Let's Learn

Like to learn with short video tutorials?  A new Mac website, http://www.themacu.com/index.html  offers some great features. Watch a video introduction of the training they provide. They also offer Mac related news, reviews, best deals on hardware, software, and peripherals. With Q and A you can ask questions or view already posted answers. Coming soon is training for iPhoto ’09, iMovie ’09, iWork ’09, Image Editing with Pixelmator and more. They offer a free 15 day trial, then membership for a fee of $6 per month. Downloaded training files are yours to keep. Thanks to Dan Simpson for passing along this info.

Lakner's Love Story Published

Our own Roger and Mary Beth Lakner were featured in the Valentine's Love Stories featured in Prescott's Daily Courier, Friday, February 13.  Here's the article:

"Five years ago this February, Roger moved from the Bay area of California to Prescott. He had recently become a widower and was determined to begin a new life in a totally new place. 



"He had chosen Prescott as his new home through the internet. His new house was in the Cottages at Prescott Lakes. 


"Being an early riser, he was often out working in his garage, especially assembling a workbench and cabinets.


"Mary Beth, who lived in the house directly across the street, often would notice Roger working in his garage. She was glad to have another new neighbor. 


"Before moving to Prescott in September 2003, Mary Beth had been divorced after a long marriage. She decided to retire early and begin a new life in a place completely different from Wisconsin, where she had lived for many years. She chose Prescott partly because her daughter and son-in law lived in Prescott at the time. She had visited them and liked the area.


"One Wednesday in March, Roger and Mary Beth met while walking back and forth to the shared mailboxes nearby. They talked and talked, standing outside in the hot sun. Mary Beth had gone to a few functions for singles by then, and she invited him to join her at a singles dinner that Friday. Roger thought that sounded fine, but he also suggested, "Why not tonight?!" So they decided to go out for their first dinner that night. From that day on, they dated often and soon fell in love. Both feel blessed to have moved directly across the street from one another! Last year, they moved once again to a larger house that they chose together.


"Roger and Mary Beth celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in January 2009 and are planning many more!"

Do You Like Cookies?

Not the kind Ginger Carlson brings to PMUG, we’re talking about Internet cookies. When on Google do a Command + , (comma) and see the list of cookies you’ve accumulated. 

I mentioned to my writers’ group about taking cookies off after you’ve been to a website. Several questioned my opinion, so I decided to take a more professional look at the subject. I note that going to any site with the word “about” in their URL brings up a lot of cookies. I got 11 cookies just from typing in “about.com.” Their expiration dates range from today until 2199. Imagine that! Each has a name and secret code, unknown to an ordinary person.

What’s your experience with Cookies? Do you have security concerns?

Under Safari Preferences, Security you have some choices to make. I’ve clicked “only from sites you navigate to.” Or, you could look up 24,200,000 sites to see what others have to say about “cookies computers privacy.”

What's New at the Library

Prescott Public Library began the month of February with an all-new web page. The new page is the brainchild of Systems Librarian Rob Lowe, who worked with public services library staff to develop the user-friendly look and feel. Give it a whirl at
http://www.prescottlibrary.info.  See today's events on the home page, along with a catalog keyword search and volunteer Lesley Schuler's event "slide show." Find your favorite databases under the "Research" tab and "Reserve a Room" under "Services."

Dealing with Software Update "Blues"

Apparently, some Mac users have had a problem right after Software Update has run on Leopard.  It's called the "blue screen of death" for the frozen field of bright blue when restarting the computer. De Prez Jim Hamm found the following tip from "Make Mac Work."  http://www.makemacwork.com/startup-fails-with-blue-screen.htm    This is most often caused by a corrupt dynamic loader cache, a feature which replaced "application prebinding" in OS X 10.5 and tells the system where to find available shared libraries.  Without a roadmap to these libraries the computer can't boot properly.  

