Category: Meeting

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th February 2021

I’m afraid the what had become the norm, delayed posting of notes has returned, so apologies for the late publication of these notes.

We welcomed a new member – Steve Jones – and I notice that there are a couple of new members hoping to join us for our next meeting too. So you’ll all have to be on your best behaviour!

I quickly followed up some issues from the previous meeting. Marie-Christine’s problem with Lightroom and Windows I’d dealt with in an email exchange but it might be that a bug-fix update to Lightroom was necessary to get a proper resolution. Jenny was not present at the meeting but Fred reported back on the National Pensioners Convention launch event on Tuesday 9th February. David Hughes had been challenged with his phone switching away from WiFi for calls and pushing his 4G calls bill up – we had advised on settings for WiFi calling and this now appeared to be working fine. Renee reported that her problems with alarm services and TV satellite were now fixed. Sianed was pleased to be able to report that she’d followed up our advice on howe to get her TV SMART once again by purchasing one of the many devices we’d suggested.

I quickly ran through some of the more interesting “news” items I’d posted on the Flipboard magazine.

I also quickly ran through the Thought grazing website, membership options (if people left the group, or if they were non-members but members of Cardiff U3A). I talked briefly about WordPress editing, commenting on posts and encouraged people to use the Bulleting Boards (Forums and Topics).

We seemed to spend a lot of time talking about COVID-19 and Jabs at this meeting – I wonder why. To that end, there were less than normal problems, issues, challenges and questions to discuss.

Marilyn had bitten the bullet and upgraded her iMac to BigSur. All was fine with her Lightroom Classic installation.

Owen gave further information on the Pixel issue mentioned in a Flipboard post and suggested we might like to consider using Pixel Block as a way to prevent information about us to be sent back to marketing departments of shops such as Sainsbury.

Stella was very unhappy about the WiFi service in her house and wondered about signal boosters. As she was using a 4G internet service to her router we felt that the problem should be reported to her ISP – Three – before any additional kit was purchased.

David Hughes reported on his interesting adventure into the world of online paying-in of cheques which was both instructive and interesting. His other query related to shared access to the apartments in his community at Penarth. Several solutions were offered. Whilst the popular option of a Keysafe got a lot of support, the possible insurance aspect of this must be taken into account. An alternative suggested by Fred were using a MasterSuite from Tunstall key set (all locks would have to be changed). Fred suggested contacting the Local Authority as they might have a preferred supplier.

Steve had a strange problem which seemed to involve phonecalls re-booting his WiFi. I’m not sure we really got the bottom of that one.

Jim was using Animatica to create slideshows of images with music coming from audacity. I look forward to watching the outcome of this project.

Paul had been looking at his Google file storage with the intended changes to the way Google was going to charge for what had previously been free high-resolution (ie not original quality) images. As with most of us the world of Backup’n’sync is a bit of mystery too!

Christine was still suffering problems with her WiFi when trying to play online bridge. The devices seem to freeze after 1hr 10mins when using Zoom – and yes it’s a paid-for account! Would Powerline Adapters help? She also commented upon Facebook ownership of Content – I disagreed with her son’s interpretation.

Don Roadblocks – games???? He reported that a grandson was happy to download animation software and create a Lego film in about 3hrs. Incredible!

Mike was having problems with his Bluetooth mouse and keyboard dying. We suggested buying a pair that would share the same USB port on his computer.

Ann was examining the cost of her phone contract and weighing up options. EE against Skynet; 4G vs. Broadband. We await her conclusions.

Me – I’d been mainly working on cataloguing videos and changing them to .MP4 format and archiving them onto the family website.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 4th February 2021

A large attendance yesterday, touching nineteen as shown above. We started with this – The Blue Ball – it’s mesmerising; the digital equivalent of those steel balls that swung on a cradle on execs desks in the seventies, remember them?

I mentioned the emojipedia which I referenced in the last notes and offered to help anyone who wanted to get onto Signal at the end of the meeting. Then it was “round the screen” to find out what members had been up to, or were having difficulties, or issues, with.

Margaret reported on two scams, one from Lloyds Bank (spelt Lloyd) and an “internet interruption” call/text which on traceback (which David H had done having received the same one) appeared to come from Caerphilly! On a more productive note she had been able to transfer a lot of treasured photos from her old laptop – which she’d been unable to upgrade to Windows 10 unfortunately (for a number of reasons, lapsed time, lack of memory) – to their desktop. I mentioned that Linux was still a possibility to revive the old laptop, we could look at that agin when we were all together in person. She also told us about a very pleasant experience attending virtually the Destinations Travel event, and informed us about the Stanfords Travel Writer Festival and the videos from the event which finished yesterday will be online from that site.

Owen reported that following the last meeting, he’d replaced his Powerline Adaptors with new ones and was now getting much improved wired connection speed for his study.

Don had been decorating for the past three weeks, that is when he wasn’t standing in the garden at a safe distance from the lead gas pipe he’d fractured in a wall, thinking it was redundant!

Jim had got himself into “trouble” with Flickr for displaying a photo of some aubergines – this caused much mirth. He reported to me today that Flickr had apologised for slapping an “unsafe” rating on the picture, and it was now visible to everyone. He had also upgraded (on his new laptop) his copies of Audacity (audio editing) and PaintShop Pro (photo editing).

LetterA 1B2

Marie-Christine reported she was having a problem with her version of Lightroom and Windows. I offered to raise the matter on the Lightroom Queen Forum if she told me hat version of Lightroom, and the precise version of Windows she was having problems with.

Fred reported that a switch to Signal was not getting any traction with his friends, and that he’d had an instance of PayPal phishing to contend with.

