Author: David Harrison

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My Top of the Pops for freely available software – updated

[First published 22nd October 2020]

I’ve written before about how it might be wise to look at subscription services rather than rely on free services and back in October 2020 I wrote a piece about the distinctions between Open Source and “free” software in general. Now it’s time to pick (and update) my winners in a number of categories. They will have to work on multiple platforms as well – PC (Windows), Mac (MacOS and Linux, and hopefully on smartphones and tablets as well. I will stake my reputation on the fact that if you download any of these pieces from the links I provide that it will be safe, and reliable.

Office software – word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentation. Here there are two close contenders but I’ll tip towards the true Open Source offering which is LibreOffice. At one time I used to recommend OpenOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office, but the better file formats supported in LibreOffice tips the balance in their direction. Here’s a review of LibreOffice – a brilliant piece of Donationware. The runner-up would be the Google suite of applications (Docs, Sheets and Slides), but they’re not truly free … are they? Alternatively, recognising the competition of Google, Microsoft has made Office 365 Online freely available to be used with OneDrive.

Desktop publishing – you might like to look at Scribus; I have no experience of using it but here’s a review.

Media Player – there’s really only one player in this category. It’s VLC Media Player. It runs on really old hardware too, and supports almost every media format – here’s a review.

Photo editor – if you don’t want to shell out on Adobe software (Photoshop and Lightroom) or Paintshop Pro, or others, then again there’s only really one leader in this class. It’s Gimp. Here’s a review. There’s plentiful documentation and videos on using Gimp available on YouTube too. If it looks too complicated for you then Paint.net, or the new Google Photos (yes I know I said it wasn’t truly free) would be worth looking at.

Video editor – one that I’ve begun to “get into” recently has been Shotcut. I can truly say that once you’ve got over the shock of so many panels and options, and have spent a little while reading the good documentation and watching a few YouTube tutorials, that this is a little gem. Here’s a review. If you want to change video formats, then take a look at Handbrake – it’s saved my life a few times; a brilliant piece of software that changes one format of video to another, and also allows you to copy non-copyright protected DVDs to MP4 (for instance).

Audio editor – this is one that Jim’s recently been using and one that I’ve relied on a few times too. It’s Audacity. A clean multi-panelled window that’s reasonably intuitive I felt. If you want to edit audio tracks, change their format, or create a playlist, give it a try. Here’s a review.

Password Manager – I’ve gone on about the importance to consider using a password manager as a way of allowing you to “remember” different passwords without resorting to yellow stickers, or notebooks. In a crowded field of freeware contenders I go with the one I used to use – LastPass – here’s a review, but you you might easily choose an alternative, eg the freemium 1Password or the open source KeePass. [NB I’m now using Apple’s Keychain as I only have Apple kit. I still have a LastPass as a legacy repository for quick checks, and you can migrate out of LastPass to Keychain, or any other password manager.]

Anti-virus – no real recommendation but the freemium possibility is Avast. If I was a Windows user, I’d rely on Windows Defender. As I’m a Mac user I’ve installed Malwarebytes – supplied by my bank – but it’s never recorded a virus, or any malware. [Fingers crossed.]

Email client – if you’ve got Outlook, use the Microsoft client (or app); if you’ve got a Mac, use the Mail app; if you solely use Gmail, use a Google client (or app); BUT if you want to try something different and Open Source why not look at Thunderbird. It’s from the Mozilla Foundation (where the Firefox browser comes from) and it’s multi-platform and multi-email system supporting. Here’s a review of it. [Health warning: I have used it in the past, but not using it now as I am so immersed in the Apple ecosystem, but if I wasn’t, I’d be seriously looking at using it.]

Group Messaging – it used to be WhatsApp, but now it’s Signal which is Open Source, and Donationware. I give a small monthly donation to support.

Web browsers – both a difficult and easy one. It has to be either Firefox, or Brave in my book. I can’t distinguish between them. I like them both, but I suppose I still just tip towards Brave because it’s more like Chrome (unsurprisingly).

Search engines – again, for me, a relatively easy one to pick; it’s DuckDuckGo. Don’t just Google It – DuckDuckGo It. It should be available as a choice on “all good browsers”. If it’s not – change your browser, or add it to the list offered by your browser.

Web-design, blogging and the rest – for me, no competition – it’s WordPress. You’ll need to shell-out to buy a domain (eg thoughtgrazing.org), but after that you can use wordpress.com to commit your thoughts to the internet. WordPress will offer to host your website for an annual fee, but the use of the software is free. If you want to take it further you can find a hosting company, move your domain there (or purchase it there) and install wordpress.org and have access to the vast number of plugins that are available to tailor your website to just the way you want it. Many of these plugins are free, or are made available as freemium software.

