(I'm sure a lot of these links are already dead.)

12/10/97

What a mess it is up here. I wouldn't know where to start if I did have some time. I'm posting some photos from the last TPC meeting. Email me if you'd like to know the URL.

12/8/97

Gosh. There is a lot I'd like to put up here, but seeing as I just can't find the time I think I'll just put it off til some other day. I had a blast at Comdex. Got to see the Monkees at the Harley Davidson Cafe (?) in Vegas at a party sponsored by Claris Corp. Mike sure had fun. So did Darren.

I spent a lot of time with my PIM Ecco Pro 4.01 the other day learning how to get more out of it. And just when I went to the NetManage site it seems that they are about to abandon this thing. It hot synchs beautifully with my PalmPilot. I would really hate to have to give this program up for a Microshaft product. Enough is enough already!!

My apologies to anyone that actually comes here and reads this. I don't update it much as I've usually got too many applications running although I did a complete reinstall of Win95 a month or so back, it just isn't stable. What can I say? It's frustrating.

Some good news for those of you that want to do the TPC newsgroups offline. Anawave just released 2.0 of their newsreader, Gravity, and it's really easy to setup additional servers. Check it out. I've only had a chance to play with it for a short time, but I like it. I'll stick to Agent (1.5) for the TPC newsgroups, but will probably use Gravity 2.0 for others. I check Stroud's a few times a week and that's how I noticed this. 5 stars!

That's all for now. I'll eventually get some photos up here.

It may take a while to load.

11/2/97

Just playing around here. Installed OSR2 this weekend. Now I've got to get back to work. Just did a little test. (8, 9, 10)

10/21/97

I've been told that I needed to update this site. Guess so. And I had to get rid of that 'new' gif. I Don't really know where to start. Kind of busy. The next TPC meeting is undecided. We don't have a program director, so the rest of us are kind of doing the job.

I met someone last week that works for Hitachi. I may have talked him in to bringing the Hitachi MPEG camera in, but I haven't heard back from him yet. Suggestions are welcome. Maybe I'll just skip the next meeting. The next day I'm going to go to the states for Comdex. I haven't registered yet and that's another thing that I ought to be doing. I may go on the Saturday before and attend some meetings organized by the Association of Personal Computer User Groups. I don't know. They are asking my to fax in my registration.

Tony Tibi brought his digital camera to last week's ICA meeting and took some photos. Once I get mine, I'll bring it to TPC meetings and do the same. That reminds me, someone taped part of the last meeting and put it into RealAudio format. If we do this every meeting, it will be a good place for those that were unable to attend the meeting to hear some of it. I don't know. Good idea, but it all takes time and I kind of doubt that the person that did it last time would be willing to commit to doing it every meeting.

I promised our editor that I would write two things for the next newsletter, one review and one article like before where I just ramble on. I'm running out of time again, so I'm not sure if I'll make it. The review I'd like to write is of a Viagrafix training CD-ROM. From what I've seen so far it looks like good stuff, but I'll have to take a much better look at it.

Another project occupying my time is a reinstall of Win95 onto my 3 year old Toshiba Protégé. Some time last month I lost use of my combined 28.data./14.4 fax/LAN card by Cameo.

I'm already out of time for today. Where does it all go?

9/25/97

Lot's happening, but no time to write. Briefly. Went to World PC Expo at Makuhari yesterday. Bumped into Tim Exley, a friend from Ringo.(This link is to CJMag User Groups page, as the Ringo Web page is way old. Tim and I out the whole time. We stopped at a connected computer w/o people standing around and did some browsing. I wanted to show him the TPC newsgroups so that Ringo and TPC people could maybe carry on a discussion and do some things together. Had a good lunch there. Saw the new Iomega 2GB Jaz2 and Buz. Not too much out there about the Buz. I'll check it out at Comdex. I think the Buz will be released Q4; Not sure about the new Jaz.. Buz seems to do a whole bunch of stuff, including video capture...? Buz comes with some software, including one that is called RecordIt. Wow, I bet it records and plays the stuff that I've been listening to recently and talked about a few weeks ago (9/09/97).

