 |
|
Home | About Us | Monthly Meeting | Minutes | Audio/Video Presentations
Become A Member | Member's Library | Links | Contact Us | Yahoo Tech Group |
|
And in case you're wondering, Lee McIntosh (the webmaster) has been recording the minutes since April of 2008...
|
|
Happy New Year MacNuts Yes, your fearless leader has finally returned! And what a long strange trip it's been . . . . I feel very bad that we so quietly passed our 1 year anniversary, and didn't get to celebrate , but am open to suggestions as to how you would all like to make that up. I know the holidays tends to sap everyone and we don't start pulling together till February, BUT, we at least have our January meeting to look forward to. Steve Pollard has had the foresight to book our regular room at the Hilo Lagoon Center for the next year. So one thing is for certain, we WILL be meeting the 3rd Thursday of each month there, at 5:30 pm, starting with January 20. Steve will be re-sharing his experience with converting tape to CD. Speaking of which, I have pulled together a New Years CD present for the group. It has a current copy of the 10.3.7 combo upgrade , Cocktail, Garageband Jampack 1, 2, & 3, an article from Macworld on Tape to CD, and a few other goodies. Be sure to bring a blank CD to our meeting so we can burn you a copy. Another highlight for the meeting will be Steve Jobs keynote speech from the January Macworld conference in San Francisco, which at this writing is still one day away. We are promised to hear some wonderful announcements about all things Macintosh. If you haven't heard the leaks, and want to snoop, one of my favorite Mac news sites is: Not only do they have their own news, but links to some other very relevant news sites concerning Apple. This should more than quench your thirst for Mac News. In the next year we want to grow our little organization a bit more. We have already grown in membership. We started with 7 members that day in November of 2003, and we now number 178 Mac enthusiasts. And our numbers are growing. It seems with the advent of the iPod, switchers are on the rise, and they certainly need our support. It would be great to plan some kind of public exhibition . We once thought of having a recycle Mac event of some sort. Maybe someone out there has a good idea brewing? We also need to pull our organizational skills together a bit. I was gone on a family emergency for nearly 2 months, and the group kind of limped along, so I want to prevent that from happening in the future. I do need to extend a very warm MAHALO to Patrick Donegan for taking charge of the meetings in my stead. Are there a few more folks who have the time and inclination to take a task to help keep us on track. With all the eggs are in one basket, when that basket gets waylaid, we don't all want to starve, do we? If we just have a few more folks who are willing to do one task and possibly attend a planning meeting once a month, that would help. So far it's myself organizing the meeting content, newsletters, and email, Margaret Strubel doing press releases, and Ann Kalber holding up our website. See a place you can fit in? This marks our first issue of our newsletter to be exclusively on our website. It was getting quite unruly to send out newsletters to everyone, so we decided to send out iCard announcements to let you know when it will be available on site. Finally, what would you, our membership, like to see at our meetings, on our website, or as activities. Remember, we are our own resource, and can only make each other happy when we know each others needs. Kinda like a relationship , huh? Well this IS a relationship, we are all HAWAII MACNUTS! A breed that is not so rare anymore. So keep your suggestions flowing in, either in a response on our website or an email... I look forward to seeing all of you who can make it at our January 20 meeting at the Hilo Lagoon Center conference room on the ground floor. And , don't forget to bring a show and tell. I know Santa was very busy at the Apple Store this year! Your Head MacNut, Dawn Hurwitz |
|
October Newsletter Aloha Hawaii MacNuts, This is the first edition of our newsletter to be posted on our web site. It is the most convenient way to inform you all of what we're up to. In future, you will only receive an iCard postcard directing you to the site with our username and password for the members' section. I had a wonderful trip to Chicago and San Francisco, that of course included a trip to the LARGEST Apple store in the WORLD! (plus a few smaller ones!). The new G5 iMac is completely awesome in it's simplicity and elegance. Anyone who has not seen it, I suggest you take a stroll over to Apple's web site to have a peek. Margaret Strubel and Ann Kalber did a great job of steering our last meeting, I'm told. Which brings to mind a subject you all may be tired of hearing, it's about having a new, larger, wired home for our meetings. Currently, Steve Pollard has graciously extended our stay at Hilo Lagoon Center (Big MAHALOS, Steve) to included the 3rd Thursday of EVERY month beginning in December, for the next year. However, it seems our group is taking on a life of it's own. Being that we live in a community who lives so far away from each other, it's easy to see how folks can get so enthusiastic about ideas and questions that they might have and go off in separate conversations about them. Sadly, this does infringe on the ears of those who are trying to focus on the presentation or discussion at large. We certainly don't want to discourage this exchange of information, but to facilitate. Stepping into the hall at this point could help, till a larger space can ease this dilemna.Or possibly save the conversation till the end of our meeting's "social hour". However don't be surprised if these separate conversations in group continue, it will bring out the mother hen in me :-) I understand that Ann made an excellent presentation outlining how to build a web site. Carolyn chimed in a good webhosting company named Monkmedia.net . Ann's personal favorite site building program is Dreamweaver, which she uses to facilitate our site. Alex brought his Airport Express for Show & Tell.