Miscellaneous

  • an AdBlocker – go for the freemium AdBlock Plus (look out for similar sounding ones, and avoid them).
  • Note-taking – it used to be EverNote for me, but now I’m recommending either Microsoft’s OneNote coupled with OneDrive (if you’re a Windows user) and the greatly improved Apple Notes (if you’re a Mac/iOS user).
  • RSS Reader to scrape and archive content from websites I follow – it’s Feedly. I subscribe to their premium service.
  • Bookmarking – I used to use diigo, but now find that with the improved functionality in browsers and the integration with the cloud that it’s best to use your browser capability.
  • For offline reading I find Pocket a wonderful resource which I subscribe to as a premium service as I do Flipboard, from which I curate magazines which you can share – and I do!. [NB I’ve updated a post I wrote back in 2018 which describes the workflow I follow EVERY morning to do this – aren’t I boring!!]
  • Mapping – OpenStreetMap is a great piece of software that I haven’t used in an active sense, but I must investigate! [As an aside, take a look at Open Canal Map, not software but a community initiative that uses other publicly available maps to build upon.]
  • Google Earth Pro – the often forgotten global visualisation software, available from your browser, or in an app.
  • Video-conferencing – it used to be Skype, now it’s the freemium Zoom.
  • Online communities – a replacement for the sadly “sunsetted” Google+ could be Discord. This has achieved some notoriety in recent weeks, but it is also used for more than gaming and sharing secrets.
  • Media-server – you don’t need to rely on Apple TV, Netflix, Britbox or whatever. You can setup your own media-server with the freemium Plex server, and add your videos, music and images to your own server which you can access anywhere in the world, or just use their Plex player to view their streaming service.

I could go on and on, but that’s enough for the moment. Have fun!

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Creating your own online magazine

[Originally published 23rd Nov 2018]

I am a creature of routine. I used to listen to Today on Radio 4 when I got up in the morning; now because I can’t stand the egos being pushed into my ears, I have a much more peaceful and indeed useful start to the day – after I’ve scanned The Guardian and Independent (online subscriptions) and BBC News (online) websites, and checked my email and other social media such as Signal, Discord and Twitter (and possibly in the future Mastodon), I look to see what else is going on in “my world” – my internet of interests.


I’ll start at the beginning and describe what I do to curate my interests, my daily internet workflow. The jumping-off point is to check my RSS Feeds using Feedly. What is an RSS Feed I hear some of you say? Well it’s a signal from a website that new content has been posted on a website. So if there are a number of sites that you are interested in, you can get an alert with an extract of content sent to you by what is called a RSS Feed, which you can then pick-up and read in full using a RSS Reader.

Now the favoured Reader for a long-time was Reader (from Google) – but as is their wont, Google “sunsetted” it. That is they killed it off. Fortunately a really good alternative came to the rescue in Feedly. Every time I come across a website I want to follow, I add it to my Feedly and, as long as a RSS Feed can be setup for the site, I place it in a category for the feed (eg photography, or IT) so that my stream of reading is organised to some level. I could stop there, after all I’ve got the link to the webpage, it’s stored in a category and I can go back and read it anytime I’m online.

However, what if I just want to scan quickly the content, and go back to it later, or what if I want to read it online? That’s where Pocket comes in. If I see an article in Feedly that I want to read later, or even archive, I add it to my Pocket, giving it some tags to help me find it later. I do both of these tasks on a smartphone, or tablet, it’s much easier than using a desktop/laptop as there are good apps which work together for both Feedly and Pocket. Once in Pocket, the article, stripped of everything that is irrelevant, can be read offline – once it’s sync’d the content from the web to your device – or alternatively you can click on a button to read the original article online.

But then occasionally, I come across some content that I want to share more widely – to the Thought grazing community for instance; and for this I use Flipboard which is a really easy way of creating an online magazine; made up of articles (perhaps with comments added) which you found interesting. From my Pocket app, I just click on the Share button and select <Share via …> and chose Flipboard.

On Flipboard I’ve created a couple of “magazines”, so I chose which one I want to “publish” the article to, and perhaps write a comment about the article; and then Post it. That’s all there is to it, but what do you need to do to replicate my workflow and produce something like this …


View my Flipboard Magazine.

Curating the web
Step 1 – create a Feedly account, and download the app if you’re going to use a smartphone, or tablet
Step 2 – select websites you want to get an RSS feed from [see above, or read What is an RSS feed?]Step 3 – check periodically to see what has “popped-up” in your feed reader.


Saving for another day, or for off-line reading (bookmarking+)
Step 1 – create a Pocket account, and download the app if you’re going to use a smartphone, or tablet
Step 2 – save to Pocket from your browser (perhaps using a browser extension), or from a sharing icon in Feedly
Step 3 – tag your articles, and read at your leisure, or when you want to


Creating a magazine to share with others
Step 1 – create a Flipboard account, and download the app if you’re going to use a smartphone, or tablet
Step 2 – create a Magazine within your Flipboard account, and decide whether to make it Private or Public
Step 3 – add articles to your magazine from your Pocket app (as described above) , or from your web browser
Good luck!