I 'heard' about a neat book the other day. I'm going to just paste a message that I posted in a TPC conference on it:

RealPlayer 4.0 has a 'Daily Briefing' button that allows me to just click once and hear a whole bunch of RealAudio files one after the other. Most of them are updated daily weekdays.

If you have RealAudio I recommend you check it out. It's 26 minutes. They change the audio daily at books.com, so it might be hard to find, but I think I have it bookmarked:

• http://www.books.com/audio/0070410453i.RAM
• http://www.books.com/scripts/view.exe?isbn~0070 410453
• http://www.books.mcgraw-hill.com/digitalestate/

I think that there will be more books like this one. He includes a 'virtual chapter' in the book, so it can be continued online.

And he gives the links of all companies mentioned in his book.

He said something that I think is very true: "Individuals can absorb a lot more information as long as they are controlling what they are absorbing when they get it."

Context is king...

Still working on the links (*removed) page. Still not sure where it's going. I stopped using my Windows IE Favorites folder months ago. Too messy. But I still need something. Maybe it's time to take a look at a URL/bookmark manager. And it would be nice to have something that synced with the Pilot so I could add things when outside.

Getting ready to reinstall Win95 on the Toshiba notebook that I bought 3 years ago. Dialup Networking stopped working a few weeks ago. The hard drive is only 120MB, but I really like this machine. It's a Protégé 3400. Found a place that sells hard drives for these. Hmmm.

Stroud's got a facelift.

 9/19/97

I'm getting up here more often. Working on that links page. I'm not sure where it's going to go. I just want a place where I can go when I'm on the road or just using a different machine. May save some time whem people ask about sites that I mention. Suggestions are welcome.

Did a little work on the Pilot page. I may never touch it again.

I like things kind of plain around here. They load faster that way. I was at a site today that uses frames that loads quickly and is mostly text.

 9/17/97

Finally getting around to creating a table so that I can keep track of all the software that's on my machine. I really don't know how other people do it. I've asked around and I seem to be the only one interested. What I want is something that I can refer to when I do a reinstall of Win95 and everything else. It would also be useful for keeping track of changes to the machine. I hope to save a copy of it periodically up here somewhere so that if someone asks me what version of whatever I'm using or for a URL, that can all be up there. I could also Hot Sync the file with my Pilot so I could have a copy when not at home or in case everything just died. I'll call it something like inventory.

I'm starting with a test version yesterday. I'll be keeping track of what's on my Pilot. (*Removed) I'm using Office97 and QuickSheet 2.0 for the Pilot. I will only post some of it on the Web. I am also going to use it to keep track of registration numbers and passwords.

And I will create a separate page for ISDN-related things. (*Removed) For now it will be just me rambling a few links, but may someday turn into something.

I promised to write something for the October TPC newsletter. I'd better get to work. I know that whenever I update these pages it means that I'm procrastinating. Like in high school and college when I'd clean my room and organize my notes the night before an exam.

9/09/97

What a day. It's so easy to get carried away up here and stay up kind of late. I was waiting for Todd to figure out the problem with his sound card and went off bumped into some prank phone call recordings. Todd is still working on getting use of his mic back, so I'm going to hit the hay.

I had wanted to tell him how neat this MPEG Audio Layer 3 stuff is that he told me about last week. I'm trying a player called WinAMP. This stuff sounds pretty good. Hmmmm. I was wrong. I thought that all of this stuff would get big towards the end of the year. This stuff seems to be talking off right now. Read some articles on it in: Forbes, TechWeb, Fortune, EE Times and USA Today. Just last week there was another USA Today story. And this is the Dvorak article that I think Todd must have seen. Dated September 23rd. Guess that issue is already out.

Todd got his gear working again. The application sharing in NetMeeting is pretty neat. I'm going to add a to-do list (local) somewhere up here and just paste things I want to do and links that I'd like to check out into it. There is a ton of stuff that I'd like to do. Might be time to take another look at that task list in Ascend97 by Franklin Quest. On second thought, nah! I just checked out the site and man they seem to have been bought out by Steven Covey. Sure enough, both franklinquest.com and covey.com lead you to the same place. They now call it Franklin Covey. And guess what, http://www.franklincovey.com takes you there, too.. Darn! And I wanted to get that one.

