We've been visiting with Nita & CJ O'Keefe for a couple weeks now in Texas while our camper is having some work done on it in Florida.  They're supposed to finish the work today but I'll call them to make sure it's done.  If it is done, then it's "Adiós Texas" for a while while we head for Lakeland FL to pick up the little camper and travel a little more.

This part of Texas is just across the water from Galveston island.  It's pretty here and warm enough that you can walk around most of the winter with just a long-sleeve shirt covering your body.  Of course some of the locals wear winter parkas but that's another story.

We always have such a great time with Nita and CJ but we also get a lot of work done. This trip we put our heads together and asked "What do our customers want next?" and I think we've come up with something just perfect.  We still have some ducks to put in order before we can do a "thumbs up" on the project so the announcements will have to wait another week or two while we finalize things, but it's always exciting to hang out with like-minded friends.

Speaking of new stuff...  there a couple new things in today's Bobbin-Buzz so I'll get right to it.  "Y'all have fun now and Adiós!"  -- Larry

One of the most popular features on ATW for years now has been our weekly newsletter "Bobbin-Buzz!" In fact, you're reading it right now! We're planning on expanding BBuzz in the next couple weeks to make it even better. As you can see by my photo below, I'm working hard on these changes right now. So watch for the upcoming changes. You will definitely notice them! -- Larry
Help!   I Think I Goofed Up Big Time! (From our "Computer Help" Forum) message Posted By Terrilmk OK sorry if this gets long. Over the weekend I back up all my designs,pictures, and artwork to CD. Today I copied everything again to my new ext HD. So far so good. Now to keep it up. Sooooo I get this idea. Dangerous I know. I deleted all the design files off of my laptop thinking everything is now backed up in 2 places. Sooooo If I download and unzip to the coreect file on my laptop, all I have to do is copy the file to the same place on Ext drive. By the end of the month all of my new designs and artwork is already backed up on the ext drive. I will then only have to backup the new files from the laptop onto cd's. My chance of losing everything is now nearly nil. Then I decided to defrag the laptop after deleteing all the design files. And that's when I noticed the problem. When the defrag screen popped up the first thing I saw was my C:drive is NTFS and the New book drive is Fat32. I almost had a stroke. I thought(I know thinking again in dangerous waters) the only real difference was amount of drive space used. This is a 320 gig drive. My little laptop drive was getting full which is why I went ahead and deleted everything after it was backed up twice. I opened Embird and imported a design from the F(external) drive. It opened ok. Soooo is it ok to leave things as they are with the notebook NTFS and ext drive Fat32, or do I need to reload everything back onto the laptop and format the ext drive to NTFS? Terri message Posted By larrypike Hi Terri - You're fine! But I bet there are people reading this and wondering what NTFS and FAT32 are all about. LOL! So I'll start with a little background info - here goes... ------------------------------------ NTFS stands for "New Technology File System" while FAT32 stands for "File Allocation Table / 32 bits". Both are systems used in laying out a grid or address map on a hard drive. FAT32 is an older system that gave each location a 32-bit address. NTFS is a newer system that gives each location a 64-bit address. The most practical difference in these two systems is that NTFS can have files as large as 16-gb all in one file but FAT32 can only have a miximum of a 4-gb file size. There are a a half-dozen more technical differences and you can read more about this here... http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid1_gci212675,00.html ------------------------------------ The question is "Would it make a difference when doing a backup if one drive was running FAT32 and the other was running NTFS?" The answer is generally "No". The only exception would be if you were doing a special type of backup known as "Mirroring" or "Raid-5". In making a mirror backup the system copies the bit setting at each location ("0" or "1") and places that same setting on the same location on the other disk drive. In that case, all the locations must be mapped out the same way. But in other types of backups, the system is not doing this, rather it is copying a file from one drive and finding a place for it on the other drive. Now I can make this really easy to understand by using an analogy... Suppose you were moving from your present house to a new house and it's time to move everything from the kitchen. Normally, you would empty out the cupboards and haul the stuff to the new kitchen and find a place to put the stuff. It doesn't matter that in the old house the 2nd cabinet on the left had your spices but in the new house it was in the 1st cabinet on the right. You would adjust. However, if you were into this new craze called "blindfold cooking" you would still want the spices in the 2nd cabinet on the left. The only way that would be a problem is if your new kitchen doesn't have the exact same cabinet design. Then there would be things in the old cabinets that didn't have a corresponding new location to put them in. Since you're not trying to make an exact duplicate but rather just find a place to put all those files then it won't matter that the drives are different sizes or even different formats. It will still work just fine. One word of caution on your procedure. I cringed when you said something like "... so I deleted everything from my laptop". EEEEEEYYYYOOOOWWWWW! Before you ever delete a data file, you want to do a spot-check of files on the new drive to be sure they did get copied safely. I would also right-click on the folder and see how much drive space was in use for that folder, then right-click on the new drive folder and make sure the same number of gb were also being used there. Just as a double-check. Finally, with critical data (and what data isn't critical?) I back it up to two different places before deleting it from one place. If I didn't do that then after I delete it from my hard drivek, my backup becomes my sole copy of that data. I have no backup. Murphy's law says things happen if you don't have a backup. Bad things. So before you delete files from your laptop, make sure you have them backed up in two places. -- Larry Got Computer Questions? Click into our "Discussion Forum" link on the top panel. Once inside you'll see the menu (shown below) that takes you from forum to forum. The newest forum is on the top right side and it's called "Computer Help". Give it a try if you need help!