"If the affected system is running 10.5.6, you can remedy this problem by booting with the 'Shift' key held, triggering a Safe Boot sequence and deleting the damaged cache files.  If you're running an earlier version of Leopard, Safe Boot won't remove the caches, so you'll have to boot the machine from a DVD or external drive and remove the files manually from /var/db/dyld/ instead.  Once the cache files have been removed the machine should restart normally."
Here, Art Gorski comes to the rescue. He adds the following info to clarify, "Booting with Shift key held down in 10.5.6 automatically deletes these cache files. Restarting the Mac should work fine then."   Art continues: See  http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ which says, "Using AppleJack you can repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files.  The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you.  
"You can boot your Mac with the Command and S keys held down and enter Single User Mode, which dumps you to a command prompt.  There you can type AppleJack to launch the utility.  One of the options in this program is to delete cache files.  Once done with AppleJack, just type 'reboot.' This method will work with older versions of Mac OS X."
Hopefully, this won't ever happen to you, but it might be good to print up these directions and file them where you can find them.  

Puzzles & Prizes

You could earn free Mac software by solving "secret agent fantasy" puzzles, according to a site sent to us by Dan Simpson.  Take a look at http://www.macheist.com/about/s/about/  Looks like a lot of people have joined this MacHeist site.  When I looked at it there were 608 members on line in their forum, with 288,492 members total. Dan says, "It is really quite fun."  Be sure to let us know if —when — you win! 

The First to Respond


After reading the earlier posting, challenging PMUG members to relate how they use their Mac we hear from Art Gorski today. He writes, "My everyday routine starts on my MacBook, checking hundreds of RSS feeds with NetNewsWire, a fabulously powerful newsreader, vastly better than Mail or Safari for this purpose. While doing this, I'm listening to audio podcasts that I subscribe to with iTunes.

"Later in the day, I'll use my Mac mini connected to a 37" HD LCD monitor to watch video podcasts that I subscribe to with Miro, a free cross-platform app for this purpose. Many of these are in HD, and look fabulous.

"Currently, I'm using Keynote to work on my presentation for the next PMUG meeting and using OmniGraffle Pro to do scale drawings of a couple of walls in my house where I'm planning to install a tool storage system.

"Occasionally, I use iPhoto to organize my digital camera pics, iMovie (old and new versions) to edit videos I take with my Canon camcorder, and iDVD to burn DVDs to send to friends and family and to archive videos. If I need to edit pictures for other purposes, I use GraphicConverter, since I think Photoshop and even Elements is overkill.

"For financial stuff, I use Quicken, spreadsheets in Numbers, and some on-line tools.

"For word processing, I use TextEdit and Pages. I'm proud to say I have nothing Microsoft installed.

"For troubleshooting, I use AppleJack, Terminal, and DiskWarrior.

"I use Chronosync running daily automatic schedules to backup all three Macs in our home to my ReadyNAS network attached storage box in my structured wiring closet over gigabit ethernet that I had installed when I built our home. We also have an HP Color LaserJet multifunction device that all Macs can print to and scan from that is attached to the same network."
Thanks, Art, for being our first member to respond.

Safe and Secure

Our February 21 meeting will feature a Keynote presentation by Art Gorski. He will give us features, tricks and tips, some unique to Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) that will make your computing safer and more secure, especially if you use a laptop in public locations.  He will also discuss safe computing practices, do's and don'ts, that will protect you on the Internet.  He promises to be gentle and not too technical, and everyone should learn something new.  See you there.

Macintosh Birthday on January 24

This calls for a cake with 25 candles. Why didn't we think of it earlier? Thanks to David Passell for alerting us to the following:

The BBC News website has this article with video, "Apple's First Macintosh Turns 25." http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7846575.stm

Another article worth perusing, "25 Years of Mac: From Boxy Beige to Silver Sleek" http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-01/ff_mac

Keep SuperDrive Clean

We just got some handy reminders from past president, current treasurer, David Passell. He relates some problems and problem-solving techniques that PMUG members need to know.