There is a new section on our site for MEMBERS ONLY .This section will allow access to more sensitive info that is not available to non-members. Also, only members can list items for sale in the classified section, which you are all encouraged to do. Another idea brought up from a member is to submit questions before the meeting (I suggest a minimum of 1 week prior), to distribute to more experienced users so that we can have fuller answers. Also, I would like to remind everyone that we want to spend about half an hour on Q&A in the beginning of the meeting to segue into the "presentation" for another half hour, then a bit of Show & Tell into a more relaxed "Social hour" to bring us to 7:30 MAX. You know we DO have a YAHOO group listed under hawaiimacnuts for further and more immediate discussions. Just go to Yahoo, look up Groups, and look up our group name and register. It's really quite easy. Then you can present your queries conveniently and usually get fairly swift answers. Our next meeting is coming up pretty quick, sorry for the late notice; Tuesday October 19, 5:30pm at Hilo Lagoon Center. Presentation will be on "Garage Band". Bring a Show & Tell We are also very happy to announce our 1st year Anniversary on November 20, which will be celebrated by a pot luck PuuPuu's social affair on that date at 4pm at Ann Kalber's home. Info will be listed in the members section with a map to get there. We do want to solicit help at this time though. We would like for some folks to commit to a few helpful positions : come early & Help set-up, stay late and help clean-up, and folks to commit to bring these items in lieu of puupuu's:
You can respond to Ann or Dawn |
|
July 2004 Backing Up-Terminology, Concepts and Software by Bob Harris Hard Disk- the main storage component of your computer system. Disks come in different sizes usually measured in Gigabytes. These disks are the filing cabnet for your computer. There is one internal hard disk and you may connect additional hard disks either internally on towers, or externally. They can be SCSI interface, USB, or Firewire. If a Hard disk has an operating system on it, this disk can be bootable (meaning you can start the computer from this disk if it has a copy of the operating system on it), except in the case of USB disks. The hard disk must be formatted with a drive utility in order to work with your computer. The information on your hard disk is placed in sectors, and because the data over time is written in sectors that are not always next to each other, your computer finds these sectors with data by using a map called the hard disk directory or catalog. It is often called the Btree catalog. At times this directory may become corrupted an you have to fix this using a utility such as Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro, or Drive 10. Volume-A hard disk may be divided into one or more volumes, or partitions. Each partition or Volume may have a different Operating system and may be booted from. Generally you have to create the partitions or volumes when you format the hard disk, which clears the disk of all the data on it. Media for Backup. There are many choices in media for backup and each has advantages and disadvantages. Among the types of media are Hard disks, floppy disks (no longer installed on Macs but can be purchased as an external drive), removable disks such as Zip, Jazz, Optical disks, CD discs (called CDR for recordable-non erasable), CDRW for re-writable, erasable CDs, DVDs , DVD RAMs which are rewriteable, Tape drives, offsite online storage, and flash memory. CD's and DVD's are the most permanent, floppy and zips are the least. Tapes fall in the middle, but are inexpensive media for the amount of storage. Backups can be different types. First is a complete backup or copy of everything on your disk. Under OS9 and below you could do this by making a Finder Copy from one hard disk to another by simply dragging the entire Volume Icon from one Volume to a second volume on a different hard disk. If the disk was small enough you could do this to an optical disk as well. The copy would be bootable as well Under OSX you cannot make a Finder copy of a Volume and have it be bootable. You must use a utility for this. Archive a copy of your data made at a certain time or date, usually for long term storage. Generally if this is an archive for a long time, the best choice is a CD or DVD. Usually an archive is just a backup of data rather than an whole hard disk. Backups to different media require some thought about the way backups are made. Backing up a hard disk from one disk to another with a utility in OSX is called Cloning the disk. All the files are copied and the two volumes match, and both are bootable. Several free and shareware utilities can be used for this: Apple's Disk Restore part of Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, Synchronize