Wisconsin All-computer Users Club
WAUC May 2000 Newsletter
Volume 17, Number 5 - May 2000
Wisconsin All-computers User's club
3 PC SIG, 7:00 p.m.
NEW LOCATION as of last month
Super America Station
60th & Layton
Topic: Calendar Creator 5 For sale at SIG for $44 WAUC General Meeting, 7:00 p.m.
Jackson Park Lutheran Church
4535 W. Oklahoma Ave.
Backing up Our Systems9 Apple II/Apple IIGS SIG, 7:00 p.m.
Child Dev. Center of St. Joseph's
1699 W. Oklahoma Ave.10 HTML SIG, 7:00 p.m.
Corporate Technologies
9733 W. Greenfield Ave. Suite 20611 Multi-Format SIG, 7:00 p.m.
Corporate Technologies
9733 W. Greenfield Ave. Suite 206
Print Artist Video, Conclusion &
Bring your Birthday Card Creations15 Deadline for submitting articles for June WAUCtaIk
marieb@eudoramail.com18 Telecom SIG, 7:00 p.m.
NEW LOCATION as of last month
French Immersion School
3575 South 88th St. (88th & Morgan)
Enter on Warnimount Ave.
Meet in the library31 Exec. Bd. Meeting 7:00 p.m.
Marcia Zientek's Home
President's Message PC SIG AppleII/AppleIIGS SIG HTML SIG Computer Stationery Items for Sale March Board Meeting Multi-Format SIG Telecom SIG Swap Meet Treasurer's Report Book Reviews New Members
William Yehle
Carolyn Harmon
Erwin Erdmann
Debra Babajan Conrad P. Heinzel
June Larson Anita Wailner
Mildred & Fred Young Christopher Gerard
Dale BoehmWell, COMDEX is over, but it was interesting. There were a lot of the old vendors, and some new ones. Two years ago the push was for Windows '98. This year everything is Windows 2000. What will it be in 2 more years?A good time was had by all and we had a few interesting developments. The restaurant was great as always and the total package was a deal in itself. As this COMDEX winds up, we look forward to another one next year. We had a full bus, so I guess we can deem it a success.
There is a lot ahead for WAUC in the upcoming months. We have new SIC meeting places, plus very interesting demos planned. If there is something you would like to see demonstrated, let one of the Board members know. There was a sug-gestion from one member to start a LINUX SIC. If there is enough in-terest perhaps we could consider it.
Have a great Mothers Day and Me-morial Day.
Bruce KosbabThe April 5th PC SIC was the first to be held at the new 60th and Layton Super America lo-cation. Who would have believed there was such a spacious meeting room at a gas station? You have to walk through the store to enter the room. However, as the SIC is a popular one, those who have col-lapsible chairs are advised to bring them in the future. Also, please don't park at the filling station. There is a lot to park in right next to the station.The new WAUC projector worked wonderfully with Roger Brinkmeier's laptop. Prior to the demos on AZZ Cardfile and using a scanner, Terry handed out the rules for submissions for a Birthday Card DOM. Then Marie demonstrated installing WINZIP, a decompression program nec-essary for the installation of AZZ Cardfile, as well as many other shareware programs and compressed files. From the Start menu choose Settings, then Con-trol Panel, the Add/Remove Pro-grams, select Install and Browse. Choose to look in the drive where your program is located, in this case 3 1/2" Floppy (A:). Select WINZIP, open, and follow the onscreen prompts (when to go to the next screen, agree to the terms and conditions governing the program, start with WINZIP Wizard, etc..). When in doubt, it is usually best to go with the defaults. WINZIP automatically creates a file association for ZIP files.
We repeat the steps with AZZ Cardfile, noting that there is a clamp icon next to the program's name (and all zipped files). Double-clicking the icon automatically activates WINZIP. Note that both WINZIP and Azz Cardfile are shareware programs, meaning you can make copies legally for friends, and use the programs on a trial basis, but after a certain number of days, you are obligated to register the programs (send the authors money), if you continue to use them. The number of days and the price varies with each program (a message should come up during install, and reminders usually appear when booting up such programs).
AZZ Cardfile is a replacement for the old Cardfile (rudimentary data-base) program that used to be part of the Windows 3.1 operating sys-tem, but which Microsoft discontin-ued in the Windows 95 and later operating systems. It is capable of importing MS Cardfile databases, as well as importing text files. Think of it as the electronic version of 3" X 5" index cards.