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Apple’s iCloud and Google Photos

A short post to highlight an issue that I wasn’t aware of, and now have to be very wary of. Indeed Ian’s comment about whether you need the Google Photos app installed on your iPhone is prescient – you most probably don’t if you’re backing-up photos to your iCloud account. And if you’re backing-up photos to a google account (as described in the earlier post), there are different ways of doing it which means you quite possibly don’t need the Google Photos app on your phone.

Remember, you can always look at the photos stored in the Google cloud from photos.google.com on your Apple phone or tablet – you don’t need the app installed.

So here goes … another learning point. I’ll type it in capitals so that you don’t miss it!

IF YOU DELETE PHOTOS FROM THE GOOGLE PHOTOS APP ON YOUR IPHONE OR IPAD AND IGNORE THE WARNING – THEY WILL BE DELETED FROM ICLOUD AS WELL.

There, I’ve said it. I didn’t realise it, and always shied away from deleting photos in Google Photos because I didn’t really understand what the warning meant. But now I do and obviously that’s not something I want to do, so how do I go about removing photos from the app, and/or from the Google cloud. Read on!

Scary, eh?! Take care when deleting photos from your iPhone

What I’ve researched is well summarised in the following article …

How to Delete Photos from Google Photos But Not from iCloud

and a couple of posts on the Google Photos support forum …

Does deleting photos in Google Photos also delete them from my iCloud photo Library?

Google Photos deleted my iCloud Photos library

So what do I take from this?

  1. If you want to delete photos from Google Photos – do it on the Google Photos website, not in the app on your iPhone or iPad. If you have synchronisation active, they will then be deleted from the app on your device as well.
  2. If you want to quickly delete all photos from your Google Photos app, just delete the app having first ensured that you’ve switched off Backup and Sync, because if you don’t, when you re-install the app, they will be synchronised back to your iPhone/iPad.
  3. If you don’t need the Google Photos app, uninstall the app, no photos will be deleted from your phone, they will still be in your Camera Roll and will have been stored on iCloud, nothing will be deleted from the Google Photos website either, so you will have to do that deletion from photos.google.com – see Case 1 above.
  4. An unlikely scenario, but one to be aware of – If you turn off iCloud before deleting photos from Google Photos on iPhone, then the photo will be removed from your device and Google Photos. It will stay on iCloud. However, if you enable iCloud again on the same phone, the photo will be removed from it too.
  5. And even more unlikely, but probably unexpected and a potential surprise – Disabling Backup and sync will not have any effect on your iCloud photos as it is just a setting to enable or disable backup service on Google Photos. If you disable it and then delete photos from the Google Photos app on your device, they will be removed from the device as you are technically deleting the device copy on your iPhone/iPad. And once it is deleted, the iCloud copy gets deleted automatically.

Remember. Google Photos in the cloud, and iCloud Photos do NOT work the same way. Apple aims to synchronise all images across all devices with “the master” being held in the cloud. The Google Photos app is just a portal looking into the images on the device, and synchronising (if chosen) those images with ones stored on photos.google.com.

I hope that makes it all perfectly clear 🙂 🙂 🙂

In summary, do not delete photos in Google Photos directly from your iPhone if you have both apps on the device. Use the Google Photos website to remove photos. It is suggested that you should delete a few photos initially. Then, check them in iCloud after some time. If the photos are still there, you can go ahead and delete them in bulk.

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Notes of meeting – 13th April 2023

Apologies: Sue, Jeanne, Mike, Jenny, Renee, Fred, Yvonne – apologies from me if I’ve forgotten anyone.

I gave an update on Paul – having visited him recently. We all hope that he, and David Hughes might be able to rejoin us in person sometime soon. [We did have a Zoom meeting on the 20th April at which Fred and Renee joined Paul, David and me.]

News: I quickly ran through the recent items I’d highlighted in the Flipboard magazine. These mainly being comments from WhatsApp about the changes to data territory and how they (like Signal) would be forced to exit the UK if the proposed legislation were to go ahead – of course we’d all get VPNs then, wouldn’t we?! Also an item from Jonathan on Windows 11 settings you might chose to change, and a variety of posts from Appleand about OpenAI (ChatGPT and DALL-E). We then also looked at a couple of items that had first appeared in the Signal group – the scamming of a journalist in the US’ credit card – unusual in that involved theft of the card within the US postal service and then working back towards the SIM swap; also the rather scare-mongering advice from Australia about a WiFi scanning device called a “pineapple” which omits to mention that deploying a VPN is a sufficient defence against possible intrusion; and finally the item on voice-cloning which was a bit frightening really. Again however, unless we’ve left a huge amount of our spoken voice on the internet, we should not be too alarmed – but it is amazing what technology can now do. I’ve put details of these on the Forums for you to refer to. We also discussed the reverse phone lookup sites that allow you to see whether a phone call from a number is likely to be a threat, or not – Who called me? and (confusingly, but different) Who called me.

