ARCHIVE - AUGUST 1999

IF THIS BORES YOU AND YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME THEN JUST REPLY WITH
SIMPLY "UNSUBSCRIBE" IN THE BODY OF THE MESSAGE.

It might pay you to print this out now - about 4 pages

Now having said that let's proceed to where I'm up to at the moment.

1. Why a newsletter?
2. What I'm personally up to.
3. Licensing Tutorial Course
4. Updates and further pages in coming month
5  Problems I might have regarding tutorials etc.
6. Did you know you were a "statistic"
7. Stuff that should interest you
8. Feedback

1. Why a newsletter?

I can't claim this is an original idea of my own. One of the web programming services I subscribe to
made mention of newsletters and went on to say "you DO have a newsletter don't you? If not - why not?"

I didn't then but I do have one now!.

A huge amount of effort is made internationally to attract people to web sites and it makes a great deal of sense to provide some mechanism to keep interested visitors informed. Also see below - 6. Did you know you were a "statistic"

2. What I'm personally up to

Many of the people receiving this newsletter have corresponded with me previously on a wide range of
topics and to an extent know a little bit about me.

For those unfamiliar I am 57 years old, forced into "early retirement", live in a retirement type village on
the very beautiful central coast of N.S.W., Budgewoi actually (that's an aboriginal word meaning
"meeting of the waters").

Presently I do my tutorial thingy, try and research my own little corner of the hobby and try not to annoy
anyone unduly.

I have recently been appointed an editor of the Open Directory Project (Netscape's answer to Yahoo) so
I must be doing something right.

3. Licensing Tutorial Course

The first lessons are now quite advanced and will be sent out to registered applicants by the due date
i.e. 1st September. This course will be quite comprehensive and will require some work on the part of
participants. It is not a "mickey mouse" or pretend "learn questions and answers" type of course.

Finish the course and you will definitely be able to say you truly understand electronics in general and
radio in particular. You probably won't qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize in Nuclear Physics but it should prove personally very rewarding. Yes - you will be able to asks questions and receive answers.
.
4. Updates and further pages in coming month

Amplifier Design
AM Radio Design

5. Problems I might have regarding tutorials etc.

My biggest concern at present is the site is growing like "Topsy" and tending to be somewhat
unco-ordinated. The original structure is becoming a bit messy - a "bits and pieces" approach by default
so I might need to go back to the drawing board. The next problem is with the growth, I might ultimately
need my own domain. I've a lot to chew over.

6. Did you know you were a "statistic"

I try and keep myself informed as much as possible on trends etc. and subscribe to quite a number of
tools. Among these services is a tool for keeping track of site visitors. While these services don't and
can't provide information on individuals they can provide these statistics about my site since 2nd May,
1999 Total Visitors since 27th January, 1999 are 8,273 and after a slow start are escalating.

Total unique (you only get counted once) visitors:

May    1334
June   1516 - an increase of 16.8%
July    2074 - a further increase of 36.8% (WOW)

Of these total visitors - your operating systems were:

Win 95    51.7%
Win 98    30.2%
Win NT    11.6%
Sun           1.7%
Mac           1.5%
other          3.3%

Of these total visitors - your browsers were:

Net 4    39.81%
I.E. 4    37.45%
I.E. 5    12.23%
Net 3     6.21%
other     4.30%

Now I think that's a good vote for anything other than Microsoft and my reasoning is this: Virtually every
PC shipped is equipped with the current version of IE. To use any other browser you must have made a
personal effort to download and install the alternative

Of these total visitors - your monitor resolutions were:

800 X 600    49.14%
640 X 480    23.41%
1024 X 768  19.94%
other            7.51%

And my personal favourite - Of these total visitors your LOCAL time of day for visiting me was:

Guess what? - 11 a.m. to Noon your local time around the world - followed by
1 p.m. through to 5 p.m.

Naughty people, and your employer thought you were all hard at work.

Last but not least:

41.94% of visitors come from search engines
28.72% of visitors come from bookmarks
29.34% of visitors come from links from other sites - they have good taste

From the search engines above:

90.00% of visitors come from Yahoo!
5.52% of visitors come from Alta Vista
4.48% of visitors come from all other search engines.

The single most used keywords on search engines were "electronic projects" scoring 29.14% with
literally hundreds of others.

Why so many from Yahoo?. Firstly I've found out that Yahoo! are the hardest to even get listed with, let
alone a high listing. I happen to have both (always knew I had a touch of class about me). Secondly
Yahoo is miles ahead of the others when it comes to being a preferred search engine of choice.

7. Feedback

Well tell me what you think. Offer suggestions, constructive criticism anything to let me know you are
alive and well. Give me a little story about yourself. The most personally rewarding aspect of all this
apart from the "thank you's" is the number of fine people with whom I am now friends world wide. And
that's really something worthwhile in life.

Speaking of friends how about telling your friends about my site and my monthly newsletter?

Let me know if you would like to see some "Net Dummy Humour" or other humour (both family type)
and/or trivia included in the next newsletter. e.g.

From actual classified advertisements:

1.    Free puppies. Part German Shepherd, part dog.

2.    1983 Toyota Hunchback for sale $2,000

3.    Free Yorkshire Terrier, 8 yrs. old. Unpleasant little dog.

4.    German Shepherd dog, 85 lbs. Speaks German. Free

5.    Found. Dirty white dog. Looks like a rat. Been out awhile. Better be a reward.

6.    Cute kittens for sale. Two cents each or best offer.

Individual contributions welcome - space permitting.

8. Stuff that should be of  interest to you

If you want a schematic circuit drawing package (it does other things I haven't had time to try out yet):

Capilano's DesignWorks Lite (student version, I think)

http://www.capilano.com/
 

Keep your PC's clock correct by adjusting it every time you connect to the internet. It's called
SocketWatch and it is shareware:

http://www.locutuscodeware.com/

Gee! Don't you think I should charge these people for advertising?

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IF THIS BORES YOU AND YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME THEN JUST REPLY WITH
SIMPLY "UNSUBSCRIBE" IN THE BODY OF THE MESSAGE.
 

Thank you and 73's
 

Ian Purdie
VK2TIP "I'll give you the TIP mate"
Budgewoi N.S.W. Australia
Tel: 61 + 2 + 4399 3228 (2200 - 0800 U.T.C. please.)
QRP-L member #1978.
URL - http://my.integritynet.com.au
URL - http://www.qsl.net/vk2tip/
"Three out of five Web experts agree that frames are the work of the devil and represent all that is evil about the Web. The remaining two experts are agnostic and think that frames are just a stupid idea" -