9/06/97

I'm going to create a links (*moved) page which will I can use to jump to the sites I visit most.

9/05/97

TPC meeting was last night. No time to really comment on it now. Maybe next week. It was a lot of fun.

9/04/97

TPC meeting is in a few hours. I'm not sure how I got volunteered into doing a table. Too late too back out, but I realize that I'm not too prepared. Counting on other Pilot-packing members to help me out. Mike Kato called and told me that he's bummed out that it's a roundtable-type meeting as he is running one table talking about storage-solutions.

Todd turned me on to some good music in RealAudio format. They are adding albums every week. I must have listened the the Doobie Brother's Rockin' Down The Highway about a half a dozen times. Piped through my stereo at 80Kpbs in sounds just like a CD. And I bet my neighbors can't either. The 'bottleneck' isn't the Net, but rather my machine as I tend to keep lots of things open at once. I don't think that it's necessary to place a RealAudio icon and link here. :-)

Sigi, Stuart and I are arguing in the tpc.help newsgroup about the importance of a news reader to support multiple news hosts easily. I use Agent for reading TPC newsgroups, but revert to the newsreader that came with Netscape 3.0x when I want to go to other hosts. Agent involves creating a new icon and another directory or something like that.

There was a neat article in the September issue of Byte on HTML + NNTP. I agree that the present way that news servers pass messages to each other seems kind of silly. I think the ideal is to write once and just point to everything. You can see how they are using it at the magazine by joining one of the discussions. They have a Web-based view of some of them, but I don't want to wait for the page to load every time.

So be ready to be doing news at a bunch of places real soon and hot just your office news server or ISP. Sigi asked in a conference somewhere about newsgroups and they

Back to the meeting. I want to get something ready for the meeting. I would love to see a program like Ecco by NetManage, which I use as my PIM, but with live hotlinks or whatever.

8/27/97

Vortex is something that I played around with a year or so ago and I'm going to check it out again. What do you all think? I'm putting this line in here as it's kind of hard to get to this site. This might be something to show at a future TPC meeting. former TPC member, Todd Boyle, who is keeping in touch with us via the newsgroups told me about this the other day when I was telling everyone how much I like my VCR which plays back at 1.3x and 2.0x speed by cutting out the pauses.

Back to Vortex. It's MARS, which stands for 'machine assisted reading software', I think. It's at version 3.0 and from what I read (or had read to me <g>) the next version will support double byte characters. This might be fun. And I am going to try and add Cornix to my pages here someday to see what people think. It requires a java-enabled browser and that's it.

Actually Todd is posting via email which screws up the threading. Oh, well.

Mijenix has released an update (2.03) to PowerDesk. I like this program as it gives me dual window panes which helps with file management.

And Todd told me about an ISP in Japan, Typhoon, that is suing some spammer for using him to send mail. Great! You can read about it.

PS: Is anyone actually reading this?

Been a few weeks now. Not a heck of lot going on. One week vacation starting Monday, but no plans to go anywhere. It's father's day in China. I had reservations to go to Shanghai on on the 13th for a week, but changed my mind. I'd like to go back, but I guess not now.

Last night was the TPC meeting. Fun, as usual. Was able to get my second article ever in the newsletter. (It's not there, yet.) I'll add links to it eventually, maybe not. I realize I've got a lot to learn and need a lot of time...

Thanks to my brother for reminding me that it's been a few weeks since I've done anything here. He should talk. (*dead link) Hahaha! 

I went to Guam a few weeks ago. Before the crash. First time there. I'd like to write more about the trip as it was beautiful and I highly recommend the place I stayed. But, hey, it's been 2 weeks and I haven't written anything about it yet. Let's get real here.

Spending lots of time reading news at NewsHub these days. A lot of times I just leave a browser window sorted by time open to and refresh when I feel like reading something. Looking for something like this that has general news. Looked a bit, but I find that I go back to Yahoo to catch up on some event.

