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 You can do IT is a regular feature
of laterlife.com aimed at trying to help
laterlife visitors make the most of Information
Technology on or off the web.
Jackie Sherman who runs the
You can do IT Question & Answer
section is an IT trainer and author. Jackie has spent
her career in education and specialises in teaching
IT to adults. Her courses for adults include such
topics as MS Office, the Internet, e-mail and basic
web page authoring.
  Jackie
has also written the four books shown
here - you can find more details about these by
clicking on the cover images above. Jackie has
also been running a course specifically for over
50s.
 Via laterlife.com Jackie aims to
particularly help those new to IT and the web to build
up knowledge and confidence, so no question is too
basic. At the same time she will cover Q&As for the
more experienced user.
So if you would like to ask a question
of Jackie, why not email her jackie@laterlife.com
or if you have discovered something
which may be of interest to others in making the most
of the web, then she would love to hear about that too
jackie@laterlife.com
September 2007
PLANNING YOUR HOLIDAY
Q: With all this rain, I want to plan my
holiday quite carefully. Can you recommend any useful Internet
sites for finding out what the weather will be like?
A: Here are some
sites that I use regularly:
1.
www.bbc.co.uk/weather. Type in the name of your nearest
town and you will get a 5 day forecast showing likely
temperatures, visibility, sunshine, rain and wind speeds.
2. If you go to the BBC weather UK page, you can
also view a synoptic chart – click Pressure to play a
video showing the pressure changes over the next few days.
3. A really useful facility nowadays is a webcam.
Many sites run these locally so that if, for example, you want
to go surfing or sunbathing or check the traffic, you can see
what the waves or roads look like.
For the South West, for example, try
www.exmouthcam.co.uk/webcam.htm or
what about
www.bournemouth-surfing.co.uk ?
The BBC has a wide range of cameras on its local pages,
for example check the Staffordshire beaches at
www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/webcams/surfing.shtml.
For links to many traffic webcams (or "jamcams"),
a
good starting point is
www.abd.org.uk/links/webcams.htm.
BASIC TYPING
Q: I am a very slow typist. Is it worth
buying a touch-typing program?
A: My personal
view is that it isn't worth spending any money on typing
programs unless you want to get a job as a typist and need to
improve your speed and accuracy drastically. For most of my
students, the most common mistake I found was that they did NOT
want to use all their fingers, but insisted on continuing to
plug away with just index fingers. This is not helpful in the
long term.
There are numerous free
programs if you really want help – e.g. I haven't tested these
but found programs at:
http://homepages.westminster.org.uk/it_new/keynet/index.html
or
www.aetech.co.uk/ttutor/download.html or even a children's
version on
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/levels/level1.shtml
To improve without
going through a program, follow these steps:
-
Rest your fingers on
the middle letter keys with the little fingers on A and the
colon and index fingers on F and J etc.
-
Reach out to letters
in the top and bottom rows with the nearest fingers that
feel comfortable e.g. little fingers to Q or P, index
fingers to B & V or N & M etc.
-
Practice slowly
typing single letters using ALL the fingers.
-
Do not give up – in
time you will speed up and it will become reasonably
natural.
Unless you type a lot,
you will make many mistakes but will be much faster than before
and should start being able to watch the screen, rather than the
keyboard, as you type.
RECOVERING LOST WORK
Q: I had just completed a long and complicated document when
my computer froze. I hadn’t save the last part of the file and
when I restored the computer it was lost. Was there anything I
could have done?
A: The computer
is normally saving copies of your work as temporary files all
the time you are working. Usually, with modern machines, when
you switch your computer back on, you will be shown recovered
files and can save them with a new name. But it doesn't always
work.
Sometimes, (but there
are no guarantees!), you can trace back to an older backup
version by searching for all the .bak files created on a
particular date. (Enter *.bak where the asterix
represents the file name - you will find all the files created
including your lost one, as the computer may have labelled the
current version with an unknown name.)
You can also help
yourself in future by making sure you set the AutoRecover option
so that copies are saved every few minutes. The most up-to-date
copy will then usually be displayed after a reboot. To do this,
go to Tools – Options and select the Save tab. In
the Save AutoRecover info every …. box set a small
number.
View previous editions of
YoucandoIT
for more useful Questions and Answers
For a wealth of books on the web and IT generally,
visit Amazon
and under the books section select Computers and
Internet.
Don't forget to visit the general
laterlife features section called laterlife
interest
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