David H added to Margaret’s description of the “internet will crash” scam. Someone asked where you should report such scams. The preferred method would appear to your ISP, in this case Sky, but Marie-Christine reminded us of Action Fraud (0300 123 2040) – is it a scam in itself? No it’s run by the police. Other tricks are to type the phone number of a caller into a browser and you’ll get an indication from Who Called Me? or Should I answer? Of course for an email you should look carefully at the email header address and type the domain into a browser to see if it’s genuine. David also asked whether it was possible to use WiFi for making telephone calls as the O2 signal in his apartment was so bad. The answer appears to be to activate WiFi calling for Android or iOS. David also reported that he was still not having any joy with his Times subscription on his iPad although it was working on his wife’s machine. I suggested that perhaps the subscription was limited to a fixed number of devices, and that perhaps deleting it from both machines and then re-installing it in order of preferences might solves the problem. Just a thought. Finally, he mentioned the possibility of adding people to a Netflix account and that his daughter had added them to her account and he was paying her £3 a month in gratitude – this being the cost of the extended subscription. It was pointed out that there was a similar option for Spotify, and the launch of Apple One scheme just recently was very similar. [NB The Spotify Family requires address verification; I’m not sure how this works but all members have to have “the same address” – work that one out yourself.]

Mike had nothing to report.

Renee reported some alarm issues ; problems with her satellite TV which required a factory reset eventually as the Italian channels had changed polarity (??) and just re-tuning didn’t solve the problem.

Stella had nothing to report.

John told us about the problems that have dogged them since he lost a bank card and the issues of not knowing whether a request to change details for a direct debit (because it use the former 16-digit number) was a scam or not. Just a nuisance. He wondered whether there were more scams at large currently because of Covid. Not sure. He reported with some delight success in transferring a SIM from an old phone to a new iPhone XR. There were some problems initially (with O2) but these were now resolved and he was getting the service he wanted at the reduced price of the service on the old phone. My standard advice is never to buy a phone on a plan, but to always save up for “the next one” when you purchase outright a new one. Also look at the plans that are available for SIM-only, or Pay as you Go. Measure up what you can get against the ones offered by GiffGaff (running on the O2 network and owned by them), which is my personal recommendation.

Paul had nothing to report, having been too sore to think of anything else but finding a comfortable place to sit since his accidental encounter with his loft.

Phil told us about a Facebook page – Strange things found in walls, including a safe and a gothic arch. He also told us about his experience (relating to Jim’s Flickr episode) of the poor performance of content-filtering for schools internet when he was working.

Ted told us about Just Watch – a really useful website that tells you which streaming service you should look on to find films, etc. He also mentioned how useful he was finding the Snipping Tool in Windows to cut-out an element from an image. I was able to say that the Screenshot Utility in MacOS did the same thing, but there were also short-key sequences for the Mac that did the same thing.

Sianed relayed the sad story of the Smart TV that had lost its smart functionality. For many of us that’s a cause for celebration as the smart functionality decreases with the age of a set as manufacturers don’t keep their apps up-to-date. So now she is in the happy position of using possibly an Amazon Firestick, a Google Chromecast (although Paul doesn’t rate it as there appears to a lot of US-content), a Now TV dongle, a Roku device or an Apple TV. Here’s a recent review of all of the ones available in the UK.

Finally Jenny described the National Pensioners Convention (Wales) event that she was participating in on Tuesday (9th February). You are encouraged to sign-up and take part in the webinar – I’ve circulated details by email earlier. She particularly noted the work of the Good Things Foundation and the Carnegie Trust in supporting digital inclusion activity and projects. She recommended looking at the former’s website.

I concluded the meeting with a gallop through home networking and router configuration which is all written up in this article which builds upon earlier ones.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 21st January 2021

Apologies (again) for the late arrival of these notes. Covid is certainly slowing me down – is that the same for you!!?? We kicked-off by going round the screen, several members had nothing to raise, no IT-problems is a Critical Success Factor for the group. Am I doing something right? {Don’t answer that.}

Owen described the installation of his Vodafone 5G Broadband service which he’s written up in this post. It’s an interesting development and points to the future of rural broadband as well … maybe. Certainly a more environmentally friendly alternative, but you need to ensure that there’s take-up/adoption, and of course hills can make construction of such a network very costly. But, for rural Pen-y-Lan in a cable desert it’s a winner!

Sianed had been having problems with OpenReach after damage to the cable feeding her property. Hopefully that’s now been resolved.

Ted was experiencing contention issues due to the increased number of devices using his home network with his son now living in the house as well. The same son had improved the performance by disabling one of the channels on the router. This led to a short discussion on wavelengths and channels used by the router and suggests that a repeat session on that topic might be worthwhile. {I’m going to do that at the next meeting on Thu 4th Feb.} He was also having some difficulty with adapting to the new WordPress Block Editor for his Family History blogs. I sympathised, but urger him to stick with it, I’d now made the switch and was finding it SO MUCH better! I suggested that perhaps a “special” extra session on WordPress might be worthwhile and possible?

David Hughes was experiencing problems with getting The Times on his iPad, whilst it was running on his wife’s. We ran through a number of possible solutions, which David had already attempted, so we were left with a puzzle which was not very helpful for David as he had been experiencing language challenges with the offshore IT Support Desk. {Is that me being sufficiently political correct?}

Fred praised the steps that Cardiff County Council had made towards inclusivity for those who were threatened by digital exclusion with the distribution of tablets, and adoption of new policies. He was also having much more pressing difficulties with a kitchen roof which he’d not been able to have fixed until a date in February. We sympathised with the challenges of someone moving to a new area and not having the list of useful contacts. To this end Christine offered me the contact details of a roofer – thanks!

Mike was enjoying his better broadband at reduced price. Great!