7/20/97

Been over a week. I ought to write something here. Nah. I must be procrastinating. But I just thought of something. I'm just wondering how to make it easier for TPC members to do news. This might help. We'll see.

Time to get back to work. I'm supposed to get something to Paul and Mike for next month's newsletter. Boy, do I hate deadlines. But without them I'd never get anything done.

7/11/97

Not much going on this week. Todd Boyle and I tested a bunch of Internet Telephony programs. I really, really, really like Net2Phone. You talk into your computer (with mic, soundcard and the free software) and call someone that's using a regular telephone. It's full duplex, too. I'm not sure why it hasn't gotten much press. Just one review listed at Yahoo. I think it might be because most of the Internet news is written by people in the states who have cheap phone rates anyway.

 It's really great for those of us living overseas, though. I pay 10-15 cents for phone calls to anywhere in the states. Toll free (800 or 888) numbers are free. I haven't used my callback service in two weeks. Last night around midnight I used it to call Northwest to make some reservations for my next trip. The offices were closed in Japan, but not there. I didn't mind them putting me on hold. Finally getting a return on my investment in some of this stuff.

The PC to phone programs are okay, but there are problems. You and the person you want to talk to both have to be online, have the same software running, find each other out there somewhere and hope everything works. But it is totally free, except for your local phone charges, and the whiteboarding, application sharing and video are neat if you have them and can get them working. My biggest complaint is that time seems to fly by and if you don't hide yourself you get constant calls from strangers and all of them ask the same questions.

Back to Net2Phone. If you want to test it out for free take a look at the AT&T Toll-Free Directory (maybe not so complete). The quality is really good enough to get most things done. But notice that the software is beta and may crash your machine. They even recommend not running any other apps when using it. Best to have something like this on a second machine.

7/09/97

Some of you know how crazy I am about that 'new'  Microsoft Scrolling Intellimouse. It's really incredible, saving me about 5 minutes or more an hour when I'm browsing, etc. Of the applications that I use the most it was supported by MS IE 3.x, MS FrontPage97, Office97, Powerdesk 2.02 and my newsreader Agent 1.0x. (There are some others here.)

But I was disappointed that Eudora Pro, my mail program, didn't have it. At Spring Comdex Mike Kato and I met some of the Eudora engineers and they said they were going to look into it. Since getting back, I've downloaded updates to see if they added the support. Not yet. :-(

Well, I've got good news. Today, I read about, downloaded, installed, tested AND registered a 10 dollar shareware utility that gives you scrolling mouse support in almost all your apps, including Eudora. Yeah. Finally!! The program is called Flywheel and it's by Plannetarium and it's this weeks featured shareware of WUGNET.

That's all I have time for now. Thanks for listening.

7/04/97

Last night was the TPC meeting. I'd like to thank Norm and Howie of AV Engineering for telling me all I need to know about the Year 2000 problem. I'm not too worried about it, though. I will have

After talking to R.K. Deane tonight I decided that I'd better do some work on this page. Since there is a link to this page from the TPC page I ought to make things a little easier to find.

I have got to confess. One reason I don't work on this that much is that half the time I go to make changes to a page, etc. Microsoft FrontPage97 doesn't allow me to do so. I'm still not sure if I like this program, but I'm not going to knock it until I've given it more of a chance.

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote anything up here. I hope to do a little 'work' this weekend. It will be my first weekend in Tokyo in a few months. I was tempted to go somewhere from Thursday to Monday, like Hong Kong again or even Taiwan or Guam, but decided not to. I've got some mileage that expires at the end of the month and don't want to waste it.

Tomorrow I'm going to Akihabara. I'll be stopping in to say hello to Pete and thanking him once more for bringing me a 'present' from the states. We were in Atlanta together for Comdex and on the last day of the show he bought a keyboard, mouse, monitor switchbox. It's awesome. It's called MasterView CS-104. I just did a search for it and it turned up a few sites in Japan. I bet they are popular here because we have so little space. I had hoped to find the manufacturer's page. I stopped at their booth at Comdex. Nice people. I did find that Plathome in Akihabara sells them and cables to go with them. I'll stop there tomorrow. A place called Altex in Texas also has them.