"Last fall after a lot of work that I was doing burning DVDs of Photos and Movies for a friend, I decided to listen to some music. When I inserted the CD it would not mount. Attempts to mount it with Disk Utility only showed it was there. It had all sorts of other weird information displayed when I clicked on the disk icon. I finally was able to eject it. The usual methods did not work.

"I had other problems when I tried to burn a CD with some photos: No success.

"I inquired to various sources, and the general suggestion was that the SuperDrive in my Mini was out of alignment or defective. There are two separate lasers for DVD and CD, I'm told, and one can fail while the other still works. Even the consultant at Argosy West said I probably would have to replace the drive under warranty.

"Not wanting to separate myself from my computer for a week or so, and noting the amount of dust which floats around the room (one of the problems of having pets around), I thought I would try to clean it. I heard a disaster story about trying to blow out the drive with compressed air (destroyed the drive) so I went to Staples and purchased for $10.00 a CD/DVD Drive Cleaner disk. This is a CD with a big arrow printed on the label side and a couple of little brushes on the shiny side.

"Per the instructions on the package I inserted the disk into the drive arrow forward and immediately I got the Audio CD Icon which was a good sign. There was also a voice message (actually available in several languages). Continuing on, some of the instructions did not exactly work as expected. This may be because like so many products they were PC/Windows oriented. In any case there were a lot of whirring and disk activities which within a minute or so stopped.

"I was able to eject the disk in a normal fashion; that is drag to Trash, use CMD-E, or the little arrow on the upper side of the top menu bar.

"Then I inserted my music CD. It played normally. This was on October 4, 2008. The drive has worked fine for both CDs and DVDs until a week ago when I noticed that CDs would not mount. I got out the Cleaning disk and performed the ritual again on January 13, 2009. The CDs mounted and played normally again.

"Conclusion is that if you start having problems with your SuperDrive, especially if it is in the close confines of a Mini get a Cleaner Disk and give it a try before you start looking for a replacement. The Mini has only ventilating openings at the back and its almost silent fan probably draws in a lot of dust.

"Further note: If you do a lot of DVD or CD work, you might consider purchasing an External drive for $100.00 or so. By the way, I would avoid those "LIghtScribe drives." You pay a premium, and when you read all the fine print you will discover that it takes 20 minutes or so to write the image. I prefer the crude old soft-tip pen and reserve my art for an insert. NEVER use a stick-on label. If it has any hanging edges it may jam in the drive. Then you do have problems."

So, there you have it, PMUG members. Thanks to David for taking the time to chronicle his computer adventures.

Jim Says, "Hi."


From a bluegrass festival in Blythe, CA, De Prez Jim Hamm sends greetings.  "The weather has been perfect, the music great, and we're having a good time. . . We had a fire in an outdoor stove every evening, and, of course, some pickin' . . . Glad the meeting went well Saturday."  

(That's Zee in the picture with Jim.)  
He concludes with "I'm actually sending this email from an RV park near Palm Springs, CA on Monday evening where I have wi-fi access.  Weather is 80 degrees and I'm in shorts and sandals.  Tough life, but we'll persevere. . . . (grin)  See you in a month."   

Starting Off the New Year



Our 2009 series of PMUG meetings at the Prescott Library got off to a good start today. Roger Lakner presided since De Prez Jim Hamm was off on a trip, and Roger took these photos. 

Speaker John Sykes from Argosy West gave a slide presentation about new features of some Mac products.  It was fun meeting visitors Daniel Leung, Al Abady, and Allen Laudenslager.  Helen Parsons, new member, remembers David Passell from "a long time ago" in PMUG. 
Thanks to Ginger Carlson who keeps us in cookies, with the help of Lynn Bischoff.  And Randy Calvert lugs those books for those who want to read all about Mac stuff. Thanks to the early birds, especially Mary Beth who helped set up the room.