There were several existing databases on the floppy disk, so the first thing Marie demonstrated was opening a file, by clicking on the yellow folder icon. She had the computer look in 3 1/2" Floppy (A:), and selected one of the AZZ files (databases) on the disk to open. When a File is opened, you will see the card titles in a column on the left (instead of a picture of overlapping index cards with the titles showing in index lines in old MS Cardfile). On the right, the data for the highlighted card is displayed (while this corresponds to part of the index card below the title, there is much more room for data than on a 3" X 5" card). Marie was able to enlarge the font in both columns to be readable even in the back rows. You can add a new card to an existing database by click-ing on the + icon or using the Insert key on your keyboard. The first thing to do with a new card is name it. The next is add the data. You can copy and paste data from a different pro-gram or (after making sure the title of the card you want is highlighted) place the cursor in the data column and type it in.
How you organize your Cardfile is up to you. An example given is greeting card verses. Some pre-ferred to have all their verses for a broad category, such as "Birthday," on one card, separating the verses by a blank line. Since you can have several cards with the same title, others preferred to have several cards with the title "Birthday," and a different verse on each card.
To save, click on the disk icon, you can also use the pull down menus (under File you will find both Save and Save As). If you always save to one spot, Azz will automatically go there; it becomes the default. How-ever, if you want to save to both your hard drive and floppy, you will need to do a "Save As," so you can select the drive. If you are saving a new file, you will also need to give it a title.
One way of getting all ( or several) of the databases from the floppy to your hard drive is to open each one in AZZ Cardfile, and then "Save As" to the AZZ directory on your hard drive. This can be tedious, so there is a way to move a bunch at one time (this method can be used with other programs). Go to Windows Explorer: from the Start Menu, choose Programs, then choose Windows Explorer (A short cut which also opens Windows Explorer is hold down the Windows key and type the letter "E."). Open the floppy drive on which the files are stored. To highlight all the databases, start with the first AZZ data-base file, and hold down the shift key while mov-ing to the last one. To selectively highlight several files, hold down the control key while clicking on the ones you want to move. When you ‘ve highlighted the files you want to move, drag them to the AZZ directory in the C drive. The computer will then copy them into that directory.
Terry passed out a handout on Scanners, mentioning that there may be different programs with different scanners, so you might have to adjust a little if your software is different than the demo, but the principles should be similar. Marie demonstrated different ways to start the scanning process. One is to double-click on the Mustek icon (brand name of the scanner). The toolbar opens, click on scan menus. When you scan, it is always best to do the prescan, as you have more control (and don't have to wait while it scans the whole flatbed area when you only need a small photo scanned). You can scan one photo at a time, or more (if they all fit on the flatbed). It is suggested you scan at 300 DPI for a graphic you would use on a card, but 72 DPI for Internet. With today's monitors, there would not be a notice-able difference in quality, but the lower resolution scan will load much faster). Once scanned, iPhoto Plus opens for editing. You can touch up the background or add a child's miss-ing front tooth. One thing to remem-ber, photo retouching takes time and patience. Save often, in BMP for-mat, so you don't lose any vital changes. JPEG's are more com-pressed files, but saving in that format repeatedly can cause loss of quality, so don't convert the file to a JPEG until you are done editing. Cropping and resizing can also be done. Use the double arrows to form a box around the area you want to keep if cropping (don't click if the scissors is showing, unless the area you want to crop is successfully selected). The double arrows can also be used in resizing mode. It is a good idea to keep aspect ratio when resizing a photo. When you clone, you can draw a copy of the photo, starting with the spot you clicked on.
You can also start scanning from your editing program, in this case iPhoto Plus. Select Acquire or pull down the File menu to Acquire. You can batch scan 2 or more photos, and stitch them together.
Roger suggested checking the scanner reviews on ZDnet on the Internet before buying a scanner. Some of the new ones, have buttons to press to copy and print, without going through all the scanner menus!
Christine GardnerOur group met at the Child Development Center of St. Joseph on Tuesday, April 11th. Those present were Richard Durand, Richard and Lorraine Schmit, Erv Erdmann, Dick Reinhard, Becky Becker, Pat Nye, Sr. Samuel - and her bird "Blue".HTML SIGAlfred Zealy attended, as a guest, but his interests lie in the MAC. He's hoping there will be a MAC SIG soon that he to sit in on. Erv, a new member to our group, had a puzzling question. It seems that as he was printing out some material, all of a sudden the size of the print b e c a m e much larger, and he felt he hadn't done any-thing to change the print. Sister walked us through Appleworks GS, showing how to change fonts anywhere within text. Sister also helped Erv with a database question.
