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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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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.

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Snapseed and Google Photos

If you want to edit, even if only in a minor way, the photos on your smart device (phone or tablet, Android or Apple), two offerings from Google should be tried first. If you’re an Android (Google) device user, it’s a no-brainer.

The Google Photos app will be installed on your device when you get it, and all you need to do is install Snapseed from the Google Play store. If you’re an iOS or iPadOS (Apple) device user then there’s a couple of extra steps you need to do before you can get started.

This guide concentrates on Snapseed. I’ve written about Google Photos previously and I’m providing links to them below. I’ll check to see that things haven’t changed materially since I published these posts …

Getting to grips with Google Photos – needs some updating and revising, and links need to be checked.

More Google Photos – some simple image manipulation – basically sound, but I need to check to see if there are any additional tools added.

Sharing an image (or album) from Google Photos – should be just about up-to-date.

How do you delete photos from Google Photos? – more recent so I’m assuming that it’s good-to-go, but I’ll check of course.

Although Snapseed is intended for use on smart mobile devices, you can install it on either a Windows PC or a Mac, but I have no experience of doing this, so it would be a project you would be taking on ahead of me. So for that reason I’m only looking at the app that you can download either from the Google Play, or Apple App stores.

So for camera users (rather than smart phone users), you will first of all need to get the photos onto your device. This could be by a direct cable connection from your camera to your phone, or by transfer using Bluetooth or WiFi, but more likely might be by using a SD-card cable like this one I have for the Apple gear. [It will either have to have a Lightning or a USB-C connector – check first before buying one.]

Apple USB-C to USB-A connector with USB-A SD-Card slot

The image(s) thus transferred will be added to your photo library be it Google Photos, or Apple Photos. Another way of adding photos on your computer to your Google Photos would be an Upload to photos.google.com – you will need a Google account to do this. This is how you would do it …

Select Import to Upload images to Google Photos
Select images from the Computer (or from Google Drive)

You could decide to use Google Backup to synchronise all your photos from your iPhone (or iPad) to Google Photos as an “easy” way of getting the photos on your Apple device into Google Photos, but this is not necessary to use Snapseed as it can access your Apple Photos directly; so I don’t because I’m already backing-up my photos to iCloud. [I only discovered in November I was also sync’ing to Google Photos, so I stopped doing that then and saved some Google Drive storage, and a whole lot of complications about knowing what was where.] But if you want to synchronise from your Apple Camera to Google, this is how you do it from the Google Photos app on your device …

Instructions on how to synchronise Photos on Apple devices to Google Photos

You should now install the Snapseed app on your device(s) from the Google Play, or Apple App stores, if you haven’t already. If you’re an Apple user you might choose to install the Google Photos app at the same time – although you don’t need it to use Snapseed, but you might just like to compare how it works.

Next up, if you’re an Apple user you need to allow access to your Photo Library to Snapseed (and optionally Google Photos). This will allow both apps (on iOS) to access the Photos in your Camera Roll on your iPhone or iPad.

Setting up Google Photos and Snapseed to be able to look at Apple Photos on device(s)

So now your ready to start editing. Open the Snapseed app on your device – you are prompted to Open from device (ie look at the images in your Photo Library), or you can access the camera to take a shot, or Open latest image that you’ve taken. The steps from then on are relatively straightforward and you will have selected the image that you want to Use.

Open Snapseed and look at the photos on your local device
Select an image to edit, and click-on Use
… and so start editing.

That’s about it. This video (recorded from my screen, hence background noise and rather low audio volume) gives a reasonable introduction on how the Snapseed app works …

A brief (14mins) introduction to editing photos using Snapseed

Here are some links that you might find of interest:

Complete Guide To Using Snapseed To Edit Your iPhone Photos

How to Edit Photos in Snapseed

Using your Android camera to take photos; but I believe all Android phones have slightly different camera interfaces, so you’re better off researching that for yourself. [NB If you have come across a really good guide, let me know and I’ll add it to the list here.]