Pro, Super Duper, Xupport, Retrospect, MacBackup See complete list from Randy Singer Below When you do this the downside is that you may be copying a corrupted file and will have no way to go back unless you have an archive of the earlier version, or are using a software program that allows incremental backups While you can do an incremental backup to a second hard disk, it is often better to make an incremental backup to a removable media set such as CD's, or Tape, or DVD using s program like MacBackup, or Retrospect. In such cases you can go back in time to a saved version that is earlier in case something is copied later that is no good. In some cases this earlier version is called a Snapshot. full backups. During an incremental backup only the files that have changed since the most recent backup are included. That is where it gets its name: each backup is an increment since the most recent backup. The time it takes to execute the backup may be a fraction of the time it takes to perform a full backup. Backup4all uses the information it has recorded in its catalog file (.bkc) to determin whether each file has changed since the most recent backup. The advantage of lower backup times comes with a price: increased restore time. When restoring from incremental backup, you need the most recent full backup as well as EVERY incremental backup you've made since the last full backup. For example, if you did a full backup on Friday and incrementals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the PC crashes Thursday morning, you would need all four backup container files: Friday's full backup plus the incremental backup for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. As a comparison, if you had done differential backup on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then to restore on Thursday morning you'd only need Friday's full backup plus Wednesday's differential. Full backup is the starting point for all other backups, and contains all the data in the folders and files that are selected to be backed up. Because full backup stores all files and folders, frequent full backups result in faster and simpler restore operations. Remember that when you choose other backup types, restore jobs may take longer. Read full backup page for more details. Our backup software performs full backups. Differential backup A differential backup contains all files that have changed since the last FULL backup. The advantage of a differential backup is that it shortens restore time compared to a full backup or an incremental backup. However, if you perform the differential backup too many times, the size of the differential backup might grow to be larger than the baseline full backup. Read differential backup page for more details. Our backup software performs differential backups. Incremental backup An incremental backup stores all files that have changed since the last FULL OR DIFFERENTIAL backup. The advantage of an incremental backup is that it takes the least time to complete. However, during a restore operation, each incremental backup must be processed, which could result in a lengthy restore job. Read incremental backup page for more details. Our backup software performs incremental backups. Mirror backup A mirror backup is identical to a full backup, with the exception that the files are not compressed in zip From Randy Singer Author MacBible The Restore tab in Apple's Disk Utility (OS X 10.3-only) works almost exactly like CarbonCopy Cloner. It makes an exact copy of a disk or a disk image to another disk. It can even make a bootable clone of your disk. The only options are to erase, or to leave alone the data on the destination disk, and to do a checksum integrity test of the data being copied. However, this feature is not designed to do incremental backups. So it really is more of a cloning tool rather than a complete backup program. With a .Mac subscription you get a copy of Backup: Retrospect Data Backup $49 Deja Vu $20 (comes highly recommended by users I've spoken with) Intego's Personal Back-Up $60 Carbon Copy Cloner (donation requested) iMsafe $15 iBackup free SuperDuper $20 Revival $25 Synchronize! Pro X $100 Synk X (now free) Tri-BACKUP $49 BackupToolkit $50 LaCie SilverKeeper (FREE!) BUUP4_for_cron ($5) Psync (Free and open source) SwitchBack ($30 and up) Folders Synchronizer X $40 Chronosync, $20: DiskGuardian $70 (A multi-function integrated application.) Impression $25 rBackup free HELIOS has released an HFS-aware version of gnutar. Impression $25 CopyCatX $40 MimMac $10 DV Backup is a shareware application for MacOS X 10.2 which lets you backup computer files to a domestic DV or Digital8 camcorder via a FireWire connection. You can backup about 10-15 GB on each tape. BRU $500 BackupScript FREE Backup Simplicity $20 first year; $15/year thereafter. BackUp Application and ScreenSaver by LARA-A FREE rsyncbackup FREE (a PERL backup script) BounceBack Professional $99 Pocket Backup $20 Impression Courtesy of Randy B. Singer How To Deal With Common OS X 10.3 Panther Problems |
