IVCA VISION NEWS
LETTER No.17
April 18
- 2002
THE INTERNATIONAL VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS
ASSOCIATION
Keeping Amateurs informed on Developments in Visual Communication
around the world
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Dayton Information ( make your
reservations soon!)
Don Miller W9NTP informed me, that he will be the Master of
ceremonies at Dayton this year.and the following
information is to obtain a
reserved room at the Best Western Executive Hotel. You can call 1-937-278-5711
or 1-937-275-5039 and ask for one of the block of IVCA- 20 rooms.
(they will be held until May 1, 2002). The cost is $100 double
occupancy. We also have a 40 chair meeting room at the same hotel 6:30 PM till
10:00 PM meeting to start at 7:30 PM The Saturday
SSTV Forum will be held in room 1 at the Convention Center at 2:45 PM till
5:00 PM.
IVCA SSTV Contest LOG Book Information
(and the winner is?)
All that participated in the SSTV DX Contest of April
6th and 7th, 2002 can send a copy of their contest log information by
e-mail to Stephen ZC4BS at steve@stevebb.com and he will review
the results so a winner can be selected and announced in the VISION News.. (To
be counted, you must get your logs in before May 25 -2002 )
Television History The 75
Year Anniversary (Mechanical to Digital TV)
The first commercial public television broadcast in America
took place when the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover became a TV Star, when
his voice and image were transmitted over AT&T telephone lines from
Washington ,DC, to New York City. (the first slow scanner?) As I also
remember, that one year after I was born,the first picture
transmitted in the USA was one of the cartoon character "Felix the Cat" using a
mechanical electric motor synchronous scanning disk arrangement with the use of
AM radio. It is also interesting to note that for more than 37 years amateur
radio operators around the world have sent and received TV pictures
by radio and also over phone lines, thanks to the inventor Cop
McDonald WA2BCW. It was not as easy back then, but all this was
well before the invention of the personal computer.We have had enormous
advancements in television technology in amateur and commercial TV from those
crude, early mechanical scanning, black and white low resolution, still
pictures. Today Commercial TV broadcasters are now starting to convert to High
Resolution Digital color at a cost of $1 (million) to $ 2 million in
hardware for a single TV station..The home HDTV receivers are now
selling at $3,000 to $5,000 each. note:The Sony Co. will soon have seven new
HDTV receivers, from table top to large projection models.available. Some say if
the Television and cable industry fails to advance to digital video on
demand with interactive service, then the computer industry will develop
streaming video on demand. Note even now you can purchase a plug-in
computer card to receive HDTV on your IBM computers screen for as little
as $300..(Perhaps we should start to think of how we could use some of the
digital HDTV technology with SSTV) My brother in Tulsa Oklahoma has a
very large projection HDTV receiver that I tell him he could use to
start an outdoor Drive-in Movie business with......HI
SSTV Results or
Effects
As we have been active on SSTV for a number of years I have
noticed that the mug shots I receive usually show an amateur operator with
eye glasses that is older and getting bald. My question is does SSTV
attract ham radio operators that are older with bad eyesight and
losing hair or is operating SSTV the cause of these problems? Note:Needless
to say like most I'm older and losing my hair and also wear
glasses! Ray W5NOO
Need for Computer/Web speed
("Faster than a speeding bullet and able to jump tall buildings" or
just a 56k modem)
I understand that in America we now have more than 60% of the
homes online and over 50% of the web computers users have broad band
connections (faster than 56K modem ). The new computers are said to double in
speed every 18 months and will reach the maximum or practical speed limit
before very long but the real problem in the USA is the availability of
fast web connections. We have an almost unlimited amount of Fiber Optic
cable capacity in America and trunk lines installed but it's like a wide
Freeway with out any "on" or "off" ramps. Only a few of the city folk at present
have fiber to their business or homes. So you say "How Fast is Fiber
Optics, Really"? It can reach the speed of light or around 186,000 miles a
second or several hundred gigabits (billion bits) per second. Compared to
USB bandwidth that is 12 Mbs and FireWire is 400 Mbps Fiber Optics will
permit high resolution with motion and color video communication for TV or
public video phones etc.when and if it ever becomes generally
available. The movie and cable business will likely also have to make big
changes in program availability, number of channels etc. ( And just
to think we are lucky here on the prairie in Oklahoma if we have electric
lights and a 56k phone line and indoor plumbing). HI
Ok so you don't have a fast
connection with Fiber Optics or cable or DSL or a two-way satellite
dish or wireless and you only have a dialup 56K modem. What is your typical
connection speed? If you are getting less than 28K (kbps) on the average you may
have a noisy phone line problem or overloaded ISP etc. (You perhaps can get your
phone company to help if you tell them the voice quality is poor, don't even
mention your data speed!) To obtain complete detailed
information on the performance of your connection and ISP and a
complete connection history record etc. you can down load the free demo of
the Net.Medic program at http://www.vitalsigns.com/products/nm/
You can also test your connection speed at Net Stat Live
at http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/nsl.htm
or try DSL reports at http://www.dslreports.com/stest to
check performance and connection speed. (Note: windows only gives an
average connect speed but Net.Medic program shows each packets speed with a
graphic display and also more detailed connection information than you can
use or even need)
Computer Tips (fix a
memory leak with automatic memory recovery program)
Memory problems described in Vision News No.14 can be
solved if you down load and install the freeware program "Memory-Trax
lll" from the following URL http://www.profan2.com/mem-trax/index.html
This free memory recovery program that puts a little window on your desktop and
permits you to automatically recover the memory amounts you select, and a voice
even notifies you when it starts and when it completes the memory recovery.This
makes windows 95/98/ME run smooth and crash less and also helps eliminate memory
shortage problems. (I sure like it when the computer can automatically fix some
of it's own built in problems and tell me about it.)