If I get some time this weekend I'd like to write about my experiences with OCN and my new router. Lot's of fun. No regrets. And if I forget, remind me to talk about Net2Phone, Internet Phone (Vocaltec) and RealPlayer 4.0. This is really amazing stuff.

6/11/97

I'm back from my trip to Atlanta and Chicago. It was a quick one. Fortunately on both international legs of the journey I had 4 seats to myself. Both flights weren't very full. I think this is because Northwest has two flights per day to and from Minneapolis and I took the earlier ones each way.

I'll write more later. I'd like to talk about the show and the reunion. Met a lot of nice people. Saw a lot of things. Ate some good food, too.

Rec'd the latest 'issue' (number 16--June 1997) of the Japan Internet Report by TK Associates. There is an interview with Will Auckerman of Computing Japan Magazine. He talks a bit about the TPC and how his experience with the club prepared him for his present job there.

I bought a Visioneer PaperPort mx while in Chicago. Bought it from Computer Discount Warehouse. I didn't know it, but they had a store right in Chicago. The address is 315 West Grand Avenue. I walked there from Michigan Avenue. There is a Computer City right nearby. Not sure how long these stores have been there. Wish one of my friends would have told me sooner.

On the PaperPort. Anyone know the difference between the 'vx' and 'mx'? Just the software? I really don't know. And do I want to upgrade to PaperPort Deluxe 4.0?  I'm trying to figure out what's what.

A couple of things that I 'found' today. One is a place to search a whole bunch of computer magazines. It's called Computer Magazine Archive and is part of Ziff-Davis Net. I was about to sign up for it, but noticed that I was already eligible to get it for free as I had joined ZDNet as a part of CompuServe 'Computing Pro Forum'. Not a bad deal.

The other is something that Todd Boyle turned me on to. They are videos of Microsoft Tech-Ed 97 in NetShow format. I didn't really want to download another plugin, but I was curious. Can't say much for NetShow, but it does tell me one thing. And that's that this year we are going to be doing more and more over the Internet and modems aren't going to cut it. Todd just wrote to tell me that he has installed NetMeeting and that his mic is ready and waiting. I'll give it a try in a day or so. Right now I need some sleep.

6/02/97

Some of you know that I teach American history on the telephone once a week to high school kids here. Tonight was kind of fun. I did some searching (less than a minute) on the Internet and found audio files of The Star-Spangled Banner (*Broken) and a few seconds of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech and played them over the phone to a few students that were in the chapters where these were mentioned. Probably next year or the year after I'll be correcting there papers, etc. over the Internet. At least for those kids that have them. Most of them seem to have no clue as to how much their lives are going to be changing.

I noticed that the Using Japanese with a PC Running English Windows has been updated. He mentioned the TPC. As I've said over and over again this sounds like a subject that TPC members should be involved in What I have, UnionWay and The Japanese Language Support pack for MS IE.

Don't forget I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Atlanta and Chicago. Did I mention that I'm going to try and get to my 10th college reunion. Was checking out the U of C reunion site the other night and looked up a few old friends. One guy, Larry Heller wrote back within hours. Kind of creepy. In his second message he attached some porn photos. Sick ones. We really won't have time to keep up with all these people from the past. I'd better give my favorite time management tapes a listen.

Back to the reunion, I checked who's going to be there, or at least those that signed up. I only know one person. It's mostly because I took off two years between my junior and senior years and went to Taiwan. Oh well, speaking of Taiwan, I just did a search for an old friend there, John Cappo. Found him. Doing some sports promotion or something. Man, that guy has been there for 10 years now.

 Called NTT and signed up for their VoiceWarp service. (spelling?) Not sure how it works, but it seems to be just call-forwarding. 500 Yen per month. I think that in combination with some other 'services' like push button line and CatchPhone (call waiting) it's less. They've got something called a TripleSet discount and you get 20% off.

 5/29/97

 I went to the Telecom show at Sunshine City yesterday with Mike Kato. Had our picture taken. It'll only be there a few days. [Sorry, the picture is gone now.]

