Author: John Clark

Mac classes – May ’10

May arrives tomorrow, and wouldn’t you know, I can simply repeat my comment from last month: “Maybe it’ll stop snowing one of these days, eh?!”
Mac class news for the month:

First, the program-specific classes:
 For starters, next Saturday, May 8th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering Pages, Apple’s word processing program. If you would like to learn more about Apple’s competition for Microsoft Word, this class is for you. Like all of their programs, it’s a visual tour de force, and powerful to boot.

 Then, on Saturday, May 22nd, from 10 a.m. to noon, back by popular demand, I’ll be covering iPhoto. If you’ve been wanting to learn all the ins and outs of Apple’s popular digital image management program, your next chance is here!

These classes are always held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall, and carry a fee of $20 for the two-hour session.
Both of the above classes are open to drop-ins, with no sign-up necessary…

Then…
 This month, the regular FREE “Overview of Mac OS X” class will again take place on the last Wednesday of the month, Wednesday, May 26th from 5-7 p.m. These overview classes are held in the computer lab at the Ridgway Library. There are only eight seats available, and the Library has asked that I handle the sign ups, so give me a call at 970-417-8434 (or drop me an email) if you’d like to attend. (Be aware that first-timers take priority over anyone who has taken the class before, but there are often openings for repeaters).
There are six Macs in the computer lab, so only two of the eight attendees need their own laptops. This class is beginner-oriented, but we cover some different things every month; repeat attendees are encouraged (when there’s room)!
Also, for June, July and August, the dates for the above “Overview” class will bounce around a bit, due to a busy summer travel schedule! I’ll keep you posted.
Let me know if there’s something else you’d like me to consider covering in these Saturday sessions.
I hope to see you at a class sometime soon!

iWeb class – April 24th, 2010

I feel like my first-ever iWeb class went well this past Saturday, despite my fear that it might simply be too much to try and cover in two hours. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t give short shrift to the larger background topics of custom domains, hosting, and how to publish. Towards that end. here are a few links to things I discussed that could help you on your way:

• First, the link to GoDaddy that gets you $6.99/year .com domains:
• Next, I shared some ways to get both MobileMe and iLife ’09 for less than Apple charges ($99 and $79, respectively):
– MobileMe at Amazon
– MobileMe at eBay
– iLife ’09 at Amazon
– iLife ’09 at eBay
• Next, here’s the link to Apple’s excellent tutorials on most of iWeb’s various features:
• Lastly (though this is quite a bit more complicated than most everything else we discussed) here is a link to PayPal’s instructions for setting up a “buy now” button on your site for selling things:
As always, please feel free to call or email me with questions that may arise as you explore this amazing program in more detail!

April Mac classes

Happy April everyone! Maybe it’ll stop snowing one of these days, eh?!
Mac class news for the month:
 This month, the regular FREE “Overview of Mac OS X” class will again take place on the last Wednesday of the month, Wednesday, April 28th from 5-7 p.m. These overview classes are held in the computer lab at the Ridgway Library. There are only eight seats available, and the Library has asked that I handle the sign ups, so give me a call at 970-417-8434 (or drop me an email) if you’d like to attend. (Be aware that first-timers take priority over anyone who has taken the class before, but there are often openings for repeaters).
There are six Macs in the computer lab, so only two of the eight attendees need their own laptops. This class is beginner-oriented, but we cover some different things every month; repeat attendees are encouraged (when there’s room)!
Now, for the focused, program-specific classes:
 First, next Saturday, April 10th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will again be covering iTunes & your iPod/iPhone. It will be held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall. If you would like to learn more about Apple’s preeminent music & video program, or simply want to find out what all the iPhone (not to mention iPad!) fuss is about, this class is for you. From playlists to podcasts, audiobooks to “apps”; attend this class to learn how to gain control of this run-away twenty-first century phenomenon.
I apologize for the short notice on this class…

 Then, on Saturday, April 24th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I’ll be covering iWeb, Apple’s incredibly powerful web-design program. If you’ve been thinking of starting a web page, and want to use perhaps the easiest program to do it, then this class is for you!

These classes are always held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall, and carry a fee of $20 for the two-hour session.
Both of these classes are open to drop-ins, with no sign-up necessary…
Let me know if there’s something else you’d like me to consider covering in these Saturday sessions.
Thanks very much, and I hope to see you at a class sometime soon!

Are you backed up?

Just a quick post to remind everyone of the importance of BACKUPS! Toward that end, I put together state-of-the-art backup hard drives from the highest-rated bare hard drives which I put in a slick external enclosure that includes four connection options (USB2, FireWire400, FireWire800, and eSATA). The latest iteration are 640GB in size, and I sell them for $150 [image above]. FYI, this price is my cost for the parts, plus about a miniscule amount for my time putting everything together.
I also have just a couple portable (not needing an external power supply) hard drives for you road warriors out there. Call for details on these models…
If you’re interested in getting one of these, please email or give me a call (970-417-8434). Don’t let yourself get caught without a backup!

