Past Meetings

10 - 25 - 2005

On a dreary and rainy afternoon, nine people took a break from their busy schedules to talk about Macs and share a pizza (thanks Bob). Attending were: Tom B, John R, Ed K, Henry C, Bob S, Jim P, Bill N, Jack H and Bob G.

Most of the meeting revolved around discussion and demos of various methods of transferring files from one computer to another.

Transferring Files on Mac

Floppy Drive ---1.4mb - use built-in Floppy Drive on older macs or external USB Floppy Drive ($37 at OWC) - USB is cross-platform (Window PC & Mac)- floppies can be easily reformatted for either PC or Mac by using Desktop Menu > Erase - a floppy disk was dissected at the meeting for educational purposes- remains viewable here.

Zip Drive --- built-in or USB -100mb ($79 at Small Dog) - Zip disks can be reformatted by using Iomega Tools application that comes on the Zip disk - can be erased and reformatted many times before the infamous 'click of death' occurs- zip disks have a proven track record for durability and compatibility at low cost

Jaz Drive --- 1GB & 2GB- similar in appearance to the Zip disk but much larger!

CDRW Burner ---external USB/FireWire ($97 at OWC)---blank CD-Rs only 17 cents each at Target - package of 100 for $17)

E-mail Attachment ---use compression such as DropStuff to reduce file size if necessary

Ethernet Network (OS8-9) using cross-over cable ($10) (Note: newer macs do not need a 'crossover' cable - a straight ethernet cable will do). If you have an old and new mac, use the crossover. MonoPrice - great on-line place to buy cables of all kind at VERY reasonable cost - quick shipping too. (A 10-foot USB cable is $2.35 - a 25-foot SVGA cable for powerpoint projector is $2.95)

---Apple Help : How to connect two macs using OSX 10.4 Tiger via ethernet here

---Apple Help : How to share files using OSX 10.4 Tiger via your ethernet network here

USB-2 Jump Drive - range in capacity - 256mb sold for $29 at Target - very tiny unit, fits on a keychain - cross-platform (PC or Mac) - Drivers for OS8.6 and Windows available here

External HD --- 40gb as cheap as $79 (notebook 2.5" 5400rpm at OWC) - get a FireWire enclosure for $39 here

Fire Wire (target disk) --- before booting up, connect two macs w/ firewire cable & make one a 'target' by holding T- key on bootup on that computer. The FireWire symbol will appear on the display of the target mac and a disk icon will appear on the other computer. Files can be dragged and dropped from one mac to the other.

iDisk --- upload / download files from website storage you can purchase for $99 a year. Host your own websites (such as this one that you are looking at).

Digital Cam --- take pictures and download them directly to your Mac via camera/USB cable. Tip: you can use a camera to take a picture of your Mac monitor when trouble-shooting where you can't record the data any other way (such as on boot-up or freeze).

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Other stuff:

Macintosh System Library (All Updates for OS7-8-9-X) ---available on one CD for $25 at Apple Rescue - these are all available at Apple as free downloads- you must have the original system already installed to run the updates. Very handy - all on one CD.

New features in TextEdit (OSX Tiger)
---Tables - Open TextEdit - in Menu select Format>Text>Table
---View multiple JPEGS - you don't have to use the default iPhoto to view your digtal photos - just associate jpeg files with Preview by using the get Info window - select Preview - apply to all. Open a folder of jpegs, select all, then double-click on one jpeg to launch Preview. In Desktop Menu select View>Slideshow

Anamorphic Art came up in a discussion. Anamorphic means to re-form. DaVinci first mentioned it in his studies. Michelangelo painted giant Biblical anamorphic figures hovering over viewers on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, Renaissance palaces had flat trees painted on walls that seemed to be growing in 3-d. In our culture, anamorphic art is used in pragmatic 'STOP' painted on street intersection to be viewable from low level by driver. See some neat examples of sidewalk chalk drawings done in England, France and Germany by artist Julian Beever here. This site was posted using a cool freeware called J'Album which easily converts a batch of images into web-ready html pages, including a thumbnail slide viewer. For more info about anamorphic art, click here.

Link to H'PORTMUG homepage

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