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SEAL: South Essex Apple Link

SEAL Meeting Reports

9th June 2006

Nigel started this meeting by making an announcement about the SEAL committee structure. Nigel is taking over from Mick as Chairman but Mick is continuing in his role as Treasurer. Robert has become the Communications Officer and Sam remains as a committee member. Nigel took the opportunity to thank Mick for all his efforts as Chairman and Founder of the club.

After the announcement Mick gave a demonstration of Toast Titanium 7, Roxio's CD and DVD burning application. He showed how it can easily burn data, video and audio CDs and DVDs doing appropriate formatting and conversions automatically. David then demonstrated how the same tasks could be performed using the built-in features of OS X but in most cases with considerably more hassle! Dave also demonstrated an easy CD copying utility he is working on.

Malcolm brought along his 15" G4 PowerBook with an interesting BookEndz docking station which replicates all the PowerBook's ports. The docking station can then be permanently connected to a monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. and the PowerBook easily disconnected or reconnected to everything.

12th May 2006

At this meeting, Robert gave a presentation on Podcasting which included a demonstration of how a podcast is published, and how you con subscribe to podcasts using iTunes and other Mac software. Members contribued their hints, tips and experiences with podcasts.

Dave gave SEAL members a demonstration of his newly updated utility Gallery Grabber QED which easily downloads web based picture galleries.

14th April 2006

Dave demonstrating the Desktop. OS Xs Universal Access features used to enlarge the display.

Dave demonstrated tips, tricks and secrets of the Mac OS X Finder and Desktop. Everyone chipped in and helped answer specific queries from other SEAL members.

10th March 2006

SEAL is growing - new Mac enthusiasts outnumbered the regulars this month!

Nigel gives his own keynote presentation. An audience gathers.

Nigel gave an impressive demonstration of iWork'06 (featuring Pages 2 and Keynote 3).

Mac 'experts' getting involved. Mac 'novices' being shown how easy everything is by Dave.

Later, there was plenty to get involved in (for both experts and novices alike!)

10th February 2006

This week, more experienced members tried to help out those with technical problems!

Chris Hockley handing over an Apple Classic II to Nigel. A small crowd gathers to see..

Chris Hockley made a visit to the new venue, and very kindly donated an Apple Classic II with a bundle of hardware and software.

The Apple Classic II. PowerMac Dual G5.

Besides the Apple Classic II, we also got to see Elliott's hefty PowerMac Dual G5...

The iPod Nano in-hand. iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle.

and a number of competing desktops!.

13th January 2006

CoverFlow screen grab.

Among other things at this months meeting; members discussed Steve Jobs' Mac World keynote address, saw a demonstration of CoverFlow an album cover viewer that integrates with iTunes, and were introduced to the Google Earth Beta for OS X 10.4.

SEAL MEAL - 23rd December 2005

A party popper.

Mick Sutton, SEAL's Chairman, brought his organisational skills to bear on the Christmas meal this year meaning that we actually had it before Christmas rather than in January this time!

SEAL members old a new, including a few faces we hadn't seen for a while, turned up at a Beefeater restraunt near our regular venue. A good time ensued without too much "shop talk"! Here are some photos:


Ready... Aim... Fire...	Duck!

Direct hit!	Candles added to the festive ambiance.

The "food" mode of Nigel's new digital camera came in handy.	Cheers!

9th December 2005

The iPod Nano in-hand. iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle.

We got to see some of the members iPods; getting to compare different models at first-hand.

Setting up the video projector. Robert's system, with Mac Mini and AmigaOne tower.

Robert set up his Mac Mini to a video projector. And we all got to see a demonstration of MPlayer - a cross platform video player that can deal with a multitude of file formats.

You can see Robert's Mac Mini sitting on top of his AmigaOne G4 tower. We calculated that the Mac Mini was about 5% of the size of the tower!

11th November 2005

Mick with Picture Arena.

Mick Sutton brought along his iMac G5 with iSight and demonstrated Picture Arena a new image cataloguing and editing application from IOSpirit. The iSight came into its own recording short movies of the member's antics during the meeting.

We have each have different Macs.

Nigel showed us how the dual screen feature works on his Powerbook G4 12". He is currently working on a new website and showed us his progress in Nvu a cross-platform open-source graphical webpage editor.

Dave and Nigel.

Dave gave some programming advice on beginning Objective-C.

Rob with his Mac Mini.

Robert demonstrated an early version of this very website on his Mac Mini. The site is compiled using HSC which allows both Mac and Amiga versions to be generated from the same source code. The Mac version of the site has been designed by David Kennedy.

14th October 2005

First off Nigel brought along his new 12" G4 Powerbook and demonstrated running the OS X native MaxUAE (an Amiga emulator) and also AROS (an Amiga-like open source operating system) running within VirtualPC at the same time! This was on a dual monitor setup and looked really cool.

Nigel tilting his Powerbook.

Nigel also demonstrated a novel use for the sudden motion sensor (SMS) which is designed to protect the Powerbook's hard disk from damage in a drop. The SMS senses movements of the computer and Nigel had a game where you control a rolling ball by tilting the whole computer!