News

The passing late last year of Wayne, our chairman, hit us all very hard. He was a real enthusiast for Seniornet, leading from the front, and the success of our Learning Centre is due in no small measure to his efforts over the last ten years. Rest in peace Wayne.

Our plunge into a short course regime in the second half of last year worked well. A lot of work went in to get the system up and running with a reasonable repertoire of short courses. Work is ongoing to add to this repertoire to have an even better range of topics of interest to offer to our members.

During the break we have replaced some of our computers to allow us to run courses using more demanding programs and more demanding versions of our popular programs. We have also reloaded all the software on our other computers to give them a new lease of life in their performance. These have been set up as triple boot computers to make sure that classes whose members have a variety of operating system software can be readily accommodated.

The February class schedule is available on the Course Schedule page so have a look and book yourself a seat. Get in touch with us if a course that you would like is not on the schedule. We are keen to know what you would like.

Enjoy our short course system and the change in the variety of topics of interest that we will be offering each month.

We Listened !

As a result changes are under way at SeniorNet to make what we are offering better fit what you are looking for.

We have listened to what our members are saying and we have had a good look at what is being done at other centres. It showed that some other centres were doing better than we were, and even of greater importance were enjoying what they did more.

Overall our local members feel that we are doing a very good job of what we present. There is however one area where we fall short of delivering what is required. Most of you have specific wishes as to what extra functions you would like to use your computer for. We have been offering material which enables you to develop the required know how and skills. Unfortunately however this is being presented in a course, sometimes as long as eight weeks, that also contains a lot of material that you have already mastered or in which you do not hold any great interest.

To rectify this problem we will be splitting our courses into short well defined modules involving one or two weeks. You will now have the choice as to whether you do a cluster of modules or just one module that contains the elements that you want. This has the following advantages.

-The choice is all yours; you can pick exactly what it is you want to learn

-If you think a course may interest you but are not certain, you can do one module to check it out without requiring a lengthy commitment.

-if a course is fully booked new courses will become available every month instead of having to wait a term

This is how the new format of courses will work for existing members.

The schedule of courses being offered for each particular month will be notified to you one month ahead of the beginning of the courses. For example you will receive the details of August courses in early July

This notification will contain the name, date and time of the course, a brief description of what it contains, the name and phone number of the tutor, and any suggested prerequisites.

Obviously with some courses there are some capabilities you should already possess in order for you to participate successfully.

Although suggested prerequisites are made in the course description the final determination is up to you. If you are uncertain as to whether you have sufficient background ring and discuss it with the listed tutor.

Once you have decided that you wish to enroll ring the course tutor and they will complete the proceedings

The course fee will be collected on the first day of the course. This may be either by cheque or cash but if by cash please bring the correct amount as no change will be available at the centre.

We have put a lot of work into these changes and are feeling confident that they will deliver something even better than previously available.

We have consulted widely in setting them up but we have not stopped listening. If after you have tried the new format you have experienced any difficulties or have any suggestions we will welcome your input

Contact our Secretary, (click here) and she will be delighted to answer any questions that you might have and to facilitate the process of joining and helping you to choose a starting course.

With MS Office 2010 installed in our Windows 7 partitions we are now offering courses using MS Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. Further course variations are using Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live mail. The course on managing files and folders is also available in three varieties - Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Interest in long courses is diminishing so we will soon be offering a wider variety of short courses and workshops covering topics of interest.

Our third term has just finished. As well as our core classes we held a number of workshops during the term. The popularity of the workshop on 'Transferring photos from your digital camera to removable storage' was such that we repeated it several times. A workshop on installing and using Skype voice over internet was also popular and a lot of fun, each session ending up with video chatter between rooms. A video call, using Skype, carries much, much more communication than a simple voice call. A workshop introduction to the world of spreadsheets also attracted considerable interest.

The new premises are working very well with the more open space allowing us to have more workshops and Q & A sessions with larger groups of members.

We have developed a short course using Picasa, the free photo management and editing software. This is proving popular and dovetails well with our Photo editing courses.

Microsoft Windows 7 is now here and, thanks to Microsoft and Techsoup, we can now install it and offer our courses using that new operating system. Half of our computers are set up as dual boot machines to boot either into Windows XP or Windows Vista. The remainder presently have Windows XP only and we will set them up to boot either into Windows XP or Windows 7. Further down the track we expect to replace Windows Vista with Windows 7.

To cope with the demands of these operating systems we have increased the random access memory in all of our computers.

We will shortly be having another Open Day so have a look at the Chairman's blog for the details. The link is at the top of this page.

In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.

In my day, we didn't have rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.

In my day, we didn't have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

In my day, we didn't have cats and dogs. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip.

Webdrive is the Auckland based company who sponsor us by hosting this website for free. They also provide us with an email box. This means that we can use our domain name as the base of our email address, so open up your address book and change the email address of our Learning Centre to:

We think that this is a neat name and much easier to remember alongside our web address of:

We now subscribe to TelstraClear for our telephone services and they also provide us with the ten mailboxes that we use in our Email and Internet courses.

TelstraClear subsidise the Federation of NZ SeniorNets by a proportion of the monthly amount that our members spend

with them. So please let us know if you use any TelstraClear services. You will be helping us.

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. One elderly man's response was,

"Well for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and went into a shop. We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a parking warden writing out a ticket. We went up to him and said, 'Come on, how about giving a senior citizen a break ?'. He ignored us and continued writing out the ticket. I called him all the names under the sun, he glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tyres. So my wife started to let him have it, so he finished the second ticket and started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes and the gathering crowd was giving him a hard time as well. The more we abused him the more tickets he wrote.

We try to have a little fun each day now that we are retired. It's important at our age."

You could of course come into our Learning Centre, have a great deal of fun and gain some new skills.

God looked down on Lower Hutt recently, was surprised by what he saw and called up his helper.

God: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colours by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles.

St Francis: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

God: Grass? But, it's so boring. It's not colourful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and porina catepillars. It's sensitive to temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

St Francis: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

God: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

St Francis: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.

God: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

God: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

St Francis: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

God: What nonsense! At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn, they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life.

St Francis: You had better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

God: No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter to keep the soil moist and loose?

St Francis: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

And the moral of the story ?
Well, when you are busy typing up your family history and aiming to produce a beautiful smooth sward of text,
but your word processor keeps on popping up these annoying "weeds", don't despair, just remember
that somebody up there loves them.

One of our members, who is a cracker-jack tutor, had her entry in the recent Grown Ups photo competition "Highly Commended". So, for your enjoyment, here is her entry, called "Dressed for The Races".

Now that Santa is bringing you a digital camera, you will of course have every reason to come along to our Digital Camera and our Photo and Image Editing courses in the New Year to learn how to produce wonderful images like this.