Nov 12 2002 minutes
About 12 members were present.
Mark announced that the December meeting will focus on games. He will have a variety of games available for demonstration. Some of the games will be raffled off to the members and guests attending.
Mark also mentioned that the Washington Apple Pie user group may be able to take some old Apple equipment to be rehabilitated and donated. They are also wondering if we want some of the equipment they can't find homes for. Their web site is www.wap.org
The presentation tonight was on Photoshop Elements v 2.0. Dorothy Durrenburger gave her impressions on the program after 2 months of exploring it. She's very pleased with its capabilities. Dorothy's presentation sparked a lively discussion of digital imaging.
Question and answer period followed the presentation.

Dec. 10, 2002 minutes

About 10 members were present. Unfortunately, Mark did not receive the games from the publishers in time for the meeting. Hopefully, they will arrive for the January meeting.

In lieu of a game discussion, Jeff gamely waded into a presentation of iMovie, showing several minutes of video of his dog Molly gamboling around the yard. He explained how easy iMovie had been to use- despite a complete lack of previous video experience- he was able to download the raw footage, assemble the clips, add some titles and transitions and make a decent home movie within an hour or so.

January 2003 minutes
About a dozen members present.
The meeting started with some discussion of new announcements from the recent Macworld-the new 17" laptop, and the the new apps-Keynote and Safari. Safari seems to be getting good reviews from those who've downloaded it.

Mark's young sons Nick and Ben were here to show off a few of the current games available for the mac market. Ben presented a round of Breakout, his older brother Nick presented Galactic Patrol. Many of the games they enjoy may be downloaded for free from the Apple Site. Some commercial games shown included Medal of Honor, Harry Potter and F1 Championship Season, kindly lent to us for review by the folks at Feral.

Despite a very wintry evening of cold and snow, 10 members showed up. However the scheduled presenter was unable to make it. We enjoyed an extended question and answer period. There was some discussion of Airport technology and the pricing of older macs for resale.

Next month will be the annual swap meet, where members can bring old mac equipment for sale or trade. If it's too much to haul, bring a list and I'll get it up on the web site. Mark reminded us of where the games came from at last months meeting. See apple.com/downloads/macosx/games for free games, shareware games, and some retail games

March 11, 2003 minutes

About 18 members present, including new member Jason.Tonight was the annual swap meet and quite a few people have items to add to the swap or sale list.

Kevin Thomas presented his review of F1 Championship 2000 Season:
"I test drove the F1 Championship Season 2000 game on my iBook 500 Mhz Dual
USB laptop. The machine has 384 MB RAM and is running OS 10.2.4. Overall,
the game is an exciting trip into the land of Formula One racing and someone
who is really into gaming and racing should surely enjoy this game.
I'd recommend using external game controllers to better your experience.
You can use the keypad but it's kind of cumbersome to get around. I also
think if you had a better video card than the stock one in my laptop that it
would be a better visual experience. I found the frames to be sometimes
choppy but that's due to my machine and not the game. Also, if you're using
OS X and you update your QuickTime to version 6.1, you'll experience
problems with blacked out video. This is a conflict between the game and QT
6.1 but there's a patch on the Ferel web site (feral.co.uk) that solves the problem.
I have to be honest, I'm not a "gamer" and when I do game it's on a Sony
PlayStation 2. Also, I'm more of a Nascar fan than Formula One. So, my
personal experience wasn't as enjoyable...again, though, not because of the
game. In fact, my 5 year son LOVED it...he thought it was "really cool!" :)
The review on Macworld.com is more extensive...I'd recommend checking it out.
In summary, I think it's just amazing what you can do with these games and
those individuals that are really into games are sure to enjoy this one."

April 8,2003 minutes

Another wintry night, but 11 members came out for the meeting, along with several new guests.Two of the new people, the Weavers, joined the club at the end.

Derek Morr gave a fine presentation on the Apple version of Zero Configuration technology, known as Rendezvous. He made the interesting point that Apple Talk, developed in the 1980s, already featured the major elements of Zero Configuration. It was self configuring and automatically updated available servers.Rendezvous is updated for the new century and offers an easy alternative to the complications of the standard IP networking.

He put his show together in Keynote, the new presentation software from Apple, and he also showed us a brief demo of assembling a slide show.

May 13, 2003 minutes

Yet another wintry night, actually just a cold front with wind and showers, but we're looking for some real spring!

