. This is based on some work that Dan referred to in his earlier presentation on spam filters. Click here to review the earlier club meeting minutes. The new spam filter works only on Outlook (not Outlook Express) and can be downloaded for free. After Mike’s discussion, Dan demonstrated some freeware email reader software called Thunderbird. Dan also referred to a freeware Internet browser call Firebird. Al Howard presented the final tip of the evening. He called it his "get a life" tip. In this tip, Al showed us how to turn the computer off and go enjoy life! Thanks, Al. The meeting adjourned just before 9pm and we actually made it out before the Librarians had to throw us out! Respectfully submitted, Web sites visited during the presentations:
August 2003 Meeting: PDAsPresident Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:07pm. Mike introduced the EPICUG officers and then went around the room with the usual introductions. We noted a few new faces and encouraged them to join up. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of July 2003 stood at $833.60. Of that amount, we incurred a service charge of $10.00 since our account is now below the threshold of $1,000, incurs no interest, and is liable for the bank service charge. We need more membership dues to drive us up over the $1,000 mark. Don addressed this problem with the members and suggested that we’d actually be better off withdrawing our money and storing it in a mattress! Don asked the member’s permission to see if he could do something about this, such as getting a waiver on the bank charges, open an account elsewhere, etc. Dick Junghans suggested that he had been dealing with a bank that gave waivers to organizations like ours. The members agreed to have Don check this out and come up with a suggested plan. So let it be written, so let it be done. Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheets. Dick Junghans suggested that the current policy of having the Special Interest Group (SIG) meet on the third Thursday was met with resistance in some quarters because it causes two meeting (EPICUG and SIG) to occur in the same week. It turns out that the Library has slots available for the fourth Thursday (excepting Thanksgiving and Christmas) and it might be interesting to move the SIG meeting there. Dick will bring this matter up in the forthcoming SIG meeting on Thursday. Larry Bonner stood up and discussed the fact that the school board is getting ready to release 80-90 old computers as they upgrade their school computers to newer models. The computers are fairly low powered but would likely be very much appreciated in disadvantaged homes that had no computer. Sean Garcia volunteered to be the sponsor for an effort to figure out how to upgrade and disperse these machines and he would give them a temporary home while this process works out the details. Thank you, Sean! The EPICUG officers and Sean will get their heads together in the near future and work with Larry to come up with a plan. Sounds like the perfect thing for EPICUG to get involved with. We then got down to the program for the evening. Dan introduced the evening’s program, PDAs, and gave a short slide show that outlined the history of PDAs since they arrived in their current form with the introduction of the Palm 1000 in 1996. Click here to review Dan’s presentation. Sean Garcia began the presentations by demonstrating the latest model of a PDA offered by his new company here in Estes Park. (His company, Mobile Freedom, is located on Hiway 7 near Norlarco.) Sean demonstrated a T-Mobile PDA/telephone combination unit. It connects to the T-Mobile wireless network and Sean has a special introductory deal on the unit for $329. Basically, the unit resembles and acts like a PDA with a built-in microphone and speaker to offer telephone service as well. It runs on the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system and has a dazzling array of features and goodies. Sean was uncertain as to the unit’s firewall and virus defenses, a matter that was on the member’s minds due to the recent occurrence of the Blaster virus worldwide. Sean demonstrated a bunch of nice features that smoothly integrate the telephony side with the PDA side and it’s definitely worth a look. Mike Molloy then showed off his latest gadget, a Toshiba E755 PDA. This unit was connected to the wireless world via a Sprint PCS connection but did not include a telephone capability. It had everything else though. The basic PDA comes with an optional accessory that clips on the base unit and allowed Mike to surf the Internet via the Sprint network. Mike showed us several web sites that have been reconfigured from their big brother web site so as to offer a small-screen version suitable for this type of PDA. He also showed us that you can actually scroll around through the tiny window of the PDA to view a regular large-screen website (albeit painfully). The Toshiba costs about $500 and has a bunch of optional accessories such as the wireless attachment Mike showed us. Click here for links to web sites that Mike used for his demonstration. We were running out of time so we had one last demonstration by Judy Houston. Judy showed us her original Palm Vx PDA which is now considered a dinosaur. However, it still worked and filled her needs quite satisfactorily. She had loaded it up with a bunch of games and applications and it was quite useful in her business. By the way, Lee Lasson again brought his video camera and tripod and hooked it to the digital projector so that everyone in the room could see the PDA demonstrations on the big movie screen. This technique has twice served us well for demonstrating tiny objects. Way to go, Lee! Don’t forget this when we have Gadget Fest later this year. The meeting adjourned just before 9pm and we actually made it out before the Librarians had to throw us out! Respectfully submitted, Web sites visited during the presentations are incorporated into the minutes above.