Blue behaved well, for a bird, utter-ing an occasional squawk, pecking an intruding finger, and even doing a "bird dance" to sister's singing.
It was an informative evening.
Pat Nye
The FrontPage 2000 user group met April 12, 2000 at Corporate Technologies, 9733 W.
Greenfield Ave., Suite 203 in West Allis where we looked at FrontPage 2000 benefits.SIG Leader, John Hirsh, said "All you need to do is go to Open FrontPage 2000 and then use your mouse to find File\New\Web. Then select a personal web that you can modify and you're off!" FrontPage 2000 al-lows you to save space by putting your Web on other hard drives. In FrontPage 98 you were limited by one drive in C:\windows\ webshare\ Now you can create a Web page anywhere on any drive including a Jaz drive. First you enter Front Page 2000, go to New, then Web. To publish you could create a C:\webone, D:\webtwo, E:\webthree, F;\webwauc or I :\websewwug.
For those people who like to work in HTML, John said FrontPage 2000 allows you to do just that. You go to File\View\Reveal Tags and write en-tirely in HTML. If you make errors in
HTML, FrontPage 2000 will correct them automatically.How do you put this on the Web? First you need FrontPage 2000, an Internet Service Provider, and Hosting. FrontPage costs about $125 to $140; upgrade is $75. You can get FrontPage 2000 for only $30 if you take a course at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. You can also get FrontPage for only $30 if you are a full time stu-dent at Milwaukee Area Technical College. For more information see the Wisconsin Integrated Software Catalog at www.wisc.edu/wisc.
There are other fantastic bargains for students such as Office 2000 ($30), Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 Windows ($25). These are some of the WISC prices that beat the computer software at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Book Store!Once you have FrontPage 2000 software you will need an Internet Service Provider such as NaSPA. Net in Oak Creek. You can set up a Web site at very nominal cost by simply typing http:I/yourname. naspa.net. NaSPA will show you how to use the file transfer pro-gram. If you want your own do-main, NaSPA can help in getting a domain. The cost is $70 for two years ($35 per year). Hosting at NaSPA is $24 a month. Another place you can get hosting for $24 a month is at www.hosting.com for-merly located in Shorewood, Wis-consin.
John Hirsch
Computer Stationery Items for Sale
Cardstock (15 sheets) $1.00
Business Cards/sheet .20
Address Labels/sheet .25
Return Address Labels .50
3 1/2” Diskette Labels .25
Iron-on Transfer Shelf 2.00
Decal Sheets, Clear-8+ x 11 1.75
Photo paper 8 1/2 x 11 .65
Checkbook covers - clear vinyl 1.50
Magnets-Business card size .25
Envelopes-4x6, pastel .10
Envelopes-6x9, (4) .25
VHS Cassette Labels .25
File folder labels .45
Certificates .10
WAUC Logos - Iron on 1.00
WAUC Logos - Clear vinyl 1.00
Magnetic Sheets 1.25
Glossy cardstock .10
Glossy paper .10
Plastic Binding Combs .15
Laminating sheets .25
March Board MeetingBruceKosbab, Doris Regner, Marcia Zientek, Terry Harvey, Marie Bellin, Leo Hoffer, and Di Vukovich gathered at Marcia's home on the last Wednesday of March.We looked at the latest version of the club's brochure and made a few adjustments before it's printed.
Next topic was the logistics of set-ting up at the French Immersion School for the Telecom SIG.
Leo reported he has three seats left on the bus to Comdex. We hope to fill those seats at the next general meeting.
The old projector will be used for the Apple SIGs. Sister Samuel will be responsible for the projector.
We've ordered some CD's from APCUG but they have not yet arrived. We were hoping to have them in time for the Annual WAUC Swap Meet, which is being held at the beginning of April. Doris thought it would be a good idea to purchase a laptop computer for the club to use at the various SIGs and the general meeting. We discussed it for a bit and it will be further dis-cussed at the general meeting in May.
Nancy Setlock sent a message that she thought it would be a good idea to purchase a clip on microphone for presenters to use. No one at the meeting knew anything about them so we will be doing some research on them and present the idea at the May meeting.