I then quickly referred to the ChatGPT session we’d had previously and again there was a fair amount of comment, and also mentioned that I’d written an article on Google Photos which had been sparked by the group and my realisation that I didn’t fully understand some aspects of the synchronisation process and the difference between iCloud and Google’s cloud storage approaches. [As an update, I’ve subsequently realised there’s more for me to assimilate still, and I’m working on another post on deletion of photos from Google Photos and Apple photos – hopefully that’ll appear very shortly.]

I forgot to mention in the meeting that with the closing-down of the public Thought grazing site, I was now copying (with appropriate edits) some of the posts from this site to Just thoughts – my personal website.

Members raised the following issues (others not mentioned, did not have specific issues):

Jim commented that he’d been trying to get to the bottom of how short videos (called “hot shots” I believe) which enable you (on the Android) to select the best image from a short clip, do not appear to be retained in the cloud after an edit. [Subsequent to the meeting Jim did some more investigation and this, reported on Signal, has been transcribed into a Forum.]

Ian noted that the credit cxard replacement process {ref. US scam above} has changed and the verification process is now much better. It did mean that for some non-IT-savvy older folk, it might now involve a visit to the bank to complete the process.

John continues his learning pathway on Google Photos and using his iPhone. The discussion that followed led me to the realisation that I probably don’t need Google Photos (as an app) on my iPhone, and this in turn led me to consider writing another post (see above).

Ralph reported that he’d been experiencing messages from his ISP (through his WiFi connection) that he wasn’t online – when he most definitely was, or should have been. This quickly rectified itself in a few moments. I ventured the thought that this was the ISP disconnecting the router (employing dynamic IP-addressing) to either save allocation of scarce Cat4 IP-addresses, or alternatively to save bandwidth being allocated for polling the router to see if it was awake, and connected, or not. One way to test both would be to examine the IP-address being allocated to the router, and see if it was changing. With my VM ISP I appear to have a static IP-address – which is great. It never changes. This would allow me to run a server across the internet as the DNS would never change.

Stella had been alarmed by a message that appeared in her email that she felt was trying to make her download something that she hadn’t requested, and didn’t feel she needed. We went over the standard things that one should investigate in situations like this – looking at the URL, seeing if it’s https:// (SSL), and calling back independently from the message. All things we’ll cover again in the forthcoming Security session.

Anne had climbed out of another black hole (her words, not mine) having had a series of problems with a printer, buying a replacement, finding that the printer drivers were probably corrupted, and finding also that she quite probably hadn’t needed a new printer at all. The advice from PC World (imho) had not been good. The standard approach when you have a printer problem is to re-install the printer drivers – NOT install McAffee AV protection and say she had a virus problem!!!

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Google Photos and Apple revisited

This post is a sequel to the article (see link below) that I wrote in November, and reflects a little more of what I’ve learnt about the crazy world of how Apple Photos and Google Photos interact (or work) with each other. I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last.

Getting photos to the cloud(s) and back

This one starts from an observation I made this morning that some recent photos I’d taken with my iPhone and which were in my Photos Library also seemed to have been added to Google Photos on my iPhone (but not my iPad) as well. From the outset let me assure you that this is the normal behaviour. You have to set Google Photos to see all the photos in your local Photos Library {Settings > Google Photos > Allow Google Photos to Access – All Photos} otherwise it can’t work. What you are seeing in Google Photos is the app getting a view of what’s in your Camera Roll on the iPhone/iPad – you haven’t added anything at this stage to the Google Photos app, and more importantly, nothing has been uploaded to Google Photos at photos.google.com.

What I did see however additionally in Google Photos were some edits of recent photos that I’d done in Lightroom which I’d exported to my desktop, and then uploaded to photos.google.com. They could be identified by the little cloud icon on the picture.

It got me to thinking; what is the best way of sending photos from the iPhone/iPad to Google Photos – if I don’t want to sync everything using Google Backup (which as I explained in the previous post, I most certainly don’t want to do as they’ve already been backed up to iCloud). Am I doing it the best way?

Method 1

As above. Share (export) the photo from the iPhone/iPad to a chosen folder in the Files app or Google Drive, and then upload from that folder to Google Photos from photos.google.com (see also Method 3).

Upload from iPhone/iPad Camera Roll to a variety of services

Method 2

This is by far the easiest, and simplest way (and believe it or not I didn’t know you could do this). Open the Google Photos app on the iPhone, select a photo and then select the Upload (cloud) icon …

… the photo will be backed up to Google Photos (and photos.google.com); you will also note (see above) that once you’ve done that the Upload (cloud) icon is removed from the screen. In the Google Photos app, the photo will now have a cloud icon. Simple, eh!

