VACANCIES IN COURSES STARTING OCTOBER

Have you been considering enrolling for a course this term but haven't quite got around to putting your name down?

Our trainers are ready and waiting -

-as of today we have vacancies in the following courses during the first half of the term:

 

Mondays:  

Oct 14, 21, 28, Nov 4       Windows 8 Beginners                   9.15 – 12.00  Trainer: Deborah Martin

Oct 14, 21, 28, Nov 4       Windows 7 Beginners                   1.00 – 3.45    Trainer: Dawne Zotz

Tuesdays:   

Oct 8, 15, 22, 29, Nov 5  Windows 7 Beyond the Basics    1.15 – 3.30     Trainer: Michael Myers

Wednesdays:

Oct 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov 6   Hallmark Cards – Beginners        9.30 – 11.45   Trainer: Lily Patterson

Oct 9                                     Skype                                              1.15 – 3.30      Trainer: Bing Kinsey

Oct 16, 23, 30, Nov 6        Facebook                                       1.00 – 3.30      Trainer: Deborah Martin

Thursdays

Oct 10, 17, 24, Nov 7        Word 2010                                     9.15 – 11.45   Trainer Hazel Labka

So, if you are interested in enrolling into any of these courses don’t delay, give us a ring and let us know that you would like to join us.

 

You can ring the club on 9806 5030, or Michael on 9801 1686 – leave a message if no answer -(or mobile: 0432 223 383)

 

We are all looking forward to hearing from you

Michael Myers

Training Co-ordinator

SEPTEMBER MEMBERS' MEETING

Another large mob of members were present at our regular monthly meeting held today to laugh with  our guest speaker Joe Moreno of Smarter Digital Photography.

Joe gave a very entertaining and informative presentation of the latest developments in digital photography. Joe was glad to hear that our Club members use Picasa to crop and improve our digital photos.

Joe spoke about the various ways to transfer pics from your camera to a computer or tablet by cables and cards, and then told us that wi-fi is fast becoming the way to transfer your photos, by way of a Eye-Fi SD 8gb card that is now available with built in wi-fi and makes connecting a camera to your computer/tablet so exciting.

   

A small www.lytro.com/  digital camera that does amazing things in-camera-

like playing around with focus, water painting, have a coloured

subject on a black and white photograph-was demonstrated

by Joe.                                                     

 He played a video that demonstrated new NFC (Near Field Connection) that is used by Sony to separate the lens and body of  their latest digital camera.

Joe brought the members again to laughter when he demonstrated the "Shoe Zoom" technique.....just.walk towards the subject!

Joe was so good, we are going to recommend he speak at next years ASCCA Conference!

The "Mug of the Month was presented to our Club's Foundation Treasurer Jan Gathercole, who is moving to Bowral.

Enjoy youe rural life, Jan!

Secretary Margaret gave members a tour of our club's new website, that is located at

http://parramattacps.org.au/


Go to the website and explore it






PS. If you would like to receive  a notice about my new post on this blog, just put your email address in the box at the top of this post--"Follow by email"....its much easier.....

HOME NETWORKING - Short Course

Another short course, this time Home Networking with Trainer Bing and five other students.

I've always had my printers hard-wired where they are close to the desktop computer. But now with a laptop I am not confined to the outside room when using it. Also, I have recently purchased a printer with wireless.

Bing's course came at the right time, so I could learn about networking and connect my laptops by wireless to the printers out in the back room....no more carrying the laptop outside to print something.

The first hour was speng discussing the advantages and disadvantages, use of moden/routers and setting up the first computer in the new network. And hearing about WAN, LAN, WLAN and MAN ...wow, no WOMAN among this lot!

Bing told us that Microsoft includes networking in its operating system, called HomeGroup for home networks, and he demonstrated setting it up.

At the end, we all had some basic understanding of networks and how to set up a wireless network to share information between our home computers and printers,etc.

Thats the last of the four short courses I have attended our the past four Mondays - its a good way to improve your computer knowledge about different things, and I am glad I made the effort to sign up and attend......

Bing was the Trainer for three of the courses and his experience and knowledge gained during his working career is outstanding, thanks Bing!

FILM MAKING GROUP - AN AWESOME AFTERNOON WITH DEBORAH & JOHN

 Ten of our Club's Trainers and 2 members spent an awesome two hours today learning about Adobe Premiere Elements 11 that delivers video editing tools that are ideal for home users, and anybody who wants  to produce high quality movies and DVDs.

Club President Deborah led the Group through  the Adobe Classroom in a Book's Lesson 1 covering launch of Elements 11, the Quick and Expert views and the various windows and panels, and Premiere workspaces.

Convenor John Moxon played Adobe's video presentation by an awesome american presenter who demonstrated the need to create folders for the source video and other assets prior to opening a new project, and then went on to create an awesome short movie.

Todays Group enjoyed the awesome presentations of Deborah and John. If you are interested in film making, come along to this Special Interest Group - dates and times are listed on the Club website 

http://parramattacps.org.au/

And me....I'm happy that the above group photo, two separate photos stitched together by Windows Gallery Panorama, did not result in anybody having two heads!

