1st Someries Scout Group Quiz Night

It was great to be invited to join a team again to give our grey cells a workout in Stopsley at the local Scout Hut. It was much warmer than it has been and the moon was almost full. We met up at the Bowles residence where we had a chitchat before the walk to the venue. I took my next door neighbour, Brenda and at Jennie and Colin’s we met up with Janet, Wendy and her son Christopher.
In the recent past our teams had been joint second and first, so no pressure! After the first round we had come tenth out of twelve – not exactly an auspicious start, but one thing our group did not lack was laughter! As our table was 2 our position at the start of the marking was good and to see 4th come up was more promising, but glance away for a moment and take another look and the position was 9th.
Towards the end we were mysteriously listed at 7th yet our score was much higher than those above us, but a trip to the scorer and we were restored to 4th – passable but we did have several Tombola wins, Jennie chose a large basket of fruit which she generously shared amongst all the team.
We all had a great time and didn’t mind the slight drizzle of rain on the walk back to a cup of tea and more chatting, all of us promising to meet for the next one at Christmas.

A Bitterly Cold Dawn

Eleven Days on from the other bright morning when I found myself covering the Protest March between the villages of Slip End and Caddington, I woke early and I already knew there was a possible bright start to the day. I took a look outside and decided I needed to take some photographs.

I got dressed, collected my camera and a few lenses and wandered first to our newly refurbished Co-op store. Already there was activity; the shutters were up and staff were preparing for the new day, I took a handful of shots, then jumped in the car and drove to Slip End where I took shots of the re-routed Public Footpath and the soak-away for the motorway, before moving towards Luton Hoo and the hill down towards the Lower Luton Road.

I spotted a lone Red Kite gently soaring over the valley and a pheasant took off from behind me and flew over the road; I managed to capture a couple of shots before he disappeared, but in the biting wind I had to wait quite a while before the Kite came into range again, but at last I was able to get some usable shots, even though it remained fairly distant.

Adobe ConnectNow

I am willing to bet that a substantial number of experienced Photoshop CS4 users have never noticed, let alone used, the free screen-sharing feature within their File menu.

If you are one of that number and either work remotely or have colleagues that could help you out when stuck, and they are some distance away, then take a look at this feature. I would add that I do feel the program does need some attention; in particular the positioning of its alert messages requesting access at various stages – I sometimes feel that the programmer was either a psychologist testing observation skills or he was a Games Geek! They are placed entirely randomly, yet they do need to be answered for the program to continue; so be alert!

How does this feature work? Well, to state the obvious you do need an Internet connection; it works from your browser to fire up the Adobe ‘ConnectNow’ application and the initiator requires the free Adobe ID, and the recipient (there can be a maximum of two) is invited to the ‘Meeting’. This invitation to join is made via email which contains the URL to which the recipient responds by clicking; this either opens the session in an open browser, or first opens the default browser, then opens the session. They may possibly have had to load an ‘Add in’ program, or a later version of the free ‘Flash Player’.

When sending out the invitation link via email, set the button in the top right of your screen to allow automatic entry. The name of your guest appears at the bottom left of your window once they have accepted the invitation. You then set the role by choosing ’Participant’ in the attendee’s pulldown menu.

Along the top of both your screen and that of the person you are contacting are a series of icons to set up devices such as webcams, microphones, and screens. The purpose of the Meeting will define how and what is set here. However, if you plan speaking using ConnectNow then click to open the microphone before setting the WebCam, but do remember you will both (or the three of you) need to have fast connections to support all of ConnectNow’s functions simultaneously, if in doubt use the telephone for voice communication to avoid ‘choppiness’ or echo from feedback. Do remember there may well be a delay between you finishing asking a question, before the other person responds. This can be disconcerting.

In the main recently I have been the recipient of meetings with Adobe in various parts of the globe, but as I have been using it increasingly to offer help to remote clients, I felt it was time to pass on my experience of using ConnectNow to a wider audience. I will also add that I have tended not to use the full facilities for bandwidth reasons, and often relied on the telephone for the verbal aspect, and the screensharing and text for explanations, but with good fast links, all the facilities are there to use ConnectNow in its entirety.

A few points to bear in mind. If either party has a single screen then the images of ConnectNow’s control panels appear as blue ‘J-cloth’-style areas on the recipient’s screen, so it is a good idea to bear this in mind when setting up a screen for the other to view and/or control, and move that panel off to the side, whilst maximising the meaningful position and area. When you are controlling another’s screen your cursor will remain as an arrow, which can be confusing if it is a brush which would normally display its size! Also, if for instance you are on a Mac and are controlling a PC, you will need to know the corresponding shortcut keys – small, but important points.

Adobe ‘ConnectNow’ is not the only contender for the features I have described, Skype and iChat are also available. It is platform agnostic and does offer participants control over other’s screens, which Skype does not, though it is also cross-platform, whereas iChat is only available for Mac-to-Mac work. It is the most polished, but all could be improved in some ways. I imagine Apple would say that there is Apple Desktop Remote, which is the professional tool. However, I think as Broadband improves in speed and more users take up the free options, they will receive the necessary attention.