Method 3

You can do the process in reverse. Go to photos.google.com and select Upload. You will be offered a variety of options …

An upload to photos.google.com from the Safari browser on my iPad

Choose (in this case) Tablet – as I was using my iPad to get the screenshots and you will get this dialogue …

Choose Google Drive and you will get this dialogue …

Choosing an image you’ve uploaded to Google Drive

Choose Copy from other services and you will get these options …

From which you can see (something else that I’ve learnt), that you can copy from iCloud – where all my iPhone photos are backed-up – to Google Photos. Duh!!!

What a wonderful (and complicated) world Google Photos is, and think – this was just prompted by me seeing photos in the Google Photos app I knew I hadn’t “uploaded” to Google Photos. Rest assured, they’re just views into the Apple Photos Library, not copies!!!

PS This isn’t an April Fool!!

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ChatGPT, Open AI – Artificial Intelligence

By way of introduction

It all started (for me at least) with this powerful poem sent to me by my son – who lives in Australia …

Do not go gentle into that good land,
Australia, wild and free,
Where golden sun sets on red sands,
And the ocean's voice speaks to me.

Rage, rage against the dying light,
Of the day, and the endless night,
Where the stars shine bright like fireflies,
And the kookaburra's laugh takes flight.

Do not go gentle into that good land,
Where the heat beats down like a drum,
Where the droughts are long and the wildfires grand,
And the rains come in a monsoon.

But do not despair, for in this land,
There is beauty in every plight,
The eucalyptus stands tall and grand,
And the kangaroo bounds with might.

Do not go gentle into that good land,
Australia, wild and free,
Where the spirit of the land is strong,
And the people, a part of its destiny.

Wow, I thought. I never knew he had it in him (being IT-geekish like me). It sounds like it could have been written by Dylan Thomas. He then let on …

“I asked ChatGPT to write a poem in the style of Dylan Thomas about Australia :)”.

That was on January 24th. It opened my eyes to something that was sweeping the internet and which had obviously been developing for many months, if not years. Of course I’d known about the concept of artificial intelligence, but had always imagined it in the context of driverless cars; sensors in rooms (or of any variety); clever games that you might play against, etc. etc. But here was something that seemed – on the surface at least – to have a sentient presence. Something that could think, interpret what you were saying (or writing) and return a result that – on the surface at least – made sense.

He then followed up his magnum opus with this …

Verse 1:
The world spins round, the money flows
The rich get richer, the poor get woes
We're told that we need more and more
To keep up with the Joneses, we're a corporate whore

Chorus:
Materialism, capitalism,
A never-ending cycle of greed and madness
We're slaves to the system, we're just cogs in the wheel
Materialism, capitalism, it's not real

Verse 2:
We're told that happiness comes with a price
We buy and we buy, but it's never enough
We're in a rat race, we're running on a treadmill
We're chasing the dream, but it's just a mirage

Chorus:
Materialism, capitalism,
A never-ending cycle of greed and madness
We're slaves to the system, we're just cogs in the wheel
Materialism, capitalism, it's not real

Bridge:
We're drowning in consumerism, we're losing our souls
We're sacrificing our humanity for shiny gold
We're living in a world of illusion, a world of lies
We're sacrificing our future for temporary highs

Outro:
Materialism, capitalism,
A never-ending cycle of greed and madness
We're slaves to the system, we're just cogs in the wheel
Materialism, capitalism, it's not real.

Double wow!! I knew this time it wasn’t him doing the thinking, but what was the question that the tool he was using had been asked, and what was the song based on? Any guesses?

He replied …

“The song by the way? I asked for a song about materialism and capitalism in the style of Pink Floyd.”

“How do you do that?” … I of course asked …

import socket

# Target IP address
ip = "192.168.1.1"

# Open a text file for writing the results
with open("port_scan_results.txt", "w") as f:

    # Scan for open TCP ports
    for port in range(1, 65535):
        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        sock.settimeout(5)
        result = sock.connect_ex((ip, port))
        if result == 0:
            f.write("TCP Port {}: Open\n".format(port))
        sock.close()

    # Scan for open UDP ports
    for port in range(1, 65535):
        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        sock.settimeout(5)
        result = sock.connect_ex((ip, port))
        if result == 0:
            f.write("UDP Port {}: Open\n".format(port))
        sock.close()

“There you go. This is a port scanner application.” was his reply. [Please don’t ask me to explain what this is, and how to do it. As I said, he’s an IT person, and far more experienced, qualified and up-to-date than me!!]

