 xH                                                                 that for this editorial, I would just sit down and rattle off the things I want to report, as they occur to me. That way we will avoid any formalization of the piece.\\ 
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FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK.\\ 
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\K\Q\AI thought that for this editorial, I would just sit down and rattle off the things I want to report, as they occur to me. That way we will avoid any formalization of the piece.\\ 
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For those of you who didn't make the March 3rd meeting, you missed a very pleasant informal session. In attendance were members Bob Stroud, about who more later, Charles Smith, Jack Forsythe, Don Mason, Michael Lyons, Ted Underhill, Francis Naish, yours truly, and a potential member Garry Chater. I say potential, because I haven't yet received his annual dues.\\ 
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After a brief opening statement by Bob Stroud, Ted Underhill demonstrated the simplicity of replacing the printer ribbon in one of his original Coleco cartridges. The whole operation can be accomplished, as Ted easily demonstrated, under less than ideal conditions, in just a few minutes, using only a pocket knife, a pair of scissors, and a small piece of Scotch tape. I think that most of us who had religiously wound the refills on to the original spool, were surprised to find that, at least in the case of Ted's cartridge, it was simply a matter of pressing off the empty hub ring and pressing on the new refill. We only have 18 or so pancake ribbon refills left out of the fifty I originally purchased, so, if you want any, now is the time to say so. Keep your unused ones in the refrigerator. It improves the storage life.\\ 
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Garry Chater, our potential member, brought up a problem he was having with scrambled texts in certain of his files. One of the suggestions that was made was that he clean the read/write heads on his datadrives. Remember, the coatings from datapacks do slough off and some of this material deposits itself on various parts of your datadrive mechanism. I intend to publish an article in the next ADVISA, dealing with cleaning and care of datadrives. Watch for it!. You may be amazed at how little foreign material it takes to cause read/write problems.\\ 
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As a result of a discussion on the relative merits of Diablo Hytype 1 ribbons vs Coleco originals, the members decided it would be a good idea if we ordered a dozen of the Diablo ones, to examine and test them. They have been ordered.\\ 
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Ted Underhill demonstrated a SmartBASIC programme he wrote, which provides accurate determination of additives needed to be mixed into a "must" in wine-making. The programme prompts the user to provide certain relevant information, then, using that data, plus data resident in the programme, it calculates the amount of sugar, etc, that needs to be added to the "must" to provide the means of achieving the desired specific gravity. I have the program on file and will publish it in a future issue of the ADVISA.\\ 
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Ted also demonstrated using SpeedyWRITE. Many of us are somewhat overwhelmed by the tremendous array of commands that are part of SpeedyWrite. I know, I am!. But Ted made it all look very simple.  It's probably a case of perceived, as opposed to real difficulty.  Ted certainly made it all look very easy.\\ 
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Towards the end of the meeting, I proposed to Bob Stroud that he consider taking on the role of President of our group. Although the proposal was new to Bob, I had discussed it with several of the original members, and they all agreed that Bob would be an ideal person to take on the role. I was extremely pleased that Bob agreed without delay to adopting this newly appointed responsibility, and I must echo the other member's sentiments. Bob is an ideal choice to act in his new capacity, despite his protestations.\\ 
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Now that we have a President, you can enjoy Bob's regular input to this newsletter. See his first article " A President's Prerogative" in this issue. You can also read reprints of two reviews Bob originally had published in the Edmonton ADAM User Group's newsletter, ADAM'S LEAF.\\ 
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You may recall that I previously mentioned that Dave Sands, the ex-editor of ADAM'S LEAF was coming to live on the Island, in Deep Bay. Well, he sent me a cheque to cover his membership in our group, and we expect him to take up residence, on or about May 1st.\\ 
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In addition to the potential member I have already mentioned, as a result of a series of ad's I have placed in the Buy, Sell & Trade weekly, I was contacted by a gentleman from Bowser, who came to see me after our initial phone contact, and subsequently joined our ranks. His name is Roy Frederickson, and he wants to use his ADAM to create and maintain a database for his collection of movies on Beta VCR tapes. He has some 300 of them. He also has an extensive phonograph record collection, which he wishes to catalogue. Because the movie titles are changing as Roy records new titles over old ones, he needs to be able to update his directory frequently, and to be able to "sort" under several different categories. I suggested that ADAMcalc was probably the best database for his purpose because you can "sort" by column, or by row, and you can "search" for specific "names". 
 
For the record collection, he wishes to be able to "sort" and print the database into several different categories, including artists name, music titles, music type, and etc. Once again, provided these categories were identified as individual columns in ADAMcalc, they could easily be sorted alphabetically in each column. I am hopeful that Ted Underhill will be able provide some knowlegeable advice on using ADAMcalc as a database.\\ 
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                                                                   He has some 300 of them. He also has an extensive phonograph record collection
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