Little-Known Company
Unveils Tiny PC (Honey I shrunk the Computer)
The tiny ultra personal computer developed by the startup San
Francisco Co. "OQO" (a Windows XP battery operated wireless unit the size
of a Palm Pilot) It's only 5X3 inches and also can be used with a regular
monitor and mouse and has a one gigahertz processor and 256 meg's
of RAM and a 10 gigabyte Hard Drive.with a $1000 price tag. See
details at http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/04/17/modular.computing.ap/index.html This
is a remarkable development and shows just how small we can get with
electronics, Looks like competition for the PDA devices! ( Hmmmm I wonder if it
has a sound card or USB and could possibly run SSTV or web video phone
?)
Slow Windows
Start-up Problems (or just too many Fonts
to load)
If you find your computer is still taking much longer to
boot-up and you have removed the extra unnecessary little icons from the lower
right side of the taskbar Perhaps you have installed a large number of True Type
Fonts (they are nice but are the same as a program ) You can delete the ones you
don't really like or rarely use but don't
delete the Windows System Fonts!
Find the fonts to keep
To find out
the ones to keep do the following 1. Click on my computer
and select properties. 2. The general
tab should be open (if not click on it) 3. Record what is
noted under "System" 4.View the
fonts on your computer by using the steps above. Switch the view to
Details,which should list the fonts alphabetically. You want the information
listed under Modified. 5. Now look at the Microsoft
webpage on how to determine the default Windows fonts, Find the version of
Windows that matches your own. Microsoft lists a system date for each version
(for example Windows 98 build 4.10 1998 has a system date of 5/11/98 Record the
date. 6.Go back to your fonts folder .Any
font that has the same date as your system is a system font. DO not delete this
font.
Deleting
fonts
1.Click start; point to
Settings;click Control panel; then double-click Fonts to open the Font
folder. 2. Click the icon for the font you want to
delete. 3. On the File menu, check Delete. (To
select more than one font to delete , hold down the CTRL key and then click each
of the fonts you want to delete)
(If you find the above a little
complex, then avoid the temptation to load all the fun fonts or just sit
and wait as windows starts up!)
Nerd Talk Abbreviations
Explained (every one uses these letter abbreviations that I don't
understand)
There is just not very much that you can't find on
the web. If you want an Acronym Finder try http://www.acronymfinder.com/about.asp (I
made a web search with the finder for the two letter acronym "IP" and it
produced some 70 results including the one we were looking for!) I also
just hate it when Nerds pronounce an acronym as a new word like
W,Y.S,I,W,Y,G for "What You See Is What You Get" and then use the computer
nerd term "Wiz-e-wig". I once read an article in the American PC-Magazine that
never even explained the acronym that an article was about and I simply was
unable to figure out just what they were describing. Put a different way,
computer nerds just like to use abbreviated or strange words .
More Cute Google tricks
(Is Big Brother is watching you?)
If you use the Google search engine at http://www.google.com and type a phone
number in the search window it will do a reverse lookup for the address
information and it can also show a map of the location if you select the
MapQuest function it can give a map or even a satellite view of the
address when you click and pan and zoom around. I checked and found my
address and ranch house and drive way etc.using only my phone number information
to obtain a map and photo. ( Note: With a number obtained from
a Caller ID device you can even see where those unsolicited phone calls are
coming from and get a map or photo)
