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Today I attend the Intro to MIDI class. Instructor Dick Loucks shows us how to make music on a standard keyboard. Elsewhere, Jeff Yurka teaches Intermediate FileMaker aided by his infamous rubber chicken pointer.
Despite the expertise around me, I’m having technical difficulties. I’ve spent almost a day and half trying to download pictures from my digital camera. It worked Friday, but not since. Multiple restarts, system configuration changes, checking and rechecking the cables, connection and power, and it still won’t work. I have to unload pictures to take more. I’m about to rip my hair out.
DeVore comes over to help. We fiddle around, read the manual for the umpteenth time. DeVore remembers a quirk with a past digital camera and advises turning AppleTalk off and restarting. Bellissimo! It works. Pictures downloaded, all is right in the world. This is the essence of MacCamp.
“PMUG is about teaching people how to use their Macintoshes,” says DeVore. “We’re a learning user group. We want to help people learn and spread the enthusiasm.”
Once people go to MacCamp, they’re often hooked. This session, a quarter of attendees are here for the first time, another quarter have been here once and the rest have been coming for years.
I corner Lori Welch for a picture to prove that girls come to MacCamp and bring cool stuff. She’s here with her boss’s new iBook. As the computer support person at her company, Welch has to make sure the iBook is A-OK for management use. (Wink, wink.) A MacCamp newbie, I ask Welch if she plans to come back. “Ohhhh, you bet,” she says.
Yep, me too.
— Diane Cohn
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Wiring the Woods
MacCamp’s official network admin for the weekend is hard at work blasting his buddies. Lon Johnston, 17, has been a member of PMUG since he was 13. He sets up networks after school for pocket money.
Since most Macs are Ethernet ready, building the entire MacCamp network is simple. Johnston and his crew spend about an hour untangling the Ethernet cables and another setting up the network. That’s it. Problems are rare.
“It’s pretty much laying a few routers, stringing Ethernet between the buildings, and voila — a no-problem network ready to go.”
MacCamp takes place at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon each April and October. Sponsored by the Portland Mac Users Group (PMUG), camp is open to members and non-members. Please contact Charles DeVore for more information.
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