How to Use the Camera on an Android Phone: The Basics Explained

Then for the iPhone …

How to use iPhone Camera: A guide for beginners and pros

A Beginners Guide To Incredible iPhone Photography

How To Use The iPhone Camera App To Take Incredible Photos

I hope that helps. Please advise if you come across something that doesn’t quite work for you, it might be my notes!!!

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Home Networking

This article was written to accompany a presentation done on 22nd January 2023. All the videos embedded in the post were current at that date. They could be removed from YouTube, or replaced by later ones, at any time.

The presentation built upon one that Paul de Geus did and which is included below. I’m indebted to him for pointing me to the video from RSAweb, which is a really good and short introduction to improving Home WiFi signal, and also including at least one video in the show from PowerCert. They are so good, I’ve used them as the basis of this presentation.

I’ve also written a couple of articles that you might find it useful to refer to …

“Improving home network performance“, and

“Home networks – some notes“

Also, remember there’s a “Network issues” Forum that has several Topics relating to Home Networking, and if you have discovered a really good bit of technology, or you want help with the kit you’ve got, that would be a great place to look, or contribute to.

First however take a look at Paul’s presentation, of 2019 – yes five years ago, I can’t believe that! You can scroll through the slides using the arrow keys at the bottom of the window and make the text bigger using the +/- keys.

U3A-Cardiff_-Computer-Group

I suppose we should start with perhaps the main problem – a poor WiFi signal – and then work back from that to see whether we can improve our understanding of how networking works and how we can improve our Home Networking experience.

How to improve your WiFi signal at home

A more detailed look at possible quick wins are detailed in this article, and again some of the suggestions it mentions are covered later.

You might be able to improve your home WiFi by following the advice in that video and the article; indeed WiFi Extenders could do the trick (see later), but it’s probably better to understand a little more about the devices you’re using. So we start with Modem and Router. Almost always in new installations combined into one device called a Super Hub, or Smart Hub. Often an Internet Service Provider (ISP) will package that with a streaming TV service which includes the capability of recording TV channels and this will use the Hub to transmit by ethernet, or WiFi, to the TV.

Modem vs Router – What’s the difference?

So we have a device – a modem, that is connected to the internet by either a fibre-optic cable (eg VirginMedia), or DSL copper/fibre connection (eg OpenReach); it will almost always have a router with both WiFi and Ethernet ports included in it. The WiFi will normally offer two bands (wireless frequencies) at 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz. These two bands have different characteristics which are explained in the following video. [NB It’s important to note that Smart Devices mostly seem to prefer to operate on the 2.4Ghz band, so if you’re having difficulty connecting them, it might be prudent to check you have enable that band.]

2.4GHz vs 5GHz WiFi: What’s the difference?

Older WiFi devices will tend to use the 2.4GHz frequency and newer ones the 5GHz frequency. If you were experiencing poor WiFi on the 2.4GHz frequency it used to be recommended that you checked the channels that were being used in the neighbourhood and for you to change to a different one, usually 1 or 11 – the default is often 6. This is easily done by logging into your router (hub) and configuring a default channel.

However another possibility is to install a WiFi Extender. This device, as it suggests) accepts a WiFi signal from your WiFi Router (hub) and extends the signal to a part of the house where the signal is not so strong.

WiFi Extender (Booster) Explained

One of these devices may well suit your purposes and you may well be able to get one that has auto-sync that enables the network name (the Service Set Identifier or SSID) of your router to be used on the WiFi extender, but not always, and you may find yourself with two WiFi networks – one SSID for the router, another SSID for the extender, and you will have to choose your network depending upon the area of the house you are in and seamless roaming between the two will not be possible. Examples of WiFi Extenders (or Boosters) are listed here.

A different approach is to use the electric power circuits in your house to extend an ethernet network from the router (hub) to a power outlet on the same electric circuit. [NB This is the only configuration I’m happy to recommend. If you have more than one ring main, you may find that you don’t get good results when trying to connect between the two.] This technology is called Powerline and you can purchase devices that have both ethernet and WiFi capability. Again, look for ones that have auto-sync that will extend the SSID of the router to provide a single WiFi network. The video below explains how Powerline networking works.

