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So we arrive at the penultimate meeting of the year – just one to go! A few apologies for absence with members being searched out by grandchildren being a very valid reason after so many weeks of separation. So what went on …

Fred asked for guidance on how to get WhatsApp working properly on his phone – we didn’t answer that one, but did suggest there was a way using WhatsAppWeb on a browser that would answer his question. I promised to send him a link – here it is – that would assist in getting WhatsApp working on a desktop/laptop.

Christine reported that her new Cello Tv was having some problems connecting to the Internet and her son had advised purchasing a BT Powerline adapter to provide a stronger single, or indeed hard-wire connction. I’ve used this sort of device in the past and they can get round the problem well. She then enquired … “what is the best 43″ TV at the moment?” This created a lively discussion and ultimately it comes down to what you actually want from your TV. For me it’s the display quality. Smart features can be added-on, but it’s the screen and the menu facility of the set that’s most important. For that reason I’ve chosen to purchase the new Samsung 43″ QLED set – when it comes into Richer Sounds. You may be able to get it elsewhere, but I’ll wait until I can get it from them as they were so helpful in assisting me get to the decision I’ve made. One thing I need to clarify after the meeting though. It’s only OLED screens made by LG that are used by Panasonic, Sony and others, not LED. The competing standard is QLED from Samsung which is probably not as good as OLED but it’s only Samsung that offers a 43″ screen at this improved picture standard. Our existing set is a 10+ year old 32″ LED, we are upgrading to a 43″ QLED. Hope that makes it clear.

Paul related his experiments with stop-start gmail and google calendar and has found a workaround by starting Google Chrome, and then re-starting it. This seems to fix the other problems. This does seem to point to a problem with Google accounts in some way and we talked a little about the Google Dashboard as well. These can be reached at https://myaccount.google.com/ and https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard respectively (when logged in). It would be well worth your time spending a little while on these two pages and perhaps refining some of your settings with Google services as a result. Paul also promised to tell us all in the autumn about his CCTV installation as he edges nearer to making a decision on the system he’s going to deploy.

John indicated that he’d like some guidance on the WordPress system, the differences between .com and .org installations and how to use the Block Editor. I offered to do something for the session next week and try and recommend a good tutorial/book for using the wordpress.com site.

Stella‘s problems with exiting from her BT Broadband contract continue – she’s only got two weeks left and they are sending her messages that would seem to be suggesting she’d lose connection to services such as her photos on iCloud. This is patently not accurate, but for her peace of mind we did suggest that she download her photos onto her laptop and perhaps move them to an external device for safe keeping. She should do that by going to https://icloud.com logging in with her AppleID and Password and then downloading the Photos from the screen that would appear. However one thought did occur to me afterwards. If you have supplied your BT email address to be your AppleID then you need to change that before the end of the month. This goes for any other services that you might have supplied with your BT email address as this will cease to be active shortly after the account is closed. So … check your online services and see if you have used a BTinternet.com email address on any of them and change that to (in your case Stella) your yahoo address. If you close your BT account your email will remain active for 60days and you will have the chance to migrate to BT Premium Mail which is a chargeable service – you will probably be chased to take this up, but it’s advisable to take the opportunity to move to a non-ISP dependent service such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail. You do not have the opportunity of moving the mail messages from BT to another provider. Shame on you BT!!

Stella was also alarmed at having her account details flashed up on the screen which does appear to me at least to be strange thing to do, and she intends raising the matter with OFCOM. To top it all her connection to broadband has got worse and worse and it has taken up to 2 hours on occasion for her to connect to the Internet. Our sympathy is with Stella and we do hope she gets a good resolution from this and finds her Network 3 experience a happier one. [Jim is in the wings to provide assistance on that one.]

Ann wanted advice and guidance as to how to get rid of WhatsApp images and videos on her phone and both Christine and Paul gave advice on both. You can delete them off your phone by going to a specific album in your Photos on your phone, and delete them from WhatsApp by pressing on the image and choosing the Delete option.