To add insult to injury my daughter then added (this was on Signal by the way in our Family chat group) … “Do you not use ChatGPT yet dad ? I could spot the author of that poem a mile off …”

I realised then it was time for me to wake-up! I conclude this detailing of our early morning convo (see, I know the lingo) with this … informing me of not just ChatGPT but OpenAI – the platform it’s based upon.

The journey starts here

I jump forward now to our meeting on 23rd February when I must have mentioned something about ChatGPT. I was delighted that Ian sent me this link to a site that aims to provide you with an itinerary for you to use when visiting a place you don’t know – it’s called Roam Around. Take the time to play with it.

In between, I’d started my journey of discovery, helped a lot by the plethora of articles that had begun to emerge since the New Year.

Microsoft were building OpenAI into their search engine Bing; Google were following suit with their equivalent – Bard. [Where do they get the idea for these names from? Then again where did they get the name Google from?] Here’s a set of links to articles that I read during this time …

December 7th – ChatGPT-style tech brought to Microsoft 365 – the announcement that started the “race” with Google. [I found this one retrospectively.]

January 27th – Some Notes on AI, ChatGPT, and the Photography World – I like the really simple question, and the clear concise answer.

February 2nd – ChatGPT vs Google: Which is Better at Answering Photography Questions? – mind blowing head-to-head contest with Google being outgunned in all 10 questions. Wow, wow, wow!!!

February 2nd – How 5G and AI will work together – a techie article illustrating how the explosion of machine learning, with highly advanced technology will benefit us all in the future. I recommend a quick scan through this article to show how the two technologies working together will improve the performance of a lot of our existing systems.

February 7th – Microsoft integrates ChatGPT into its Bing & Edge products – a huge leap forward, but the early demonstration was beset with some problems. Things are moving fast!

February 10th – The Guardian view on ChatGPT search: exploiting wishful thinking – the grounded (editorial) view, reflecting that we’re a way off yet from the “Brave New World”.

February 10th – Google v Microsoft: who will win the AI chatbot race? – the expose of Google’s rush to match Microsoft’s announcement, and what may happen in the long-run.

March 12th – How to use ChatGPT on Mac – thank goodness; help at last, perhaps I’ll be able to try it out?

March 16th – AI: How ‘freaked out’ should we be? – The BBC enters the commentary on AI – it’s a good read and was worth waiting for.

March 17th – How to Get ChatGPT on Your Apple Watch – it had to happen! Chat to your watch. Beam me up Scotty!

March 17th – GPT-4 has brought a storm of hype and fright – is it marketing froth, or is this a revolution? – the cautionary note. No one should rely on this technology alone just now. Engage brain.

March 21st – Microsoft & OpenAI add AI image creation tool to Bing – we’ll be examining DALL-E in a moment, but here’s the announcement that it’s being integrated into Bing – but there’s a waiting list to get onto the Preview service! Microsoft Bing’s AI Chatbot Can Now Generate Images with DALL-E and Microsoft’s AI-Powered Bing Experience Gains Image Creation Functionality. Everything is moving so fast!

March 21st – ChatGPT watch out: You can now chat to Google Bard – not to be outdone, the Google riposte.

March 21st – Will Google’s rush to join chatbot party with launch of Bard backfire? – sober refection on whether Google is fully up-to-speed on this one, or is trying to rush-to-market. We look to Jonathan for guidance.

For further links that may not appear in the list of references above, please pop-over to Thought grazing on Flipboard to see articles – some of the recent ones are about ChatGPT, OpenAI that I’ve curated there.

And so to demonstrations

The starting point has to be ChatGPT, and to use it to ask questions that will get hopefully meaningful answers, or to craft lovely poetry, songs etc. you need to create an account with OpenAI – the company that has created ChatGPT and other AI-like applications. So click on this link, and create an account from the Signup button. After you’ve provided an email address and Password, you will need to go to your email to Verify that email address and then you’re invited to provide some personal information, including a mobile phone number, to which a verification 2FA code will be sent to. Once you’ve done that you will be presented with some information screens …

… and you’re good to go …

… so give it a go.

We then tried out Roam Around for which you don’t need an account. It appears to not provide completely up-to-date information, but it’s an interesting application …

Finally, using the account we’d already setup with OpenAI, we tried DALL-E, using first the request to create an image of Cardiff Bay at sunrise …

… a surrealistic set of images which were only surpassed when we added the text “with Donald Duck present”. I leave other possibilities t to your imagination …

I also was able to use Bing in Microsoft Edge – the featured image at the top of this article shows this – to create similar images. Unlike Google/Bard; the Preview for Bing with OpenAI seems to be more readily available. You may need to download the most recent version of Edge though, and it most probably helps if you’ve got an existing Microsoft account (which I did have).

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Notes of meeting – 9th March 2023

Swinging in to early action after yesterday, I started the meeting with updates and news.

