Agewell Computer Club at The Lawns.

Workshop: Tuesday 3 January 2012 (3.30 to 5 pm).

At the recent workshop about refurbished computers, we were asked the meaning of the phrase ‘assistive technology’. It’s shorthand for a range of gadgets and software that make life easier for people who have various disabilities. For example, in our group there are many people who have difficulties with their eyesight or their fingers.

But the real problem is not disability – it’s bad design – of keyboards, pointing devices like the mouse, and software screen interfaces. We have a cupboard full of gadgets which help to overcome some aspects of bad design. They should be used more often.

Examples include …

• Alternative keyboards which have characters you can actually see.
• Sophisticated mice and trackballs that do not require you to contort your hands into impossible shapes.
• Software to help dyslexic people.

At the workshop we will have some of our gadgets on display and in use. You will be able to play around with them, and decide if any of them might be useful for you, or for your older friends and relatives.

Workshop: Tuesday 20 September 2011 (3.30 to 5 pm).

Fotografix is a free photo editor that you can use for all common image editing functions (for example – cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness and contrast), and quite a lot more besides. It’s very easy and the results are excellent. In our opinion, it is an excellent program for digital photography beginners, as well as more experienced learners. So we have installed it on all the computers at The Lawns. There is also a ‘portable’ version that will work on a USB flash drive.

You could think of this workshop as a taster for the more leisurely Hackney Silver Surfers short course ‘Working with digital pictures and photographs’.

At the workshop.

We will get you started on this new addition to our graphics software repertoire. As always, we will provide you with some photos that you can practice on – so you don’t have to bring your own.

Example slideshow.

Here are some examples of what you can do with Fotografix. Most people just want to crop and resize their photographs, but there is much else that you can do – and it’s very easy in Fotografix.

24 May 2011 – we just received 18 refurbished computers that should transform our activities at The Lawns. They all have twice as much memory as the best computers we already have. We haven’t set up the new machines yet – it will take at least a week to do that – but we thought you would like to know that our oldest computers are definitely headed for the back door, very soon.

We are gradually, sometimes painfully slowly, overhauling our equipment at The Lawns. The good news this week is that we have replaced five of the least satisfactory older machines with more powerful, refurbished computers.

The new computers have enough memory to do everything we need, as quickly as we need. We expect to see an end to the frustrating delays we have had to endure, especially in the drop-in area (after we have moved some of the other hardware around).

For people who prefer an operating system that is faster, more secure and stable than Windows XP, all five computers also run under Ubuntu (choose which operating system you want when the computer boots up).

Corner PC upgraded to Ubuntu.

Our computers at The Lawns don’t have names, but they do have places. This is about the computer in the corner – the ‘blue screen of death’ machine that was festooned with ‘knackered’ signs until last week. Now it works perfectly, and more efficiently than it has ever done.

This is not a miracle. There was nothing wrong with the computer itself. All we did was take Windows XP off, and install Ubuntu instead. We still need to tweak it a bit – but now it is fast, stable, secure, and arguably the second-best computer in the centre.

You can do it yourself at home.

If you have persistent problems with a Windows computer – especially if it is an old-ish Windows computer – this could be a permanent solution for you. Ubuntu does not have a slick user interface, but in every respect that matters it is a superior operating system. Ubuntu itself is free, and most of the software that runs under it is open-source and also costs nothing. It is totally immune to the multitude of nasties that plague Windows computers, so you don’t need extra security software to protect it. Everything you can do on a Windows computer can be done at least as well under Ubuntu – and often much better, because Ubuntu uses memory more efficiently. You can install it as the sole operating system, or you can set up your computer as ‘dual-boot’ – which means you choose between Windows and Ubuntu when you switch the computer on.

Ubuntu CDs.

We have a pile of Ubuntu installation CDs to give away. Come to the Agewell Computer Club on Tuesday afternoons to get one – and also bring some details of the computer you might install it on (for example – current Windows version, how much memory, size of hard disk, make of printer and anything else attached to it). If your old computer is a laptop, bring it to The Lawns so we can check that it is suitable for the upgrade – and (if we have time) help you to do it.