BCMUG meeting presentation; March 11th, 2010

I presented the topic of password management at our local Mac User Group last night. Here are a bunch of links to things we covered:

• To download a stand-alone version of the Apple’s built-in “Password Assistant” tool, visit CodePoetry.
• Next, a link to the website for my preferred password management program, 1Password.
• Here are a scant handful of links to sites discussing the difference between ‘passwords’ and ‘passphrases’, in the interest of giving folks a new take of the painful task of creating secure logins:
– First, the Wikipedia entry on the topic.
– Next, an interesting semi-random blog post…
– From the folks who created 1Password, another blog post, in a similar vein.
– Lastly, another blog post, this one describing a unique technique for “Creating and Remembering Complex Passwords”
Oh, almost forgot… Here’s a link to the site that provides very enlightening information about the relative strength of passwords, depending on length and variation in characters. This site is where I gleaned my recommendation that a secure password should be at least 8 characters long, and always contain at least one capital letter, one punctuation character (!@#$%^&*()[]?<>) and one number.
I hope everyone who attended the presentation got something out of it; it’s a pretty dry subject, but a critical one more than ever!
Until next time, here’s to safe secure browsing!
JC

Mac classes – March ’10

March is here; Spring can’t be far off! Hooray!

Mac class news for the month:

 This month, the regular FREE “Overview of Mac OS X” class will again take place on the last Wednesday of the month, Wednesday, March 31st from 5-7 p.m. These overview classes are held in the computer lab at the Ridgway Library. There are only eight seats available, and the Library has asked that I handle the sign ups, so give me a call at 970-417-8434 (or drop me an email) if you’d like to attend. (Be aware that first-timers take priority over anyone who has taken the class before, but there are often openings for repeaters).

There are six Macs in the computer lab, so only two of the eight attendees need their own laptops. This class is beginner-oriented, but we cover some different things every month; repeat attendees are encouraged (when there’s room)!

I’m offering two other classes every month through May. I’ve settled on the second and fourth Saturday morning of each month.

On Saturday, March 13th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering that venerable behemoth of word-processing programs: Microsoft Word. There will undoubtably be something for everyone in this class!

On Saturday, March 27th, from 10 a.m. to noon, due to popular demand, I’ll be revisiting iPhoto. If you’ve missed it in the past, or simply want to refresh your skills, then I hope this is a timely class for you!

These classes are always held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall, and carry a fee of $20 for the two-hour session.

Both of these classes are open to drop-ins, with no sign-up necessary…

Let me know if there’s something else you’d like me to consider covering in these Saturday sessions.

Social Networking Class – February 27th 2010

Links from yesterday’s Social Networking class:

• New York Times article that covers the latest Facebook privacy setting changes, and how to change them…
• Facebook page that explains the new homepage view…
• Twitter.com, where you can set up your new account (or not)…
• Twitip.com, a great site I found that gives you tons of great tips on using Twitter…
• Blogger.com, the site where you can set up a blogspot blog like this one…
• BloggerBuster.com, where I found definitive instructions for inserting Google maps into your blog (and which is even better than how I did my original maps to the class locations on the right…)
That last one is not a trivial set of instructions, but I’m confident that you’ll do just fine figuring it out as you get more confident using your Mac. If, however, you go a little cross-eyed trying to figure it out, just drop me and email or give me a call, and I’ll help you figure it out…

Internet/e-mail class

From the “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Internet & E-mail” class that I did this morning, here are a few links:


• First, for the Safari “plug-in”, Glims, that I was using which gives you auto-save/restore of last session’s windows and tabs, auto-closing Downloads windows (and much more), look here:


• Second, for the Google search tips blog entry that I used to demonstrate all the cool custom search tricks you can use with Google, look here:


…and for the downloadable cheat-sheet put out by Google themselves:


• Lastly, for a ton of tutorials from Apple dealing with how to get the most out of their built-in Mail program, look here:


If you have questions or run into problems, don’t hesitate to let me know, I’ll see what I can do to help!

I’ll post more links to helpful info as I come across it…

Mac classes – February ’10

February is here already? Boy, does time keep flying by; seems like it’s faster every month…

Mac class news for the month:

 This month, the regular FREE “Overview of Mac OS X” class will again take place on the last Wednesday of the month, Wednesday, February 24th from 5-7 p.m. These overview classes are held in the computer lab at the Ridgway Library. There are only eight seats available, and the Library has asked that I handle the sign ups, so give me a call at 970-417-8434 (or drop me an email) if you’d like to attend. (Be aware that first-timers take priority over anyone who has taken the class before, but there are often openings for repeaters).

There are six Macs in the computer lab, so only two of the eight attendees need their own laptops. This class is beginner-oriented, but we cover some different things every month; repeat attendees are encouraged (when there’s room)!

I’m offering two other classes every month through May. I’ve settled on the second and fourth Saturday morning of each month.

On Saturday, February 13th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering the two main things most of us do on our computers: everything you’ve always wanted to know about E-mail & the Internet. There will definitely be something for everyone in this session!

 Then, on Saturday, February 27th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering the ins and outs of “Social Networking”. If you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and the like, then this is the class for you!

These classes are always held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall, and carry a fee of $20 for the two-hour session.

Both of these classes are open to drop-ins, with no sign-up necessary…

© Copyright 2026 John I. Clark, Ridgway's Mac Doctor