Blog posts

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"Thought grazing" and the U3A

This blog is one way I am offering to share with fellow Third Agers, what I have learned, and have experienced, through a lifetime of using IT.  I think of this as  ‘thought grazing’ by us ‘silver surfers’ – click on the link above for a fuller explanation – particularly for those members of the University of the Third Age in Cardiff.
The two most recent posts to the Blog appear in the feed below. To see them fully and either Comment, or Reply to a Comment, you will need to click on the title of the Post first so that it opens in a window by itself.
If you’re a Cardiff U3A Computer Group member, after Login, you will also see Private posts in the feed below, and be able to read the content of Member Posts, or Meeting Notes, from the Menu above.
Once you’ve logged in you’ll also be able to view some guidance on how to use the site from the Cardiff U3A Computer Group menu.
Enjoy!
David Harrison

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Amazon Echo one year on.

Hi,
After being an enthusiastic Amazon Echo user for the past year, I have to admit that I’m simply not enjoying her company so much any more.
As an enthusiastic user, I took out an extra subscription with Amazon so that I could upload my music to their servers so that I could access my CD collection through the devices. Recently I’ve had an email from them to tell me that they are discontinuing that service. Hours of wasted effort.
It was kind of cool asking Alexa to play certain tracks and certain tunes however once you realised that your success rate was only about 40% my enthusiasm soon waned.
I took out the extra Amazon Prime Unlimited subscription for a while so that I could listen to just about any track ever recorded. Thing is; and you old folks might relate to this ….trying to think of something inspiring out of fresh air isn’t all that easy any more. It is far easier to see your albums displayed on a tablet screen, offering some suggestions as to what you might like to listen to.
However, the most infuriating problem that I experienced was what I’ll call “The Tuesday Phenomenon.” My wife babysits on Tuesdays. Theoretically that gives me free time with my music collection. Often, on a Tuesday I’d ask Alexa to play a certain album only to find that it had lost network connection. It would then take about 30-45 minutes to get back into the groove by which time I’d often need some calming music to tend to my fraying nerves.
Amazon Echo. Great for asking for spellings. Pretty good at sums. Turning lights on and off is really cool but the music player simply isn’t anything but frustrating.

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IT on trips, or holiday, and meeting notes – 7th June 2018

Here are my notes from the meeting; with a couple of additions from you …

Issues
News
Trips and IT – Hardware
  • Smartphone, Tablet or Laptop
  • Power sockets or adaptors
  • Cables (Ethernet and HDMI cable)
  • MiFi – portable WiFi using 3G/4G
            MiFi from Three
            Huawei MiFi at Amazon
Trips and IT – Software
Trips … on the go
  • Want to do some fun geocaching? – Munzee
  • Want to hire a bike? – NextBike, it’s not available everywhere – but it is in Cardiff!
  • Cheaper digital banking overseas? – Revolut
  • and then there’s apps for Expedia, trivago, TripAdvisor, Airbnb, kayak, Hotels.com, Booking.com, etc
  • eBooks? – try the Libra eBook Reader with the Cardiff Library service, or the Kindle app for your tablet – you don’t need a Kindle!
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Mapping, Google and geocaching and meeting notes – 10th May 2018

Ocado
Quick hints:

  • Getting short cuts for documents on your Desktop – Go into File Explorer, find the document you want to create a Shortcut for, single click on that document, right click, select Create Shortcut.
  • Format painter in Word. It’s the paintbrush in the home menu. Highlight the area of text that shows the format you want to copy. click on format painter. Highlight the area of text you want to copy the format to.
  • Bullets – highlight the text that you would like to add bullets for. Click on the bullets in the Home menu – about half way along in the top row.
  • Disabling touch pad – on a Lenovo machine press F6. Only works for that session.

News:

  • Windows 10 update
  • Google launches
  • Broadband speeds

Google maps

  • Getting coordinates – go into Google Maps. click on where you want to get the coords for. Rich click. Go down to What’s here? A box will appear at the bottom that includes the coordinates. These coords are often not in the format you want for your SatNav so have to be converted. A good website for doing coordinates conversion is: http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi
  • https://www.google.com/mymaps – this website appears to allow you to plan routes, whereas the https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ site does not
  • Saves to Google Drive – the route you plan seems to save to Google drive.
  • Saving as KML file – this seems to be the only format you can save a route in and not the ‘.gpx’ format that is often used. There is probably a way to convert KML file to a GPX file somewhere.

GPS
Geocaching

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Meeting notes – 26th April 2018

Here are some notes from this meeting facilitated by Paul …
We looked at three items today:
TPS > joining, Reporting  < Make a Complaint > and its effectiveness; some discussion on Nuisance communication, including Emails & PayPal Spoofs > report to Spoof@paypal.com
We looked at Google Maps,  Locations, How to get Directions, add intermediate destinations, cross the channel to France….
Owen, David, Don, Ted  and Jim collectively discussed my problem, and Jim came up with a solution to Bookmark the page & Route in Chrome.
Some discussion about downloading the routes to a Mobile from John Thorn (Alan Neave’s Brother in Law)
Ted (& Jim) introduced us to Street View History, that can go back 10 years for any location on GMaps by clicking the top Left dropdown box when in street view.
Ted will follow on with more interesting interfaces with Google Maps in two weeks.
We looked at Google Calendar and how it integrates across most platforms pretty easily.
Some discussion on Email services > Outlook , Mail, Windows Live Mail.

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Online buying and selling; Fb still in the news and meeting notes – 12th April 2018

Issues
  1. You can recall a message in Gmail for a limited time after you’ve sent it – as long as you’re using the browser version or the Gmail app; will not work with email clients, such as Outlook, or Apple Mac Mail.
  2. Problems with Spam from BTinternet – investigated; could not find anything specifically that is a current problem.
  3. How do you clone Mac – if you want to rebuild your system; resolved and answer given to Renee
  4. Topics for the future
  • Cookies and internet history – managing them
  • Buying a new system; transferring your old system to a new one on a Windows PC. This has been covered for the Mac in response to Renee viz. cloning.
News
What do you use different forms of storage for?
  • Internal hard disk drive
  • External hard drive
  • Solid-state drive
  • USB Memory Sticks, and Memory Cards (SD Cards, Compact Flash)
… and then there’s …
  • Cloud storage
Topics
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Facebook issues and meeting notes – 22nd March 2018

Issues
  • apart from getting onto Forum (see later) and the Broadband readings
News
  • Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
  • How to make yourself safe(r) on Facebook
  • Another RSS Reader hits the dust – Digg dies
Broadband speed tests
Thought grazing and U3A Forum – demonstration
            https://thoughtgrazing.org/
Next meeting – 12th April
Meetings on 10th and 24th May – facilitator for these meetings