Please make every effort to attend this meeting which is very important in our Calender.
Leopard
Gareth was not only using a new Operating System but also a new computer since his old one had a backlight failure after several years and would have been to expensive to repair. Leopard is the latest release of Mac OS X, version10.5 codenamed Leopard supersedes Tiger. This has Mac UNIX underneath. Gareth demonstrated Leopard features using the Apple website (www.apple.com/Mac OS). Several new features (300 improvements!) include Finder for locating files and Time Machine which is being talked about a lot as Apple's solution to backing up and retrieval. This runs on his MacMini. You can have 4 desktops arranged as a square similar to MoreDesk on RISC OS. The Mac Browser is called Safari. Boot Camp is used to run Windows on a Mac not being looked at today. Ben's Money is still used for Finance.
Blue dots signify that programs are running. Choose whether to use Stacks for holding documents on the bar such as downloads.
Quicklook used for looking at pictures and other multimedia files. Neo-Office similar to Open Office can open word docs etc.
The web browser is open source also runs on Nokia phones. Some speed improvements. Dashboard with widgets. Webclip can be added to Dashboard select an area of screen to copy area of screen. Can search for keywords and highlights their presence in a documents.
They are using Intel Macs are using EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface?) BIOS replacement which provides drivers and windows for WebCams etc. Gareth doesn't think Dashboard is very useful to him. Upgrades are automatically installed with a reboot if necessary. The machine is very stable and can go weeks without a reboot. Time Machine creates a set of ranked screens going back in time with a date pointer. One can move back to a previous configuration and look for a lost file. It has to be held on an external drive. Initial backup you pay for - exclude certain drives and directories. 58GB space. Keeps hourly backups for 24 hrs, daily for a month and weekly backups till the disk fills up. Mounts a disk image for restore. Gareth has two machines backed up to his external disk.
Mac Desktop was developed from the NextStep machine bought from Next (basically Unix). Can fire up a terminal. Can use Spotlight to find files. Uses bash shell. Apple Apps e.g.. iPhoto are directories with a certain structure like RISCOS. So in general you can remove apps without much problem although there may be library files. You get free GNU tools etc. BSD port system etc. You can play video as was shown later with Clip player
iLife
We will also look at the iLife '08 suite of applications, for managing music, photos, video, web and more.
Gareth only got iLife recently, which he had to purchase, so won't go into video editing with iMovie. It originally included iTunes but you can get this for free. Their Pro package is Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. Includes iDVD, iPhoto, IWeb. .Mac Web Gallery used for email webhosting etc. It can organise photos etc. Gareth doesn't use it as not an account holder but it is tied into all the other Apps. iGarageBand for Music generation. It can only be published via .Mac
iMovie
The Story behind iMovie is that an Apple Developer wanted to give a quick edit to his holiday movies and wrote this cutdown version of iMovie to do it. Steve Jobs apparently thought it was great and replaced the original version with this one, but it is not as good. New version makes it easier to mail to people and share.Export to YouTube etc. Dropped 10GB file on it and it took hours as tried to thumbnail it. Not designed for big projects any more. Ideal for Videos below 10MB ! Older plugins were very slow before.
iPhoto
Found easier than Photoshop for what he wanted.
iTunes
Now not on list (of iLife) any more but Gareth is included it. Safari and iTunes not good on Windows. iTunes can allow music use on 5 machines. He has now reached this limit but thinks it a hassle to get Apple to reset it.
[Aside:BBC iPlayer works on Linux too for streaming as long as have Flash installed.]
BBC putting video on iTunes store. £1.89 per episode same sort of price as BT Vision. HT64 encoded. Tried a preview with good quality of Spooks.
Applications
He then began by talked about the applications like iPhoto although admitting he had not taken any photos for a while. He showed some photos of Weddings and surprisingly cars! This included racing cars with stripped engines. The album facilities allow you to find photos with good search facilites and can do straightforward editing like cropping, rotation etc. You can alter sharpness and noise. You can select them for email with reduced quality or send to Apple's online print service. A next day delivery is possible if you have a standard request.(otherwise 7 days). You can also use batch processing for some features. iPhoto will support RAW format as well. You can load photos into a calendar format.
iMovie
It was much easier to use but he had found that the earlier projects would no longer load into the new version.
Can set fades and dissolves and modifications to the sound tracks.
Gareth showed finally a NASA space video from inside the space station which was very interesting and of good quality.
This was a very comprehensive coverage of all the features of Leopard and iLife08. Gareth had put in quite a lot of effort into this talk. Thanks Gareth.
It is with great regret that I announce the death of our Treasurer Tony Lister. He was a very loyal member of the club and had been our Treasurer since 2001. He was also a member of the Essex Acorn User Group for many years. He would always give new visitors to the club a friendly welcome.
Tony undoubtedly kept us in very good shape from the financial point of view and enabled us to afford the purchase of our video projector and screen which has considerably enhanced the enjoyment of our talks and demos. He was always very enthusiastic about his computing and had been to all the Wakefield shows for a number of years. Tony often gave talks to the club and was interested in photography and put many hours into digitising his Father's large collection of old photographs many taken around East Anglia.
He did not give up even after he became ill; buying an IYONIX computer and giving his talk on "1000 years of the British Monarchy" another of his many interests. He was also a very good gardener and set dancer and enjoyed travelling.
He was a good friend and he will be very much missed by all who knew him.
Sadly Tony's funeral is on the day of the AGM ; just one of life's coincidences. I hope we can continue the activities of the club in the same spirit he showed. We now need a new Treasurer to carry on his good work. Would everyone in the club now please consider whether they could take on this role.
There may be some interesting options for the future since we have been approached by members of the Mid Suffolk Computer Club about the possibilities of a merger with our Club. At our last meeting two of their members, John Davey and Ken Tew visited us to see what sort of meetings we had and to introduce themselves to us. I have subsequently had an invitation for us to visit them on Tuesday May 6th at Barham Church Hall at 7:30pm. They would like us to take part in a friendly computer Quiz if sufficient numbers are able to come.
A discussion on this topic will be included in AOB at the AGM.
We have had a committee meeting this month to revise our programme. Some of the topics below may change .
| 2008 | ||
| April 2nd | AGM + see below | All |
| May 6th | Visit to Mid Suffolk Computer Club- see Editorial | All |
| May 7th | Word processing with Ovation Pro, Easiwriter etc. | Frank |
| June 4th | Wireless Networking/Bluetooth/3G phones etc. | Gareth et al |
| July 2nd | Internet Applications Ebay, Web 2.0 , Flikr etc. | All |
| August | Social Evening Venue TBA | All |
| September 3rd | MS Office 2007, Office 2008 for Mac | Michael, Gareth |
| October 1st | Linux Evening (provisional) | TBA |
| November 5th | Storage & Backup | Peter |
| December 3rd | Gadgets and Party evening | All |
Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. We will give more details as soon as they are confirmed.
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.
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
1. Apologies for Absence
2. Minutes of the last meeting
3. Matters arising
4. Chairman's Report
5. Secretary's Report
5. Treasurer's Report
6. Election of Officers and Committee
7. AOB
If anyone wishes to stand for the above posts please contact the Secretary (currently Peter) before the meeting. The minutes of the last meeting will be sent out before the meeting and further paper copies will be available at the meeting.
Please note that subscriptions are also due at the AGM for next year £20.
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Minutes of the AGM last year are attached to the email notifications.