Past Meetings


05 - 13 - 2005

Six of us gathered at St. James' undercroft to share lunch and mac stuff. (Tom B, Jim P, Bob S, Bill N, Keith D, and Jack H). The BYO lunch meeting at high noon seemed to work well.

AppleWorks 6.2 is the workhorse Mac app that works on PPC and Intel - OS 8.1 thru OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard with Rosetta). A demo of how to use one feature of AppleWorks (Paint window) to help visualize a home improvement plan was given by Tom. Using a digital picture of his garage and driveway, he used various painting tools to draw retaining walls and potential landscaping on a steep bank near his house (see pictures). A quick picture of final results can be captured by using the Command-Shift-4 combo (the greatest single reason for buying a Mac).

Another useful feature of AppleWorks is 'Presentations' where a slide show can be set up by individually importing pictures, text and artwork into a series of slides. The show can be played out to a regular TV via a video RCA jack for easier group viewing.

A fancier slideshow can also be done using OSX iPhoto program where a folder full of jpegs can be imported with one key stroke, then played as a show with music, titles and transitions. Tom had a continuous iPhoto slideshow projecting during lunch, showing pictures of his son's fire-fighting experiences in the national forests of Montana a few years ago.

Read interesting article on how to gracefully abandon AppleWorks beyond Snow Leopard.

Tip: If your AppleWorks seems to be getting slower launching, try deleting aliases found in Recent Items folder to improve performance. ( Hard Drive/Users/username/Documents/AppleWorks User Data/Starting Points/Recent Items/ ). Find more great tips at AppleWorks support and FAQ.

Another great way to create, edit and view slide presentations is to use Microsoft's PowerPoint for Mac (which comes as part of a bundled package called Microsoft Office. The PowerPoint files can be transferred cross-platform for both Mac OS and PC Windows. PowerPoint 98 for Mac Viewer (download at this site- 6.4mb) is a freeware to allow Mac users to view and print (but not create or edit) PowerPoint Presentations. (See system requirements). ThinkFree Office.(retail $49) is a low-cost application which allows you to create and edit (as well as view) presentations compatible with Powerpoint.

How to add Fonts (such as 'Irrep' shown here) to your System (read more)

How to make reflective 'Chrome' letters with Corel Painter (read more)

GB Guitar Cable - (Retail $25 from Griffin Technology) 1/4"guitar cable-to-stereo mini plug for plugging a guitar directly into a Mac audio-in port. If your Mac doesn't have an audio-in port, use the USB iMic (below) as a port.

iMic
- Retail $39.99 (cheaper on Amazon) made by Griffin Technology in Nashville, this is a universal audio adapter USB device that adds stereo input and output to your Mac or PC. Connect virtually any microphone or sound input device to your iBook, PowerBook, PowerMac or other Mac or PC with a USB port. And iMic supports both Mic level and line level input. It also supports line level output for connecting speakers or an external recording device. Convert those old LP albums to digital and burn a CD!

Other Helpful Tips

iFelix - great help site for those using both Mac OSX and Windows XP computers

How to compose e-mail offline for online mail programs such as Yahoo (read more)

How (and why) to empty Cache, clear History, delete Cookies in your web browser

Tip for OSX Users - did you know that you can drag icons of your favorite apps to top of Finder Window for quick shortcuts? This could free up some room on your Dock as well.


Link to the H'port MUG Official Website

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Hammondsport Mac Users Group - Hammondsport, NY 14840 - www.hportmug.com