We are going to Comdex/Windows World in Atlanta next week so we will both miss the next TPC meeting.

 Naomi Nakayama of Bricks will be at the TPC meeting to tell everyone about ISDN. I can't see why everyone doesn't have it already. Kervin Go, of Cisco Japan and also a TPC member, should be there, too. He'll talk about Cisco routers. I'm thinking of getting one in the 700 Series, but I'm being told that it's overkill...

Pete Perkins of Janis/Asianet will also be going to Spring Comdex. Anyone else? Mike and I had reservations at some hotel near the airport for $160 or so a night. I told Mike to cancel them and we called Super8 and will be staying a few minute walk from all the event halls for half the price. They have some V.I.P. card that the Web page (old) says is $3.50 for a one time processing fee, but on the phone they said something about $50 per year. Anyone know more about this? Pete emailed just emailed me and said that he's going to stay there, too.

I learned something from this hotel reservation stuff. It seems that the Comdex people are really giving people that make hotel reservations through them the shaft. Book through them and a $69 room will cost you $112. I may be wrong here. If so, please correct me.

When I get back I want to do some playing with NetMeeting 2.0. We all have these ISDN lines here we ought to put them to use. My goal is to be able to hook up with my Dad in Rockford, IL once a week and have a chat. I'm excited about the application sharing. I want to be able to give him a tour of the Web. I might fly home one of these weekends to help him install a TA. Of course we've got to check to see if he can get ISDN where he lives.

Computing Japan has redone there Web site and it looks nice. Good thing they did it, because I was thinking of starting one called "Japan Computing" and making it like theirs should be. But who has the time. CompUNIQUE, a mailorder place in the states that I've been buying from for a few years, is sponsoring their site. Check it out.

I'm looking to get a new fax machine or one of those MFP (multifunction peripherals). Anyone have any advice for me? I'm considering a Brother, maybe the MFC-4550 but don't even know if it will work over here. I read some reviews and it sounds good. Home Office Computing Magazine said a few months back that people should be jumping up and down with excitement over these MFPs as they do so much and are easy to use. Read the May Byte on the plane the other day and I think that two new models have been released by HP and Brother and that these things just keep getting better and better. Don't have the magazine, but think it was the HP is the HP OfficeJet 1150C. Anyone notice?

Bought my own domain name a few weeks ago. 'cotton.com' was gone, so I got 'kencotton.com'. Nothing there yet, but it's mine! Who has your name?

I went to Hong Kong and Macao last weekend. It was fun. I had been waiting-listed on Northwest for every free weekend I had since about January. Got lots of information the Hong Kong Travel Association page before going. Considered staying at the Bangkok Royal Hotel. It's about the cheapest place to make the hotel lists, but decided to stay at the Holiday Inn Golden Mile, which wasn't much more. Think I got a good price as I'm a member of their Priority Club, which cost nothing to join. And the neat thing is that they have a toll free reservation office in Tokyo. Gotta watch out when changing money. The best place I found for changing from Yen to dollars was in Chungking Mansions. Look around as there are a few places, even in that building. That brings back memories of the first time I went to Hong Kong.

Some day I'll share my experiences up here on Worldperks. Gold is the only way to go. Takes 60,000 miles per year to do it, but after that you get double mileage, first class check in, access to the lounges and upgrades to first class when available within the states. The double mileage means that if for example you fly round trip to New York you'll get 15,000 x 2 and that's enough for a free round trip business class ticket to anywhere in Asia, which probably would cost more than the ticket to the states.

My friend and travel agent, Amir Zadeh, who used to be the branch manager of Number 1 Travel in Ikebukuro started his own travel agency in Yokohama called Seven Seas Travel. It's the same deal as the other places where you pick up your ticket at the airport in some tour group line. If you want to check him out call him at 045-451-3221 or email him.

 A lot of people ask what I do. My main job is a company called World Family. It's great. A few weeks ago one of the members emailed me after an event and attached some photos. I'll try to upload one of them. Gary Wolff also works there.

Boy, I've written about enough for now. I must be procrastinating. Oh, yeah, I've got work to do. Yuck.