Coronavirus Impact Covid-19.
Although we are no longer in full lockdown there are still uncertainties and restrictions. So for the present we are continuing to hold our meetings online.
I hope you are all keeping safe and well and will be able to join us online.
Contact Gareth ( or to iceni@woolridge.org.uk ) if you don't think you are on our meeting list of participants for online meetings if you are interested in joining in; since he is sending out the links prior to each meeting. Just follow the link and follow on-screen instructions.
There is nothing to download or install. We still meet on the third Wednesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. via Jitsi.org Video conferencing. If using a Mac IOS the Safari Browser works correctly for screen sharing your own screen, but this doesn't work for Firefox.
Gareth reckons he can talk about the UniFi network kit, mesh networking (having recently installed his parents house terrible WiFi coverage and QNAP NAS.
Peter has some queries about his Synology NAS software. It sounds very interesting.
Peter mentioned that two of his friends had had their Facebook Messenger accounts hacked. One left his profile photo intact but started suggesting that Peter could apply for a non repayable loan from some charity, which was out of character of his friend. The second had his profile picture replaced by one of a voluptuous female who wanted to engage him in conversation. Both accrual account holders had admitted to being hacked but had just walked away and ignored it.
Duncan said that Messenger was totally unreliable and What's App was almost as bad. Signal was more secure. Peter had all these but did not use them much unfortunately most of his Bowling Club and other relations were using them. Peter put as little on Facebook as possible. He only began using FB for an interest group on MH370 disappearance.
Duncan began the main point of the evening by talking about Vuescan which he had found remembers settings for any scanner you have attached to your computer. So if you have several different scanners it will identify which one has been turned on and load up all the settings data for it. You turn on the scanner first and then run Vuescan. It has a field in its setup screen labelled source which shows which scanner is in use. He then tried running Vuescan without turning on a scanner at all and found that the source field now had "file" in it. So he provided it with a photo file (tiff) which he had previously scanned from film strip as the source file and it has returned a image. He is then able to modify the data to tell it that it came from a negative whereupon it inverts the colours, He could then adjust any controls to improve the picture. There are "Professional" and "Basic" options on features although Duncan usually leaves it on Professional. There are settings to add various effects like to restore colours, set white balance and sharpen. Vuescan is a very good company and the software is very reasonably priced and allows use of almost any scanner ever made.
Duncan had to send his scanner for cleaning and contacted Nikon who told him of another company who would do it. They claimed his machine would not boot and wanted to dispose of it, but he wisely had it returned. However it was now worse than ever. He found a document troubleshooting guide. It showed his light source was faulty. He found he could adjust it and then it worked perfectly! (Nikon Coolscan Super 5000ED. )
Peter had a Nikon Coolscan III which ran on SCSI on his old PC now running Ubuntu. There is a better cleaning firm Lincoln Scan who are apparently very good but has not yet been tried.
Peter decided to present a section on ON1 RAW photo editing software which he has been using for various tasks with his Panasonic Lumix GX9 camera a couple of years ago . His camera generates 20 MP images and when he tried to use his trusted Aperture software he discovered that it could not manage the larger sized files. In looking into this problem he saw lots of blogs about Apple's plans to kill off Aperture and instead support a new photo App called "Photos" which would also replace iPhoto. However Photos does not have anything like the flexibility and features of Aperture. Photos also grabs any Aperture libraries and RAW or JPEG files and puts them into its Library ignoring the folder structure. Also something Peter did not want to happen as it just uses up too much space on his MacBook Pro. He did find some software to transfer Aperture files in their directory structure which he was able to use to retrieve all his files in their folder structure and save them to external hard drives ; later his NAS. So then Peter found that ON1 RAW software was a very capable program which handles large files and is very comprehensive in its features and is being actively developed and is supported by lots of online tutorials and YouTube videos. Although it is not free it is also lots cheaper than Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. It also has links to Photoshop and can generate file in Photoshop format if required.
Peter showed several features of the software which makes use of AI features in places.
Unfortunately Peter had shared his screen on the Jitsi Session but somehow dropped the session after a while maybe because he pressed the ESC key which he needed to do in ON1 RAW and did not realise that he was for several minutes just talking to himself! In the process the rest of you were sitting wondering what had gone wrong. On viewing the recording it showed he was still in the session but no one could hear or see him and he could not hear them. Very Bizarre! It wasn't until Peter thought it was a bit quiet and asked a question and got no answer that he realised he had lost the session! So the rest of you thought I was having a problem and I can report on what the rest of you discussed in the period until the recording stopped about 15 minutes later. Duncan did send Peter a text but he did not notice that at the time. During this time Duncan mentioned his great liking for DigiKam which was free and was a quite a comprehensive photo editing package including modifying perspective. [ Ed. ON1 RAW can do this too - I'll have to have another look at DigiKam.]
Paul mentioned adding a newer version of DigiKam running on a MariaDB database which had just loaded on top of his earlier settings and preserved them.
They also spoke again about the usefulness of the YouTube videos of RiscOS show presentations. [Steve Revell and Andrew Rawsley.]
When recording was restarted Paul said he had bought a Cloner Alliance Box Pro 
which had HDMI/VGA/AV/input which was passed through to an HDMI output to TV etc. Also it had a USB socket for plugging in a Hard drive to record anything passing through it including streamed Video. Shown here.
Later Peter having rejoined the meeting showed the Video of his family flying out of Elmsett Airfield which he had been unable to run at the Video evening. He then gave a description of using Wondershare Filmora video editing software from Australia again a paid for package. There are lots of Video Editors available and they all work in a similar fashion with a Timeline display with features to add several tracks of Video and Sound which can then be manipulated cut/moved etc. There is a library of different types of transition and many sound features too.
Peter also had some font problems in a file he had downloaded which came out as Gothic and he was unable to find it or change it.
Peter
We are due to have a Committee meeting to define our future programme so if anyone would like to present a talk or suggest a topic to be covered please let us know. As always there is scope for adjustments as we go through the year and we are hoping the Covid restrictions will have eased and we can have Social Evenings. If anyone has a favourite restaurant suitable for our Social Evening please let us know.
Also once the restrictions allow in-person meetings it has been suggested that we alternate our meetings between online and in-person as it has been quite convenient for several of us to avoid going out but still attend a meeting. Gareth suggests this may need a decision at the AGM.
Peter
| ICENI Future programme 2022 | ||
| 2022 | ||
| March 16th | Home Networking and Network Storage | All |
| April 20th | Apps and App Stores | All |
| May 18th | AGM + Extras | All |
MEETINGS WILL NOW BE HELD ONLINE BUT STILL ON THE THIRD WEDNESDAY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. FURTHER DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
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.