Powerline Ethernet Networking Explained

One of our members (David Hughes) has recently installed this system, a TP-Link AV600 Powerline system which he is happy with. There are a couple of videos on that page which demonstrate how easy these new Powerline systems are to setup.

However, for some people (me included) the houses we live in are not well suited to any kind of WiFi (or ethernet) networking, and so Mesh wireless may be the solution. Interestingly most mesh systems use a dedicated 5GHz channel to let the devices “talk” to each other. In routing terms these are therefore tri-band routers. One example of a Mesh solution is the one offered by Google.

Mesh WiFi Explained

A popular Mesh solution is the one offered by BT …

How to set up your Complete Wi-fi Disc

… whilst Renee Martin has recently installed a TP-Link Deco E4 Mesh WiFi system. However, not all mesh systems are alike; some appear to work seamlessly behind your router in Access mode, others like mine require you to switch your hub into modem mode so that the main mesh hub works in Router mode. For the TP-Link system the difference between Access Mode and Router Mode is described here.

Should you be considering a Mesh system here are a some reviews – here, here and here. My system is a Netgear Orbi RBK53 one and I’m including a few screen shots from the app that you use to manage the network to describe what it does.

You have a main hub device, connected to the internet through a modem (my VirginMedia SuperHub – configured to be in modem mode), it then has two satellite hubs, one connected by an ethernet cable to my office, the other using WiFi to the back of the house which provides a WiFi facility to the upstairs, kitchen and garden. [I have tried connecting it using Powerline but there doesn’t appear to be any benefit from doing so.]

The devices connected to the satellite hub in my office at the time I took a screenshot were …

The devices connected to the satellite in the back of the house (when this map was created) were …

There are then a number of devices also connected to the Main Hub with one port being used to connect the ethernet cable to the Orbi in the office, one port connecting to a switch behind the TV (to connect the TV, HiFi etc), one to Powerline (not being used currently), and of course one to the VirginMedia Hub.

Looking at the configuration of the Orbi in the Office, you can see that it has an IP Address which it has obtained from the Main Hub. All IP addresses within the home network will always start 192.168.1.xxx – the individual devices being recognised by unique MAC addresses which are held against the IP address in the hubs.

… so when you look at the router settings on the Main Hub you can see it’s IP address is 192.168.1.1

Looking at the internet port settings of the router you can see that it has an external IP address of 86.29.24.114. This is effectively the IP address of my house. I am extremely lucky that this IP address does not seem to change – a VirginMedia “bug”, or is it because my VirginMedia Superhub is now just a modem?? This then makes it possible for me to host a server on my network, because I have a quasi-static IP address. Normally the external device is dynamically set so that when there is a power outage you may find you have been given a different external IP address.

The other setting that is interesting is the DNS server. Your ISP will have setup your router to point at their server, but these servers will usually be based in the area that it provides service to. So, it is often a good idea to change the defaults to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), or Google (8.8.4.4, or 8.8.8.8) because their servers are worldwide and so should provide quicker lookup of the directory. [NB what we’re talking about here is the translation of a friendly domain name eg google.com, to a set of four digits.] When your router is given a domain it has to look up it will look first at the the first one in your list; if it’s very busy, it will drop to the second, etc. So My router will look at Cloudflare first, then Google before dropping to VirginMedia.

That’s about it. I haven’t covered a number of topics that you might be interested in, eg

Understanding IP addresses and how they’re constructed
How a DNS Server (Domain Name System) works.
What is a Firewall?
VPN (Virtual Private Network) Explained

A few more refs. that you probably don’t need to know anything about:
Subnet mask explained
DHCP Explained – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
WiFi (Wireless) Password Security – WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3, WPS Explained

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How does the Internet work?

[Revised 17th January 2023 and February 22nd 2024]

Now there’s a question. Once upon a time it was a little easier to answer. You connected your computer with a piece of wire to a socket in the wall and beyond the wall was ??