David F&C queried the way that Photos were backing-up to Google Photos and we talked about the way that this happened. I mentioned I’d done something about this some time ago, but I fear that the post doesn’t quite hit the mark anymore – it needs re-writing, so here’s a link to Google’s page which is starting-point to learning a little about the wonderful world of Backup and Sync.

My contribution to the meeting was to mention my surprise and pleasure at retrieving monies from a Barclaycard that we only use when on holiday which is where our refund from Singapore Airlines had been sitting since the 28th May! I also mentioned a Facebook advert that enticed a friend to seemingly purchase goods from a well-known high-street name. Just don’t do it. Be very aware! I also talked about improving Network performance i the house and promised to write-up something about that, as I did to share some guidance on using Facebook. I will do both of these on the thoughtgrazing.com site as it may be of more than general interest to a wider circle and I do need to keep some interest in that site as well!

Finally I offered to do a little on transcoding – changing the format of videos, images and audio files – as well as the bit on WordPress, for the last meeting of the year.

Another good turnout with 14 of us on my screen and such a well-behaved group of zoomers. Makes you think that perhaps we ought to be classified as “baby zoomers” doesn’t it? Anyway round the screen we wen, starting with a follow-up from the last meeting.

Owen had investigated the Gmail closing and opening issue and reported that this had been identified as a “problem” by others specific to Chrome. The suggested solution was to uninstall Google Chrome and then re-install it. However another suggestion was that you should look at the extensions you’ve loaded into Chrome. If this is the case it would be interesting to see if the same problem happens with Brave, or Edge, which both use the Chromium code that underlies Chrome. Owen also reported that the same problem had been recorded as being associated with using some Chrome-based apps such as Alexa, or even apps that accessed Windows itself, and being related to security settings in the browser. More work needs to be done before we get a definitive answer. I await the next chapter in the story!

Then we “went round the screen” starting with …

Ted, who pointed us to a post he’d written on using Google Maps – which is an interesting read, as is the other work he’s been doing with the Roath History Group creating a “virtual war memorial” and resurrecting work that he and David H had done in creating Heritage Walks (for a publication/website that appears doomed to never appear). Links to both of these projects – which prove (if proof was ever needed) that Ted has been having a very busy and productive lockdown – are on his Google Maps post. Ted invited us all to review and comment on the content and presentation of both pieces of work, please do so.

Fred has been busy doing DIY and preparing for “a big birthday”, and requested info on the availability of a Spanish wine. Owen was able to come up trumps with a local source from which it might be possible to get the wine. [I’m afraid I didn’t write down either the name of the wine, or the place where it could be purchased.]

Paul enquired about a pop-up that he’d been seeing recently inviting him to take-out a subscription for Acronis True Image. Both Owen and I agreed that this was back-up software. It had probably been packaged with the machine when purchased with a time-limited subscription which had now expired. Since Paul wasn’t using it, it was safe to ignore the invitation!

Stella had decided to go with getting Broadband via the 3 mobile network. From the website she wasn’t sure which offering Home, or Mobile, she should take. From discussion with Jim, it seemed likely that the Home Hub option was the one she should take. [I looked into this after the meeting and wrote to Stella and Jim with that advice. The important factor was to make sure you got a HomeFi (Huawei 535) Plus hub. The service should cost around £20-22 a month for a two-year contract and unlimited data.]

Renée reported on a phone scam relating to a Mastercard purchase she hadn’t made. Sianed told us she’s had a similar experience and reported it to Mastercard. I reported the excellent Mastercard “track and trace” system with stopped my card when I made a transaction on Amazon Australia, sent me a text message asking me to confirm whether the last three transactions had been made by me and to answer “y” or “n” by text, which I did and which then unblocked my card. All this took place within 1 min of the transaction and was done without interfering with the purchase with Amazon. Very impressive! She also had found a way of storingvideos from her gym on Fb, which meant that her problem (as reported on WhatsApp) with Vimeo, had been resolved.

