NVMUG Meeting

Saturday, June 13, 2009

About the Meeting

Midge Lubot and I arrived promptly at 10 a.m. for the meeting. When no one else had shown up at 10:20 we decided that if no one else arrived within ten minutes we would cancel the meeting. Midge was going to participate in the Relay for Life on with the Norris Cotton Cancer Center team starting about 2 p..m. and running all night.

Gordon Alexander arrived from Canada at about 10:25. You can’t just cancel a meeting when a member who lives that far away arrives. Gordon had brought his new used Mac Powerbook which was working fine. He had a question about making a wifi connection when he was in a location that has wifi. We discovered how to make the connection on the wifi at NVRH - see News You Can Use.

Stephen Farber and Richard Lubot arrived while we were experimenting with Gordon’s question, so we had a small but very fine meeting.

I was not sure if there were enough people to say anything about the raffle. Then Stephen’s wife arrived with their daughter Katherine. Katherine was interested in the raffle for the used original iPod Shuffle.

We held the raffle. Everyone entered, and Katherine won the iPod Shuffle, which was just what it should be.

News You Can Use

Making Airport (WiFi) Connections

Once you have set up an Airport Wi-Fi connection at home for your Mac, you do not have anything special to do to use it. When you turn your Mac on, it searches for a Wi-Fi connection. All you have to do is to open your browser, such as Safari, or your email program such as Mail, and start using the Internet.

It is almost that simple to connect your Mac to the Internet at any free Wi-Fi location such as a coffee shop, or the Northern Vermont Regional Hospital. When we started your Gordon Alexander’s it discovered four Wi-Fi signals and listed them for us. The listing disappeared before we selected the signal we wanted, so we clicked on the Airport wave icon at the top of his Mac, and it listed them again. Three signal listings contained a padlock indicating that they required a password. We clicked on the other one which included “guest” in the name. Gordon was connected to the Internet.

If there is no listing without a padlock icon, you will have to ask someone to get the password. Or, if it is a commercial site you will probably have to register and possibly pay a fee to use it. That could make it more expensive, but still it should not be too difficult.

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Spotlight

Gordon Alexander is a photojournalist and had a request for one of his photos. He had accidentally deleted it from iPhoto. He had emailed the picture before in Mail, but he could not find it in his Sent file because had been deleted. He tried Spotlight and Spotlight found the picture along with the text he had sent with it. He does not know whether Spotlight found it in some cached file or where else. The important thing is if you cannot find a file, do not give up until you have tried Spotlight.

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What Cost Secrecy

Stephen Farber recommended that you consider to what lengths you want to go to protect the secrecy of your files. Why do you want to protect their secrecy and from whom. He said that File Vault encrypts your home folder and decrypts your home folder when you open it. With large files this can take a long time, so you might want to ask yourself how practical it is.

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The Quality of Prints

Richard Lubot said that they had good experience with inks from ink4art.com when they had their own business.

Warren Walker who was not at the meeting has studied inks, papers, and how to get the best quality prints. He uses Epson ink on his Epson printer and Red River paper for longer print life and getting the rendition right.

Stephen said that he would use the printer manufacturer’s ink and paper.

Stephen said the big jump in consistent print quality is from RGB to CMYK. The translator (driver) makes the difference.

Gordon said that the professional photographers were adjusting their images to try to get the color just right, and were told to stop by the printers. They were making it more difficult for the printers to get quality printing.

Stephen - if you look at the same web site with two different browsers such as Safari and FireFox side by side, the two will look different.

Stephen said if you can squint, you can adjust your computer’s colors using the software Apple has supplied. It is important to squint, to defocus, to see the perceived gray and not the solid lines. He recommends that you go through the procedure and collaborate it once.

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Wash Hands

My doctor said I could use Super Glue to repair cracks in my fingers, and then use hand creams to prevent them from coming back. A neat trick that worked.

When I told Stephen Farber about problems I was having with my trackpad. He asked if I was using hand creams. He suggested I wash my hands before working with my laptop. It helps.

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Eject your iPod Before Disconnecting

My iPod Nano stopped working. It did not respond to the controls and would neither play tunes nor shut off.

I tried connected my iPod to my laptop, but it did not show in my Finder or in iTunes.

I thought that disconnecting it without ejecting it first might have cause the problem, or that it might have been caused by recent software updates. I tried reinstalling the latest Mac OS X system update. Then my iPod showed in my Finder but not in iTunes.

I started to reinstall the latest iTunes update, but it required having the latest Quicktime update. So I installed the latest Quicktime update next. The Quicktime update required restarting.

After restarting, my iPod showed in the Finder and in iTunes (without reinstalling the latest iTunes update). My iPod is again working fine.

From now on I will be more careful to eject my iPod before disconnecting it.