My Page

Here's where I get to rant about things that interest me. If you're an SBAMUG member you can get your own Page(s). You can rant too! I'm doing these pages using Freeway 5, a very cool web authoring program.

Digital Photography

Make great looking business cards.

Backup strategy .

Convert vinyl records and tapes to CD. Updated; originally presented Aug 2005

About Mail: From July 2006

Using passwords: Protect yourself (presented Nov 2006).

I've prepared some 18 presentations for SBAMUG. I've given only a few at our general meetings, quite a few more at the beginners group and some never presented at all as I've not detected any interest. Let me know what you'd like to hear about. Most are getting old and out of date, so they'd need updating. Technology marches on.

Biography of a Nerd
bob1st

I was a nerd at an early age (left) and made a telegraph set out of wire, nails, tin cans and a battery, that I took to school to show my classmates. Later I made a one tube radio and entered it in the country fair. In high school I got my ham license (K6BGN) and had a station in our basement (right) along with my photo darkroom and chemistry lab.

ham
bobweb1

My career was spent at TRW (now Northrop) in Redondo Beach where I got my first computer, an Apple II. I started using one of the first Macs, probably a Mac 512, for work and later the company got me a Mac SE. I bought 5 MB external hard drive for it and used it for a long time. Then I got a Mac IIci that for a long time. What I know about Macs I learned by reading, experimenting and asking lots of questions.

In my other life I'm a musician (piano and accordion) and a dancer (Scottish, Scandinavian and international). I've had a dance/music web site since 1996.

My wife teaches jewelry making. She uses Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for her designs and to document her work and Freeway Pro for her web site.

Shortly after I got a computer at work I bought one for home. Then another and another and another. See below. I joined SBAMUG when it was at Pacific School, a couple of blocks from my house. I love our group because everyone is so friendly.

Nov 1983

Apple IIe with 128K of memory. A CPM card and a 1 MB memory card.

Mar 1988

Mac Plus and an external 30 MB hard drive

Apr 1990

SE/30 for a whopping $2800 with 4 MB of memory and NO hard drive. I installed a 105 MB drive ($611) and more memory. Later I got a full-page, b/w portrait monitor.

Oct 1994

Performa 475 and an external CD drive. About then I became a beta tester, and then subscriber, to eWorld, Apple's on-line service. It closed in Mar 1996 and I joined LA Free-net, then DSLExtreme and recently Verizon FIOS.

Nov 1996

6116CD with a Power PC 601 chip. It failed after a year, but later I got it working.

Nov 1997

SuperMac C600 clone and a 19-in ViewSonic monitor.

Nov 2000

Mac G4/400 that I use today. Installed a Sonnet 1 GHz accelerator card. Still going strong.

Nov 2003

Apple iBook G3/900 with Airport. I use it mostly for our meetings.

Jun 2005

iMac G5/1.6 GHz, the finest Mac I've had. I got it for my wife to use for her jewelry work.

Apr 2006

I finally got my own iMac G5/2.1 GHz, but keep the G4 as a backup and a testbed.

DrBob@SBAMUG.com