| July 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Centre - Conference Room
Bob Harris will make a presentation on System back-ups (using Retrospect), and also printing on different papers. Bob Harris is one of our new members from Hawi. He has vast usergroup experience, particularly having organized 2 longtime Mac User Groups on the mainland. |
|
June 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Centre - Conference Room After the terrific Press Releases sent out by our "Publicity Concierge", Margaret Strubel, there was tremendous response. 30 members took part including 1 from Hawi , 2 from Kona, and several from Oceanview! Because there were so many new members, we all went around the room to introduce each other and our uses for Macs. We watched a video on Hidden Capabilities by Chris Breen for Macworld. Will be happy to send a copy of the video by email (98mb). This video was made available soley for official MUGs. Next, Carolyn Clark made a presentation on how to make a slide show in iPhoto, and export to a Quicktime file (compressing it), and being able to send to others. Another presentaton was made on Adobe CS of how to make a contact sheet. Morgan Sky reminded to join our Yahoo group. Go to Yahoo.com and get a free email account (if you don't already have one of those 100mb deals!), find Yahoo groups and join hawaiimacnuts and click join group. Many burning questions you might have to discuss can be facillitated this way. There was some discussion about wifi access as a result of my going to Honolulu last month and staying at the Ala Moana Hotel, and accessing the Apple Store's broadband from my balcony and the help of a free application called Mac Stumbler (download @ Macstumbler.com). A new member (who we will hear much more about) Bob Harris has info he can email you to help with further surfing outside your home; email him for wifi access to get a map of access points. We also heard of a warchalking website, where on the mainland folks mark the sidewalk corners with chalk where wifi is available. AND jambajuice in Kona has wifi. Let us know of spots you may have found. |
|
Compression: Video & Audio Taught be Steve Szabo from Honolulu. The Hawaii Mac Nuts would like to extend our mahalos to Steve Szabo for coming over to the Big Island and instructing our first workshop. It was a success and we look forward to being part of more workshops on the Big Island. Mahalo also to Waiakeawaena Elementary School for allowing us to use their Mac Lab (it was a thrill just to be surrounded by so many Macs)
Mahalo to Steve Pollard for the financial scholarships he made available and to all the participate in our first Hawaii Mac Nuts workshop. |
| May 18, 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Centre - Conference Room
Our May meeting showed that our most favorite topic is "Show and Tell". Steve Pollard brought his Griffin iMic, and there was a joint presentation of several members on how to record from your old cassettes or LP's to your computer. Teri brought a whole bag of goodies starting with a Proscope ($199), which is a USB microscope to look at objects close and see them on your computer screen, WAY COOL! Also an "In Motion", by Altec Lansing ($149), a speaker system that turns your iPod into a boom box. AND a mini iPod (green) PLUS , iSight. We all oohed, ahed, and drooled over the booty, which was, she mentioned, borrowed from her grade school students! GB Hajim played a demo of his latest animation called Strange Frame. He is also looking to hire someone who knows how to do 3D animation who likes science fiction. Poser , is the program, and just creativity is all you really need. Carolyn Clark brought us a demo of her graphics finesse, truly awesome work. We are a group of incredible talent! She has plans in future to hold a presentation on photoshop, and has a friend who will be doing one on scanning possibly in the next couple of months. So, please try to attend our next meeting for some more surprise show and tell, all the latest in Mac, and , well, check in our website to be really clear! Also read about our first successful event, Audio & Video Compression Workshop. Please feel free to forward this to all your Mac buddies. Encourage them to sign up as members at our site. It is still free, and that could change in the near future as we get more organized. We started in November of 2003 with 7, and have grown to 103 members this month!!! |
| April 24, 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Centre - Conference Room
This last meeting was a meeting of the iBooks, although we had a few powerbooks, but it is evidenced by the photo below. Thanks Tom for getting such a distinguished photo of our group.
