Author: John Clark

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…

Mac classes – January ’10

Happy New Year everyone! I trust you all had a warm and happy holiday season.

Mac class news for the month:

This month, the regular FREE “Overview of Mac OS X” class returns to our regular schedule of the last Wednesday of the month, from 5-7 p.m. This month’s class will take place on Wednesday, January 27th. These overview classes are held in the computer lab at the Ridgway Library. There are only eight seats available, and this year the Library has asked that I handle the sign ups, so give me a call at 970-417-8434 if you’d like to attend (and 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 this month. [And I’m going to start offering the “focused” classes on Saturdays, to allow for more folks to attend.] So, on Saturday, January 16th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering iPhoto. This class will be held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall.

Also, on Saturday, January 30th, from 10 a.m. to noon, I will be covering iTunes and your iPod/iPhone. This class will also be held in the small meeting room at Ridgway Town Hall.

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

“Disc” vs. “Disk”?

Who knew? Apple actually has a Knowledge Base article that addresses the distinction:

For those too lazy (or busy) to go and read it, the difference essentially boils down to this: “disc” refers to optical meda such as CD’s and DVD’s, and “disk” refers to magnetic media such as floppies and the hard drive in your computer…
If you’re wondering how widespread that distinction is held, I checked, and Wikipedia concurs (in the technological realm anyway).
You learn something new every day, if you’re open to it…

© Copyright 2025 John I. Clark, Ridgway's Mac Doctor