April 2003

• LACEY Lethbridge Area Community Events - Your online guide - View for current community events particularly for readings in Lethbridge.
• Lethbridge Naturalist Society - their website provides a copy of their monthly newsletter.  Get meeting and membership information.  Visit their website for information on 2002/2003 executive.

Charles Noble

Local Southern Alberta author, Charles Noble, is launching a new book through the University of Calgary Press this April, Doubt's Boots.  Visit the Charles Noble webarea on PI-Flora and visit Lacey for reading dates scheduled for Red Deer, Calgary, Banff and Lethbridge.

Michael St. George

Michael St. George performed in Southern Alberta this March.  In Lethbridge, he performed at AdaptaCare and for Most Vocal at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and was interviewed by Mark Campbell for a five-minute spot on Global TV's Noon Hour show.   Guests of his performance were invited to visit his website where they can enter a comment into his guestbook or to visit his publisher's website to obtain the paperback, Night Spin.  Michael has signed a limited number of paperbacks which will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis.  Audio CDs of Michael's Root 2 Fruit album are also available in Lethbridge through his publisher.   

While Michael was in Lethbridge, decisions for his publication, Night Spin ECD and his website were made.  Look for website changes in the near future and watch for the ECD in the summer, in addition to his new audio title, Dubbin' de Vibes. 

Dealing with Spam

Do a search, these days that means entering "email spam" into Google.  You will get all kinds of advice.  One advisor [Mac user] says, "All you can do, is to either look at it, then bin it, or close your email account and make a new one."  Just so you know, the term, "bin" means send it to the Trash or Recycle Bin. You'll get told to start using your email program's Mail Filtering.  Then, they offer the disclaimer that it is not 100% accurate, and some legitimate email may get lost. They'll suggest that you setup a Rule telling your program to delete email sent by known spammers, then disclaim that Rules do not catch much spam, the senders are different most of the time and change their email addresses often.

MailBlock

A new email service call Mailblock overs spam-free email.  Through this service, you signup to get a Mailblock email account.  Before you think, "Oh, no, not another one."  the supporters of this service assure you that your current email  can be used.  If you send mail to someone with this service you would encounter an email message that tells you:

Hi,

You just sent an email to my Mailblocks spam-free email service. Because this is the first time you have sent to this email account, please confirm yourself so you'll be recognized when you send to me in the future.

 It's simple. To prove your message comes from a human and not a computer, go to:
http://app1.mailblocks.com/confirm2.aspx?ck=DGRhdmlkY291cnNleQAUbW1lbmFyZEBwaS1mbG9yYS5jb20pMl57

 This is the email message you have sent that is in my Pending folder waiting for your quick authentication:  

Subject: sending mailblock

Sent: Apr 1, 1:26 PM

If you have not confirmed within two weeks, your message will automatically be deleted.

 -----

Email for Humans... Mailblocks

Try Mailblocks web-based personal email -- faster, cleaner interface, more storage, bigger attachments, and 100% spam-free.  About Mailblocks

(c) 2003 Mailblocks Inc.  All rights reserved.

When you click on the link provided to you, you will get a screen similar to the following:

After entering the number, you get the following screen:

For people inundated with spam email and no time to deal with it, it is likely worth a try.

Wallpaper Calendar

Zepsoft's wallpaper calendar is now one of PI's recommended computer programs.  It is very easy to use, yet extremely powerful.  A semitransparent calendar is placed on your desktop whereby you can triple-click (sorry, fingers) to add notes or reminders to any date.  You can always see your notes and reminders, easily edit them yet — the full desktop is still visible to you.   

Your favourite wallpaper image or group of images can be employed in the background.  The program can be set to change them at selected intervals.  There are a lot of user-defined options that let you tailor your  desktop to fit your needs. 

A 30-day, fully-working trial version of this software is available.

Updated Sites and Pages

• Minda Rogerson, Sutton Group Lethbridge — Lethbridge real estate services.
• Charles Noble — April 2003 release, Doubt's Boots for U of C Press.
• Teeniestown.com — for teens.

PI-Flora Statistics

For the month of March, the PI-Flora website had close to 72 thousand hits, with an average of slightly more than 2,300 hits per day.  On average, there were 281 visitors a day; a visitor's stay averaged over 8 minutes.  Almost 900 visitors repeated their visit.