VIDEO: Computer Skills 4 Embroidery Many people have started into the machine embroidery hobby with "zero" or "very little" previous computer experience. While there are other tutorials on the market to teach computer skills, they are not geared toward the embroiderer. This video is! I started out to do this video over a year ago and kept running into one big problem... as soon as you make a video about computers, you realize that you forgot something! The solution finally dawned on me -- you make an ongoing series of videos. Cover as much as you can in each video and then pick up where you left off in the next one. Another challenge is that everyone is at a different point. Making a video that just covers "basics" won't be of a lot of use to the more advanced users. Making one for advanced users won't be of much use to the beginners. So each of our videos will cover something for everyone to use NOW and in the future. Something For Everyone If you're a biginner - we cover BASICS. If you need help with embroidery software - we have EMBSFT. If you have "problems" right now - we have the HELLLLLP section. If you want to know more about using the web - we have the SERVICES articles. If you need to buy on the cheap - we have the BUDGET sections. And if you're starting an online business - we have the PRO articles. The CS4E series has been created like a video-magazine. You can browse through sections at your leisure or as you need-to-know. Here's what's in this first issue... CS4E Volume-1 Topics... BASICS-1: Folders and Files on your computer BASICS-2: Clean Up That Messy Start Menu BASICS-3: Unlimited Storage Space for 15-cents per gb EMBSFT-1: Converting Formats Using BuzzXplore EMBSFT-2: Moving Designs from hard drive to CD/Mem-stick/etc. HELLLLLP: Let Google Troubleshoot Your Computer! SERVICES: Yahoo Email Just Got Better! BUDGET$$: screen-Capture For Under $10 EASY-PRO: Photo Slideshows You Can Make MORE-PRO: Sell Online Using Paypal Total time about 2 hours on one CD. They will be ready to ship next week on Thursday April 18th 2007. Order now at the PRE-RELEASE price of just $12.95 for non-members or $10.95 for members + shipping/handling fees. After the videos are in-house and ready to ship, they will go up to our INTRODUCTORY price of $14.95/$12.95 (non-member/member). When Volume-2 is released for sale, this issue will go to full price. Place Order For CS4E Video Here!
Indiana Embroidery Conference Hi Everybody! Nita and I will be attending the Indiana Embroidery Conference this year 2007. We will be setting up a table and be available to answer questions about embroidery, digitizing or anything we can help you with. We'll have news about Nita's new venture (which, by the way, you will LOVE!) and maybe some new design sets. July 30 - Aug 2, 2007 will be the 10th Anniversary of the Indiana Embroidery Conference. It is held in Columbus, Indiana. If you are interested in more information check out the yahoo group or their website. I hope to see alot of you there! We'll have lots of fun and learn a little too. 8-) --Holly Here's the Yahoo group... http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianaEmbroideryConference/ and the website... http://hometown.aol.com:80/bobrien90/indianaembroideryconference.html (Now I see why Nita emailed the web address to me! LOL!)
New Designs Released This Week At ArtisticThreadWorks... See ALL this week's new sets here! And this months Member Bonus Set... "Dream Catchers" Here's a picture of ONE of this weeks new sets... See ALL the new sets here!
Chat Room Secret Revealed One feature we've had for over a year is called the "Chat Room". It has been used for general talk about embroidery, teaching quilting, and general conversation. It recently dawned on me that it wasn't easy enough to FIND the Chat Room on our site! To make it easier to find the Chat Room, I placed a link to it inside every forum. When you are inside a forum here, you'll see a menu at the top (picture below) that takes you from one forum to another. The menu also has the "Chat Room" link on it. So now anytime you want to check out the Chat Room, just click into the forums and then click on "Chat Room". The chat room page shows who is currently in the forum. If there's nobody chatting, you'll see a "0" where the list of users would normall be showing... Here's the big secret: If you want to get a conversation started, be the first to login, then wait anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes. Someone will generally happen by and see you're name on the entry page and know that somebody is waiting to say "Hi" to them! See you in the Chat Room!
Weekly Prize Drawing Winner We are doing a weekly drawing for readers of Bobbin-Buzz. The prize is a 3 month membership to ArtisticThreaWorks. That's something anyone on our list can use! To be in the prize drawings - just be on our Bobbin-Buzz mailing list... If you're not on the list yet, you can sign up here! This week's winner drawn at random is... testerlady53@yahoo.com The winner has 5 days to contact me via email and claim the prize. Send the email to Webmaster@ArtisticThreadWorks.com. Congratulations and good luck to everyone else in next weeks drawing!
Without A Prescription A lady walks into the drugstore and asks the pharmacist for some arsenic. "Ma'am, what do you want with arsenic?" "To kill my husband." "I can't sell you arsenic to kill a person!" The lady lays down a photo of a man and a woman in a compromising position. The man is her husband and the woman is the pharmacist's wife. He takes the photo, and nods. "I didn't realize you had a prescription!" Members can download ALL the designs in our Design Library. Are you a member? If so - you're in the drawing for the "Wall-of-Thread" prize shown here... Prize = 452 Mini-King spools of thread + 3 Wall-Mount racks / Embroidery machine not included! Get Drawing Details Here Join ATW Here!
Bobbin-Buzz Designs Help yourself to this weeks free design set "Birds Houses". These are for everyone that is a subscriber to Bobbin-Buzz, our free weekly newsletter! Download Birds Houses Here! Have fun!
Pink Ribbon Cuties! Members - help yourself to this Surprise Set of designs in the Design Library. Just look under "This Week"