Owen told us about Training he’d received from U3A about holding Virtual Meetings and particularly AGMs using Zoom. He had learnt a lot more about facilities in Zoom from that session and shared some of them with us including having co-hosts of a meeting. Marilyn asked whether it was possible to set up break-out groups (as she was now experiencing in a Welsh course run by the university), and Don added that these were being used by his church after the Sunday service, as well as using a poll during the service itself. We all expressed our grateful thanks to Owen for all he’s been able to do for Cardiff U3A during this difficult period and furthermore expressed the view that we were particularly fortunate to have someone with technical expertise “in charge” at such a challenging time.

Jim continues to weed his photo collection, a repetitive but in the end very valuable and useful task!

Sianed enquired about a problem encountered by her husband who was losing sight of emails which he had then to recover from the Draft folder of his mailer (Hotmail). Several suggestions were offered, including (and the most likely) that he had possibly changed “focus” of the browser by clicking on another window, which then caused automatic saving to draft; but the general advice was that if you were writing a long email you should do it in a text editor (not a word processor) – I use Evernote for instance – and then cut’n’paste the text into the email when you’ve finished, and then do any formatting in the email before sending it.

Don told us he’d been looking at the zoom controls (settings) on his machine after he’d had an alert that Zoom was using 90% of the machine’s CPU. We didn’t think this should be anything to be concerned about as his machine was well above the minimum specification for Zoom and he wasn’t doing anything much in the background. However, the general advice is that if you do find things are “slowing down” then you should look to see if there are processes running in the background, and close them down. Most Zoom problems are related to poor bandwidth, not CPU or RAM problems. He also reported that he’d been amazed to be able to purchase HP compatible cartridges for his printer from IJT for c.£20 as opposed to the £75 quoted from HP. David H reported that he’d been surprised to find Amazon prices beating IJT prices for HP cartridges, so the moral is shop around!

Phil was challenged on why “tattyjacket” as his email address and he revealed the Tatty Jacket (he plays accordion with a Morris Team). He also told us that the episode of The Chase he’d been seen on the week before was recorded more than 4 years ago, and he didn’t do any better the second-time round!!! He also told us about The Pilgrimage Way to Penrhys (and Stella told us the hill at the end was quite steep). [I’ve also written the word pop-up down – but have no idea what that was all about!]

David H, who will now be renamed David the F&C to avoid confusion with my good self, updated us on the saga of his meeting with the VoG Planning/Licensing Committee and the relative victory in stopping the licence for the fish and chip shop on the Esplanade being extended beyond 11:00pm. Now to tackle the odour problem. He also updated us on the Jigsaw website and told us that you can get puzzles of 500 pieces as well.

Finally I told the group that I’d had little time to do anything else but re-work the family website after the late intervention of my Australia-based IT son.

I then kicked off a discussion about this article from The Guardian, that I felt made for uncomfortable reading in terms of the type of society we were heading for.

I’m also including a few more links that I didn’t have time to mention in the meeting

About Internet Society

Consolidation in the Internet Economy

What are the Pros and Cons of Network Neutrality – I include this because of the discussion we had the previous week about less 4K movies on Netskills, and my thought that it might be related to tiering of internet service in the US.

Tim Berners Lee, on 30 years on, what’s next #ForTheWeb? and his idea of A Contract for the Web – we have discussed this at an earlier meeting, but it’s interesting to see the list of companies that have now signed-up for it.

I’m late again, writing up the notes, so it will be interesting to see whether my memory is better than the last time when this happened. My writing is worse than a doctor’s so that can tell you how bad it is, so between that, and my memory, please excuse me if I’ve forgotten something. In my defence however, I did all the actions required of me before I went for supper last Thursday, so I got them out of the way! You can see them in the WhatsApp group, and Paul added an item there as well about Printer Ink – of which more below …

Paul mentioned his Zoom quiz, and it appears quite a few of us are taking part in these; he also asked whether there had been any solution to the Google Mail problem which he’d raised a fortnight before (and I can’t remember what it was …) and which Owen had kindly “volunteered” to look into.