Terry HarveyThe Multi-Format SIG met JL April 13, 2000 at Corporate Technologies.Doris brought in some cards made with platinum & gold vellum. We hope, in the future, to get some for WAUC stationery sales. Having seen the results, I sure would like to try it for myself. I'd brought in 2 "mixed media" cards that used rub-ber stamping on cork and on velvet. Barb had some gold paper for a card, but wasn't sure how to print on it. I suggested printing on a trans-parency, and letting the gold paper show through it. I've used this tech-nique with metallic and with other light-colored papers that don't work with an inkjet printer.
For those who want Netscape, it can be downloaded from their website, but it is a long download. You have to make note of the file name, and where you are downloading it (what drive and directory), so you can find it and properly set up the program. It is also possible to order it on CD for $5.00.
Azz Cardfile can be used for recipes, addresses, or keeping track of which quotes in Print Artist you've used on cards. To copy the quote you used, highlight it in the text editing box in Print Artist, se-lect "Copy," then in AZZ Cardfile, create a new card in your quotes database and paste (Control-V) the quote in the data column of the card. You can also use AZZ Card-file to clean up a quote you got in your E-mail. After pasting the quote to a card in Azz Cardfile, go to Edit to edit the card and choose "replace." You can type the > in the "find" portion of the dialog box, and leave the "Replace with" blank. It will replace all the >'s with noth-ing. Use Control-A to "Select All," Control-C to Copy, and when your document in another program is open, use Control-V to paste in the edited text.
We reviewed how to view thumbnails on ACDSee. Click on File; Browse, then select the drive and directory in which your graphics are stored. Thumbnails will come up automatically. You can also resize them.
Terry handed out the rules for mak-ing cards to be used for contributions to the PD card disk. It must be a Print Artist 112 Fold Card, printed on plain paper or cardstock (as well as on disk). No fancy papers or embellishments (glitter, ribbons, charms, etc.) Any graphics that do not come with Print Artist, should be included on the disk you submit. The pnnted cards will be displayed to show whal is on the disk. You can also submil envelope designs in Sign format.
Terry demonstrated using the yellow box and changing its color to creatE a background. You can also use a graphic background. To create a watermark, use a graphic, and usE the color menu to lighten it.
Print Artist does not center graphics in the panel, even though the screen display shows it as centered (with margins on all 4 sides). If you maximize a graphic, it will have a margin on 3 sides, but will print all the way to where the fold would be. Terry brought a template for making cards with designs centered in the panel.
Terry also showed how to get text the same point size in different text boxes. Using the fonts menu, make note of the point size of the font in the first box. Then, when you do more text boxes, go to the font menu, fit frame to point size, and type in the same numerical size you noted.
I mentioned to Terry a text effect I like to use sometimes. If I'm using strata in the text (horizontal or verti-cal strata), I customize the text to have an outline (white or black) and use a "fill" (the yellow box) behind the text and the same shape as the text box. I will choose the same strata from the effects menu, but (from the color menu) reverse the order of the strata. This works well with "rainbow, blended" as the color for both the text and the fill.
Terry went over some of the shapes you can use for text and fills. One of her favorite techniques is to do a Convex up on the text near the top of a page, and "Convex down" on text near the bottom; the gentle curve frames the graphic in the middle of the page.
She suggests printing draft copies before you print on good paper; to save ink, use econo-mode or draft mode, grayscale, and, of course, the cheap paper. Doris said that you can save even more ink by printing in coloring book (outline) mode, if all you need to know is placement of graphics (you would not see shading). Terry mentioned that, since what you see is not what you get, regarding color, it is a good idea to print out the Print Artist color palette. While you are work-ing on a project, go to print, but choose "Swatch" instead of "Document." The colors will print in the same relative position that they appear in the color menu. You will not need to do this every time, but keep the printout handy, for when you are customizing colors.
Terry strug-gled with get-ting rid of the "blue box" when using imported graphics; it worked at home, but there are quite a few different versions of Print Artist 4. The imported graph-ics cannot have long names (the old DOS limit of 8 characters before the.xxx), must have the same name in the card as on the drive they are imported to, and there cannot be another graphic with the same name on the drive.
The Internet wasn't working properly, but if you have a graphic site you like, you can save graphics from that site by right clicking on the graphic, and, when the menu pops up Save it to disk as a JPEG. A good site for graphics is at pic-turesnow.corn.