CLOUD COMPUTING USING DROPBOX - 9 September 2013

Another day, another course.

This time its a one-day short course on using Dropbox, which is one of the popular cloud computing services that can be used by us "ordinary" persons.

Dropbox provides 2gb of free storage, with additional free storage provided when you refer friends to Dropbox, and they accept and join.


A Dropbox folder is created on your computer, and any file (photo, document) saved to that folder is also saved to the Dropbox website and, most importantly, to all your other computers, tablets, smart phones with Dropbox installed.......and Dropbox will then synchronise all your devices.

 Deborah has taken Christina's photo



and has shared it with Christina and Margaret on the club's computers.

By the end of the course we had learned how to use Dropbox to store and share our files with family members and others, and how to store and view photos and documents on our various synchronised devices.

A very interesting and worthwhile course for members to attend. If you are interested in this short course, contact the office to put your name on the Waiting List for Dropbox.......

Building a new website at ParraPals

Our blogger, John Lee has kindly allowed me to be a contributor to the blog he has been publishing for the club over the past few months.  I do hope I live up to his high standards.

I thought I'd fill you in about our new website, which looks quite different from the "old" one, which I designed in 2007.  It was looking a bit dated and no longer competitive in the annual ASCCA competition.

So at the left, you will see the new look.  It is based on the open source technology www.wordpress.org, which is the most popular blogging application (apart from Google's Blogger the other popular alternative).  In fact WordPress is now one of the most popular website building frameworks, given the power of its added value.  Expert designers are building a wide range of themes and "plug-ins" for WordPress.  These save "not so savvy" website builders a lot of work, learning sophisticated code to create website facilities that leave us saying "how did they do that?"

This blog - A volunteer at Parramatta Computer Pals - is based on a single page and many posts.  It is built with the Google tool Blogger, which we sometimes teach at ParraPals.  A Wordpress blog is generally set up much the same.

But Wordpress is more than a blogging format, it also has the capability to create a web-based Content Management System (or CMS).  When used as a powerful website, Wordpress generally has many pages as well as posts or articles.  

It also offers widgets which display common features such as a Search window, Calendar, Events management, Categories and Tags which display every post classified in a particular category or topic. You can see how I have arranged these widgets on each main page.  I have not used Widgets on sub-pages, because I preferred to have a one column layout for much of the content.  You can see some "widgets" on the right.

As well as widgets, Wordpress has many free or commercial "themes" to choose from, and it is reasonably easy to choose colours and styles (within limits unless one is very technically competent).  WordPress makes it relatively easy for a computer savvy but not so savvy website builder to create a decent website.  It certainly helps to know various web design languages like "HTML" or "CSS" but not so necessary to know PHP or other web languages in detail.

On our website, you can type in any word you like and the CMS will search all pages and posts to find relevant material and list them.  You can then click on any one of these pages and posts you choose. Sometimes a search word or phrase eg "president" or "course timetable" will bring up a number of pages, so you might have to be more specific eg "Term 4 timetable".

This particular illustration of the Home page brings up a photo of last year's Christmas party.  But don't expect that to happen all the time.  The website will display a variety of header photos randomly. 

The website uses the same URL (web address) as the former website - www.parramattacps.org.au but it automatically transfers to the /wp folder behind the scenes.

Some of the most valuable information is hidden behind the Password Protected link.  All financial members are eligible for registration with a user name and password to see this section.  So please email me at webmaster@parramattacps.org.au and ask to be registered.  Hopefully all new members will be shown how to do this as soon as they are introduced to website and email functions.

So give it a go. Explore, see what's missing and let me know.

PHOTOBOOK INDEXING & CLOUD COMPUTING WITH GOOGLE TOOLS)

A busy day doing computerpals stuff, first I visited our Secretary (who knows the name of every member!) to get names of members who appear in my recent photobook.

  Because the book is a small history of our Club, I decided to name those members shown in the book. Orders have been received for 14 re-prints of the photobook.

 Thanks Margaret for your help, you are a wonderful Club secretary who is so knowledgeable and involved with our Club and its members.


After leaving Margaret, I had a quick lunch and then drove into Parramatta for Trainer Bing's one-day Cloud Computing using Google Tools course. Although the club uses Google Drive for our course timetables, waiting list, meeting agenda, etc, I signed up for Bing's course to learn the its finer points.

There were four of us students, Peter, George, Ray (pictured with Bing) and myself.

Our two hour course went fast, and by the end we were able to use Google Drive to store and share documents, pictures, etc...and to use Google Web apps to create and edit Word processing files.

One of the benefits of using Drive is that you are able to access your stored items anywhere in the world, on your own computer,laptop, tablet or smart phone... and also on any other computer,etc simply by being online and signing into your Google account. Google provides 15gb free storage for all Google devices, including Drive.

Next week I'll be doing another cloud computing course, Dropbox with Deborah......................