PC Trivia
RIVER BENDER - July 2002
E-mail problems:
The New Bern Computer Users Group (NBCUG) and the River Bend e-mail list now total 638 addresses and continue to grow. As administrator of both lists hardly a day goes by that I don't
receive messages from the hosts at Always-Online or Carolina Connection that something went wrong with the mail delivery. Errors are usually due to invalid e-mail addresses or someone's mailbox being full and over the quota. Whatever the reason, the errors cause me extra work. Here are a few suggestions for members of NBCUG and Rbmail that will help me.
Please don't forget to notify me by e-mail at cn1027@coastalnet.com if you change your e-mail address. I can no longer call everybody on the phone when an address shows up invalid. It's hard to get people on the phone nowadays, especially those with a PC. If you must call please do so during the day. My PC activity ends at suppertime.Please don't request to place your e-mail address on hold for a week or two while you go on vacation as I used to do when the lists were smaller. If you don't know how, or you can't use your ISP's WebMail or free http://www.mail2web.com to check e-mail from a remote location just let your mail pile up. I've learned to ignore over-quota error messages unless they continue on for months. Should you plan to be gone for an extended duration such as a whole season I'll remove your address. But you'll have to notify me when you return because I can't keep up with start/stop dates.
What's MIDI?
I play a mandolin (sort of) and have joined the bluegrass/oldies/gospel music group that meets every Friday evening at the River Bend Baptist church. I created a web page at
http://www2.coastalnet.com/~cn1027/pickin.htm where I posted a few MIDI songs that we play often. This has prompted the following amusing conversation several times. I thought everybody had heard of MIDI but apparently not…
"Wow, you guys in the music group are pretty good"
"Oh, were you a visitor last Friday evening?"
"No, I heard the recordings on your web page. They're great!"
Folks, that ain't us! The tunes you hear on the web page are MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) tunes that are synthesized by the sound card in your PC. In other words they are computer-generated. If your sound card is inexpensive and you have teeny-weeny speakers the tunes will sound pretty bad but with a good card and decent stereo speakers they're OK. I tell folks that if they think MIDI tunes sound good they haven't heard anything until they come and hear 15-20 real live musicians playing in our Pickin and Grinin group on Friday evenings at the RB Baptist church.
I love to accompany MIDI songs with my mandolin. The downloaded files are very small since they only contain digital instructions for your sound card. Who creates them? Mostly folks with keyboards that have a MIDI connection to their PC, although one can now get other instruments with MIDI. It's an art to create good MIDI music and some of it is pretty bad. To download MIDI songs type keywords like "midi, country midi, bluegrass midi," etc., in any search engine and you'll find hundreds of songs.
PC Tips
Nils Hokansson, in his Fairfield Computer group newsletter, mentioned a neat text file with PC tips from Microsoft at
C:\windows\tips.txt.
Windows 98 PC performance
Since there are over 200 Rbmail members that are not NBCUG members we'll repeat how to perk up a sluggish PC:
When you first boot (turn on) your PC, right-click on My Computer icon, select Properties and Performance. If your Systems Resources percentage is not in the 90s or high 80s your PC is probably loaded down with too many Start programs and will be sluggish. Go to Start/Run and type "msconfig" and select Start Menu and uncheck all the unnecessary programs. You're not deleting them but eliminating them from being brought into memory at startup and degrading performance. Be sure to keep at least your Anti-virus program, Systray and Power Profile entrees. Reboot and recheck your performance to see the improvement. You'll be surprised!