For more information about all this, contact acc@lawns.org.uk .

The last time we talked about this was at our workshop four months ago in May 2010. What happened next was BT Broadband trashed our Internet connection so completely we had to change our router three times — and every time, we had a new security code for wireless access so the previous code would not work.

That’s settled down now, and we feel confident that we won’t have to install a new router for a long time.

So — if you have a fairly recent laptop computer (Windows PC, Apple Mac or Linux — it doesn’t matter which, they should all work), you can bring it to The Lawns and use our wireless connection to the Internet. We will give you the security code when you next come in on a Tuesday afternoon.

By the way, all our tests so far suggest that a new-ish laptop with a wireless connection is much faster than any of our old-ish desktop computers with a cabled connection.

You have probably noticed that some of our old computers have been very slow when loading a web browser — even our preferred browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. So we have been testing some alternatives.

The result is indisputable. On our memory-deficient PCs, Google’s Chrome browser is by far the fastest to load, and the fastest in operation. As it is excellent in all other respects, Chrome is now the default browser in the ‘agewell’ login on our computers.

The Documentary Filmmakers Group have donated a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 8, which we have installed on the new Agewell Media Machine at The Lawns.

Agewell members and people involved in the What’s Your Story project who want to edit their video will have priority access to the computer and the software.

For more information about reserving computer time or using the software, please contact us on 020 7254 2183 or email to acc@lawns.org.uk .

The Agewell Computer Club has a new computer for advanced media work. It’s not astoundingly powerful, but it is the fastest computer at The Lawns by a wide margin — and has a superior graphics card and enough memory to run software that none of the other computers can handle.

So far, we have installed and tested Adobe Premiere (video editing), Audacity (audio editing), Gimp (photo editing), Second Life (virtual world), Skype (Internet telephony) , and software for vinyl-to-MP3 digitisation.

Priority for access to the Agewell Media Machine …

1. Agewell members who want to do advanced work with video, images or sound.
2. Other Agewell people.
3. Everybody else.

For more information about reserving computer time or using the software, please contact us on 020 7254 2183 or email to acc@lawns.org.uk .

Workshop: Wednesday 7 July 2010 (10.30 am to 1 pm).

The Agewell Computer Club has joined AbilityNet’s ‘Sustaining Switched on Communities’ campaign – helping people with disabilities to access computers more easily.

For us, the word ‘disability’ incorporates all the usual impairments associated with not getting younger — for example, eyesight that is not as good as it used to be, and difficulties using a computer mouse or keyboard (both of them design atrocities). There are solutions to most of those problems, known collectively as assistive technology.

AbilityNet have delivered an Assistive Technology Kit for use at The Lawns – including alternatives to the standard keyboard and mouse, software to help dyslexic people, and a bunch of other stuff which we haven’t tried to use yet.
At this session we will demonstrate some of this assistive technology, and tell you about other major benefits for people who have a computer at home, including …

• An online assessment tool to help you set your own computer to your own preferences.
• Access to a loan bank of equipment.

There is no need to reserve a place at this session, and you don’t even have to be a computer user. Just come along if you are interested.

Workshop: 24 May 2010 (3 – 5.30 pm).

The Hackney Silver Surfers centre at The Lawns is now a wireless (Wi-Fi) hotspot.

If you have a fairly recent laptop computer (Windows PC, Apple Mac or Linux — it doesn’t matter which, they should all work), you can bring it to The Lawns and use our wireless connection to the Internet.

There are no cables — so you can sit anywhere inside the building, outside on the grass, in the car park, in the launderette, even as far away as the cafés and pubs around Newington Green.

All you will need is a password, which we will give you (and which we will change every month).

At the workshop, we will set up your laptop computers and test our hotspot capability. You don’t need a laptop to join the workshop — your interest is enough.

ACC members can reserve a place on this workshop by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).

There will also be plenty of room for Agewell drop-in.