July 2003 Meeting: Video EditingEPICUG President Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at
7:05pm. He introduced the EPICUG officers that were present and also conducted
introductions of attendees. Respectfully submitted, June 2003 Meeting: Home AutomationPresident Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:01pm. Mike introduced the EPICUG officers and then went around the room with the usual introductions. We noted a few new faces and encouraged them to join up. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of May 2003 stood at $841.60. Of that amount, we incurred a service charge of $10.00 since our account is now below the threshold of $1,000, incurs no interest, and is liable for the bank service charge. We need more membership dues to drive us up over the $1,000 mark. Don requested that all the attendees get their membership dues to him soon because we need to stop the service charge drain. Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheet. The EPICUG Program Director, Dan Fitzpatrick, reviewed the upcoming programs. The list of programs can be found on the EPICUG web site, www.epicug.org. We then got down to the program for the evening. Dan introduced the evening’s speakers, Dan and Connie Young, the principals of a Loveland company known as The Future Home. Simply put, their company markets, installs, and supports the advanced technology for home automation. This includes control of the home lighting, environment, security, and audio/visual "gadgets." Dan began the presentation by showing some promotional videos for the Lutron and Vantage lighting control systems. The videos gave us a quick look at such concepts as keypad controls, home-run wiring, future upgrades, computer networks, TV distribution, phone systems, and a bunch of hardware concepts for the type of wiring to be used, how a house is wired, etc. After amazing everyone with the possibilities, Dan switched gears and talked about how an existing home could be retro-fitted with systems that wouldn’t require tearing down all the walls and wiring up a new system. In general, the retrofit systems lean heavily on the use of RF wireless systems for control. In effect, the lighting controls receive their commands from a command module that sends out the signals via RF. The system that seemed to be the most complete retro-fit system was called the RadioRA system from Lutron. After viewing the videos, Dan opened up the presentation for a long series of questions and discussions on how the various systems worked and how someone might go about installing them. Some rough prices were also discussed. Dan and Connie have posted a web site that outlines their product lines in more detail. You can visit their site at www.thefuturehome.com. After everyone was fully overwhelmed by all the neat possibilities, we adjourned at about 8:45pm. Respectfully submitted, There were no web sites visited during the meeting.
May 2003 Meeting: Google Tips & TricksThe Secretary/Treasurer was not able to make the meeting so these notes from the meeting will be somewhat abbreviated. President Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:05pm. Mike did the usual round of introductions and greetings. Since we are now in the summer season, we had a few new faces. Welcome! The Treasurer was unable to attend so there was no financial report. Here is the report that would have been given. The bank balance as of 30 April was $893.60. This includes a service charge of $10 since we are below the minimum balance of $1,000. We need more memberships! The Treasurer sent a check to the Library for $54 for a one year subscription to Wired magazine, Technology Review magazine, and Maximum PC magazine as part of our sponsorship of the Library's magazine collection. The Secretary has updated the list of members and has (hopefully) tidied up the membership list server with all the email addresses of those who have paid their membership dues. If you are not getting the membership mailings, please contact the Secretary. As usual, we have NOT done anything toward maintaining a list of members on this web site due to privacy considerations. There was a short discussion regarding the first meeting of the Digital Photography SIG. It was a good first meeting although there was some confusion regarding the meeting location. This was resolved and the second meeting should take place on the third Thursday of June, June 19th, at 7pm in the Library's Hondius Room. After the business was closed out, Mike gave an informative program on Google Tips & Tricks. Click here to re-visit Mike's presentation. Lots of useful information during the presentation. The meeting adjourned at 9pm. Respectfully submitted, No notes were taken regarding web sites visited during Mike's presentation.
