Here is your chance to sort through the loft and dust off your old computer hardware and perhaps armed with a few "floppy disks" ( That term might need explanation to the younger members!) or DVDs demonstrate some games, software or hardware.
The AGM will be formally written up for the next AGM but key points are that membership fees remain at £15 per annum and the club will henceforth adopt an End Of Year date of the End of April for the accounts.
The balance is £55.34 after current liabilities.
You will be pleased to learn that the same brilliant team of officers will remain in post and valiantly continue to serve for another year.
This was to be followed by a Computer Surgery but as both Gareth and Michael were keen to leave early as they were both of on holidays there was just a short discussion period.
Peter mentioned that he had purchased a new camera and this had led him to discover that Aperture which he used for managing and editing his photo collection was not only unsupported by Apple (which he already knew) but in fact would be impossible to run after the next operating system version. This has been widely commented on online and various other software packages have been suggested as replacements. Peter has therefore decided on ON1 Photo RAW as a suitable sophisticated editor. He also discovered a package for downloading files from Aperture whilst retaining some of the edits. It is easy to transfer to Photos on the Mac but the editing is not as good as Aperture. He had not got very far with ON1 Photo RAW yet so more on this later. He has a copy of Affinity Photo but this seems to have a very steep learning curve and only seems to relate to one file at time, whereas one of the beauties of Aperture was that batches of photos could be manipulated together. He had also had a look at Mylio which claims to be able to archive and organise photos combined with online storage, however on reading through the conditions of use it appeared that they could copy your pictures to use elsewhere. So at the moment he has not signed up to it as he cannot allow anyone else to use family photos without permission.
One problem with the photo packages is that Aperture keeps a copy of your edits but only the raw file is imported by the other systems. Exporting from Aperture is using JPEGs usually.
Peter had another problem too in that when he had his old Mac it did not have enough memory to hold all his shots so he used the off-line facility in Aperture but now he must consolidate the off-line files before using the Aperture Transfer software.
He also dropped his new camera in airport security and distorted the battery compartment so that it would not close properly. Fortunately he was able to get it fixed on his return by London Camera Exchange in Colchester at no cost.
He was very pleased with the camera Panasonic GX9 with 12-60 zoom lens. It is very sophisticated and he is still trying out all the facilities. He also got a iPhone8 recently although Michael reckons that his Samsung A50 with special deal was more cost effective than an iPhone. The deal was the basic phone is £319 with £100 off for trading in an old Android phone, but also if you buy direct from Samsung website an extra £50 cash back. So the phone cost him only £169. It has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and 3 cameras. Peter also got £100 cash back from his camera purchase.
Peter has also used the Audit facility in Enpass to check on pwned passwords and accounts which was quite informative.
There was also some discussion of the difficulties of modern travelling by air or by train.
We have now had a Committee meeting and the following programme has been generated, but as usual, if anyone would like to introduce a new topic instead we would be delighted to accommodate them. Please note that because Peter cannot attend the meeting in May the AGM has been moved to the June date.
| ICENI Future programme 2019/2020 | ||
| 2019 | ||
| July 17th | A Retro Evening - Computing, Gaming and old Computers | All |
| August 14th | N.B. Date: Social Evening - TBA (but possibly Crown Manningtree) | All |
| September 18th | Home Automation - NEST | All |
| October 16th | Programming - XML Web Technologies and Go | All |
| November 20th | Slide and Video Evening | All |
| December 18th | Gadgets and Party Evening | All |
| 2020 | ||
| January 15th | Winter Social Evening: Suggestions welcome. | All |
| February 19th | Chrome OS and Linux Apps. | All |
| March 18th | AI - Pattern recognition etc. | All |
| April 15th | Accounting Software | All |
| May 20th | AGM - Cloud Computing | All |
The Social evenings dates and venues are just suggestions at this stage.
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.org.uk
Membership fee currently £15, visitors free.
"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."
However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)
Our website URL is
http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website. If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.