In case you are wondering how I take a picture of our Zoom meetings, the answer depends on which operating system you are using. (I am using Windows 10.)
David has supplied these instructions for Apple users:
To do a screenshot of an iOS or iPadOS device, press the power-off button and then the Home button.
With a Windows computer, the simple answer involves the ‘PrtSc’ key, near the right hand end of the top row of the keypad. You might have to press the Alt key or the Fn key, on the bottom row, at the same time. You will have to experiment. A message might pop up, saying the screen shot has been saved somewhere. If that doesn’t happen, the image might have been saved to the clipboard, in which case you will have to choose somewhere to paste it.
The less simple Windows answer involves the Snip and Sketch program, which you access by pressing the Windows key + Shift + S. This gives you the opportunity to crop the picture on the screen, so you only save the area you want.
For Android tablets and phones, press the power and volume-down buttons at the same time. I couldn’t get that to work with my phone though. I did have success by holding the power and ‘home’ buttons together. The screen flashed to show the shot had been taken. The picture went to Google Photos and to the Gallery.
There is to be a change to the free version of LastPass service. At present, you can use LastPass on as many devices as you like absolutely free. That’s changing on the 16th March.
You’ll have to choose whether you want to use LastPass on computersormobile devices You won’t be able to use it on both unless you pay for the premium version.
If you use it on both computers and mobile devices at the moment, choose which one to
keep. The first time you sign in to LastPass on or after the 16th, it’ll record which device you do it on. That will become your free device type – so if you sign in first on your computer, you won’t be able to use the app any more (and vice versa).
To keep access to both, you need to sign up for the premium version. If you upgrade before the 16th March, a full year costs £22 or £30 after.
I have for the years of my retirement chafed under the yoke of slower Internet access compared with when I was at work. Although I have had fibre from the cabinet as soon as it became available, I have rarely had more that 18-20 Mb/s download speed and commensurately slow upload speeds. I have also suffered with intermittent halts on the network where a succession of routers have decided to drop the connection back to the ISP, sometimes for several hours. And not just one ISP either. We have also had problems with Apple devices (iPad and iPhones) which frequently dislike the wireless network and have to have their lease renewed or their wireless function turned off and then on again.
As my most recent contract was coming to an end in January 2021, I took the opportunity to explore other options. Fibre to the premises was my hope but not available and no prospect in sight. I had signed up to receive an indication of when it might become available but OpenReach has lived up to its reputation for impenetrability and Virgin Media have no interest in cabling up my end of Penylan.
I did remember a member of the Computer Group had mentioned non-cabled access although my faulty memory suggested the word ‘radio’ and I couldn’t track that down. But the concept stuck and I looked at whether it was feasible to implement home broadband using mobile technology. The answer is of course, yes.
I spent some time looking at the three possible providers – 3, EE and Vodafone. They all had different offerings: 3 the cheapest, EE possibly the most flexible and Vodafone another option. They all provide useful ways of determining just what service you can get at your address. 3 quickly dropped out as they did not provide 5G cover in my area. Then I investigated volume usage and checked with my existing supplier (Vodafone) as to what sort of throughput I was currently using. It turned out that EE’s highest level contract was an allowance of 300Gb per month and that if, as my wife and I do, you watch a number of subscription services over the Internet and do a lot of Zooming, you can approach that level quite easily.
So there I was, Vodafone was the remaining option: the most expensive but offering unlimited usage. I struggled with their online system for investigating any further despite being a current customer but eventually came up trumps – I wonder if that’s a phrase that will fall out of favour now?? – using their chat system. A piece of advice : use the chat system from the sales page not the general or technical support page. The financial imperative means they give better answers and don’t want to send you to any other group!
I quickly gained an assurance (in writing) that their 5G service would reach my house and provide good and consistent connections and importantly, there is a 14 day trial period to check it all out. I placed my order and on hearing of the difficulties I had had with the existing connection from Vodafone, have a £10 per month discount for 2 years. It’s still twice what I was paying, though.
The Gigacube and SIM came the next day by courier. It took me 10 minutes to install, plug in my two Ethernet cable to the sockets; then 2 or 3 hours to visit every networked device and change it over to the new wireless network. My iPad is now downloading consistently at 170Mb/s and nothing in the whole set-up is slower than 45 Mb/s. Every room in the house has a good signal including the attic room two floors up.
