September Charity

by Colin MY COMPUTER TUTOR

My September charity is The British Heart Foundation.

Three reasons at least:

• JB who welcomed me to his home in California four years ago and who started this month with a heart attack. The medical team were brilliant.
• MC whom I teach. An old soldier with a wicked sense of humour, he has a "dicky ticker", as he puts it.
• My dad 1916-1997

You can probably think of some too...

Today I have no clients - people don't seem to want Tuesdays! - but I have loads of support material to produce for clients' manuals, so shall spend a busy morning with screenshots, OpenOffice.org Writer, my excruciatingly slow printer and a hot laminator.

Oh yes...I know how to have fun!

Colin

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P.S....Bullet Points

I wondered why the bullet points above didn't show up, so I took a deep breath and explored the template HTML.

So now I feel very pleased with myself....and just had to tell you!

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"...one of Nature's little kings"

by Colin MY COMPUTER TUTOR

Just thought you'd like to see what I saw this afternoon.

I'd just spent a couple of hours delivering my new improved leaflets. I've decided to re-do Hereford City because it's at least a year since I last hit the city's streets with leaflets. More of that story later...

I was walking back along a busy street in town when I saw a small group of people staring and pointing at something on the steps of a financial adviser's - you know the kind of building, with that air of exclusivity and smoky glass. As I approached I thought it was a leaf, or maybe a butterfly that they were so interested in, but when I got close I saw it was a goldcrest! There are some birch trees along the road and an old cemetery nearby with other trees and bushes, but this little fella must have got a bit confused and flown into one of the windows and stunned himself.

This isn't my hand, nor the same bird - I've borrowed this photograph courtesy of The Western Isles website.

There were three women there looking, one of whom I recognised as an ex-school pupil. She had her daughter with her in a push-chair - it was 'school home-time' - and she said she'd nearly run the bird over with the push-chair.

The bird was just standing there, the eyes bright, but I easily picked it up. Wild birds won't normally let you do that! When a bird is stunned, the best thing to do is keep it warm and calm - i.e. in the dark - so a tiny bird like a goldcrest can easily fit in the warmth of two cupped hands.

And sure enough - or maybe I should say luckily - after a couple of minutes he started to perk up and then flutter...and off he flew up into a birch tree

Goldcrests are actually the smallest British bird. They are common but not many people are aware of them because they are so small and like to poke around in hedgerows or up in birch and larch trees. Their Latin scientific classification name is Regulus, which means 'little king'. The Americans call them kinglets!

I've featured several pictures of birds in my posts. That's because I've always been fascinated by them and I'm always looking out for them!

New Season

By Colin MY COMPUTER TUTOR

September always feels like a fresh start. It's the end of the holiday season for most people - back to school for many - and having been a teacher for 25 years I still get that "start-of-a-new-year" feeling in September. So although my business year doesn't start for another two months I'm already in "review mode"!

Now I'm free of the monthly payments to ADC, for advertising in my local Sainsbury's, I've decided to invest in more leaflets and also use my local freebie newspaper. Leaflets have given me the best return of clients so far. Local parish and community magazines have been worthwhile too, so I think it's going to be worth paying that bit more to get a decent size advert in the local freebie each week.

Here's the revised leaflet - this is its 4th incarnation!

The printers said that they could do the logo in shades of blue rather than full 4-colour, which would have been horrendously expensive.

The top two blues came out a little darker than the ones you see here, but there's still good definition and I think it looks much more professional to have your logo in its colours rather than 'grayscale'.

I've had 5000 of these done - they work out at a little under 3p each - and they will be hitting the neighbourhood as from this weekend!

I tried the local newspaper last year for 4 weeks and did get some response from that, so I'm prepared to try it again up to the middle of December. There's little point in advertising in the week before Christmas, so I shall have another review in the New Year.

One of the local papers charges double if you include any colour, so I'm advertising in the other one!

Luckily, the paper with advertising at the cheaper rate features news and articles, so it's more likely to be read.

The other one is totally dedicated to adverts, so if you're not looking for something to buy you're likely to throw it away without even opening it...I do!

This will go in the 'Professionals' section, which is chockerful of display adverts. Most of them are single column and the few that catch my eye

(i) have a logo and/or (ii) are three columns wide.

So that's what I've gone for here. It costs more but should catch the eye, which is the first step in advertising:

Attention, Interest, Desire, Action...

I seem to remember from somewhere...so I hope I've got some of those right!

Colin

Long Distance Information...

by Colin MY COMPUTER TUTOR

I'm now travelling an 80-mile round trip once a week to teach a gentleman in Builth Wells in mid-Wales. We've agreed that I'll do a three-hour session and take him through "the basics". We start off with coffee...then do an hour or so...then there's a coffee-break...and then another stretch until he feels he's had enough. Information and coffee, that is.

What do you consider to be "the basics"?

In my experience, as far as that goes, people have a home computer for communication and finding information, which usually means learning how to do email and how to find things on the Web. So my first sessions are about email - which is a big topic - and then how to search for information.

I am a great fan of "email clients" - Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail ... and recently Mozilla Thunderbird. One or two clients are using Outlook, but they'd already been introduced to it by their children.

I really do my utmost to discourage people from using web-mail unless they are already set in their ways. I hate it!

I hate the way AOL mail announces "You have email...."

I hate the way BT fills up every mail folder with an advert as soon as you empty it...

I hate all the distracting flashing flickering adverts that generally surround webmail...

I hate having to enter my email address and password every time I want to see my emails, even the old ones!

Yeuk!

Just a personal opinion...but everyone is entitled to my opinion!

So, rest assured that I have got my new client off to a good start with a mail client!

The other thing that annoys me is the way that various agents clutter up your browser with toolbars. I reckon the only toolbar worth having is Google's - so you can always carry out a Google search however many webpages you have open.

That's all I have - and I always make sure my clients have the Menu Bar available too.

Of course, the more toolbars you have in the browser the less space there is on the screen for the webpage.

I could rant on......................and probably will in ensuing posts! But to end, here's a little tale about communication:

I received an email through my website last week from a lady in Manchester, who wanted help with her laptop and also to know how much I charged. I'm always pleased when I get feedback from my website - it shows it's working! - but sorry that I couldn't help the lady. Manchester is 145 miles away from me and that really is too much of a round trip.

So I did some research through Google with "computer lessons manchester" etc. etc. and managed to find a couple of references to computer tutors in that area. I then emailed her, apologizing that I couldn't teach her but offering her these local contacts.

One of them is Pete, who specializes in teaching digital photography and website design. We've now exchanged a couple of emails and I've put a link to his website in the UK Tutors list...

Colin