About fifteen members present. Mark brought in a real live 17" Powerbook to drool over, and a 20 GB iPod. The Powerbook looks great, and the members suggested that it be the evening's door prize.

There was no presentation, but several of us with laptops connected to the PSU internet via Airport, and we traded information on the new Apple Music Store, Photoshop and numerous other issues. As the meeting went on, we discovered that our iTunes playlists were showing up on each other's music lists. I was able to play a Steely Dan tune from Mark Linton's list for example.Cool. Mark Engle demoed a new game called Worms that was a lot of fun.

June 10, 2003 minutes

Finally a nice summer evening. About a dozen members present for a freeform meeting. Mark passed on info he'd received about companies like Timepalette.com that are offering discounts to mug members, as well as a variety of websites of interest to the group. Several people were interested in used equipment, so they checked out Poweron.com and the Apple mug store.

July 8, 2003 minutes

Unfortunately, Mark Engel was unable to attend, due to a recent injury. He'll be fine after a few days of rest. Jeff led a small group through some discussion of the new G5 chip and other news from Apple.

Gretchen Weaver presented Sticky Brain- a really useful utility that expands on the basic sticky note concept. Looks like a great way to keep track of all those lists we generate. We also viewed slide shows from the Weavers and from Jeff.

August 12, 2003 minutes

About a dozen members present, including several new faces, Ron Fisher and John Williams.

Mark Engle is looking for any help the members can give in regard to doing presentations and organizing the meetings. He's always been a busy guy, but he's getting even busier. Several people volunteered to review programs that Mark picked up at Macworld in July. Ron Fisher jumped right in and will offer a review of Adobe Acrobat 6 in September.

We recently learned that Schlow Library has purchased 2 new iMacs. This is great news. This follows from the iMac that our club donated to the library 3 years ago. We're glad to see that they have enough continuing interest in the Mac to purchase new ones on their own. We discussed donating a copy of Word to put on their old iMac which continues in use. Jeff and Bill Bemis will give the donated machine a checkup soon.

September 9, 2003 minutes

About a dozen members present. Ron Fisher started a presentation on Adobe Acrobat 6, but technical difficulties prevented his full show. We'll try again on that, probably in October. Acrobat generated a lot of interested discussion of the whole subject of cross platform problems and the promise of PDF to help.

Jeff announced that he had bought the copy of Jaguar and a bunch of RAM for the iMac at Schlow. The group responded with an outpouring of donations towards the expenses. We also briefly discussed future donations to other area libraries.

October 14,2003

About 14 members present. Dorothy Durrenberger gave a presentation on Worm Blast. She had fun with it and liked the graphics, but did find the learning curve steep. Ron Fisher also demonstrated the use of Acrobat 6. He showed how he'd received a contract in PDF, printed it, filled in his signature, scanned it and replaced in the PDF document.

Next month will feature Mary Deutsch presenting Painter.

Mark got down to the Schlow iMac a week ago, and fixed the slow startup problem- turned out to be a bogus server alias that the mac was seeking. He downloaded and installed several OS 9 updates to prepare for a the transition to OSX. And he upgraded the RAM to 512 MB. For the meeting, Mark demonstrated his new Sony Puppy- a device that recognizes his fingerprint and permits to him to log in. It's on loan from Apple.

November 11, 2003

Fifteen members and guests came out for a fine presentation on Painter 8 from the Corel Company. Mary Deutsch showed us the basics of painting and navigating in that program. It's an impressive program with many creative possibilities.It will bring out the artist in anyone.

Mark had two of the new 12" powerbooks on loan. Very nice machines indeed! He also had a wireless keyboard and mouse for members to experiment with.

Next month will feature a short presentation on the digital World Book Encyclopedia, as well as a look at OSX.3--Panther.

December 9, 2003

A dozen members turned out for the meeting. Herb gave us a look at a program he admires and uses a lot - The World Book Encyclopedia, on 2 cds.We all agreed that the animated explanation of an internal combustion engines, for example, was a great way to really understand a complex subject.

Mark was unable to attend, so his feature presentation on Panther was postponed. Rob Weaver stepped in and showed us a brief look at his copy of Panther. Rob W. also tentatively scheduled a talk on 2 games he's been sampling for the February meeting.

January's meeting will feature our student Apple rep, as he shows us the basics of iMovie.

