General Meeting

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the September, 2005 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

Richard Hall started the meeting with announcements. He talked about the moving future meetings to the Hardesty Library in January of 2006. He said that there would not be individual computers at the library for members, but there was more room and better access. There were 16 people present at the meeting and more chairs were needed to seat everyone. The members seemed willing to move to the new location.

Richard said that Don Singleton had offered to do a show in September on Helping Tulsa. Richard asked if the club wanted to hear about the effort to refurbish computers to give away to schools, churches, senior's centers and other non-profits as is done in HelpingTulsa. He said that Don may want volunteers to help with the refurbishing. The club said that they would like to hear about the project.

Richard informed the members of a new user group that had been started in Tulsa to review Microsoft products. The group had a web page at www.tmwug.org and meets at the Tulsa New Horizons Learning Center

Mike Sheehan reviewed the multifunction Microsoft Calculator Plus, a freeware, unsupported program from Microsoft. The program is available here.

Mike said the program offered more functions and a conversion utility that the calculator that comes with Windows does not have.

Mike reviewed Acrylic from Microsoft, found here.

It is the second "Microsoft Acrylic Community Technology Preview" of a Creature House Expression that Microsoft acquired in 2003. The most recent "preview" weighed in at a hefty 82 MB, a sizable download, especially for those with a dialup connection.

Mike brought up some pictures to manipulate and add layers. In comparison with Adobe Elements, Gimp and Acrylic, he said that they basically do the same things, but the menu items are in different locations. He said it is sometimes difficult to find the tools and menus even though you know what you want to do. It was not apparent from looking at the program if there is a limit on how long the program function, as has been the case on other Microsoft beta releases. Mike said there was a previous version and some menus and features of the program had changed in the new version. Mike demoed different filters and layers. He demoed how to lighten tintype pictures and change colors of the images.

Mike demoed Gimp 2.2 which is the latest stable version of that Open Source program. He demoed filters and different affects in that program. He made cartoons and jigsaw pictures and otherwise distorted one of his own pictures.

Mike demoed Adobe Photoshop Elements. He said he had taken some classes at TCC and is most familiar with it.

Mike went back to Gimp and did some more filtering and showed a movie of how to cut images and manipulate photos in that program. Mike distributed CDs to the audience with three Gimp installation files on it.



For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here



Tulsa Computer Society 9/01/2005
Don Singleton, President