Renee had an interesting problem which was she had a satellite receiver dish with no manual and was having difficulty in making it work. I offered to supply a link to a manuals site that I’d used to good effect. Here are a couple – https://www.usermanuals.tech/ and https://www.manualslib.com/ – there are others. Someone (Paul or Phil ??) did suggest perhaps using a laptop with USB, rather than trying to connect to her TV. We await developments with interest. She also wondered whether there was anywhere you could look to find the meaning of emojis, there is – here it is Emojipedia.

Jim reviewed his difficulties with using an additional SD-Card for his new phone and thanked Paul for resolving the problem. He was now saving his photos on the card, and not using it as extended SIM memory. he also told us about his decision to take out a subscription to Google Drive/Photos to ensure that he could save his photos (taken with his phone) on Google at Original Quality. I expressed the view that perhaps this would not be an issue for smartphones as the limit for High Quality was 16Mp {most smartphones being 12Mp}. I sent him this link – Google Photos “High quality” vs “Original”: What’s the difference and should you care – which you might be interested in which compared different compressions with Google Photos.

Christine was still having difficulties with her WiFi still losing service when she was trying to play chess with another user (her husband) in another room in the same house. I suggested that this might be an issue which we could solve with our session on router configuration {see above}.

Phil was revelling in having discovered how good Google Docs is! {He ought to look at LibreOffice as well} It’s good to have a personal recommendation and I concur … why people are still paying money to Microsoft for Office when there’s free and open source alternatives that read .docx formats (and in the case of LibreOffice – write .docx), is a puzzle to me! He was also wondering whether anyone had come across an online version of Cluedo; he had updated his favourite gadget – his Firestick; and showed us how to move Zoom windows. Oh! Bliss!

That means that Marie-Christine, Ann (who had to leave the meeting), Margaret and Marilyn had no issues to raise.

So what have I been up to? The greatest success has been able to get my new Sony Bluetooth headphones working so that I can listen to music and not disturb anyone! Other than that I’ve been in organisation mood. I’ve sorted out my cloud drives – Google, iCloud and Dropbox so that they all have a distinct and different purpose; respectively photos and webwork, documents and archiving/backup. A lengthy job that I couldn’t have managed without dupeGuru, a rapidly favourite bit of Mac software. I then went on to start deleting duplicate (of which there were many) family history records. Duplicates are a pain in the neck – you never know whether you’ve got exactly the right one. That’s where dupeGuru comes in. I did have an anxious moment however when Dropbox informed me I’d deleted over 20,000 files. I restored them just in case, which put me back half-a-day; I hadn’t made a mistake!!! A neighbour across the road stores a backup disk of my photos and so I recovered that and did a backup and returned it to them. I do this every year. I have back-ups on an external disk connected to the computer as well for day-to-day use.I upgraded a few apps; removed Flash – hope you’ve done that too! However most of what I did was connected with my concerns with WhatsApp and it’s changes to it’s Privacy Policy.

We had a discussion on this – or rather I spoke at length of my concerns. They appear in three places – this blog; on the public – Thought grazing and my personal blog – Just thoughts. I won’t say any more at this time, but I will be reviewing my use of WhatsApp (in particular) before the new deadline of May 15th; and will be considering leaving Facebook and instagram after removing my content – a subject for a meeting at a later date when they decide to move away from Ireland.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 3rd December 2020

“The Rogues Gallery”

I think this might have been our largest attendance at a zoom meeting and as usual we had a lively discussion with a lot of good craic.

I kicked off with a quick follow-up from the previous meeting on 19th November, I wondered whether David H’s issues with Linux on his wife’s laptop might be due to missing a setting for US/UK keyboard during install, and Phil supported this view. We agreed to look at this again when we could meet in person. We briefly discussed the session with Digital Communities Wales and confirmed that we’d now wait to see what the Cardiff U3A Exec wanted to do about digital inclusion for our members. Phil noted that Cardiff City Council were now promoting a scheme to provide equipment to those on benefit. We noted a couple of new scams involving HSBC, Amazon and DPD – these had been reported on our WhatsApp group. Thanks. I also gave a quick demonstration on editing in the new WordPress Block editor and pointed to the Help files that might be of assistance too. Finally I drew members attention again to the Flipboard magazine and the link to it that now appears under the Computer Group menu.

We then went “round the screen”.

John was having some issues with his use of Lightroom Classic – I suggested that he brought this up at the next session of the Lightroom Pantry Group. [He did, and we then had a follow-up session]

Renee was experiencing a strange behaviour when using Powerpoint and Zoom (with Screen Sharing) where her cursor (on a Mac) seemed to disappear. I couldn’t think of any reason why this might be. Hopefully, it will resolve itself 🙂

Margaret described a very sorry tale connected to her “smart” hearing aid, an app that couldn’t be upgraded and the inability to pair the aid to her phone. Hopefully there will be a positive outcome but unfortunately this is only too likely to happen as suppliers don’t keep their apps up–to-date with changing technologies. She also advised that she’d managed to resolve her printer problem (from the previous meeting) after she’d found an old cartridge which when fitted had allowed the printer to spring back into life!

Christine described a problem that she was experiencing when using WiFi on her new Lenovo Chromebook. When connected to the same network and sitting near to another machine to play chess there was a lot of interference. I said this happened to me as well and the only solution would probably be to sit further apart – even in different rooms. It will be interesting to see whether this problem can be resolved.

Sianed told us about a C4 series on Amazon and noted that Amazon was increasingly being used as a search engine (rather than Google). I can understand why. Often I do a Google search that then leads me to click on a link to Amazon – why use Google in such a scenario!!!

Jim advised us that he hadn’t yet decided on his new laptop.

David H told us about the saga of the M&S hamper to his grand-daughter which led to it being left on the doorstep of her house fronting the street. When he’d complained he was impressed at the way the company had responded. Good customer service.