Mary Deutsch's talk on Painter 8, last month inspired Jeff to buy a copy of it for himself.

January 13, 2004

Despite some very wintry weather, 18 members and guests came out for what turned into a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Mac.John Hiester brought in his Mac 512k. It still runs perfectly well. We watched a demo of MacPaint.One interesting note is that the price point always stays about the same- he paid about $2600 for the 512k back in its day, and of course that's still what it takes to get a modern desktop Mac. Bill Beamis also brought in his old Mac SE. He took off the cover and revealed the names of the original Mac development team etched into the inside cover.And there was "steve jobs" among all the others.

Billy Greenberg, our PSU Apple student rep gave a fine presentation on iMovie, that sparked a discussion of the role of instant news video and its effects on public debate, particulary concerning the easy manipulation of the footage.

Rob and Gretchen Weaver visited Macworld SF and brought back tons of swag! Several copies of MS Entourage, a suitcase full of magazines and fistfulls of other stuff. We had one of the best door prize giveaways the club has had in a long time. Many thanks to them for their expo foraging. Rob also provided a short slide show on the keynote and expo.

February 10, 2004

Fourteen members and guests turned out on a decent winter evening for a short presentation by our Apple student rep on the iLife suite.Due to technical difficulties the presentation is postponed till March. Mostly we had an extensive question and answer period focused on the complexities of cd and dvd formats.Several people mentioned threats to the longevity of cds-- some papers may stick to the cd and peel off the top layer of the cd; also Sharpie pens may harm the media.

We're declaring a swap and sale event for the March meeting. Bring in the actual gear if you feel like lugging it, but a list is fine. I'll collect the lists and post them on the web site. Please put your name and email address on any list you drop off. Also you may bring a want list of anything you'd like to find.

March 9, 2004

Seventeen members showed up for the meeting. Unfortunately, the featured presentation fell victim to a scheduling snafu. We'll try to get the iLife presentation in the near future.We'll get it one of these months!The most interesting item for the Swap or Sale was two Mac Plus computers offered for sale to benefit the club. See the For Sale page for details.

A lively discussion session continued last month's subject of cd, dvd and archiving. Wireless networking is also a hot topic as many members now have Airport equipped laptops.

April 13, 2004

About 18 members and guests were present for the long awaited presentation on iLife.This time our PSU Apple student rep, Billy Greenburg, outdid himself with an excellant review of all the iLife apps.I'll list them in the order he covered them, with a note on just some of what he covered in each:
• iPhoto- he reviewed the album and slideshow features, and the ease of adding any music from your library.
• iMovie- he went through some of the many transitions available to add between clips.
• iDVD- he showed how to add interest to the chapter openings.
• Garage Band- he demonstrated the ease of adding music loops and altering them. And he brought along an electric guitar that he plugged into the laptop. A new guest, Zeke, stepped right up and strummed some chords into the program, which Billy then altered as well.
•iCal- he pointed out the utility of the 'repeat for every year' function. Hard to forget a birthday that way!
•Keynote- he showed some of the many themes available for adding interest to a slide show.
•iChat- he briefly chatted with several other laptop owners in the audience over the wifi network.
•iSight- we saw how easy it is to share images while chatting. Thanks to Billy for a great job on that presentation, and to Mark for bringing the equipment such as an iSight camera that added to the experience

May 11, 2004

Rob Weaver entertained 18 or so members with an excellant tour of Ghost Recon. It's a first person shooter game that transports the player to 2008 when rebel Russians are threatening to take over all of Asia again. Rob suggested it's a good game for beginners with relatively slow paced action, but it holds a great deal of challenge. He said it would still take several weeks of practice before a beginner could hold his own with networked players.

Rob also led us through a quick look at iTunes 4.5, pointing out new features like Party Shuffle and the ability (finally) to print out the song list and cover art for a cd that a user burns .iMix also looked interesting- seeing what other people feel suits a particular theme is a great way to discover new songs or at least be reminded of favorites from the past. Thanks to Rob for another fine presentation.

Mark Engle hauled in a G5 desktop machine on loan from Apple. Quite an impressive machine. Several people instantly coveted it.

June 8, 2004

Summer finally arrived with the first hot evening of the year.And about 10 members arrived for a warm informal meeting. There was no presentation, so we took the time to have a brainstorming discussion on ways to publicize our group.