Issues? Yes, one. I distribute a wired Ethernet connection via powerlink devices (you connect one to the router, plug it into the mains and then get a network connection from similar devices plugged in elsewhere in the house). The main one is to my study for my PC and laptop. The new network didn’t seem to like this at first but after a few hours of head scratching and for no apparent reason, it suddenly started working. I haven’t worked out why yet.
Verdict: well, it’s early days isn’t it? But I’m certainly very pleased so far. I’ll monitor usage and maybe ‘unlimited’ was a bit of a luxury.
Soon after retiring and joining U3A I was asked to prepare something to show people how to use computers to research their family tree. Well, that really sparked an interest. I started researching my grandfather, George Henry Davies (Harry). He was a colliery farrier from Blaenllechau in the Rhondda Valley. I was two years old when he died. Sadly, I have no memories of him.
As a younger man, he joined the army in 1915. After a very short period in France, he was shipped to Salonika in Greece. These days, not many people remember that any fighting went on there. Harry stayed in Salonika until early 1918.
During 2020 the whole world changed beyond all measure as countries around the globe suffered the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic. For many, including myself, had to endure many months in lockdown with limited opportunity to go out and socialise. My music making with my recorder group, Morris dancers and folk sessions all came to a grinding halt. For many months I simply didn’t feel like playing any music at all. Then a friend introduced me to the idea of making Acapella videos .
Using this system it is possible to create little arrangements with myself playing all of the parts.
Around the same time I learned that the Imperial War Museum had a set of pantomimes from the First World War Salonika front. These pantomimes were performed by a party of traveling ambulance men, the 85th Field Ambulance. With the help of the Salonika Campaign Society, I’ve managed to get scanned images of the three pantomimes, Dick Whittington, Bluebeard, and Aladdin in Macedonia. They provide a strange and unique insight into the lives of soldiers posted to this long-forgotten battlefront.
At the moment, I’m trying to put together some of those Acapella videos, trying to breathe new life into those old tunes. I’m keying in each note of the tunes into Musescore software. This must be a bit like following a knitting pattern stitch by stitch with no idea what the finished item will ever look like. I’ve created some musical videos with the help of Apple iMovie and Acapella :- Pitch Perfect.
Initially, I thought I’d try to learn one or two of the tunes. I couldn’t be certain that my grandfather Harry had ever attended any of these pantomimes but after a short period of study, I feel that he probably did.
The Macedonia front was quite unlike the experience of the Western Front in France. During Summer, it was fiercely hot but Winter brought freezing conditions and snow. For most of the time, the battle lines were fairly static. There was little chance of any entertainment. Only lucky soldiers managed to visit the town of Salonika. Curiously, soldiers developed a strange form of entertainment:- Racing tortoises. Well, that was impossible during Winter as the tortoises would be in hibernation.
Also, it appears that these pantomimes were incredibly popular, frequently out-performing pantomime productions staged at Drury Lane.
Let’s imagine then that grandfather Harry did manage to get a ticket for the pantomime. Imagine him trudging through the snow to a small barn, nicknamed The Kopriva Palace Theatre. We’ll take a seat beside him and enjoy some of the tunes that he would have enjoyed all those years ago.
I’ve finished three videos of songs from Music of Macedonia. You can see them here.
I experienced a strange coincidence when I was looking through the music from Aladdin in Macedonia. Look at the name of the composer. Not my grandfather, G.H. Davies but a strange coincidence, another G.H. Davies.
Here are the slides from the presentation. The links unfortunately don’t work from the slides, but they are added below the relevant slides in Orange type.
It has to be said that I am a bit of a gadget geek. I was actually quite an early adopter of the Amazon Echo voice activated assistant. I bought a pair of them a couple of years ago and have since added some lights to my smart home. All in all, I’ve been delighted with the system although to be honest, I’ve sometimes felt that I wasn’t getting the experience quite right. Maybe I was missing something.
About six months into The Great Lockdown I noticed that Amazon had a special offer on the Amazon Echo Show 8; just £69.99 (it is now £89.99 so keep an eye on the price). It really is sinfully easy to click on the “Buy Now” button. Here’s what I’ve discovered.
First of all, I believe that you can only get the full value of the Echo experience if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber. I’ll tell you more about that later.
The Amazon Echo is a bit like a voice activated tablet screen. You can set it up to :-
Show a continuous slideshow of your photographs, cycling through your snaps at random.