Paul was having some difficulty with his Google Contacts. He would report back on his progress. He also told the group that Aldi were now doing Click’n’Collect.

Marilyn was still having problems with her external SSD (MacOS) and was going to back-up the disk and re-format it as APFS as she now felt there was little need to have it formatted as Ex-FAT (for MS-DOS/Windows compatibility).

Stella was having problems with LastPass – I’m afraid my notes/memory on what it was fails me. Sorry. She also had reported a scam from 3 to the authorities.

Marie-Christine reported that the OU Photography course she’d hoped to have followed had to be abandoned due to a hack of the URL for the course. She had been recompensed however.

Mario asked about the nature of WordPress. I gave a brief outline of what it was and why it was not just a blogging platform but a website design and delivery tool in its own right.

Don reported that after the previous meeting in trying to improve performance of his machine, he’d removed unused extensions from his Chrome browser and this had helped. He also described how he’d solved a problem of being unable to do double-sided printing from Word 2007 by emailing the document and then printing from the email. Magic!! He also reported that he’d had excellent customer service recently from Amazon in the matter of a wildlife camera he’d purchased.

Ann gave a big thumbs-up to Paul for his advice on purchasing a kit to copy VCR to DVD. She was glad she’d spent a little more to get a kit with a Help Tutorial guide but reported that the transfer was not quick!! She also advised us that Google Play was no longer available (needs clarification – not sure what this refers to) and that she was still having problems with the Sky Internet Service slowing down.

Finally Mike announced that he was well-satisfied by his upgrade for less cost from TalkTalk – to their Fibre65 plan. It was better and cheaper. Isn’t it a shame that you have to lobby and threaten people to get the service you require, which is not what they’re delivering.

Again, we’d run out of time, so my proposed session on Google settings had to be postponed. I may actually write it up as a blog post instead.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 19th November 2020

Got my act together this time, and sitting down quickly to write up the notes of the meeting which saw three guests attend – Tony Baines (the Vice-Chairperson of Cardiff U3A), Matthew Lloyd (on his last day as South East Programme Manager for Digital Communities Wales) and Jenny Phillips (their Wales Volunteer Co-ordinator).

We started the meeting as normal by reviewing the Notes from the previous meeting and what had been on WhatsApp. I advised the group that there was now a link to the Thought grazing Flipboard “magazine” under the Computer Group tab on the website; I mentioned that I’d put some links to Which? articles on Black Friday on WhatsApp and would copy them into a Forum on the website asap; I’d written an article for the website on Purchasing a Laptop – copy’n’pasted from Which?; Paul had posted a screenshot of Google many years on, reflecting on how things had changed – Where is the Advanced Search these days???

John had sent me some links in an email re. Surge Pricing which was something I’d not heard of before linked to Smart Meters. I also said I’d check whether there was anything on Which? about this issue. There isn’t. However, it seems to be an issue that emerged in 2018 (mainly in right-wing press, it has to be said) and all has gone quiet since then. There’s an interesting (and perhaps useful) discussion on the Smart Meter roll-out in this article, which also explains what Surge Pricing might mean and involve, as well as discussing where we are with SMETS 1 and SMETS 2 meters.

I also reported in response to Anne’s query at the last meeting that I’d installed the Java Runtime Environment on my iMac and LibreOffic Base (their database) was then able to run.

We noted Phil’s letter in “Age Matters” and Don had been having difficulties in wiping a Hard disk clean. [This was resolved by Don taking the machine to Neil and “donating” it to him on the basis that he’d wipe the disk clean as this was an issue with the version of XP (Home Edition) which was on the machine which didn’t allow a Format.] I also reported that I’d posted articles on URL shortening and Taking Screenshots on the website.

David H thanked Phil in his absence for providing a second Linux USB stick and he’d tried to install it on an old laptop, but the keyboard had failed for some reason. They will return to visit the issue when they can meet in person. [Just a thought – it’s not something as obvious as US vs UK keyboards in the Linux setup???] However, they had received wonderful service from Curry’s who had delivered a new full-size iPad within a couple of days of ordering and he was most impressed at how easy it was to transfer everything from their old iPad Mini to the new machine. Renee confirmed it was a very straightforward and simple operation.

Mike told us that he had been in conversation with TalkTalk re. his poor internet reception and had managed an upgrade to Fibre65 and had reduced his monthly charge from £32 to £42, Threatening to leave is an unfortunate but essential tool in the armoury of the consumer.

Owen encouraged to read the reports and vote on the AGM motions on the Cardiff U3A website.

Jim was still in the process of deciding on a laptop and wanted to get a 15″ one with audio input/output, HDMI and USB. It was suggested that he perhaps looked at: a) a smaller (and cheaper) laptop and using an external screen; b) getting a small desktop – this is what Marilyn had done last year – instead of a laptop if it wasn’t going to be needed outside the home; or even c) get a MacMini and use it with a large TV screen or external monitor. [Guess who suggested the latter, fired-up by the new Apple M1 MacMini launch the previous week.]

Stella informed us that you needed to renew your iPlayer account every two years – I hadn’t realised that – and that she had experienced some fun and games in doing that before she managed to do it from her phone – Voila, she said!

Christine had decided to go for a laptop rather than a tablet, and this now enabled her and her husband to play online games, or quizes (??) separately; she also advised us about disabling Face Recognition in Facebook. [Note to self: I think we ought to have an annual session on Facebook settings as well as the Google account one I committed to last time.]

Don recounted his issues with scrubbing his hard disk (mentioned above); had been writing a report on church matters and had been playing online chess with his grandson.

Renee cheered me up by saying that she’d been reading the meeting notes and had downloaded bit.ly; taken screenshots and was now using Brave and LastPass – makes my ramblings so much more worthwhile when someone follows up on things. Thanks.