Billy Greenberg had a number of good suggestions for attracting more students to the meetings. We will be focusing more on contacting the students in departments like art and architecture where mac use is heavy. We should contact professors in particular who might encourage their classes to visit us. They could even give credit for presentations to our group. He also suggested several specific kinds of presentation that might draw in more students- a demonstration of converting cassette tapes to digital, or how to use iSight for chats. I also liked the idea of an iPhoto party that would involve printing out digital photos from different people and collaging them together.

Our immediate goal is to generate a club business card and a flyer that could be handed out by the membership.

July 13, 2004

Despite the lack of any planned presentation, about a dozen members showed up and generated some impromtu shows. John Heister displayed a slide show of his trip to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. A famous glassblower named Chihuly has planted hundreds of remarkable organic forms, rendered all in hand made glass, in the various gardens. Others were the centerpiece of fountains, and even lily ponds featured glass globes drifting about. Thanks to John for sharing his photos.

Then our club treasurer, Lloyd, played a dvd of the 2003 State College fireworks display. He followed that with his own slides of this year's setup. He's involved in the production and we got to see a lot of backstage views of what it takes to put on a major fireworks show. Thanks to Lloyd for the inside look.

Club members agreed the business card designed by Jeff was what we needed. Next step is to shop for printers.

August 10, 2004

About ten members showed on a rainy summer evening. It was a very informal get together. Jeff passed out the new business cards and flyers to all members, who will hand them out to anybody who might wish to try a mac club meeting. Print It Plus on West College Ave., did the printing. They're a mac based business and we'd encourage members to do their printing there.

A guest, Joyce, arrived with an older iMac. She needed plenty of advice to organize a transition to a newer machine. Bill, Rob and several other members were glad to help her sort through some options and explain some procedures.We successfully transferred some files via ethernet cable, and Jeff burned a cd that she could use to put the files on the newer mac.

September 14, 2004

After a summer of informal meetings, we started the fall with a fine presentation by John Hiester on converting vinyl records to a digital format. He included a short series of Power Point slides to illustrate the subject, then demonstrated the process of extracting the music from the old record. He used Sound Studio to digitize the music and do some basic editing.

The attendence was about 18 members and guests.

For the October meeting, Zeke Zembower is scheduled to demonstrate further ways to edit and modify a sound file.

October 12, 2004

Zeke Zembower, IT instructor from the Mt. Nittany middle school, gave a well organized presentation on the editing of sound files using Sound Studio. He started with a recording from an old vinyl original that had many problems such as white noise and skips. Sound Studio does wonders with isolating the problem spots and removing them. About 15 members were present and all very interested in the process. Thanks to Zeke for his show.

Rob Weaver brought in a new iMac. Quite a beautiful design and we were all impressed by the clarity of the lcd screen, especially from acute viewing angles.

November 9, 2004

A dozen members drove through a chilly autumn night for a meeting with no scheduled presention.A guest showed up with a sick iMac and the group quickly focused on fixing it. Bill Bemis and Rob Weaver were the chief surgeons. They decided it required a new battery. The guest ran off to Radio Shack, bought the item, and within an hour had her machine up and running fine.

Hopefully, we'll have some games and fun stuff to review in time for Christmas at the December.

December 14, 2004

There was a small turnout on a wintry evening, but those who came out were rewarded with cookies and cupcakes brought in by member Donna Martin. Thanks to Donna for her thoughtfulness.

Mark led us in a general discussion meeting, that mostly centered on details of hard drive replacement, as well as some questions on syncing PDAs with a laptop.

January 11, 2005

The weather was so foul, with snow and sleet coming down earlier, we nearly called off the meeting. But it settled down to just cold rain and we had about thirteen members come on out.

We discussed the upcoming Big Ideas event hosted by Hewlett Packard reps at the Nittany Lion Inn. Several people expressed interest in seeing what they had to say.

Donna volunteered to review Circus Ponies Notebook in return for a copy of the program.

The Daily Collegian today featured a front page article on a new Apple user group on campus. We're glad to see them getting together and we'll be looking for ways to collaborate with them in the future.

We finished with a look on the web at the new products announced at the SFMW expo today. All were very impressed with the new Shuffle iPod, and the mini mac.