April 2003 Meeting: Digital PhotographyPresident Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:03pm. Since we had a full plate with the program tonight, Mike skipped the usual introductions. Treasurer Don Widrig then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of March 2003 stood at $807.60. Of that amount, we incurred a service charge of $10.00 since our account is now below the threshold of $1,000 and incurs no interest (there’s 20 cents down the drain!) and is liable for the service charge. We need more membership dues to drive us up over the $1,000 mark. Don requested that all the attendees get their membership dues to him soon because we need to stop the service charge drain. In addition, Don announced that he was soon going to remove all non-paid folks from the membership list. This will have the effect of dropping some people from the EPICUG membership mailings but will not affect the general announcement list. Don passed around the usual meeting attendance sheet and he also passed around a signup sheet for those folks who might be interested in forming a Special Interest Group (SIG) on Digital Photography. Lee Lasson will take the list and set up a SIG meeting, probably at 7:00 pm on the 22nd of May in the Hondius Room at the Library. Stay tuned for further info on this matter. Don then did a quick survey of the proposed magazines that EPICUG might want to sponsor at the Library. The group approved sponsorship of Wired magazine, Technology Review magazine, and Maximum PC magazine. Don will work with the Library to set this sponsorship up. Program Director Dan Fitzpatrick then presented the results of his survey taken at the previous meeting. The survey was intended to determine which programs should be presented at the EPICUG meeting for the rest of the year 2003. The proposed meeting schedule, based on the highest votes, may be found on the EPICUG Meeting page on the web site (you’re reading that page now). Lee Lasson then began the program presentation for the evening, Digital Photography. Lee had done a wonderful job of preparing for this presentation. As a result of many pre-meeting reminders, many people brought their own digital camera for show and tell. Lee intended to allow each user to show off their camera and talk about it. He had set up a tripod arrangement that allowed the users to view their camera through another video camera (Lee’s) and project the image on the big screen in the room. Thus, people could point out the tiny details of their camera while projecting the views of the camera for everyone to see. Nice work, Lee! Lee began the show-and-tell by showing an old Apple QuickTake digital camera. Its features and resolution weren’t very impressive but that camera really paved the way for an affordable digital camera to be used by the masses. We simply didn’t have enough time for everyone to show off their camera but here is an approximately correct list of the cameras/owners who came prepared this evening:
In addition to showing off the cameras, Lee quickly showed some techniques to transfer images from a digital camera to a computer. Lee used Windows XP and a USB connection and demonstrated how easy it is to use XP to copy images from the camera and do some rudimentary image processing. Of course, image processing is a HUGE subject in its own right so we barely scratched the surface of that topic. Image processing will have to wait for another meeting or possibly a SIG meeting. Lee also showed a short movie he had made using his digital still camera. Many still cameras nowadays have the ability to make short videos. They aren’t anywhere near as powerful as a real video camera but the small digital cameras do a fair job of making short videos. As the users showed off their cameras, they were encouraged to comment on the good and bad features. The most common complaint, of course, is that these cameras eat batteries at a furious rate. Dennis Carr showed off a compact battery recharger/rechargeable battery set that is commonly (and cheaply) available everywhere. He keeps a spare set of batteries continually charged so it is easy to switch battery sets as needed. Another common complaint is that the cameras have so many frills and features that you always have to keep the user manual with the camera so you can refresh your memory as to how to do something. The Olympus camera line came under an unusual set of complaints. For the Olympus cameras that have both an optical viewfinder and an LCD view screen, it seems that most of the Olympus cameras position the two finders such that your nose always rubs nose grease onto the LCD screen when you are looking through the optical viewfinder. Speaking of optical viewfinders, several of the cameras allow the user to attach a limited variety of lenses on top of the existing camera lens. When an auxiliary lens is attached, it is usually the case that the image in the optical viewfinder does not match the image viewed by the lens combination. This is not a problem in the older single-lens-reflex (SLR) film cameras since the viewfinder is always coupled to the actual film image but the digital camera people don’t seem to want to move in that direction. They want to use the LCD screen as the viewfinder. The LCD generally works OK but it has two problems: 1) it uses a lot of battery power, and 2) it is usually un-viewable in direct sunlight. Dennis also mentioned that he had heard that SmartMedia cards were going to be discontinued. This led to a discussion of the digital storage media. The group’s consensus was that the Compact Flash (CF) cards were likely to emerge as the winner in the storage business. (Since the EPICUG meeting, the member email has been alive with a continuing discussion of the various storage media.) Several members brought in inkjet prints made from their photographs. Bill Jenkins even went so far as to bring in a cute little battery powered printer intended for low volume portable use. Some of our members are in this digital camera stuff pretty deep. As Gary Lister put it, "It’s my passion." And, he isn’t kidding! Gary showed us a 3-foot by 4-foot print he made from a digital camera. It was amazing (and HUGE) and didn’t show the slightest hint of pixelization or grain! Gary is taking serious courses that combine a lot of artistic training and technical training in the use of the new breed of digital cameras. Gary’s passion also runs into the big $$$. He showed us his latest digital camera, a top-of-the-line Canon digital camera that cost about $8,000 and has more adjustments and features than he could possible explain in several EPICUG sessions. We hope to hear more from Gary in the Digital Photography SIG. Near the end of the meeting, Mike Molloy took over the controls for a while and showed us some very simple techniques to prepare and distribute digital photos using the Internet. Software tools are available to quickly and easily prepare web pages that simulate photo albums and these albums can then be posted on the Internet. This would be an easy way to display pictures of grandbabies, pets, hobbies, etc. Mike Molloy showed how to use the Web Gallery automation feature of Adobe Photoshop to take pictures from the camera and create attractive ready-to-surf HTML pages with thumbnails linked to full-size images. Mike recommended Adobe Photoshop Elements (under $100) as a great value for digital photographers. Click this link to learn more about Elements, http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel/main.html. We also mentioned some other ancillary gadgets that might be useful for photography. For example, Ernie Petrocine discussed some of the new lightweight miniature tripods that are handy for hikers. As we adjourned the meeting, several members expressed the sentiment that this was easily one of the most interesting and informative meetings in some time. Everyone agreed and we finally adjourned at 9:03pm. Respectfully submitted, Other than the web sites used for the demonstrations, there were no web sites visited during the meeting.
March 2003 Meeting: Postponed Because of SnowFebruary 2003 Meeting: MSN Groups and PHP-Nuke, Virtual Clubhouse Tools?President Mike Molloy called the meeting to order at 7:01pm. Mike introduced the officers for 2003 and welcomed Bill Kammerzell to the meeting. Bill was one of the founding members of the club. Glad to have you aboard, Bill! Mike then had everyone introduce themselves. Some new faces here. Welcome! The Treasurer then gave the financial report. He reported that the bank balance as of the end of January 2003 stood at $719.60. Of that amount, we incurred a service charge of $10.00 since our account is now below the threshold of $1,000 and incurs no interest (there’s 20 cents down the drain!) and is liable for the service charge. We need more membership dues to drive us up over the $1,000 mark. The Program Director, Dan Fitzpatrick, discussed possible topics for future EPICUG programs. They included:
The group is to consider these topics and make recommendations for future programs for this year. Elizabeth Repola reported on developments with her 5th grade Internet class. They are planning to have a tutorial and open house session at the middle school on 12 March. The hope is that folks will come and learn about computers from the students. We need to get EPICUG folks involved in order to back up the students (and learn new things as well!) Lee Lasson proposed that the EPICUG members might be interested in forming Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that explore specialized topics. Lee suggested SIGS might be appropriate for:
Richard Junghans suggested that EPICUG take over the regular Thursday night time slot formerly occupied by Trout Unlimited. We could have the EPICUG meetings at their regular time and then have SIG meetings in the Hondius Room two nights later. Sounds like a wonderful idea. While the group discussed the possibilities, Don Widrig went out into the Library and signed EPICUG up for the SIG time slot for the rest of the year. It’s now official: EPICUG will continue having their regular meetings on the 3rd Tuesday of each month and the SIGs will meet on the 3rd Thursday of each month. It remains for the SIGs to decide how to allocate the meetings to the room. Al Howard announced that there would be a series of grand openings of the Library’s new High-tech Room beginning on the 28th of February. At 7:40, Dan and Darren Koepp started the formal program for the evening. Club members were not completely happy with the use of Microsoft’s SharePoint technology to form the foundation for a "virtual clubhouse." Therefore, Darren and Dan volunteered to go and find alternative technologies that might be a better fit. This presentation is the result of that search. Darren started by demonstrating how the MSN Groups web application could help form a "virtual clubhouse." While the technology is similar to the SharePoint technology, it certainly seems to have some features that our members thought might be useful. Darren's presentation is posted on this web site and includes lots of interesting tutorial material on how to get started and use the group he set up. Better check it out! Click here to review Darren’s presentation. Dan followed with a presentation using a non-Microsoft product known as PHP-Nuke. Once again, the application offers many features that are similar to SharePoint but with improvements. Click here to review Dan’s presentation. After "drinking from the fire hose," the members were impressed by the time and effort that Darren and Dan had put into their demonstrations. Nice work, guys! There was too much information to digest in such a short time so the members decided to ask Darren and Dan to explore their demonstrations further by setting up some trial sites for the members to explore. The Secretary was instructed to give Darren and Dan a list of the current members to use in setting up their sites. Once we have had some time to explore the demonstration sites, the club officers were to decide on possible live implementations for the club. By the end of the demonstrations, everyone was exhausted and exhilarated. It was time to wrap it up, so we adjourned at 8:50 pm. Respectfully submitted, Other than the web sites used for the demonstrations, there were no web sites visited during the meeting.