So perhaps it’s never been easy to answer that question. It’s not magic, it’s not fluffy, it’s actually really complicated technology which works in a relatively simple way to make things relatively easy for us to use it. Let’s start with a few videos …

How does the internet work? – This [updated] BBC Bitesize page (produced for children) is a really good starting point to help you understand how the internet works and introduces some of the terminology (ie protocols, packets) that will be useful to you to understand the other videos.

How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes – the internet is not a fuzzy cloud. The internet is in effect a wire (or a fibre-optic cable), actually buried in the ground or carried as wires between posts. Computers connected directly to the internet are called Servers, while the computers you and I use are clients, because they are not connected directly to the internet, but through an Internet Service Provider. Mobile devices away from the home, connect to the internet using radio-waves to connect to cell-towers with increasing capacity being generated by increasing the frequency modulation of the waves (ie 3G, 4G, 5G and even 6G). Mobile devices in the home or in the office, or in public hot-spot spaces, use WiFi to connect to the internet using two frequencies – 2.4GHz and 6GHz. All of these require Routers to shuttle packets of information across the internet, and transmit e-mail, pictures, and web pages. Although this video is a little dated, it really does explain the process of what happens when you connect to the internet …

A more recent video and the ones that are referenced at the end of the video will get you a long way to understanding the technology that makes up the Internet.

How Does the Internet Actually Work? – this discusses how internet traffic can be labelled to ensure that packets of data can arrive at their destination with the minimum amount of disruption [- but it is a biased view in favour of scheduling]. However for an impartial point of view of Net neutrality, you should probably look at this video produced by Vimeo – strong supporters of Net Neutrality …

… and the policy documents from the Internet Society and Electronic Frontier Federation.

Finally a couple of alternative views of the internet. First, Andrew Blum (in a TED Global talk) philosophically examines What is the Internet, really? A journey that started for him when he found out a squirrel had chewed through a cable led to him exploring trans-ocean cables and the very physical nature of the internet – a wire! Then this rather entertaining video …

… takes us from very local internet and cell-phone technology, through an examination of data centres such as the former Western Union office at 60 Hudson in Manhattan, to laying ocean cables and the future with balloons acting as transmitting stations for low-density inhabitation, or remote areas.

You might also be interested in seeing a Google Data Centre, in particular the pieces on security and cooling are interesting. [However, all of this increasing use of the internet comes at a cost to our environment as the advance of Artificial Intelligence and its huge need for energy for increased computing power comes at a cost.]

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 12th January 2023

What would turn out to be our last hybrid meeting

I started off the meeting with an apology for not doing the notes from our last meeting on the 8th December. I had the beginnings of a cold on that day, and the notes I took were indecipherable by the time I had recovered after Christmas.

I briefly went through the latest News – not that there was much as Jonathan and Paul attested to as well. Their additions to Flipboard and mine can be found here.

I then asked the group to consider using the Forums/Topics area on the website as an addition (not a replacement) to using Signal for issues that might be of interest to reference in the future. I suggested that Signal might best be used for getting quick responses to issues, and then copied to the most appropriate Forum as a Topic later. Or … perhaps just add them as a Topic if no response was immediately required and you just wanted to promote discussion on a Topic. I stated that I’d be reviewing the structure of the Forums and the Topics within them [Update: now completed], and that I would also be looking back at posts on the website that I thought ought to be promoted more for easy reference and access [Update: now done under Blog posts menu item].

I proposed to the group that we might review the way the group was working, and to discontinue doing hybrid zoom meetings which I was finding quite stressful. The group agreed with my proposal which I later circulated as an email …

I am grateful to those of you who attended the meeting yesterday and who accepted my suggestion to re-structure the programme of meetings for the Group.

We will still meet on the Second and Fourth Thursdays of the month at 2:00pm at SightLife, but without a Zoom hybrid component. Doing this was becoming a stressful addition to the meeting that I was finding it hard to work with, so I felt that if the group was going to flourish in the future we had to find a different way of working.

