January 2007 Issue of SPCUC

This is a special year being the year in which we celebrate our 20^th anniversary. Although we struggle a bit, we still manage to keep going. We have not heard from a few members so we must take it that they are not continuing their membership this year. This is a great pity as some have been members almost since our first meeting in 1987. We still hope that some will renew their subscriptions as we do not like to lose members. This newsletter will be sent to all of last years members but will be the last if we have not heard that they will be renewing their subscriptions. If members leave, we take this opportunity of thanking them for their past membership and wish them all the best for the future and assure them that they will always be most welcome to come to a meeting as a visitor. I would also be more than pleased if they at least kept in touch.

When the club was started nearly 20 years ago, I had virtually no knowledge of computing. My computer is now my main interest and through it I have made many friends. One would have thought that after 20 years of continually using a computer there was not much else that I could learn. How very wrong that is.

I have always had a strong urge to conquer any practical task put before me and I have been given great support for anything that I have undertaken.

I learn something different about computing all of the time and the club has been an enormous help to me.

I know that if I have a problem, and I frequently do have, there is always someone there to help me. Nigel King usually being the someone - thank you Nigel.

A few years ago we started an evening at Wyvern especially for beginners. We had many new members that year most unfortunately leaving after the end of the year. It was not that they found the club of no help but we found it difficult if not impossible to help members, with varying levels of knowledge, in just a couple of hours once month. It was never intended that we would offer a course of instruction but we would attempt to help members with the basics of computing. On tendering their resignation from the club most said that they found the evenings most enjoyable and

instructive but that in one evening a month they made very slow progress. I tried to explain the benefits of membership of the club, particularly always having someone that they could turn to for help but all chose to leave. The evenings at Wyvern were cancelled and the club now continues just at Cantell. Most of the members attending Wyvern were from my golf club and are good friends but it is a little irksome to be continually asked to help past members who thought it not worth £10 to have help readily available.

I expect that members are tired of hearing about what I have been doing on my computer but there is not much else for me to write about unless you would like to hear of a good shot I had on the eighteenth hole at my golf club.

If life had not turned me in certain directions I think that I would have enjoyed being in the film industry. My interest started with a magic lantern, progressing to cine camera and projectors on to video recorders and finally to computing. My first task with my first computer was to do a database of 2291 Bing Crosby songs. A source of information I still use today.

With my video recorder I made a collection of about three hundred films. I always had hoped that one day I would be able to edit the films eliminating adverts and possibly adding introductions and endings.

I have related before how my film collection has now been transferred to DVD by means of my computer. Now I can edit the films add introductions and endings (e.g. end of part one where a film has to be split between two DVD's).

None of this is very difficult and I expect some members do the same but it is new to me and I find it very satisfying and frankly quite exciting.

I still have quite a lot of cine film to transfer and I am looking forward to this, adding introductions and transitions.

This meeting notice/newsletter, was based on that produced by Ken Miles, and sent by snail mail, to members of the SPCUC a few days before each monthly meeting. Comments about the club's web pages, to the webmaster.

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January 2007 Issue

Happy New Year