February 8, 2005

Chuck and Bill gave a report on the HP Big Ideas seminar that took place January 26 at the Nittany Lion Inn. They were particulary amazed by the new Vivera Ink, that promises 70 years of life even in sunlight. The Scanjet 4670 with the clear top, and a battery powered projector impressed them. HP's multi-function units looked good, too. Chuck and Bill were also pleased by the knowledgeable and friendly salespeople in attendence.

No other presentation, so we had an extended question and answer period, mostly focused on internet connection problems.

March is traditionally our swap and sell month. If anyone wants, bring in your excess gear and and we'll do some trading!

March 8, 2005

A late blast of wintry weather didn't stop about 16 members and two guests from turning out for the March meeting. Our treasurer, Lloyd, demonstrated how he scans his old family photos, negatives, and transparencies, preserving them in digital form for years to come. He went on to demonstrate some editing techniques to improve the images.Thanks to Lloyd for his informative talk.

The only item for the swap and sell event was surplus inkjet cartridges donated by Dorothy. Several people took some home. Thanks to her for that.

In April we are expecting a review of Notebook, from Circus Ponies, and iMovie.

April 12, 2005

About fourteen members in attendence. The meeting began with scheduling business. Mark is unable to continue coming on the second Tuesday of each month, as it conflicts with another community position he's taken on. As he's our chief technical guru, we are switching to the first Tuesday, pending confirmation with the people in charge of the MRL building.

Herb gave a short presentation. It was an iMovie he'd assembled to depict a math function called Least Squares. Few of us understood the entire concept, but we're always happy to see another member having fun on their mac.

Donna also gave a short talk on Notebook from Circus Ponies. She showed us the basic idea of using it for outlining ideas, but found the deeper functions difficult to use.

May 3, 2005

Fourteen members and a new guest showed up on a cool spring night for our first "First Tuesday" meeting. Herb volunteered to post a note on the MRL door next Tuesday to inform anyone who hasn't heard of the change.

John Hiester has agreed to take on most of the officer duties that Mark has handled for so long. Mark will continue to be our chief technical advisor.Congratulations to John for taking on that responsiblity.And Thanks to Mark for his many years of service.

There was no presentation. But Donna Martin brought in an ice cream cake and other refreshments for Mark's 40th birthday. Who needs a presentation when there's cake? All enjoyed an extended question and answer session, while eating the cake and chips.

June 7, 2005

Ten members enjoyed an excellant presentation by Zeke Zembower on the concept of One to One computing in schools, or in other words, giving a laptop to each student. Zeke is an IT specialist at the Mt Nittany middle school and is in a good position to evaluate the possibilities and pitfalls. The school is proceeding in careful steps. So far only a trial 6th grade group has laptops available, and they can't take them home. Even so, teachers are already noticing substantial improvements in learning. To me, the most surprising fact is that so far, not a single iBook has been broken. Zeke says the kids quickly learn that hurting the computer only hurts them, and they tend to be very careful.

A quick demonstration of multiple wifi networks was set up by Bill Bemis.Later we used the connection to talk with Roger who lives in California. He's the son of a new member, David. It's an impressive technology. Zeke added that he will try a 3-way connection soon with his children who live in distant cities.

July 5, 2005

Nine members and two guests were on hand for a spotlight (so to speak) on the new features in OS 10.4, aka Tiger. John Hiester started off with a quick overview of the new system, and introduced us to Widgets and Spotlight, the new search function. Mark's new business colleague, Tim Perry, then took over and went into more depth. He explained that Spotlight indexes your entire hard drive right after installation of Tiger to insure quick and thorough searches. He hinted that Spotlight will grow in features and importance with each succeeding system version.

Tim also explored the world of Widgets in more detail, explaining that they're really a kind of mini web page, and very easy to create if one knows html. He went on to cover Automator (a greatly improved Applescript), RSS feeds, Mail, and several other improvements to the Apple system. Altogether, Tiger looks like a very impressive beast.

August 2, 2005

Seven members of the club and a guest, Roger, showed up on a steamy summer evening to discuss events for fall.

Unfortunately, we've been derailed by a very recent decision by Penn State to limit internet access to registered staff and students. We made several attempts to hook on via ethernet cable and wireless router, but we were not able to get anywhere on the web. If we can't find a way on, we may have to consider an alternate meeting place.

Tentatively, we decided that October would be a good time to have the regional Apple rep here, and coordinate with the student user group for a joint meeting.

