ICON's December program featured me, demonstrating how to "doodle," using the Paint program. Paint is included in every version of the Windows operating system. It is a very rudimentary graphics application compared to Corel Draw or Adobe Photoshop, but everyone can have some fun with it! You can create basic shapes or draw freehand with the pencil tool. You can work with the default colors or edit them to create custom ones. ICON member, Mick Topping, suggested that you are more likely to learn something if you try out the Paint program, instead of playing Solitaire, the next time you're bored.

I also demonstrated, rather clumsily, a Medion graphics tablet Sarah and I purchased recently. The tablet and stylus are functionally the same as a mouse in that both are pointing devices, but drawing with the stylus is more natural than with a mouse. Your mouse pointer is oriented to the display screen itself, but the stylus for a graphics tablet is dependent upon its proximity to the tablet surface. For the purpose of creating or editing images, the tablet has some distinct advantages over a mouse. We'll cover this more fully at a Digital Imaging SIG in the not-too-distant future.

We concluded our auction of ICON's KDS laptop computer at the meeting. We sincerely thank Jim Stewart, who won the bidding and all who participated in the auction.

I also announced the launch, on our web site, of ICON's Image Gallery. You can check it out at www.iconusersgroup.org. Click the "Image Gallery" link in the blue (main) navigation bar, at the left of most of the pages on the site. You can browse pictures submitted by others and submit some of your own. Give it a try! Thanks, Sarah, for making this and all the other features of our web site so usable!

After my panic attack over the closing of Old Country Buffet, ICON's holiday dinner and party turned out to be a wonderful time of fun and fellowship thanks to Golden Corral, who accommodated our needs only three weeks before Christmas. Whew! My personal thanks goes out to all those who gave of their time and effort to help make this event a success.

Check the online calendar for details of our January program. January is "Clean out your closet" month! Don't let those old software programs or hardware rob you of valuable storage space. If you have computer equipment, software, peripherals, books or magazines, and/or supplies that you will not use, bring them to ICON's January 15th general meeting. We will have a table set up to display them for others to see and take home if they can use them. Anything leftover after the meeting will be donated, recycled, or trashed, whichever is appropriate.

Be sure to note the time schedule changes beginning this month, which affect all of ICON's SIGs. Because some of you have let us know that you are still sleepy at 9:30, we will be starting a bit later than we used to.

The Office Applications SIG, which has been meeting on the 4th Tuesday evenings, will be added to Desktop Publishing on the 4th Saturday. Our new Web Design SIG will take the Tuesday evening time slot.

I have not forgotten my promise to cover networking as a focus topic, and we will cover it in about three different sessions beginning with the 10:00 AM mini-seminar on February 12th.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and wish each of you a stupendously joyous and happy new year. There are new and exciting changes happening for ICON in 2005. Let's all resolve to enjoy our computers and learn more this year…that should be an easy one to keep!

Happy Computing
Terry