I will try to give an outline of the development of Vector drawing programmes, leading up to ArtWorks 2.75, the latest version.
Then a brief look at what Computer Concepts, the original authors of ArtWorks, have now produced for Windows under the new company name of Xara Ltd.
I will try to show off the latest developments in the foremost RISC OS vector art application, !ArtWorks. In some respects, it now rivals some other types of application whose primary function is not to produce artwork, but to display it and to publish it in print, e.g. desktop publishing software. The concurrent developments in this respect all link back to the activities of their common (and prolific) author, Martin Wuerthner.
There will of course be the opportunity to remind oneself of the wide ranging basic capability of ArtWorks.
Frank
This somewhat hastily arranged evening turned out rather well and we all had a very good time.
The food was good and the venue and company superb. Since we only ended up with nine of us, after Gerald and Sarah unfortunately had to pull out, the restaurant put us on one large circular table which, although we were a bit hemmed in, meant that we could all talk to each other. I had been a bit worried earlier in the week, as I made arrangements to move the date from the Wednesday to the Thursday so that John and Mary could come, and read in the paper of the Stour bursting its banks at Dedham accompanied by a photo of the Oarhouse being under water! I thought to myself ...what could possibly go wrong! I was reassured by the Restaurant that they were fine and not under water. They did however phone me to confirm that I had booked for 11 people on the Wednesday and 9 people on the Thursday hadn't I?
Well that was soon sorted out. Frank had kindly suggested that to avoid the problems of totting up the bill and dividing it into shares which had marred previous evenings he would produce a Pipedream spreadsheet with copies of the menu printed out for each party coming along and bring his laptop along to data log our choices and produce individual bills at the end. We could correlate this with the bill produced by the restaurant and people could decide if they wished to add a tip at the end. A Trojan effort, and it worked very well with the unforeseen problem that the menu on the night was different to the one displayed on their website which Frank had had to use! Even the manager did not realise they were different! Nevertheless it made it much easier to sort out at the end and also added to the entertainment of the evening. Well done Frank! Here are a few photos of the proceedings.
In case you are wondering the last is Frank's Ducky (Catty?) bag for his cat kindly designed by the restaurant. I didn't hear whether the cat enjoyed it yet.
I've got some tales to tell of revamping my Tom Tom One with new maps and a larger SD card and also of using some backup software for PCs, but I think these will have to wait for another time. If anyone is trying to update their Tom Tom let me know.
| 2008 | ||
| February 6th | "Vector Artware and Artworks" | Frank |
| March 5th | "iLife08 Managing your digital world" | Gareth |
| April 2nd | AGM + TBA | All |
Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. We will give more details as soon as they are confirmed. We are having a committee meeting this month to revise our programme so the above topics will probably change.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website. http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com
The first visit is free and subsequent visits for non - members is £2·50. The membership fee is £20 due from the AGM date in April, but may be reduced for those joining late in the year.
Continuing our publicity for EAUG events - please see their Website for details of their next meeting.
| 14th January 2008 | "What I got for Xmas" | |
| 12th February 2008 | "Sat Nav Loaded" |
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall, on the second Tuesday of the month
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.eaug.org.uk or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.eaug.org.uk/ppl.htm
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
P.S. My insurance company have added my computer cover away from home with no extra premium required, yours might do the same.(Ed.)
If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website.
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com as a virtual domain,
it can also be reached using http://www.btinternet.com/~icenicomputerclub
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk