MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MEETING ON 20th April
Only ten people attending. If anybody is reading this who didn't come or has maybe given up coming, please let me know why. I've dropped from 27 to 10 in a month. What am I doing wrong?
There's not a lot to add to the documentation you already have. The only way to become comfortable with files and file paths is to practice, and, mean man that I am, I won't be showing you how to do this until next time - May 4th.
The topic which we covered in greater depth than the book goes is the matter of file extensions - those little three (but can also be 1 or 2) character sets after the dot (or, to be pedantic, the last dot) in a filename.
The main use of extensions (but not the only use) is to tell Windows what sort of data the file contains. It may be an executable file, one which windows can run directly, in which case it will (usually) have the extension .exe. Or it may be a data file which can be interpreted by a specific program, in which case Windows will open the program specified and pass the file onto that program. For example, a .jpg, a picture file, may be opened by Microsoft Paint, Internet Explorer or a 3rd party program such as ACDSee or Paint Shop Pro, depending on how your computer is configured.
If Windows has no program associated with an extension, it will ask you which program to open it with. If you get asked this question, it is either because the file in question is not designed to be shown or otherwise interpreted by any program, or else the program that CAN decipher it is not on your computer. Either way, you are unlikely to get anything meaningful out of it. All you can do, more by way of curiosity than anything, is to open the file with Notepad (or any other text editor). What you see is likely to be a mostly meaningless load of gibberish, but at least you can be secure in the knowledge that opening something with Notepad, provided you don't try to modify it, won't cause any damage or unwanted effects.
Surgery and general gossip mornings are on the 27th April and 11th May The next formal meeting is on May 4th. On 27th April, I am determined that we will get Project Oasis connected to the Internet!
Finally, a reminder of my e-mail addresses:
billnot@billnot.com for general mail
questions@billnot.com for questions to be answered in the Grapevine or at a session.