Tid Bits on a Friday

New Computer
It has been a busy week. My main computer had died on me about a month ago, due to a power surge. The mother board and the power supply got fried. My computer was 5+ years old, so it was time for a new one. But like a lot of things, it came at a bad time. But I managed to work out a trade for a brand new computer, and I really love my new computer.

I have my new computer about 90% setup at this point. So, I'm able to do most of things I did before and a few new things. My new computer is running Windows VISTA Ultimate, which so far I really like. I haven't really used VISTA very much. My old computer was running Windows XP Media Center, which I also really liked. It worked great for me.

So, I'm learning new and fun stuff with VISTA, which not only helps me to accomplish what I need to, but I plan on sharing some of the things I learn with you all. So, stay tuned for those tips, because I'll start posting some of the tips and maybe we can go over some of them at our meetings.

Once I got my new computer and started setting it up, I decided that I wanted at least one good reference book on Windows VISTA, so I drove into Johnson City one day this week and I picked up a book at Books-a-million. Here is the title of the book I picked up: "Windows Vista Inside Out" by Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, and Craig Stinson. It is a big reference book and should make good reading on those nights I have trouble sleeping..

CraigsList
I also picked up a couple of magazines. One of the magazines I picked up was "Wired". There was a really interesting article in it about Craig Newmark, the creator/founder of Craigslist. I would highly recommended reading it, since a lot of us are using Craigslist and it may be one of the topics at our next meeting. To read the article online, go here: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist.

Creating Your Own Handwritten Font
I picked up another Magazine, "Windows Magazine" the Fall 2009 edition and found several interesting articles in it, but one that I thought the group might be interested in was titled "Turn Your Handwriting Into a Font You Can Use" by James Stables. This sounded interesting and fun.

In this day and age when so much is typed and not handwritten, you can find yourself longing for a more personal touch and maybe to stand out a little in the pack.  I read the article and the process for creating your own handwritten font, and it is simple. 

There is a web site called yourfonts (http://www.yourfonts.com)  and they have a simple process for creating your own font.  All the instructions and the process is on their web site, so I won't go over them here. 

I would like to say that once you have created your own handwritten font and installed it on your computer, remember that if you create an email using your new handwritten font and you send your email out to a friend, your friend won't see the text displayed in your new handwritten font, unless they install your new handwritten font onto their own computer.

What would work just fine is if you type up a letter in Word using your new handwritten font and then printed out your Word document.  It would be printed using your new handwritten font, since you have it installed on your computer. 

If you play around with creating your own handwritten font, let us know by posting something on the blog or emailing us your new handwritten font so we can install it and check it out.  Have fun.