Fred (a self-confirmed “zoom virgin” – his words) had been mainly involved with various DIY projects around the house, something which I reluctantly have been engaged with as well!

David H told us about the preparations for his Vale of Glamorgan Planning Appeal video-conferencing session – we look forward to the report of how it went. He also let us know that for £3 his daughter had allowed him (legally) to piggyback on their Netflix account. [ Me, I’d have said thanks very much and then forget to pay :-)] Phil reported that he thought Netflix were reducing the number of films they were streaming in 4K due to bandwidth demand, but there’s plenty of 4K content on YouTube such as watching the BBC Tuning Page of years ago. [I wonder whether the reduction of 4K content on Netflix is related in any way to the tiers of bandwidth service that are being marketed in the US – something that the Internet Society campaigned strongly against as it heralded the introduction of two- (or multi-) tiered services which was against the philosophy of the Internet as being an equal service to all. I’ll look up a bit more on this before the meeting as it relates to the theme of Corporate Control of the Internet in a way as well.] David H also recounted his pleasurable engagement with computerised jigsaws and has written an article here – many thanks.

Stella recounted how her conversations with BT about upgrading her broadband were proceeding – they weren’t; every time she called them the price of what she was already getting was going up. We had a general discussion about broadband providers and I created a Topic on the subject here, that you might be interest in reading, and contributing to.

John advised us about an offer pushed through his door of his apartment in a group of flats inviting him to get broadband collectively for the residents for £39.99 each. We all thought this was a bit expensive. He also told us that he’d done a full migration to Win10 now on his desktop, had shed MS Office and was now using LibreOffice. He also told us that he had a new Covid-Project – taking pictures of clouds. Very restful. I look forward to seeing some of the outcomes if we ever get the Lightroom Pantry group going again.

Jim had bitten the bullet and decided to subscribe to Flickr Pro (£55.88pa, but reduced for 2-year subscription), and was pleased that there were no adverts as a result. He continues to weed his photo collection providing tags to them to assist in search recovery.

Renée was engaged in more and more Zoom meetings (3 that day) and all was going well.

Don had discovered an old Logitech 300 camera he had which he’d connected to his computer and which was improving what he could do because he could move the camera rather than rely on the built-in one. We then had a discussion about HP providing an email service (£3.50pm) to monitor ink levels and send out replacement cartridges when they were needed. Paul told us about IJT (details in WhatsApp group) who he’d found very good to provide replacement ink cartridges.

We celebrated with Ann her backup of the BIOS on her Lenova IdeaPad 320 (4Gb) before upgrading the BIOS and all the other work she was doing on the machine.

Phil told us about his latest project – a computerised (Raspberry Pi) microscope and showed us a picture of a dead fly to prove his success. He also entreated us to support a campaign he was thinking of setting-up to get things (what???? – my notes fail me) in the right order. He recommended a channel UKTV Play to watch loads of old TV. What he failed to tell us (perhaps he didn’t even know) was that he was to appear on a five-year old re-run of the The Chase that evening!

Christine recounted the sad demise of their TV which broke as it was being replaced by their new Cello set – perhaps it was trying to tell us something? Anyway, it’s in the skip now!

Finally, I talked about the installation of a new Netgear Orbi Mesh router and WiFi system which took up most of Father’s Day – the best use I could imagine for such an artificial American concoction. I also talked a little about the new Edge browser and difficulties a member of the Photographic Group had using it with Flickr, and I explained that this often happened with new browsers and old web pages which didn’t keep pace with technological change. His problem was solved by using Firefox. I expressed the view that I thought Firefox might be making a comeback as a secure and privacy-focussed browser and promised to look more into it for a meeting at some point in the future.

A couple of members (Mike and Marilyn amongst them) had nothing to report.

After the round-the-screen session I gave a brief demonstration of using the Block Editor to create posts on the site – I was delighted to see David H had used it in the last week.