September 6, 2005

A half dozen members and several guests discussed the possibilities for alternate meeting spaces and/or getting a Friend of PSU status that would allow us back on their internet.

We were able to schedule Tom Morton, the Apple rep, to come in October. At this time we're not sure what he'll speak on. Apple's Paris show will be just a week before that, so perhaps he'll be able to fill us in on any new products announced there.

October 4, 2005

Tom Morton, Apple's sales rep for higher ed in this region, was kind enough to join our group, about fourteen members and guests, for an extended discussion of current products as well as some glimpses of the future. Among the hints he dropped was the idea that hard drives may fade away in laptops, in favor of flash memory. He mentioned the rapid cycle of OS improvements is expected to slow down from every 18 months or so to over two years. Also, he says we can expect to see Apple branded merchandise appearing at all the Apple stores in the near future.

The best news is that he is eager to help us grow our club and reach out to other Mac users in the area. At least, he will keep us keep coordinated with the student user group.

November 1, 2005

A dozen members showed up for our usual mix of questions and discussion.The lack of internet access remains a problem with no clear solution yet.

Thanks to Donna Martin and her husband for bringing in cookies and soda for refreshment.

For the December meeting we will feature some Christmas gift ideas, especially digital cameras.We may also have a Mac mini on hand.

December 6, 2005

Fourteen members and guests showed up for the Christmas meeting. Thanks once again to Donna Martin and her husband, Dave, for bringing in piles of cookies, nuts and even a very tasty punch.

A guest, Bob Leonard, is asking for volunteer instructors for the organization he's involved with--CALL (Community Academy of Lifelong Learning). The group meets at South Hills business school and will use the Mac lab available there, starting this spring. They especially need people who can instruct basic system and program use. Contact Bob at rel4@psu.edu for further information.

Mark Engle brought in the latest 30GB video iPod, and demonstrated the ease of hooking it up to the projector in the room and showing us some home videos and music videos he'd downloaded to the iPod. He also brought in a Mac Mini, cracked it open to reveal the compact innards, then hooked it up to a display. Thanks to Mark for sharing his toys with us, while answering a variety of questions from people about their computer problems.

January 3, 2006

No meeting due to a conflict with the PSU Orange Bowl game.

February 7, 2006

Despite the winter chill, a dozen members and guests came out for the meeting. Mary Deutsch led off with a demonstration of the Epson Picture Mate printer.She took a few snapshots, loaded the card into the printer, and just a few minutes later we had some very nice prints. This Epson would be a great item for parties.

Next, Jeff presented a slide show of his trip to Macworld Expo in San Francisco, including some shots at Cupertino, and up north in the Marin countryside. He brought some goodies from the Apple company store, and the group enjoyed a raffle to end the evening.

March 7, 2006

Over a dozen people showed up for a very informative talk on the latest iLife suite from Apple. John Hiester explained the new features in iPhoto, such as the calendar and card printing, and the photocasting option. He moved on to briefly demonstrate how he'd put together a quick podcast in Garage Band. Next month we will take a hands-on approach and assemble a podcast at the meeting.

Thanks again to Donna and Dave Martin for bringing in cookies. This batch had a St. Patrick's Day theme!

John also demonstrated the new Google Earth program, a fascinating view of the world.

April 4, 2006

About a dozen members showed up for our first attempt at a group podcast. We selected digital cameras as our topic since several of us had different models with us. John launched Garage Band on his laptop and we used its built in mike to record. We discussed a Nikon 8700, a point and shoot Olympus, and a more professional model of Olympus. It was interesting to hear the real life experiences that folks have had, both good and bad, with their digital cameras. After 45 minutes, John stopped recording. Next meeting, he will lead us through the editing process and posting it to the web.

Donna and Dave went for the Easter theme with their refreshments this evening. Thanks to them for bringing in jelly beans and chocolates.

May 2, 2006

Adozen members and a couple guests gathered around the big table for an extended question and answer session. Jeff had an odd browser problem, and got a few clues from a new fellow who works in web development. Bob Leonard brought in his new MacBook Pro- the first in our club. Several of our members helped him get some minor issues sorted out Mark also helped Donna with a problem she has with her laptop.

The podcast editing has been delayed till next month.

Donna and Dave, the official refreshment crew, provided us with an ice cream cake tonight. Thanks to them for the treat.