Paul had suffered from problems with his BT Home Hub Mesh setup and after not being able to fault resolve over the phone; the engineer (from the North East of England) had arranged the dispatch of replacement units – which were now working well. He also brought us up to speed with his look at Cardiff County Council’s website for Digital Inclusion (referenced in the last set of meeting notes.

This was a good introduction to Fred and Jenny bringing us to speed on what they’d done (mainly referenced in my late set of meeting notes from last time) and which then led into a general discussion on how we would handle our guests who joined the meeting at about 3:00pm. I admitted Tony Baines to the meeting first and he explained his role (mainly concerned with Cardiff U3A strategy) and he described how we could see things in either an out-facing (to non-Cardiff U3A members), or in-facing (exclusively to Cardiff U3A members) – this was a useful distinction to bear in mind as we admitted Matthew and Jenny to the meeting.

I gave a brief introduction about the Group, introduced Tony, and handed the meeting over to Matthew who presented through some slides. These are embedded below. He handed over to Jenny who described her role as helping, facilitating, training Digital Champions within communities and organisations. I believe that was the activity that she felt that DCW could offer to Cardiff U3A were we to identify some Digital Champions who would be working with Digital Companions who themselves would be alongside our members who felt they needed assistance to get online, etc.

In questions they asked us to think how best they might get their message out; we identified the issue of “digital poverty” – the removal of a bus service and the replacement with an app to summons a personal bus on paper seems a good idea, but not if you’re not digitally aware, or confident.

After they left the meeting we had a brief discussion on “what’s next” and asked Tony to consider whether in-facing digital awareness should be part of Cardiff U3A’s strategy for next year; I encouraged members of the Group to feed back to me their thoughts; and whether they could be digital champions, or digital companions. You can do that either through WhatsApp, or by email to me.

DCW-DCHW-Presentation-U3A-19.11.20

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 5th November 2020

So once again I’ve been a bit slow with the Notes. Apologies. I’ve been waiting for a couple of things which I’ve now received – thanks Paul, Jim and Fred and I’ve also needed to write a couple of short posts on URL shorteners and taking screenshots – now done. That being done, what else happened?

Margaret had received a book from her son who worked at the Met Office in Exeter and she read from it to illustrate just how much the computing power had increased there over the recent past.

Owen reminded us that the U3A AGM was coming up as a Zoom event.

John reported that he was still coming to terms with his new iPad Pro, and expressed some problems with sync’ing Apple email. I hope we sorted that out, but if not please raise th matter again.

Don was having problems with his Google settings, and I remarked that it would probably be a good subject to look at at a meeting. He also indicated he’d value some advice on a wildlife camera – I obliged with information after the meeting. It was felt that WiFi probably wasn’t the best way to transmit the images, and that if power to the camera was necessary that might restrict positioning.

Jim indicated he was still thinking about replacing his laptop. I gave some advice after the meeting, both to Jim and to the WhatsApp group.

Paul told us about his encounter with PayPal and Pre-approved or Automatic Payments. I attach his notes here …

I did not know these existed until I made a purchase from Google. My PayPal account automatically paid from one of my debit cards without any further selection from myself regarding my preferred funding source etc. So I investigated…

Not obvious  you have them,  or where they are 
Not easy to Find in PayPal Headings, as they are then called “Automatic Payments”
Log in to your Pay Pal account
Go to Settings (Gear Wheel type icon)
Go to Payments
Go to Manage Your Automatic Payments and then  Select
Click on  Show Active  &  Show Inactive as nothing may be displayed !
Select item from the list to change or deactivate.

… and you should have removed the Pre-approved or Automatic Payment.

Fred reported back on his conversations with Digital Communities Wales and his minute of discussions is attached below

“ Fred D reported back on the minuted action aimed at establishing the need for support/contact arrangements for isolated/disabled households, amongst others, as highlighted in media /TV reports & whether there could be a role for  group members individually  or collectively

Following  consultation with Jenny Sims the work of Digital Communities Wales was highlighted ;The organisation has received an £800K WAG grant to address Digital Exclusion & the Web-site gives a clear indication of wide ranging all Wales supported projects including involving those as above.

Following discussion it was decided to invite the SE Wales Programme Manger (Matthew Lloyd) to participate in the next (19/11) group Zoom meeting; It was also recognised that this activity could in, due course, be of interest to the main U3a branch & wider network”

In her absence, by email, Jenny reported My good news is that my digital working party’s recommendations have been approved and the National Pensioners Convention will launch a campaign on February 1st to help more older people get online and support those who cannot or do not wish to be online.

Subsequently Fred sent me this message from Cardiff County Council …

Further from my telephone conversation earlier I (Katie Rapell) wanted to clarify some of the initiatives and projects that we are currently running: 

Tablet Gifting Scheme – Due to be launched formally in the coming days. Will seek to provide the most vulnerable in our community access to a FREE data enabled tablet which they can keep. Eligibility applies, applications are subject to assessment. 

Digital Surgery (Digital Drop in sessions) – one to one digital advice available over the phone or via video call, current turn around response is 2-3 hours. This service is open to anyone and welcomes any digital query. This service used to be face – to -face in hubs, and also offered a repairs service but due to Covid -19 we have had to move online. Typical enquiries involve : 

  • How to download apps or access information online 
  • How to enrol in Adult Learning courses online or access council services 
  • Online benefit or tax applications 
  • Scam help service, to identify potential correspondence from fake or scam services and verification of email. 
  • Installation  of broadband advice and signposting 
  • referral for training or activities

Basic digital skills courses (BT Skills for Tomorrow) – In partnership with BT, We offer a one day basic digital skills course that is delivered through the Learn My Way platform. The course is tailored to personal need and is accredited. 

