by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
I hope everyone had a great Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year! Have you made those New Year's resolutions yet? Better get to it; otherwise what will you have to break in the new year?
I must say that I was a little disheartened at our last meeting, you know, the one with all the goodies? We only had five people show up. I know, Christmastime shopping and other activities got in the way, but we still had a good time. Scott had his new Christmas present, the 64 DTV, on hand and gave us a demonstration. A rather cool device.
All right, the next meeting will be on January 13th, 2005 at 5120 Cedar at the Roeland Park library at 6:30 pm.
Go to our website at http://cugkc.cjb.net and leave a post on our Forum.
I still have 64s and 128s with 1541 and 1571 drives. I also have printers and monitors for sale. Catch me at the next meeting or call me at home. My number is 816-761-4777. Call after 4:00 pm.
Financial Report
Balance Nov. 2004 ................... $305.15
Income: Dec. 2004
Renewals (2) ........................
$ 20.00
Expenses: Dec. 2004 .................-$ 0.00
Closing Balance Dec. 2004 ........... $325.15
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for December was held Thursday, December 16th at the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library. I was disappointed that only 5 members attended, but at least that meant more goodies for those of us who were able to attend!
Due to the lack of a quorum at the December meeting, we did not hold the election for officers for 2005. We'll try again at January's meeting.
As I mentioned in last month's newsletter, I have updated the CUGKC Monthly Meetings web page. It now lists the meeting dates for 2005. Most meetings are scheduled for the second Thursday of each month; however, we have rescheduled February's meeting from February 10 to February 17 because the meeting room at the library is unavailable February 10.
Speaking of the CUGKC website, our provider of the CUGKC web forum has pulled the plug on our forum. We have lost the topics/messages in the old forum, but I have created a new forum for us to use from this point forward. Check it out today!
As I mentioned in last month's newsletter, the Commodore 64 DTV (Direct to TV) is now on sale! I also asked if you think that this would be a fun demo at an upcoming CUGKC meeting. I was hoping that someone would answer "yes" to this question, because I bought a DTV and demonstrated it at December's meeting. I'll bring it again to January's meeting in case you want to give it a spin.
Finally, a reminder about the next Group meeting. It will be held at our usual place, the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library, on the usual day, Thursday, January 13th at 6:30pm. See you then!
by Lenard Roach / lroach1@cugkc.cjb.net
With the holidays finally winding down I had a chance to do a little work on "The Envelope Addressor" program; and when I say little I do mean little! The war on improving the BASIC text started when I tried to add the "Attn:" line to the Preview part of the program. Even though the insertion of the extra line was easy enough, getting it to cooperate with the rest of the program was not. For some then unknown reason there was a "break" in the envelope box display that by all rhyme and reason should not have been there. However, when I removed the "Attn:" line from the BASIC text, everything was just as it should have been by the rules of Commodore BASIC. So, after much frustration and anguish, I sought advice from someone who would possibly know exactly what was happening with the program. I allowed him to peruse both the written BASIC text and the running version of "The Envelope Addressor". He looked it over carefully and gave me the best advice he could:
"I don't understand any of this Commodore stuff, dad. Why don't you just leave it alone for awhile, and maybe it will come to you", was Gabriel's suggestion. No wiser words were spoken, for as I did walk away from the project, a few days later the solution to this programming dilemma came right to me just like rear-ending a semi tractor trailer while doing highway speed. In this particular programming scenario, one of the LEN numerals was set three places too high. Once this was corrected, the "Attn:" line on the display screen fell right into place with the rest of the display. Leave it to the computer saturated minds of the next generation to come up with the simple solutions for us of the former computer generation.
I still have a long way to go before this program is operational to my satisfaction. With a little Commodore knowledge the program is workable now, but like any programmer I wish to make "The Envelope Addressor" as user friendly as possible. Sometimes this task is not so easy to accomplish. My programming mentor, "Grandmaster Z", always said that programming is over fifty percent trying to make the work "user friendly", and it's that fifty percent that is the hardest to work up and work into the program. To try and ignore these safeguards is like pulling a tooth without any Novocain. It can be done, but boy will it seriously hurt the work at hand.
Still needed to be added to the work are a directory reader and a file editor. Both subroutines will make "The Envelope Addressor" much easier to operate. If all goes well, I hope to have a working V1.0 ready for beta testing by late April of this year. The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City will get first option to beta test "The Envelope Addressor" once the program is done. I will be glad to report their findings to "Ryte Bytes" and my responses to what they found. If you also wish to be part of the beta test team, then leave a message of interest to lroach1@cugkc.cjb.net, and I will send you a copy of the finished V1.0 for your own personal beta test, along with a form to fill out your findings and opinions of the program. If all tests of this version go well, then V1.5 will hopefully include an optional selection to print on to either a #10 or a #7 size envelope. As it stands, V1.0 will only print on the face of a #10 size envelope. With some serious prayer and serious guidance from the Commodore populace, "The Envelope Addressor" should develop into a worthwhile program that will be worthy of being called a Commodore program.
The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City is a not-for-profit educational support group for persons using Commodore computers.
Membership benefits include a monthly newsletter as well as access to CUGKC's library of over 1000 public domain and shareware disks.
Dues are $15 the first year, $10 annually thereafter. Disks of the month and library disks cost $3 each for members.
Meetings are held on the second Thursday of every month at the Cedar Roe branch of the Johnson County Library, located at 5120 Cedar Street in Roeland Park, Kansas. Visitors are welcome to attend any meeting. For more information, contact any officer:
Email us at cugkc@cugkc.cjb.net
or visit our web site at http://cugkc.cjb.net.
Our snail-mail address is:
CUGKC
6025 Corona Avenue
Kansas City, Kansas 66102