I asked if there were any questions follow-up to the Snapseed / Google Photos session and post – there are links in this to earlier posts on Google Photos and it’s my intention to check and update these (if necessary) as soon as possible. Ian raised an issue at this point about whether you can use Snapseed without the photos being on Google Photos. I hope I clarified that Snapseed is really only a smart device app, that it was possible to load it onto Windows and MacOS, but I wasn’t advocating it. If you’ve got an Android device, you will be editing an image already in Google Photos on your device – it may as well be sync’d to photos.google.com as well (I can’t check that). If you’ve got an iOS/iPadOS device you can load an image from the Apple Photos app (iOS) into Snapseed and then after edits – Export to Google Drive. The same is true for iPadOS. You can then from photos.google.com on your laptop/desktop Import photos from Google Drive into Google Photos which will then be viewable in the app on your device..

On a separate question Ian asked whether Google Photos and Apple Photos have duplicate images on an iPhone. I was pretty sure (and have just checked) that if you go into the Google Photos app and go to delete images, that the ones that will be deleted will be ones that are on iCloud (ie they are in Apple Photos). Google Photos on iOS only stores cached images from Google cloud storage. What is more if you look at Google Photos on your iOS AND iPadOS device (if you have both, and they have identical backup settings for Google Photos), the contents of Google Photos will be different, whilst those for Apple Photos will be the same. Thus I can say conclusively that they are not duplicated. The amount of storage used by Google Photos on your iOS/iPadOS device can be limited as is shown in these screenshots …

[NB I don’t advocate this as a method of deleting images from Apple iCloud storage]

… the images that will appear in the Google Photos app will be the ones in Apple Photos on your device. They will not be in Google cloud storage unless you a) have chosen to manually upload them (see above), or b) have switched-on back-up and sync – which for Apple users I don’t recommend as you’ll then have two copies of the image on both Google cloud storage and iCloud. I hope this clarifies things, you might also find this link of interest.

I then talked about the re-structuring of Forums and Topics on the website and showed where I’d put “The apps I use …”. I invited members to add apps they were interested in under the most appropriate Topic or Category within a Topic. I added that I would move contributions around if necessary, so no one should feel intimidated about adding their favourite app (or URL). I highlighted the recent Topic on VPNs in the Network issues > Internet security Forum.

Using the opportunity to discover further the resources on the website, I showed the Guides menu page, and displayed the PDF documents available on the page from BDM Publications. These are to be thought of as “try before you buy” only and I would refer you to the new publisher – Papercut Publications – to see the complete range of paper-based guides that you can buy.

Then I quickly ran through the latest additions to our Flipboard magazine, curated by Jonathan, Paul and myself. I highlighted the growth in interest in AI and ChatGPT in particular and indicated that I was going to use this as the basis for the next meeting, with the use of Passkeys and 2FA being handled in the following presentation-style meeting on 27th April. I did dwell upon the graphical representation of Pink Floyd’s most frequently paid songs, and that sparked some lively discussion.

Finally, in my “introduction” I requested members to look at the page for the Computer Group on the Cardiff U3A website and make suggestions as to changes and additions that could be made – Jim suggested adding some of the photos that he’d taken, which I’ll certainly take on board. I also reminded members of the deadline for reduced membership subscription (March 28th). This created quite a lot of discussion about the payment method and the interface with PayPal. Ted requested that anyone having difficulties could help the Committee by taking screen shots. I referred members to this page that Jim had posted on how to take screen prints. We also quickly looked at the notes from the last meeting and were pleased to record that Anne had resolved her problem with VirginMedia whereby Prime Video was not linking to her Panasonic TV – pressing Yes, when it should be No, is not intuitive, is it?

Matters raised by members followed.

John S commented that he was encountering more and more bad website design – we concurred with that; he was also having problem with streaming services fro Sky. This I felt (unlike the advice I’d given to John M at the previous meeting about buffering) was due to contention for shared bandwidth from the ISP. All you can do is to take repeated Speedtest readings (preferably from a laptop connected by ethernet cable to the router) at different times of the day to see just how much the speed falls from the contracted level they should be attempting to deliver. It will be rare that they can reliably offer what is declared to be a maximum, all the time, but the counterpoint is that they should be close to delivering that speed in non-peak times. It’s a matter for the ISP to resolve; not one to be passed onto OpenReach to raise a query.

Kate was delighted to be able to report that she’d done a seamless transfer of everything from an old iPhone to a new one. A good news story which I can support from my recent migration as well. Very easy and painless.

Don reported a strange problem with his printer which seemed not to be working from a cable (ethernet) connection after Win11 upgrade but which was working from WiFi (and his phone). I suggested that upgrading the Printer Driver might be a solution, but it’s difficult to diagnose remotely.

Ian asked whether it was possible to copy photos from WhatsApp to Google Photos. I reported that once you’d downloaded the media from WhatsApp to the Camera Roll on the iPhone you could then upload them to photos.google.com as described earlier.