Progressive/ Industry aligned digital skills courses – In response to the growing digital sector, we have been collaborating with local industry to develop progressive digital courses that will complement the technology industry in Cardiff and globally. 

More information can be found here: https://www.adultlearningcardiff.co.uk/digital-support/

Thank you so much Fred and Jenny. We look forward to meeting with Matthew and Jenny on Thursday. The Council is due to launch it’s initiative this week through Facebook, twitter and press releases.

Phil gave a live demonstration of how an Amazon Echo Show device could work, and he was confident that it could pass his “granny” test – if he had one!!

Ann raised an issue she was experiencing with Libre Office and databases. This arose from a WhatsApp conversation where she and Maragret had been very helpful in providing some guidance to a friend of Paul, who was trying to set up a database for slides. I undertook to investigate the problem and was able to confirm that the Java Runtime Environment needed to be installed. I’d done that successfully on my MacOS system.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 22nd October 2020

There’s a direct inverse correlation (I used to teach statistics) between the amount of talking we do, and the amount of notes I take. Whether that translates into a direct positive correlation between the value of what we say, and the amount of notes – I leave you to judge. Anyway, somehow with a good attendance admittedly of 17 (thanks Jim for the screenshot above) we managed to talk for over 90 mins and I didn’t have time to present what I’d prepared on Open Source and Free Software, although an article I prepared on the subject is available here, and my “Top of the Pops” for free software is to be viewed here.

Hopefully I’ll have made you feel “right guilty”, and I can write up the few notes that I’ve got 🙂

I started off with a review of the Notes from the last meeting – I don’t think there was too much to add to them; Paul will hopefully add an image of the day-time capture from his CCTV to his notes from his presentation last time; he also reported that his Vodafone phone had returned from its enforced holiday and was now working fine and no worse fro its swim; Jenny reported that she’d setup her first Zoom meeting fine and that it had been a success; David was ploughing his way through the massive manual for his new Tesco phone; and I reported that problems with Virgin Media seemed to be occurring in other parts of Cardiff as well.

I then turned to News items which I’d loaded into Flipboard and quickly went through them. We spent a little while in looking at the changes to the PayPal Terms of Business which for once needed to be looked at as they’re introducing a charge of £12 if you don’t access your PayPal account in a 12 month period. I’d already deleted an inactive PayPal account, and you’re advised to just check you haven’t got one too. You don’t need to do a transaction using the account (thanks Christine for clarifying that) – you just need to access it.

We started the meeting with a rendition from our very own “tattyjacket” – Phillip who demonstrated that time has not been wasted during lockdown because not only has he managed to find, purchase and re-acquaint himself with a childhood love – an identical bassoon – but also he has learnt how to use a piece of software – Acapella [iOS Download] [Android download] – to create multi-instrument recordings. Here are a couple …

As Phil himself said to me (about the second one) … “I’m improving”. Most certainly he is. Thanks for sharing with us.

Sianed had been having problems with her WiFi which were eventually resolved by a visit from an engineer who reset her router {I hope I’ve got that right}. We had a brief discussion about what you can do if your WiFi seems to be running really slow. The advisability of getting baseline figures of performance for both wired and wireless connections when your network is running well; and also the first port of call – switching your router off and leaving it for a few minutes before switching back on again. [Often the IP-addresses of your devices and the cache get muddled – a reset quite often sorts it out.] She also advised that there were some very acceptable “AirPods” earphones currently available in Lidl.

David told us that he was finding it as difficult to get an online booking to play a game of golf as I had to get a concert ticket from TicketMaster. Strange world! He also pointed us to Wales Online where the latest Covid-19 rules and regs were well explained.

Stella appears to have a rather strange problem with her Samsung TV in which she’s being asked to upgrade her Browser (Chrome ???) so that she can continue to watch YouTube videos. This is a bit of a problem with Smart TVs – they become increasingly non-Smart with age as software is not updated. A solution might be to look for a native YouTube app for the TV, rather than use the browser. Also updating the software on the TV might be possible. Alternatively you can see whether adding a dongle to enable streaming from the service might be possible. She also seemed to be having difficulty with the sound on her Mobile Broadband (from Three).

Christine reported that she was now having problems with household appliances and we all bemoaned the really long wait times that we were encountering during the lockdowns. The problem with her Beko dishwasher was causing the power circuit to drop out. Not a nice thing to happen – see Renee’s item below. I mentioned my problems with Dyson, and Renee reported similar problems with Anglian Windows.

Jim felt that he might need to research getting a new laptop because more problems seemed to be occurring, other than the colours of the screen which he’d previously reported.

Paul enthused about a Google Chromecast TV device – something like this, or a Firestick, or Roku, or … might be the solution for Stella??? He was not sure yet whether it was value for money but it looked a very professional piece of kit and it allowed him to “throw” what he was watching on his Android tablet onto his TV screen (a Sony Bravia I believe).

Renee raised the subject of surge protectors – a very good topic and one that I wholeheartedly support. I must have at least three multi-socket extension towers with surge protection built into them. They’re more expensive than a normal multi-socket extension but they’re really worth their weight in gold when there’s power problems around. She updated us on the “phishing saga” which without any intervention by herself went through the complete gamut of customer service steps! She resisted clicking on any links at each step.

Marilyn has a strange problem with her iMac not waking-up from sleep. I’ve sent her an email with some suggestions about what she should try, but it might be worth getting on to Apple Support as I believe the machine is still under warranty.

Margaret praised the information on the Cardiff U3A website – a BIG SHOUT-OUT here for Owen who’s improved the website immensely. Many thanks. She mentioned in particular the links to talks.

