NVMUG eNews 6/19/2004

Last updated 6/23/2004

Round-Table Questions and Answers

Because several people came with questions, and several were eager to share answers, we decided it would be easier to sit around a table, thus a new meeting format evolved - a round-table around a rectangular table. The format worked very well as you will see below.

In this NVMUG eNews

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Round-Table as Reported in the Caledonian-Record

Stephen Farber demonstrates Activity Monitor while Gordon Alexander and Midger Lubot watch at the NVMUG meeting in St. Johnsbury, Saturday.

Macintosh User Group Goes Problem Solving
by Hartley Jim Jackson

The Northern Vermont Computer User Group meeting Saturday became a lively round-table discussion of problems and solutions.

While the NVMUG often has presentations on topics of interest, some of the most entertaining and informative programs have resulted from one person who was willing to share a question or problem with the members who are willing to share their knowledge and eager to help.

In the round-table Saturday, experts and beginners both shared questions, and toward the end the members just naturally formed pairs and small groups to discuss their issues.

Photoshop Problems

Gordon Alexander, a photographer journalist, wanted to know why his computer slows down after a half-hour or so of processing his 6.2 meg images in Photoshop. When he restarts it is fast again for another half-hour or so.

Warren Walker said Photoshop files with large images and many levels can get very large. Photoshop bypasses the system and uses a lot of RAM and scratch disks on the hard drive. It is possible that, even with 500 MB of RAM, Photoshop is slowing down because of heavy use of the hard drive. Also, the files on the hard drive may be fragmented, specially if the hard drive is 70 percent full or more, which would slow the system . Alexander transfers about 300 pictures a month from his hard drive to a CD.

I said that Panther defragments files with less than 20 MB on the fly so that a fragmented hard disk may not be the problem. It is possible, of course, that these files are defragmented when he restarts, and soon become fragmented again if the hard disk does not have enough free space.

Stephen Farber came in later and showed Alexander how to use the Activities Monitor which is in the Utilities folder, to see how much CPU each of the multiple programs is using. He suggested that Alexander use it to see what is happening when his computer slows down.

We hope that this problem is resolved before next months' meeting, but bringing Alexander's iMac to the meeting and having Farber and Walker look at the problem might make an interesting program.

Creating Web Pages

Veer-Tess Frost has a new refurbished G4 iBook from Small dog. She is a writer, and someone puts her work up on a web page. She would like to know how she could do this herself. There were so many different kinds of suggestions I could not capture them all.

Leigh Hurley uses and recommends Adobe GoLive, which someone described as like a high-end word processor except graphical. Someone else said Geof Gonter likes DreamWeaver. There is another less expensive popular program called Front Page.

She could use Word to save her writing in HTML code, though this produces terrible looking code.

Writing HTML code is intimidating at first, but when you work with it, it is not that bad. It gets tricky when working with action, and interactivity, but that is probably not necessary for what she wants to do.

Maybe the best suggestion was to have someone work with her at the start. Someone to set up templates, and possibly style sheets, and show her how to insert her material. That way she can start with a page that has everything except the text, and write the text adding simple HTML tags and possibly simple links to pictures.

She can use her browser, Safari, to review her web page before she uses a program like Fetch to upload it to her web site. She can use View Source under the Safari View menu to see what the HTML code looks like for other web pages.

I showed her a little program, HyperEdit, which I use to view the web page while writing the HTML code. I maintain the NVMUG web site by simply copying a page, replacing part of it with the new text, adding the HTML tags around the text such as ‹p› and ‹/p› to surround a paragraph, adding links to pictures I have uploaded, and then uploading the new HTML file and pictures.

Veer-Tess Frost left the meeting with a book about HTML code from the NVMUG library. The book I use the most is Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst and published by O'Reilly.

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2. More About the Meeting

Hartley pointing at HyperEdit to Veer-Tess Frost, photo by Gordon Alexander.

This month's Words of Wisdom from Richard Lubot ... A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes up a lot more space on a hard drive.

Other comments related to Gordon Alexander's problem....

• Someone said, It is always risky to let software decide what to throw away. But then, some people back up everything before they run any new software.
• I believe Warren suggested using a secondary hard drive for working files and as a scratch disk.

Veer-Tess Frost from Wolcott designed her web site and is paying someone to do it, but it still has typos. She writes a newsletter that she sells about dreams. She saw work on one web browser that looked terrible. Warren said that code saved from a word processor might have 72 character lines with a carriage return at the end. Web pages are not normally 72 characters wide, and, if the translation to HTML inserts a break code for the carriage return, the display will be a mess.

Someone asked if anyone knew about lowering the dot gain for low key pictures with a lot of black background. Someone said you'd have to talk to the printer. Most of them want a digital image in full size JPEG in color.

I suggested he experiment with draft mode, or normal mode, and stay away from best mode. I use draft mode to print most of my text and all my letters, but use best mode when printing a drawing with light thin lines. Draft mode prints a lot faster, saves a lot of ink, and often looks as good or better on ordinary paper.

When you get a message saying it is time to upgrade your software, do you do it? Some do, some don't. Some members have had disasters occur after an upgrade. I often upgrade some of my programs as soon as an upgrade is announced. When it is an overnight download upgrade to the operating system, I generally wait to see what problems are reported on MacFixIt first. Others believe it is safer not to upgrade unless you have a good reason for making the change.

Do you use PayPal? Again, some do and some don't. But never give out any information in response to an e-mail that looks like it comes from PayPal. It is most certainly a fake. Fakes often have misspellings.

I asked, if you have an iPod and a Macintosh computer, do you need a CD drive for your HiFi. Would it be reasonable to load all your CDs onto an iPod or Mac, and then use that in some way to connect to your radio, amplifier, or speakers?

People agreed that you probably do not need the CD player and could file your CDs away. They recommended looking at last month's Macworld which I have not had time to finish. Richard Lubot said that the new AirPort Express may be able to send music to speakers from your Mac without wires.

Someone is having trouble translating a table from MS Works. Someone said, if it cannot be translated with some version of AppleWorks or Clarisworks, CanOpener or Mac Link probably will do the job.

What do you use for virus protection? One person said Virex. The rest said none. Someone recommended the latest Apple security upgrade.

Neil Raphel asked about upgrading to FileMaker 7. Someone said the files are larger for the same number of records in FileMaker 7, but it is a more a true relational database. It has improvements for graphics using display postscript. Filemaker will bend over backward to help if you have any trouble. The latest Mac Addict as the 30 day trial on a CD, but be warned that FileMaker 7 files are not backward compatible with the older version.

Neil said the new eMacs are great. The 17" flat screen is absolutely crisp and a combo drive is available.

Do you use your PowerBook as your main computer? Midge does. She bought the 15 inch because she has to work with two pages on the screen at one time. Richard uses her old 12 inch PowerBook.

Veer likes her iBook because it is easy on power. She can 5 hours of work done every day before she has to recharge it. The only electricity she has at home is from one solar panel. She reads by candlelight. Someone suggested a lantern with LED lights which they saw in a CampMore catalog. Someone else happened to have the catalog in his briefcase.

Warren's father has a small windmill which he put up 40' on a pole with guy wires to get above trees for wind. He said that there is normally a wind when there is no sun to run solar panels.

You can't beat connecting person to person.

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