ICENI News March 2006

This is an internal club meeting and not one with an outside speaker since neither of the two people approached was able to give a firm commitment to the date. The committee have therefore had to fill in at short notice with this topic. Hopefully you will find it interesting to see how others use their computers.

The aim of this evening is for members to present a hands on talk on how they use their own machines and what interests them. Perhaps about 20 minutes per person would suffice. Peter is going to set the ball rolling with a discussion about teletext, share prices and accounting with photography and other topics thrown in! I think Gareth will then take over...

Last Meeting: Wednesday 1st February "A JPEG slideshow"

I was very pleased at the very good attendance at this meeting and also at the high standard of photos and presentations.

Tony

Tony gave us a tour from his Polish holidays and old family portraits. Sheringham.

One sign on a station platform read " No Entry - Staff only", which amused us Can it be interpreted as "General public allowed in"?

Many other interesting shots of Bremerhaven and ships, boats and trains. Also an Enigma machine. Finally returning to Norwich.

Michael

After the ships and trains we had the aeroplanes. These were filmed at the Duxford air show on 16th October 2005. Mainly privately owned I believe.

Dgs

Dgs gave us a slick OHP2 presentation ranging from shots of Framlingham Castle to the Dutch RISCOS show and visits to Brussels, Dunkerque and Greece. Including a speed trap anecdote.( He was let off! ). Nice shots of the Acropolis.

Frank

Frank used Swift JPEG for his slideshow which allows zooming and drawing on the displayed JPEG (non-destructively). This was running on Virtual RPC-SE. However some of the controls only work correctly on a real RISCOS machine. This software may be downloaded freely. The slideshow times may be altered. Frank showed some curious cat pictures and vintage family photos. He also demonstrated his high zoom range with shots of Wivenhoe across the river with his latest camera.

John Rye

John's slideshow using OHP2 was of 4 nights in Bangkok. This included the temple tour including a shot of a solid gold Buddha weighing 5 tons! These temples were extremely ornate. In Thailand there is a great contrast between opulence and poverty. The Summer Palace of the Kings was also very interesting. The river taxis were also intriguing being driven by car engines at high speed. The Flower and vegetable markets were very colourful and the Royal Barge Museum was impressive.

Gareth

Gareth showed shots of Harwich, Felixstowe Pin Mill Orwell Park School and Orford and one red car!.

Peter

Peter showed holiday shots from Italy(Venice - canals, Florence - Ponte Vecchio, various shop window displays, Padua street scenes. He also showed some wedding photos which he had edited in Photodesk with before and after shots.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to an altogether good evening showing that we are all interested in photography and are getting great advantage from being able to display, store and process photos on computers.

A Video Projector for the Club

We have found several projectors which lie within our budget range of £500-600 and have reasonable specifications. We will make a decision on which one to purchase in April when you will have paid your next year's membership subscriptions! In the meantime if anyone knows of a particular make or model to go for then please let the committee know as we are still gathering information in order to make the best decision.

Editorial

I made an appeal for the IRC sessions in my last editorial but have so far not received any response from members. I would draw your attention to the next section which is a letter from Audrey Hart who, although not a club member, has been a devoted participant in the IRC sessions over the years. Please let us have a discussion about this.

A letter on the IRC sessions

There may be some of you who don't know who I am as I live far too far away (North Yorkshire) to attend ICENI meetings. In fact, the only gathering I have been able to attend was one of the Summer dinners at Manningtree, I think that was three years ago.

Anyway, I am Audrey!! I joined computer-corner with my sister about seven years ago, following an article written by 'geffers' (WHCC), in an Acorn magazine. My sister and I were both driving Acorns at the time!! (It was with mixed feelings I joined the 'Windows' set in 2001!) Since about 1998, I have been a regular attendee on #Computer-Corner.

It took me a few hours, but I have just read most of the logs for 2005! (I was on the channel every Tuesday evening, all through the year, except the odd time (5) when either me or my computer was sick!!) I even went on the channel from America during my holiday!!

I must say that until the very last evening, there was lots of laughter on the channel !! :-)

The regulars were Wizzco (Paul Moore), Viking (Royal Moore), Ragga (Gareth Woolridge) and myself. Semi- regulars(!) were TopDog (Peter Dunn)... DavidG... Michael.... And very welcome, cheery, friends of mine, Pipex and Bozodog - from USA - who came a lot... SomeUser and Coyote`, also American friends, who joined in sometimes.

Sadly, in the fourth quarter of last year, the chat became less and less and I found I spent many hours just sitting in front the screen hoping for someone to come and say something! This became worse and worse. Then the server 'boss', Wolfgar, was blaming me for the break-down of the channel and his appearance on Tuesday evening 27th December - where he slanged me without relief - was not easy...... (to put it mildly...) I decided to call it a day.

But it seems hardly fair that we should loose our chat channel even if only partly because I had had a quarrel with Wolfgar. (Sadly not an unusual event) To give him his due... he helped Computer-Corner get started... kept the channel open and was always ready to help when and where he could.

People enjoyed the channel. I would love to see it restart and I will happily rejoin - if you'll have me! But I am not prepared to go on the wolfchat server.... sorry. Will join you anywhere else if you like, or I will give you my blessing if you go back there. But please don't let us let it die!!

ICENI Future programme

Date	Topic	Speaker
March 1st 2006	"I use my computers for ... "	Peter, Gareth et al.
April 5th 2006	AGM + Computer games	All
May 3rd 2006	Printing with Uniprint and VA & GIMP print	Tony & Frank et al
June 7th 2006	Outside speaker(TBA)	TBA
July 5th 2006	File transfers	Tony

Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. We will give more details as soon as they are confirmed.

The first visit is free and subsequent visits for non - members is £2. The membership fee is £18 due from the AGM date in April, but may be reduced for those joining late in the year.

Adverts

EAUG News

Continuing our publicity for EAUG events - please see their Website for details of their next meeting.

Special Notice - Insurance

"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.)

Our Website and Email

Following on from a brief discussion at the last club meeting it has been agreed that I should remove a lot of the old newsletters from the website and archive them to CD/DVD. I'll probably not do this before the end of February. If anyone would like a copy of the CD I'm sure this could be arranged.

I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the new website. Our website URL is

Next Meeting: Wednesday 1st March " I use my computers for..." Peter, Gareth et al.