eNews SeniorNet Porirua Inc
www.seniornet-porirua.org.nz
Edited by Bob Pretty
Some Good News?
I read an article in a newsletter I subscribe to, that
Amazon are going to release a smart-phone onto the
market for US $100 The very next week I read in the
Dominion Post that Vodafone NZ are putting out a smartphone onto the New Zealand market for NZ $99. Both are
only very small phones and are not of great quality with a
small 4" screen and a cheap plastic case. My old eyes
would have a job seeing such a small screen. However,
they would be a cheap entry to the smart-phone for a
youngster. So if any Nanas or Pops out there are looking
to spend a few dollars on their grandchild here's a good
way of doing it. This phone was advertised by Warehouse
Stationery the same week on special at 38.95. It pays to
keep things in mind and read sometimes.
June 2014
Newsletter
Select the Share button on your device to send it directly
via e-mail.
I'm sorry I couldn't give screenshots here but I don't have
an iPad or iPhone. I'm sure anyone that has one can
follow these instructions.
Just a Laugh
Sixty Years
The other week I felt a little off colour and as the week
progressed and I began to feel better, my wife
commented that she knew I was coming right because I
was back to my grumpy ol' self. I guess she knows me
pretty well by now; on the 24th June we'll have been
married 60 years – I consider that to be some kind of a
milestone in life. We don't intend to make anything
special of the day except maybe go somewhere special for
a meal. One thing it does remind us of is that we are
getting older and both are beginning to feel the dinosaur
type of aging of our bones.
Tip of the Month
Many of our members are now using the iPad Tablets.
Two or three of them have asked me how they can take
screenshot with one and send them (the screenshots not
the iPads) by e-mail. I did some research on this and it
doesn't seem hard to do – tho' I don't have an iPad so you
may let me know otherwise.
Screenshots should be a system wide feature allowing the
capture of any displayed screen in any application. Taking
the image you follow these steps:Press the Power Button on the top right corner of your
device at the same time, press the Home Button. The
screen flashes, if you have sound enabled you will hear a
camera shutter sound.
Go to Photos App > Saved Photos. Tap the thumbnail of
the image you saved to see the full image.
A man went to a 24-hour grocery.
When he got there, the owner was locking the front door.
He pointed to the sign and said to the owner,
"Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours."
Owner's reply was "We are but not in a row!"
"What am I supposed to do with this?" grumbled a boy
racer when the policeman handed him a speeding ticket.
"Save it," the cop said, "when you collect four of them
you get a bike."
Thought for the day.
"A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she
says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he
says to her."
"Electricity is really just organized lightning."
During a visit to a mental asylum, a visitor asked the
director what the criterion was that defined whether or
not a patient should be kept there.
"Well," said the director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we
offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and
ask him or her to empty the bathtub."
"I see," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the
bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup.
"No," said the director, "A normal person would pull the
plug. Do you want a bed by the wall or near the window"?
Bits and Bytes
I was asked the other day why a byte is only one byte yet
a kilobyte is 1024 bytes. A kilo means a thousand 1,000.
So, how can there be 1024 bytes in a kilobyte? That's a
really good question from a layman computer person and
here is the answer.
There are 8 bits to one byte these bits use the power of 2
to represent what's in the byte. Going from right to left
across the bits if they are switched on then they represent
a unit to the power of 2. So, counting from left to right we
have
Bits 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. But with the bits on and using the
power of 2. The value of the bits is 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1.
Don't forget the bits are counted from right to left as we
do in normal arithmetic. As these are added together in a
byte the largest number we can hold in 1 byte is 255.
Count the values across and you will see I'm correct. We
can also represent these number in hexadecimal.
We count hexadecimal numbers with base 16 instead of
10. There's nothing unusual about this, we did it in ounces
to the pound for years before decimalisation came in.
The way hexadecimal numerics work is, from 0 through to
9 they are the same as decimals, then we change for 10 –
15 A B C D E F. It makes no difference if the letters are
lower or upper case. This means that now we can
represent the number 255 decimal as FF hexadecimal.
Don't get weighed down with fear about this here. When
we get to 15 = F if we add 1. We now have 16 or 10. In
pounds and ounces this would be 1 lb – 0 oz. So, it's
nothing you haven't seen before. Therefore one byte with
all bits switched on is FF or 255 but don't forget we have
the 0 figure in any byte and that makes 256 different
combinations of the bits that can be held in a byte.
We know that 2 to the power of 8, written as 2 ^ 8 is 256
while 2 ^ 9 = 512. When we get to 2 ^ 10 we arrive at
1024. Remember the horse shoes from last month's
eNews?
If you look at the ASCCI Table (American Standard Code
for Information Interchange) we find that these codes are
used to send information from the keyboard to your
computer screen. The upper case A = 65 so, with bit 1 and
7 on they add to 65, all other bits will be off. Next time
you type something on screen you are only sending
separate bytes to the screen with bits switched on or off.
When a bit is on it is a 1 when off it's a 0. So for all the
intelligence people credit computers with, these dumb
machines only understand the figures 1 and 0. The ASCCI
Code was first used by the old teletype machines we
knew them as Teleprinters.
If you follow this argument through you'll find the biggest
number 2 bytes can hold is 65536 values, these are
integer numbers that are unsigned as negative or positive.
Quick Word Tip
Do you ever wish to see the old menus back so that the
menu drops like it used to in Word? Well that's not quite
possible but minimising the Ribbon is. While the Ribbon is
minimised you can still use the keyboard shortcuts and
the ribbon will stay minimised. To do this use the key
combination Ctrl + F1. If you wish to display the ribbon
again then use the Ctrl + F1 again. Open word and try
using this key combination and you get that extra screen
space that the Ribbon takes up. If you click on any menu
option the ribbon will display and you may click on any of
its options. This ribbon will then hide itself again. If you
wish to see the short cut keys while the ribbon is hidden
just type the Alt key and they will display. To select an
item from the list, type the key displayed.
Try this as practice – Type the Alt key once. From the list
of letters highlighted in the Ribbon area type the N key.
You will be placed in the Insert part of the ribbon with the
Insert ribbon displayed and a set of new letters that apply
to this ribbon only. All items can be selected with the
mouse as normal. To hide the ribbon again type the Alt
key again. These short cut key combinations are very
good for touch typist to learn, they save all the picking up
and dropping the mouse.
Last Word
Enterprise Miramar and its business improvement district
have made Free WiFi available in Mirimar it will be the
first Wellington suburb to offer this service free. This
means that if you are travelling in Mirimar (An Eastern
suburb of Wellington) you will be in a hot spot throughout
the area. The roll out to take place soon will eventually
cover the whole area and although meant to make a
cover for people travelling in the district, anyone in the
area including residents will be able to connect to it.
There are a number of manufacturers in the district as
well as Peter Jackson's studios in Park Road and the Weta
Workshops. For visitors to these facilities both from
Wellington and overseas this will be a godsend.