Ann taxed us with the problems a friend was having with McAfee software and Windows 7. We advised her that in all respects whether she liked Windows 10, or not, she really ought to take the machine to Neil and get him to do the upgrade and add any RAM that might be necessary to make the machine run well.

Don told us about unused Currency Cards being “absorbed” by the issuer and people losing funds. This may or may not be related to Britain leaving the EU – certainly Brits abroad will lose the capability of having British bank accounts. A possibility I’ve used is Revolut – a multi-currency debit card. You load it up over the internet from wherever you are, or before you go abroad, spend in the local currency, and then reclaim the remaining funds when you return to the UK. We used it on our trip to Norway and it worked very well.

John had a new iPad Pro and was loving it complete with it’s keyboard. He felt that it meant he wouldn’t need to have a laptop. We look forward for further updates as he gets to grips with it.

Fred and Jenny will get together through email to discuss the issues of online Covid access to those in care, or who are vulnerable at home. They may have something to report back on next time. Jenny also told us that it was Get Online Week – an initiative to attempt to get more older people using the internet.

Mike didn’t have anything he needed to add at this time.

We mentioned URL shorteners and I said I used bit.ly – I may try and write a short note on that; I also asked whether folk knew how to take screenshots – we’ll cover that next time, and I also thought it might be worthwhile re-visiting WiFi network problems in the loight of Sianed’s difficulties.

And that was that – unless, I’ve forgotten something, which If I have, please add in the Comment box below.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 8th October 2020

A good attendance to our meeting of 15 members, plus 1 guest – the convenor of Porthcawl U3A Computer Group, Martin Patten (a former work colleague of Paul).

We started by me doing a quick review of the last meeting with a couple of updates from the Meeting Notes, and also the Topics created on the Forums. I urged all members to make use of them. Then I did a run through of what I’d sent to the Thought grazing Flipboard magazine – news so-to-speak – accessible also from the Thought grazing “home” page. In particular I highlighted the NASA daily photographs, which are spectacular, and which you can now set to be your homescreen on an iOS device – something I’m definitely going to set up. I mentioned that Microsoft will be trying to persuade users of Windows 10 to move to the new Edge browser more – as it has “settled down”; and I referred to the article about the NHS App – which I will also link to from the post that I wrote after the last meeting.

I ended this part of the meeting with a short video of a new Ring (Amazon-owned) security drone that flies around your house – which was by way of an introduction to Paul who took over the next part of the meeting to talk about CCTV and his experience of installing a system recently.

Here is a post of Paul’s presentation with links to further information.

So then we turned to members issues, concerns and questions.

Phil had been on holiday in Builth Wells (having left pre-lockdown lucky couple – we were unable to go to Raglan, so had to cancel our short break). He reported on hospitality venues use of the Track’n’Trace QR code (or not) which was a bit hit and miss in Powys. He also reported use of a bread-maker, but I’m struggling to see the relevance. As this was the first mention of the NHS App, a lively discussion and debate ensued on the appropriate use of an Excel spreadsheet which was out of date – probably by a factor of 13years plus as the .xlsx format replaced .xls in 2013. More important was “why use a spreadsheet?” Phil has sent me this graphic which is lovely …

Sianed reported a recent HMRC scam she’d received – wanting to give her money back … as if!!! This prompted me to mention the scam I’d heard of recently which attempted to extort £900 from a person who’d crossed a “county line” – the first offence apparently would result in a £90 fine. However, this is disturbing in that it would indicate that someone must be watching CCTV cameras on the A470, and then doing a check back (somehow) on the DVLC database of car registrations and ownership. Watch-out, there’s a scam about! Sign up for the Which? Scam Alert service as well. Following the meeting I received this on my phone …

… which is totally believable isn’t it. Just type-in the URL above and if your browser is working properly you’ll get an alert.

Following this I noticed that this one had appeared in the Which? Scam Alert Service

John reported his gmail problem from the previous meeting had been resolved by the classic uninstall/reinstall procedure. One that we can all do well to remember.

Don told us about his experiments using a Logitec 300 camera as a wildlife camera. This seemed to be work OK, but he was having problems mailing the resulting file using Gmail. It seemed that Outlook was necessary to do this. I promised to look into this. He also mentioned that Flash was possibly involved, and I alerted users to the perils of Flash and the fact that Adobe had stopped supporting it as had most web browsers. He also had come across a Raspberry Pi online course from the University of South Wales, which reminded me that I’d not mentioned the large number of online courses available from FutureLearn and the Open University.

Owen reported on his experience of having to learn Python so that he could attempt to create a link to the Cardiff U3A website from the online calendar in Beacon. He’d also had to move from Access to SQL Server as a database platform. [If Cardiff U3A members know the difference between a database and a spreadsheet – why doesn’t Centrica, or whoever Track’n’Trace had been contracted out to!!!]

Paul had offered his Vodafone phone the chance to learn to swim, it had declined and was now on an unintended holiday with Vodafone for repair!

Fred and Jenny had a conversation about the issue that Fred had raised at the previous meeting. I’m afraid my notes were a bit sketchy and incomplete so I don’t want to attempt to re-produce them – on the subject of IT assistance to residents in care facilities during the pandemic. Jenny, felt that a considerable amount of money had been offered, £800K. Fred was unsure whether it was going to sheltered housing as well. Anyway, I agreed to send them, their email addresses so that they could correspond offline.

Jenny reported that she had a complete new suite of kit – laptop, iPhone and BT fibre but was now a bit daunted at setting-up a Zoom conference. Owen pointed her to the Cardiff U3A webpages which might be of help.

Jim updated us on the trials and tribulations of his Broadband problem, and offered the theory that perhaps performance was in some way affected by the school gate times. It might, as students leave school each afternoon. At other times the bandwidth is acceptable. He also mentioned he’d been using Audacity. Both of these items he’d added as a Comment after the last meeting. You’re all encouraged to do likewise!