Everyone should bring their finished birthday cards for the swap and any questions or problems they had creating the cards. We will work on the cards at the SIG if needed. We will also finish the PALS video.
Christine GardnerThe Telecom SIG was held at the French Immersion School (new location), 3575 South 88th St. on April 20th, 2000. Even though the weather was cold, windy and rainy, 10 hearty individuals showed up. The room that the SIG was held in was large enough to accommodate as many as 35 to 40 persons.Roger Brinkmeier again hosted the SIG, and with the aid of his laptop, the new color projector and his expertise guided us through an enjoyable evening of web surfing, a question and answer session and various tips on using the Internet more efficiently.
A question regarding E-mail messages too large for viewing, resulting in a truncated message screen, was resolved by having the recipient contact the server in order to reset message size preferences.
Another problem involving messages being cut off because of call waiting was resolved by disabling call waiting, or by placing a 70 prefix on the dial-in number.
A neat site with tons of information can be viewed at http:\\www. hotsheets.com
Roger also showed us how to set up a signature file in order to per-sonalize your E-mail messages. We also discussed filters, which allow you to block messages from individuals from whom you do not want to receive messages.
Roger also allowed us to view the latest Netscape Navigator, beta version 6.0 which will be available sometime in the near future.
Tony Magho also passed along a tip regarding ACDSee relative to resizing a picture, by using the minus or plus key to reduce or enlarge an image.
Bruce Schneider also is going to sup-ply the URL for The Covenant Health Care (St. Joseph's Hospital) web site, where you will be able to view a heart transplant surgery operation.
We ended the session by viewing some pictures taken at the Jolly Inn Restaurant on the last Comdex trip.
The evening went by so fast; it was hard to believe that it was time to go home. Many thanks to Roger for his expertise and knowledge of computer technology, and also for providing the laptop which made the SIG possible.
Sixty-four members attended our WAUC's annual swap meet. No business was conducted.
It would have been almost impossible to distract the buyers and sellers
engaged in their transactions. Besides the bargaining, others took the opportunity to socialize,
which comes easy for WAUC members.
Marcia Zientek, co-secretaryBook ReviewsBEGINNING BALANCE $7518.23
INCOME-
Membership Dues 250.00
Sales
Apple Software/Doris Regner 15.00
Comdex 1260.00
Rebate Mcsft Home Publ. 2000 20.00
TOTAL INCOME $1545.00
EXPENSES-
Marcia Zientek - Postage 66.00
Marie Bellin - Printing 72.30
K&E Tours - Comdex Bus 540.00
K&E Tours - Gas Surcharge 22.00
Terry Harvey - Card Stock, Magnetic Paper,
Copies 49.56
Roger Brinkmeier - Projector 2329.00
Unik Associates Swap Meet Expenses 159.00TOTAL EXPENSES $3237.86
ENDING BALANCE $ 5825.37
The Little Mac Book by Robin Williams, Peachpit Press
445 pgs $15.99 at http:\\amazon.oacc.org.
Reviewed by Richard SzladowskiTLMB is geared to beginner and in-termediate users, and is written in a style "for the rest of us." It is rather easy reading. which most readers will find hard to put down. It answers most of your questions. The index is clearly laid out and quite thorough in its range of topics.The book is divided into four parts:
The Basics, Beyond the Basics, The Internet, and Extra Stuff. There are chapters on such topics as: Introductory Tutorial, Starting Up, Desktop and Finder, Menus, Icons and Files, Saving/Printing Documents, The System Folder, Control Panels, Using Sherlock, Very Important Info, Using the World Wide Web, The Internet Features on Your Mac, Tips and more Tips, and Help.Reading through the chapters is stimulating. It enables you to learn many of the little tips, tricks, and tidbits letting vou make your Mac sing Topics such as using special characters for foreign languages, shared folders, customized preferences, and good housekeeping techniques are all dealt with in easy-to-understand terms.
Being a teacher/Iecturer/writer, Robin includes a short quiz at the end of each chapter to help reinforce what the chapter discussed. The answers appear in the back of the book. This is a highly effective way to learn a subject.
I highly recommend this very worthwhile book. It should be in the library of all serious Macintosh users.
Reprinted from Scrumpy, the newsletter of the Orange Apple Com-puter Club.
Webmaster:
Roger.Brinkmeier@mixcom.com
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Updated: May 30, 2000
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