Ted requested (as mentioned above) that anyone having PayPal/U3A/subscription issues should try and take a screenshot and send it to him (or me, to send on to him).

John M asked what was incognito mode in a browser and how to get out of it. I said that was a very good question and would research and report back in the Forums.

Ralph had had a problem loading Google weather, but had solved it by stopping the download which had appeared to freeze (sic), and then re-starting it. I said I’d often experienced a similar occurrence when downloading from “live sites” – sites that were constantly changing, ones getting information from databases – and I usually just closed the Tab and then re-opened a new tab. This would clear the cache and start from scratch.

Anne was continuing her journey of discovery with Win11 (a not too pleasurable experience it would appear) and questioned where mail identified as Junk was going to, as it didn’t appear to be moving out of her Inbox. Jim felt this was probably a mail client issue, rather than Win11, but no one was able to definitively come up with an answer.

And with that rather unsatisfactory answer the meeting closed.

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Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

A piece of software that sits on your device and hides your IP address and user credentials from “snooping” network users. Of particular value when connecting to an unsecured public network (eg a cafe). Normally unnecessary on a home network when connecting to you router, but it obviously can provide additional security and hides your device completely from the internet.

Here is a link that explains how they work, and another one from the provider I use (NordVPN).

One additional use that they have is that because you can choose the geographical location of the VPN server you wish to connect through, you can logically (or virtually) place yourself in a different country, thus enabling you to appear to be in the UK – when abroad (so that you can watch UK TV); or alternatively appear to be in a different country from home (when assessing alternative cost options for say a holiday).

— Forum Responses —

Thanks for this, I am looking at NordVPN for location shifting.

If I sign up can I use it on 2 Android phones, W10 Computer, and Android Tablet, all on one subscription ?

Paul de Geus March 18, 2023 9:33 am

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Notes of meeting – 9th February 2023

This was the first of our “discussion-style” meetings and I recorded the following notes.

John S reported that his bus pass had stopped working and it had taken two further re-issues to get a working card. This led to a general discussion about apps and led to the suggestion (later in the meeting) that a session on apps might be “a good idea”. I offered to do a write-up on the Cardiff Bus app. [I haven’t done this because of later actions, namely the Forum “The apps I use …”.]

Renee had followed up her Signal request for suggestions for a new mobile contract by signing-up with Lebara (linked to Vodafone) and was happy with the deal but unhappy that voice-messaging didn’t seem to be offered. I advised that with GiffGaff (my preferred provider) it took some time for the network operator to arrange with the phone supplier the necessary integration and access to voice messaging. I found this link which might be helpful. We also discussed VPNs and I again offered to write something about them. [This I will do as a Topic in the most appropriate Forum.]

Anne was having difficulties in setting-up Amazon Prime. Getting a “No internet connection” message after she had upgraded her VirginMedia Router. Advice from group members was that she probably needed to setup the network connection on the TV again because the IP address of the router was probably different.

John M reported that he was experiencing an annoying break, and then delay in delivery of streamed media. I explained that this was almost certainly due to buffering. The download of a stream starts, then the delivery of the stream to the device is faster than the initial filling of the buffer that holds the content. Once the two are in sync, this delay would be minimised and the stream would be constant – that is download would equal display but would probably be slightly behind a live stream. This can be mitigated by using a cable connction from the router to the TV (or other device) because the download speed over local cable would be faster than relying on WiFi. He also reported some difficulties with enabling his First Direct Bank account with 2FA (his fingerprint). We suggested that he might look at the settings for his device, or the app, just to check that fingerprint recognition had been enabled.

Margaret retold in great detail the sage of changing her old phone to a new phone. The trials and tribulations of different SIM sizes (moving from a 7-year old phone); the barrier of having to provide ID at the shop (the security check to prevent SIM-swapping – which I applauded); the complexities of different USB connections (USB-A to USB-C) for an adapter; and when she’d got through all that the difficulty in understanding the instructions to validate the new sized SIM (they said Turn off, it should have said Power down). Congratulations and applause was showered upon her for the detail in her recounting of events and her success in achieving a successful outcome.

Ian was experiencing the SBOD (Spinning Beachball of Death) on his 7-8 year-old Mac; was this really the end, or could he do something about it? I suggested that the machine was probably nearing the end of its productive life. I had older machines but had been able to upgrade the RAM, the hard disk and the battery. If any of these were a possibility an upgrade might be a good idea and it was a job that a user could do relatively easy as there are videos (specific to machines) on the internet that show you hoe to do it. In the meantime, powering down the machine at least once a week (to flush the cache); running maintenance software such as Clean My Mac; and reducing the number of open windows, and background software, might eek more life out of the machine.

Stella was trying to link her laptop to her TV, but was having difficulties in doing so. I can’t remember (and I have no note) as to what was suggested.