June 6, 2006

Several new guests joined about ten members for our second look at podcasting. John took us briefly through the process of how to edit the raw file from our April discussion of digicams, and how to post it to a site where the iTunes Music Store could find it.We were all impressed by the reasonable sound quality of the file despite it being recorded only with the built in mike on John's laptop.

Herb also showed off another short Quicktime movie demonstrating a mathematical function plotted in 3D.

Thanks to Donna for another round of juice and cookies

July 4, 2006

No meeting due to the holiday conflict.

August 1, 2006

Despite a record heat wave, over a dozen members and guests turned out for a freeform discussion. Several groups formed around the different problems that a couple members were having. Unfortunately, the iMac that Mary brought in did not get its battery changed since no one had the tools to open it up.

A new guest brought it in the latest and greatest MacBook, with the black exterior. An enviable machine indeed.

Our focus for the meeting was intended to be cameras again, but the small group discussions were so animated we just continued with them. Apologies to Donna who came prepared with quite a bit of info on her D70 Nikon. We'll hear from her next month. And, as always, thanks to her and Dave for bringing cool grapes for refreshment.

Also thanks to Lloyd for renewing our domain name. Wouldn't be a web site without it!

September 5, 2006

The topic for our first meeting of the new school year was future presentations. We have a few ideas, but can always use more. Any members who know someone who does something interesting with their macs should invite them to give a short talk.

As usual, we enjoyed sharing what we know as we traded questions and answers in an informal discussion.

October 3, 2006

A dozen members showed up for another freeform discussion. It looks like Tom Morton, the Apple rep, will be here in December to present some of the latest news from Apple. Meanwhile, rumor has it that The Connecting Point, on South Allen Street, will soon be an authorized Apple reseller. We're looking forward to having a local retail outlet again.

Thanks as always to Donna for bringing refreshments.

November 7, 2006

A dozen members enjoyed a freeform discussion of several issues. In particular we spent some time getting the Penn State VPN client on more peoples' laptops so they could use the internet access. It's an extra hurdle, but once it's all set up, the connection is the fastest around. Jeff used the connection to download several updates, totalling about 100 MB, in just a couple minutes.

Tom Morton, the Apple rep, should be here in December.

Donna brought cinnamon buns this time. Very tasty.

December 5, 2006

For our final meeting of the year,16 members and guests, including some new faces were present. Unfortunately, Tom Morton had to cancel at the last minute. We're now anticpating his presentation in February.At any rate, there will probably be new products from Apple, announced at Jan. MacWorld, that he'll be able to talk about.

In addition to the usual question and discussion period, Roger shared a dvd with us of "The Ghost of Sam Peckinpah". This turned out to be a claymation film created right here at Penn State by a large group of students.The long tedious effort involved in claymation paid off very nicely here. We especially enjoyed all the references to various westerns and other movies.

Donna and Dave played Santa Caterer with armloads of cookies, fruitcake, cheese, crackers, ice cream and punch.Many thanks to them!

In addition, on their trip to California earlier in the fall, they visited the Apple Store in Cupertino, and rounded up a bag of raffle prizes. Everyone went home a winner.

January 2, 2007

No meeting.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________
February 6, 2007

Our first meeting of the new year was attended by a dozen members who braved the frigid cold weather. Our scheduled guest, the local Apple rep, was caught by a meeting conflict. Hopefully, we'll see him next month.

John filled in with a very entertaining presentation of five short films from the early days of Pixar. Many of these are now available at the iTunes store, along with many other short films that are to see anywhere else.

The usual lively question and answer period preceded the films, while Bill attempted to fix a problem with a friend's blue and white G3 that he brought in.

March 6,2007

Despite an unusually frigid evening, a good crowd came out for the Swap and Sale meeting. In addition to some odd bits of electronica finding new homes, an old blue and white Mac was operated on and restored to usefulness. There was no presentation, but the discussion groups were lively, fueled by the Oreos and juice provided by Donna and Dave.

April 3,2007

Finally some nice spring weather. A small group of members showed up for a discussion meeting. John brought in the Polaroid film scanner that he recently bought from Roger. He demonstrated how easily and well the machine translates old technology into digital form. Best of all, he will offer to lend it to others in our group who have piles of old slides and negatives. Chuck confesses to having some 30,000 slides!

Donna showed off her new Sony dvd player with a swiveling screen. She also provided soda and chocolate chip cookies.

May 1, 2007

The group met for another meeting of questions and even some answers.