David Hughes thanked us for the suggestion of going to Tesco to get a new phone – he now had two Samsung A21’s. He also told the group about his horror story of trying to get rid of malware and crashing his computer. Luckily a local repair person (in Penarth) had been able to restore the machine and he’d got a more recent copy of Microsoft Office in the process. [NB You better just check that it can be upgraded – ie, do you have a licence. Worth a phone call.] He also advised us that subscribing to online concerts from the Barbican (and perhaps elsewhere) can be a bit “iffy”; but he reported that he had been able to get his money back.

Renee reported that she was having trouble with her Virgin Media connection and that it was not just her in the neighbourhood. She also reported her experience of using the NHS app and wondered whether people had looked at the Settings to see what could be gleaned from the Notifications. Furthermore it would appear that if you got a notification from Google (ie from an Android phone) you should wait for the second notification before getting alarmed.

Any amendments or additions, please let me know.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 24th September 2020

Thanks Jim for the visual reminder of who was Zooming

We had apologies from Sianed and Owen.

I decided I ought to sit down immediately after the meeting to write up some notes this time. The first part of the meeting focussed on the NHS Covid-19 App which is the subject of a separate post. I’ll keep that updated as the days and weeks roll by, but please also make comments in the Covid-19 Forum, I’ve created a Topic for the app there as well.

As well as showing Forums and Topics (which I hope you will grow in time to use more than WhatsApp) I showed the Flipboard magazine for Thought grazing in which I’ll post articles for the fortnight prior to a meeting as the recent Computing/IT/Digital News. There’s a link to it on the Home page of the site too. I also enquired who used twitter as I had created a @thoughtgrazing account some time ago. Only four of you used twitter (and only occasionally at that), so I decided not to put any more effort for the moment into promoting, or using, that social media platform. It was noted that at times of crisis that twitter was probably the best means of finding out what was going on.

I took the opportunity of leading-off with what I’ve been up to since the last meeting, highlighting a really useful piece of software to scan for duplicate photos – PhotoSweeper (which cost me £9.99 form the Apple Store). I thought it was available for Windows PCs as well, but apparently not. The other piece of software I found when I came to wanting to share an old blog post with someone and found that the link to an embedded map no longer worked, was an upgrade to the OS OpenSpace Maps Plugin for WordPress websites which is now even better. This new Plugin (and the output from it) is called OS DataHub Maps and links to it are included in the first of the above relevant links.

So we moved to participants.

David was unconsolable that his phone didn’t appear to be able to take the NHS app and wanted advice on where to buy a no-contract smartphone. From the advice that was given – Carphone Warehouse, Argos, Amazon (used), Tesco – it was generally felt that Tesco (Western Avenue) would be a good starting point as they had a specialist desk to help people buying phones. He also praised the response he’d had from Public Health Wales on an enquiry about Covid and Indoor Bowls, and also the Vale of Glamorgan on the help and documents they’d provided on the subject of Public Space Protection Orders which he was progressing due to anti-social behaviour on The Esplanade at Penarth.

Mike was interested in the Covid app, which his wife installed whilst I was talking about it; Stella had a bad throat and couldn’t talk, and Marilyn had nothing to mention apart from reminding me about Tripod advice – which I’ve now given her!

Christine reported that she now had a fully-functional Cello TV connected to the Internet so she could partner her husband playing online bridge. Success. Paul reported he’d just purchased a similar TV for his garage – and Android TV – which was seemingly very easy to set up and connect to his other devices. She had to buy a wireless mouse (Bluetooth) to make it work as a computer though.

Fred was very concerned about the way that Zoom was not being used in Care Homes to bring residents and families closer together during these difficult time. He was going to pursue the matter through his policy connections, and I suggested that perhaps we ought to raise it with Owen as an issue U3A might like to raise nationally, or make a representation to a suitable body. Phil recommended the Amazon Echo Show device as an inexpensive device that would suit this purpose well. Don related that Liverpool FC had purchased iPads for all the Care Homes in their area (presumably not the Blue part of Liverpool).

Jim had been having troubles with his mobile broadband router and it looked now that being on the edge of a wireless zone (for Three) and maintenance work going on currently together might be the reason for the drop in bandwidth. The purchase of an antennae had don nothing to help, and keeping his window open was not going to be an all-the-year solution!

Margaret related her experience of online retail which had resulted in her being unable to route the gift that she’d wanted to send to her daughter but which she discovered too late (more than 30mins) she’d directed to her home house. Paul felt that District Selling Act should allow you to return any goods within 7 days – I’m not able to comment upon whether this does apply in this case, or not, as the mistake was being made by the purchaser, not the retailer and presumably the 30mins is the time from order to dispatch.

Don had experienced a recent PayPal scam, and had subscribed to the Which? Scam Alert Service. He was also considering how the images from his garden wildlife camera could be viewed on a computer. I offered to help if he was experiencing any problems which might involve AVI to MPEG conversion – perhaps using Handbrake, and also capturing a JPEG image from a movie.

Renee had been experiencing outages from VirginMedia; she’d had a reasonable response from the Support desk when she complained about the increase of £20 in her bill. The Retentions department gave her a re-worked cost £1 less than she was paying now. It pays to complain.

John enquired how to reverse the Gmail forwarding he’d implemented for his and his wife’s Gmail accounts – I pointed him towards the Settings > Forwarding options where he should be able to disable the feature.

Phil told about his discovery of Musescore which will enable him to read the music he needs to be able to play his newly found “love” his bassoon that much better as it can print scores larger. He also commended the use of Google Docs as a suite of applications which you can use to store and edit documents on any device, in the cloud.