Agewell in Hackney logo.
Agewell Computer Club, 8 February, 2.30 - 5 pm.
At this workshop, we will show you how to use Irfanview — the default image editor and viewer at the Agewell Computer Club (that means it is on all our computers, and easy to find if you are logged in as ‘agewell’).
About Irfanview …
- It’s free (for personal and educational use), highly-regarded, has been around for years, and has a large user base.
- It’s used for viewing digital images, and performing basic image editing tasks such as cropping, rotating and resizing — all of which it does very well.
- You can download it and install it on your own computer at home.
- There is a ‘portable’ version which you can put on your flash drive.
- It has a simple interface to scanners — you can scan directly into Irfanview.
Screenshot of a photograph displayed in Irfanview.
Things we would like to do.
- Help you understand digital image file formats.
- Show you how to use Irfanview on our computers at The Lawns.
- Show you how to download Irfanview from irfanview.com, and install it yourself.
- Help you install Irfanview on a flash drive (don’t forget to bring a flash drive if you want to do this).
- Show you how to scan new images from our scanners directly into Irfanview.
- Show you how to process photographs to make them suitable for email and World Wide Web sites such as Facebook and Internet dating sites.
- Demonstrate Picasa — a free Google program for organising and editing images, and a good choice for anyone who has a lot of digital photographs to manage.
Things we might not do.
- Discuss email attachments — that it is one of the topics of the 15 February workshop.
- Discuss how to transfer digital photographs from your camera to a computer or other storage media — that it is one of the topics of the 1 March workshop.
Shoutcast Radio logo.
Several people have asked how to find and play the Internet Radio stations we played at our end-of-year party (15 Dec 2009).
They are all ‘Shoutcast’ stations. Shoutcast is a very wonderful Internet project that helps to restore flagging faith in humanity — free software enabling almost anyone to set up an Internet Radio station without expensive equipment. There is more info on the Wikipedia Shoutcast page.
The stations we played were …
The easiest way to play Shoutcast stations is to use a web browser to open http://www.shoutcast.com/ (search for ‘Soukous’ to find the first two stations, or on ‘WBR’ to find the third).
A better way is to download and install ‘Winamp’ (a media player designed for Shoutcast) from http://www.winamp.com/. Winamp is very ugly to look at, but works well.
Before you try to install Winamp on your own computer, please read the notes on our Internet Radio page .
Skype logo.
We have created a new Skype page for notes and suggestions on how to use it.
The page web address is http://lawns.org.uk/resources/skype/ .
Skype on a flash drive.
Although there is no official portable version of Skype, it is very easy to install it on a flash drive — if you know what you are doing. If you bring your flash drive to The Lawns, Rick can put Skype on it in less than one minute.
Using Skype at Hackney Silver Surfers.
Skype is not installed on our machines — but you are welcome to call your friends with Skype on your flash drive. Our headphone sets do not have good microphones, so you should bring your own (we recommend you get a USB headset).
Calling The Lawns with Skype.
Our ‘Smartboard’ PC has Skype in it. Our Skype name is lawns.now.
You are welcome to call us during Agewell Computer Club sessions on Monday afternoons, from 2 pm until 4.15 pm. You should be able to hear what is going on, and even join in!
Screen shot of winamp.com.
This is a note for everybody who attended the last Internet Radio workshop, or would like to listen to more Internet radio stations on their computer at home.
Winamp is very good for finding and playing Internet radio from all over the world. It’s a free download from the WWW. We have placed some notes on how to download and install Winamp on this resource page: resources/internet-radio.
It’s for people at home. You can’t do it at The Lawns!
