July 10, 2010 Meeting
Tony DiPiano opened the meeting shortly after 9 AM. There were about 41 attendees. Visitors included: -
Dennis Wadsworth, who switched from Windows in December. He heard about us from Moe Comeau, while repairing huts at Valley Forge.
- Lee Gamma from Hershey's Mill, heard about us through Carol Campanelli. She is compiling a booklet in iWork for her Class Reunion.
Main Presentation: Mark Bazrod — The Best of Bazrod
[Note: Mark's slides are available online here.]
Mark began by playing a YouTube cartoon "iPhone4 vs HTC Evo". (Warning: Contains F-Language. Mark stopped it before much of the foul language was used.)
Mark's first slide had a Bugatti motorcycle. He'd been passed by one on the Autobahn, way in excess of 100 MPH. Next he mentioned that the Web has replaced much of the functionality of User Groups, but MLMUG continues to beat the norm.
Now you no longer need to be technical to use a computer. Books like Missing Manuals can help a lot. Macworld SuperGuides, Take Control, and LeVitus' books are all great. He has 9 or 10 favorite sites he goes to every day.
Mark also attends MacBUS and Macs at PACS. Manuals at Apple Support are helpful. Mark recommends visiting: AppleInsider, Gizmodo, Kirk McElhern, Lifehacker, Mac360, MacOSxhints, Roughly Drafted, Techblog (Silverman), and TechRadar.
Keyboard shortcuts allow you to be more productive. He mentioned iKey, QuicKeys, and Keyboard Maestro. Mark uses preset control keys to switch among 16 apps, instead of Command-Tab. Using the keyboard minimizes the amount of mousing needed.
Activity Monitor gives you insight into the processes executing in your Mac. It displays one line for each process, shows threads, and shows CPU usage. Safari suffers from memory leaks, so you should quit and restart it often. He recommends putting Activity Monitor's pie-chart in the Dock. Virtual memory (VM) usage is much slower than real memory, because it's "swapped" to hard disk. Bob Barton provided the definitions of real, virtual, active, inactive, etc., memory, as well and an explanation of VM swapping.
Preventive Maintenance:
- update software after a couple days
- have a maintenance calendar
- empty trash at least monthly
- delete cache files at least quarterly
- Cocktail, MacHelpMate, MacJanitor, MainMenu or OnyX
- limit desktop icons to 12. Use a Desktop (not) folder
- have a backup system — Time Machine & SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner
- Monitoring utilities — Activity Monitor, MenuMeters, or
TemperatureMonitor.
- use antivirus software if running Windows
Mac Slowdowns: There are several steps for attacking this problem in Mark's
January 2010 column, but none seem to have resolved it, so Mark put out a plea for help.
Mark did a brief demo of Path Finder, which he calls the "Final Cut Pro of file management". He showed ways to use Path Finder's "browser window, drop-stack, and tabbed browsing."
Bootable USB Flash Drive (NOT PPC Macs) — Now that Snow Leopard's footprint has been reduced, you can fit the OS on an 8 GB drive, and still have room left over for a few utilities. Flash Drives are the ultimate in portable troubleshooting. You would still need a 16 GB one for 10.5. Writing the OS to it takes about 2 hours
Text Substitution (new in Snow Leopard) auto expands key short phrases you have previously taught it. It's the System Pref > Language & Text > Text Tab. It does not work in Word, nor Pages. Create them a few at a time, so you can easily remember them.
Networking Two Macs. Specifics are in Mark's
April 2010 column. You can do it wired over Ethernet or FireWire, or wirelessly. Mark asked Linda McNeil what broadband site to test with and she recommended Speakeasy; others recommended SpeedTest.net. Mark showed a table of speed comparisons.
Cloud Computing - We use this all the time without really thinking about it. Can pose a big problem if sites are down, but does not happen often.
File Structures are dependent on personal preference. Color coding is good. Using a space in front of a name will make it appear first alphabetically. Starting a filename with the date is one method. Tagging would be good, but filenames do not have them.
Smart folders are really saved searches. They can get you to to files quickly. They can help overcome user inconsistency.
Archiving Data - Where to store old files; how do you keep track of where they're stored? Possible apps: Media Indexer, Disc Tracker, and iView Media Pro (Old version, before it became Microsoft Expression Media.)
Use BOTH Time Machine & SuperDuper (or Carbon Copy Cloner).
Use Time Machine for deleted files or prior versions of a file; the other two to make a bootable clone. Mark uses the $30 Pro version of SuperDuper. The free one will only clone entire disks, and cannot be scheduled. You should find a place "off-premises" to store a clone of your system drive in case of disaster. There are a number of Cloud archive possibilities.
Google Searches - Mark reiterated his rules for doing Google searches. A handy tool is the Google Guide.
Final topic was the Blogosphere. Most search engines ignore blogs. One that does include blogs in its searches is Technorati.
Mark wrapped up with a question — Will you carry an iPhone and an iPad? Linda McNeil carries both, plus a laptop.
Raffle
Moe Comeau summarized the rules for the free raffle:
- You must be present to win, but you do not have to be a member;
- You can only win once, so the best prizes get raffled first.
Today's winners were:
- Pete Torello won the hard drive case, donated by Stan Horwitz
- Jim Berray won the USB/FireWire PCI card, donated by Stan Horwitz
- Tony DiPiano won the battery charger w/AA battery, donated by the Raffle Fund
- Gail Montgomery won the Pen/Laser Pointer, donated by the Raffle Fund
- Si Gluck won the mini tripod, donated by Stan Horwitz
Moe thanked those who contributed to the Raffle Fund.
The meeting adjourned around noon.
— Moe Comeau
Main Meeting Recording Secretary (Temp)
|