We reviewed our workshop, Compression: Video and Audio. Twelve participants were needed and PC users would be encouraged to attend. Steve Pollard offered schaolarships to 3 folks who would like to attend for $25 each. Thank you Steve Much was shared about wireless networking, especially the fact that you don't need an Airport to do so. By using a wireless router (I use a D-Link) and an airport card in your computer, you can get the same results. And even cheaper if you have cards in two computers and one of them is online that can act as a base station. We look forward to the day when we can have online access at our group and with all our laptops be able to share. It was also discussed how to set up antenae's to link your signal further. Then there was the VERY lively surprise show-and-tell presentation by Patrick Donegen. He brought in a box of all kinds of techy gizmos and connections and passed them around the room. Here is a partial list ; Video cable to plug into powerbook, Hi grade audio cable, firwire 6 pin cable, usb hard drive, adapter for audio mic, DVD -DVI cable, Y adapters, banana jack dual plugs for speaker level. So you say it might sound boring? It was really quite informational and was decided we should have a show and tell as a regular topic. If you have a new device or idea to share, you are welcome to bring it. There was also a lively discussion on sharing what we know , and focusing on what we use Macs for in our work. If there is something you are doing that could be shared , we would be happy to give you presentation time at a future meeting. Some of the topics brought up were; Margaret-Quark, Ann-Screen SAVER , Patrick- Security on Internet .mac, Satellite, Internet, Scanning photos Carolyn?, Old Movies 16mm or 8mm convert to digital, Dealing w/SPAM, Demo. Some more pictures below of the meeting:
|
|
March 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Conference Room January 15, 2004 Ann Kalber brought a very recent video shot by her husband Mick of the latest lava shower flow. It was some very impressive footage, that they sold to national news. In future we plan to have all our announcements on our website, and you will receive an email with a link to it to remind you to visit. We are working on a different email system so as to be able to suppress the addresses as many of you have showed concern for the web spiders who collect them. Dawn Hurwitz made a small presentation on computer maintenance tips, that included a lively discussion participated by all. It was also discovered in the meeting 9 out of 10 users are using Mac OS X, an encouraging fact. We always want to address ALL users, but are happy to have a good group using the latest OS. For OSX, maintenance is slightly different now. No more rebuilding the desktop, and a new repairingpermissions system to straighten out all those little ghosts in the machine. There are also some new utilities out such as "Cocktail" and "Macaroni" which are shareware and very inexpensive. Patrick Donegon also shared how much fun one can have backing up files to a jump drive, and how easy and versitile they are to move files from one computer to another. Ann made a FUN (and envious) demonstration of how to get online using your cellphone and a laptop. It works on CDMA or GSM systems like in Hilo, but unfortunately not digital. She got some really great help from a guy named Cameron at the Genious Bar in the Apple store at Ala Moana. A link to the info Ann received: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/maccellphone/ Terri informed us of a Photoshop cable show on UH channel 55 friday nights 8-9:15PM. The show schedule is at this link: http://www.hawaii.edu/dlit/sched/Grid |
| February 21, 2004 - "The Mermaids Grotto" in downtown Pahoa
Started at 10:30 AM As of February 14, we are now an officially recognized Apple User Group. Nice Valentines Day present, huh? Lot's of input came in with suggestions for our site including a detailed Links page, a Rant's page with your complaints but only if they include solutions, or in the form of a question. Also a where to buy Tech stuff, and personal web page links. AND, a Bulletin Board page that could be accessed by members only. Jim Swearington brought us some more of his wonderful undersea video's. Some really great news is that there is a computer recycle center next door to the old Fiasco's. If you have an old computer you want to get rid of, it's a good place to go so as not to fill up our land fills. Ann Kalber has trasnsmitted the announcement of a special workshop soon to be available to us on Video Compression.Please check our website for more info. It was brought up that we should also sponsor other workshops like a Basic Housekeeping, and Beginners, and Photoshop workshops that could be video'd and then sold as a fundraiser for our group.Other items of interest were that Mac Connection is about the only catalog house that will ship thru the post office. |
| January 15, 2004 - Hilo Lagoon Conference Room
We had a great presentation by GB Hajim last night at our 3rd HawaiiMacnuts meeting. What an exciting prospect to be free of a mouse or track pad and only have a pen to use onscreen? Jim Swearingtonalso showed us some of his diving films that were really terrifc. And Steve Pollard gave a demo of a dictionary program called eReference which can be found at yourdictionary.com, that we may demo again at next meeting because he wasn't able to give it a full show. Thanks so much for all your contributions to our group. As of last night we now are 72 members strong! We also had a good discussion about where to buy products for the best price and what we use to keep up on Mac news with. |
|
Home | About Us | Monthly Meeting | Minutes | Audio/Video Presentations
Become A Member | Member's Library | Links | Contact Us | Yahoo Tech Group |
