This & That: All the Help I Can Get

     by Elizabeth B. Wright   May 2005

      Needless to say, most of us need help now and then. And sometimes we can use a lot of help. I have been reading Gene Owens’ column, now appearing in the Daily Oklahoman under the title “Buck’s English.” It really has helped me with my grammar, something that tends to slip as we hear more television, read newspapers and encounter other sources of fractured English. It is so easy to fall into the trap of corrupting words and sentences. If any of you are interested in refreshing your grammar and punctuation skills, I highly recommend this delightful column.
      Many timeworn Anglo-Saxon words in our language are not directly related to computing. However, sometimes those same words come to mind when my computer is giving me problems. Recently, program removal seemed to be in order for freeing space on the D:\ hard drive. I had made a Drive Image backup of my C:\ drive prior to housecleaning. And ultimately needed to return to the imaged drive when things really started going haywire.
      But even with the restored drive, the message shown in this graphic was still appearing when trying to double-click any .jpg file in the directory in order to open it. I tried really hard to find either the file mentioned in the message (eViewer.exe), or anything that would tell me what I needed to either restore or remove to get back to my original status. Matters were just made worse and I became resigned to dealing with it from now on. There were many references to the needed eViewer.exe file in the registry, but I could not find its source by trying to “locate” it on my hard drive. It was a mystery when the file became something my computer expected to be available, but I suspect it was when some program was removed. After putting the problem on a mental back burner, I decided to do some more cleanup. Even though this seemed to be the root of my troubles, I plunged ahead. And lo and behold!, the error message magically disappeared. Will the wonders of computing never cease?
      Many of us are using, for our print film, photo-finishing companies that offer a CD containing the images as part of their service. While the CD costs extra, it can save a lot of time later if you decide to print extra copies of the pictures. One of the programs offered on CDs by some finishers is the Kodak system. The auto-loading software on the CDs produced by this technology has a lot to offer for inexperienced users. One step in particular is quite useful. The program automatically copies images to the hard disk and strips the “read only” attribute from them. They can then be manipulated by the program and re-saved to the hard disk using the same name. This is handy for rotating pictures that were taken by holding the camera in its vertical position. People who are just starting with digital manipulation of film images will find this feature very handy. I would never save an image with its original name after changing it in any way, but although that is a relatively simple technique, it remains too advanced for many people. Some of us print our own photos, but many of the places that handle film processing have public access printers that make prints from the CDs.
      My hat is off once again to the professional Website builders. I downloaded a four page .pdf file the other day. It contained text plus graphics. It came across so fast on my dial-up modem that I thought it was not transferring. However, it was all there and when I looked at the file size after saving it to my hard disk, it turned out to be only 73k. I don’t know how they did it, but would like to be able to pass along the procedure to those who send extremely large .pdf files to my poor little 56k modem.

      If any of you are interested, the .pdf file was for the crocheted poncho pattern used to make the garment Martha Stewart wore home when released from stir. It was made for her by a fellow inmate as a going-home gift. The company that owns the pattern (and it is free, by the way) fielded thousands of phone calls requesting it, and I know of some people who were not able to get onto the website due to heavy traffic. It is quite a good story as well as a really nice poncho, and the pattern company has a donation program to the penal facility set up when certain of their products are purchased. So whether you like M.S. or not, if you like to crochet this might just be the pattern for you.

Elizabeth Wright is a member of the CCOKC and a regular writer for the eMonitor