What I came up with, and which was agreed by the members present, was the splitting of the discussion/advice/issues component from the presentational/information component, so that the first will take place on the Second Thursday of the month, and the second will take place on the Fourth Thursday of the month. Doing this will mean that I don't need to prepare stuff for more more than one meeting a month - and I am keen to encourage others to "present" also; and I need not "chair" every discussion-style meeting - concentrating just on taking notes and inputting thoughts, inmformation or even sharing advice!

To support the Zoomers and maybe even extending the online community, a Zoom meeting will take place on the First Thursday of the month. This will essentially be a discussion-style meeting, but it's up to members to take it in any direction they wish. I will host this meeting from the comfort of my own home, with technology I'm more confident with.

Yesterday, I talked about "How the Internet works", and I'll be sharing an updated post on the subject, on the website asap. At our first proper "presentation-style" meeting in a fortnight I will be talking about "Home networking" - updating the various sessions we've had over the past 6 years or so. There should be time for anyone to raise a pressing issue/problem at the end so we're not dispensing with that and we will still do a News and Follow-up bit; we just won't go "round the table/screen" seeking input as we've done in the past two years (plus).

I'm looking for suggestions for other "presentation-style" subjects. I have it in mind to do one on photo-sharing in February, but any other ideas are welcome. Just drop me a line.

Finally, I'll be providing a bit more structure to the website so that the more useful posts are more easily found; and I'm also encouraging members to use the Forums and Topics, and you will see some changes to the Forums provided over the next two weeks. I don't want to replace our use of Signal. It's brilliant for keeping in touch and getting instant answers to problems; but I am keen to capture some of the issues/solutions as Topics so that they can be more easily retrieved. I am also keen to encourage members to start their own Topics and for all members to participate with Comments and Replies.

Apologies for the length of the message. I hope you all understand where I'm coming from. I'm confident that with these changes the group will be invigorated and work even better than it has in the past.

Then after totally confusing some of you in attempting to describe how I’d sorted out my son’s network (changing a router to a bridged connection, and creating a single WiFi network with one SSID is the quick description of what I did), I moved on to showing three short videos which aimed to explain “How the Internet works” …

These three videos I think provide a sound basis for understanding how information gets to you when you send an email, or do a search from your browser, or use an app on your phone to buy something. An earlier article on the public Thought grazing covers the ground too – I aim to update it shortly. This forms the basis for helping us to start looking at our Home networks and how they work, how they perform, and whether there is anything you can do to make them perform better. That’s for the next session – our first presentation-style meeting, on the 26th January.

You might be interested in reading this article which explains a number of terms used in the workings of the internet, and in the discussion of the videos the term “net neutrality” came up. I may have not fully explained why this is important, so again an article to read – if you’re interested; and a video, which I can recommend, which explains why net neutrality is a good thing, to watch …

Vimeo video on Net neutrality which they are supportive of (unlike Google & YouTube)

As the meeting closed Ian asked about Backups on Apple Mac kit. I strongly suggested there was an inbuilt, free, solution offered by Apple called Time Machine which he should investigate with an external hard disk. I offered the opinion that this was much better than cloud backup solutions which were slow and which would slow down other internet activity you might be doing. This is not to say that cloud storage is not important – I use iCloud, Google Drive and have used Dropbox and One Drive in the past – but it should be mainly thought of (imho) as a way of sharing documents (in the widest sense) between systems, between users and for long-term storage (archiving) of important documents.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 24th November 2022

No photo this time; and my apologies for the delay in publishing the notes. I thought I’d done them and only discovered I hadn’t when preparing for today’s meeting. Duh!

Quite a few apologies Jim, Sianed, Jenny, David Hughes, Sally, Kate and Renee. Some new members too – Rob, Maline and Hok. Welcome. Linda and Peter have decided the group is not for them, but we’re delighted to see Steve and Christine again.

I once again recommended members to take the occasional look at our Flipboard magazine , and to download Signal and take part in our chat between meetings.

On Signal in the past fortnight we’ve had a Google Update issue (Ted); Jim’s phone running out of memory – as yet unresolved; Ian’s disappearing old AOL email messages – resolved by AOL with a cautionary warning (do it within 7 days or it’s lost forever); a plug fro the Brave browser (from me); and discussion on the Windows 11 Photos app (Jim, Jonathan and me).