January 2003 Meeting: Internet Messaging + Election of OfficersPresident Frank Palazolo called the meeting to order at 7:01pm. We began the meeting with the usual business stuff. The Treasurer (Don Widrig) reported that the club spent $500.06 for the Christmas party’s door prizes. After the prizes were paid for, the balance at the end of December, 2002, stood at $651.60. Don reported that the total accumulated interest in the checking account for the entire year amounted to $2.56. Woo-hoo! Don then discussed the situation regarding technical magazine subscriptions for the Library. As of 2003, there are no subscriptions outstanding that need EPICUG’s attention. Don queried the members to see if there were any other technical magazines that might be interesting for EPICUG to support at the Library. After batting around several possibilities, all members were encouraged to bring copies of possible candidate magazines to the February meeting for the members to review and determine if any additional subscriptions would be appropriate. Don discussed the membership policies of the club and invited members to pay their dues. (By the end of the meeting, nine memberships for 2003 had been accumulated.) Don then reported on the disappointing results we had noticed while trying to use the Microsoft SharePoint software. After a discussion, the group decided that the experiment did not meet our expectations and we should drop any further efforts with SharePoint. A newcomer to the club, Darren Koepp, suggested that he had dealt with the same problems and had ultimately tried MSN Groups as a way to provide a controlled virtual clubhouse. He was fairly satisfied with his tests and liked the facility better than SharePoint. The club was interested in hearing more about MSN Groups so Darren was "encouraged" to give the February program. And it was so. The Richards’s, all three of them, reported on their experiences with airbits, the RF wireless service here in Estes. They liked the service, technical support and maintenance was good, and the service seemed quite reliable. The only thing they didn’t like was the initial cost of installation. In their case, the initial cost was about $900. On the other hand, this seemed well worth the expense since they didn’t have any other way to get high-speed Internet service at their location. Ernie Petrocine, who also uses airbits, reported similar results and costs. Lee Lasson reported that his experiments with satellite-based Internet were unsatisfactory and he was dropping the service after his one-year lease expired. Once the business portion was completed, the club moved on to the election of officers for 2003. After much discussion and wrangling over roles of the officers, a slate of officers was finally proposed and approved by the members. The new officers for 2003 are:
It was unclear as to who would replace Fuzz E. Nerd. President Frank gave a short parting speech ("Scary but fun!") and Mike began office with a short inaugural speech. ("The club’s raison d’être is to have fun and help people with their computer issues. Also, we need to expand our membership and increase awareness of our club.") With respect to helping people, Dorothy Gibbs commented that she was grateful for the help that Frank and Don had given her while she is starting up her own website. President Mike then briefly introduced new people who were attending the club meeting. After all the "changing of the guard" was completed, Dan gave a presentation on the wonders of Instant Messaging. In essence, Instant Messaging (IM) allows the user to enter a "chat room" that connects with other members of the group. It’s like a text-based party line that you can use to connect people around the world. One of the drawbacks in the current world of IM is that there are at least three major and conflicting products offered, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. By intentional design, these vendors offer IM that is only intended to work on their systems. Thus, an AOL IM user cannot join an IM exchange with an MSN IM user. When will these vendors ever learn? In order to minimize this incompatibility, other vendors have sprung up that can accept the various IM formats. Dan, Lee, and Mike demonstrated a product called Trillian that allows a single user to participate in all three IM exchanges without the need to log on to each separate network. The drawback still remains that the dividing wall still exists. That is, while the Trillian client can send/receive IMs, it’s not easy for the other members to cross over and see each other’s network. After Dan’s presentation, we had a short Stump the Group session and the meeting was adjourned at about 8:45pm. Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer Other than the IM sites, no other web sites were visited during this meeting.
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