We had an update on Anne’s problems grappling with Windows 11 on her new laptop – a big change from the experience she was used to with Windows 7. Jonathan is providing assistance. Many thanks. I reported that I still hadn’t updated my iOS to v.16, or my MacOS to v.13 – I’m being very cautious this time and plan to go to v16.2 when it’s released in December and probably v.13.1 about the same time. I had experienced a strange issue with an app on my phone – the Coop shopping app that wasn’t allowing me to add new offers to my card, and yet I could do so through the web browser. I reported this to their help desk – I’m still awaiting a reply, but resolved the problem myself through an inspired guess. I disabled the VPN running on the phone, and it worked. [Message to self – you don’t need a VPN running all the time, really only when you’re away from your home network.]

I briefly mentioned the post I’d written a few years ago about using printer labels for Christmas cards and the added benefit of using the same template on plain paper to record the cards we’d received. I recommended using Avery format labels – the numbering is used by most printer label producers and so you can use their templates on whatever paper you buy.

Martin had a story to tell about his being “forced” into buying a new phone!! Being a mainly desktop user he’d decided to take the plunge and bought a Samsung. He’d found that SmartSwitch had helped a lot and prevented it being a nightmare and been able to use BlueTooth to do the transfer of information from the old phone to the new one. He’d found the SIM to be the wrong size but his telco had swapped the SIM for zero-cost. Currently he was finding that texts were not going out, but they were coming in. It was suggested that this might possibly be due to them being sent as MMS rather than SMS -we await the solution!

Don reported that he’d installed BT’s 100Gb cloud service and it had created three folders that he’d not requested. That’s the way, isn’t it. Just ignore them if you don’t want them, but they may provide automatic syncing back to the desktop.

Sue told us that she was getting fed-up with pop-up adverts, and wondered how she could get rid of them. I advised that this would be handled in the Privacy and Security session.

John Silk was puzzled by the growing number of acronyms. We helped him with what Android was, and updated him in the state of play with other mobile operating systems. These mainly being iOS/iPadOS and Chromecast. Microsoft’s offering hav efallen by the wayside.

Paul had moved from Win10 to Win11 and felt that performance on his machine had greatly improved; this may of course due to “clutter” having been removed in the upgrade.

Jonathan also noted that Win11 on his rebuilt laptop seemed to be running better.

Rob was puzzled by a problem with the display on his Toshiba Satellite Pro. It didn’t appear to be a BIOS problem. We advised that he consult “We will fix your PC” in Llanishen, and suggested that this was the standard advice we gave to new members for hardware problems. Generally these are beyond the scope of the group’s competence.

Ian queried the payment for meetings on Zoom, and in person. I advised that I would be sending out an email in due course but no one appeared to object to the idea of Zoom attendees paying something towards the cost of the meeting to defray costs of the meeting venue. He asked about the destruction of hard disks. He was advised that it’s possible to get data shredder software that makes recover of information from a disk impossible, a bit less drastic than hitting them with a hammer, or dissolving them in acid!

Stella told us about a “fun app” on the family history site – My Heritage that would change a photo to a historical figure.

Christine had been having difficulties getting decent sound from a film given her by a friend. Turning the sound up on both the TV and the video-player software had not helped at all. Installing a soundbar had however solved the problem.

Anne was still coming to terms with issues arising from her move to Win11 and had experienced a strange request for subscription to what she thought was free Microsoft Photos software. We took this up outside the meeting.

I then closed by informing users that I was looking at Photo Book printing software and Canvas printing to get the benefit of Black Friday pricing. I use Blurb for photobooks. Jonathan pointed me towards Cewe (used to be available at Jessops, and now from Boots – possibly). I’d also some experience of using YoPhoto and Snapfish. The latter do very competitively priced canvas prints (up to 70% off currently) which I’d taken advantage of. There’s always Google Photos as well. I said I’d do a review, but I didn’t have time to do it in the end.