Play your music. You can ask Alexa for a particular album, artist or genre of music. You can also get her to play your favourite radio station. You can control the volume with your voice.
Show recipes, with video and audio hints as you go along. Similarly, it can show exercise routines.
Show Youtube videos, Iplayer and news channels.
Show Amazon Prime movies.
Make phone and video calls.
Play a range of games and quizzes.
AND, it does all of this through voice control. It really is just like having your own personal assistant or butler even. You simply use voice commands like, “Alexa, phone Betty”, or “Alexa, send a text to Betty,” or “Alexa, play songs by Val Doonican.”
Setting up the device might be a bit tricky. You will need an Amazon account and you will probably need The Alexa app running on a phone or tablet. If you were setting it up for somebody with limited technical skills, you could use a friend’s phone or tablet. There is a video here to show you how to do this.
Now, since The Great Lockdown started, I’ve become a big fan of Slow Movies, It’s hard to explain this concept. Basically, it could be video taken of a view, or of a scenic route. Nothing happens but for me, they provide me with a link back to The Before Time. Alexa Show will show movies from the Prime catalogue. Besides a huge choice of regular movies and T.V.shows, there are plenty of Slow Movies available. Try one of my favourites, “Morning Jazz at the Coffee Shop,” takes me back to enjoying a cappuccino at Coffee #1 in Whitchurch.
Now, the Amazon Echo Show comes in three sizes; just like Goldilocks’ bears. The 5 inch would look great on your bedside cabinet. I have the 8 inch in my kitchen. There is a 10 inch model that would probably look great in your living room.
It really is a bit like having one of those Swiss Army knives, the ones that do everything. Besides being a digital photo frame, it plays music or radio, shows movies, acts as a clock and calendar, provides weather forecasts, does sums, tells you spellings, gives you a cheery Good Morning greeting, acts as a timer or reminder turns lights on or off….I really could go on and on.
Now, as I said earlier, you probably won’t get much out of the device unless you have Amazon Prime subscription. Basically, for £79 per year, you get free next day (or fast ) delivery on many of the Amazon products. I’ve ordered something at 10 p.m. on a Saturday and it was delivered at 10 a.m. the next day. You also get access to a huge catalogue of music and videos. You might have to pay extra for some of the newly released videos but believe me, there is plenty of choice for free. It provides unlimited storage space for your photographs. You upload photographs to your storage area. You can then choose the ones that you would like to see on your Echo Show. Find out more about Prime here.
Those who know me, know that I really am a bit of a sucker when it comes to new gadgets. Believe me though, this one does something that most of my other gadgets fail to do quickly, easily and with minimum hassle. This one regularly makes me smile.
The first thing is, to see if there are any updates available, you go to Settings – Update & Security – Windows Update.
That is worth doing anyway, but I want to tell you about my experience with “Feature update to Windows 10, version 2004”. I started that running yesterday afternoon, and it finally stopped downloading this morning, seventeen hours later. I now have to decide when to install it. I’ll let you know how that goes.
My laptop is seven years old, and I use mobile broadband, so your experience might be different, but still …
It is a dual-boot system. It has both Windows and Linux Ubuntu installed on it. When I turn it on, it asks me at boot-up, whether I want to use Windows or Ubuntu. I hardly ever use Windows because I find Ubuntu so much better. However, for this, I’m using Windows because I know that most of the afternoon Zoom group use Windows. I’m using Windows this afternoon so I can see how the Windows installation of Linux works.
Windows is horrible.
So far I’ve had five pop-ups and two programs starting without me wanting them to start. Added to that, with Windows, this laptop takes ages to start.
You don’t get those sort of problems with Linux.
You will also not need anti-virus software as Linux doesn’t appear to get viruses.
Now, you might be interested in taking a look at Linux from a purely academic standpoint; something new to learn during lockdown.
OR … you might have an old computer lying around; one that you’d like to drag back from the grave.
So let’s get started
Linux is an operating system. Windows and MacOS are also operating systems. An operating system is the program that actually makes your computer work.
To proceed, you’ll need to do the following … and it would be best if you did this before next Thursday’s meeting because some of the processes take a bit of time, otherwise you’ll just have to accept being an observer.
Take a look at the computer that you’ll be trying to revive – but remember you can run Linux from the USB drive without making changes to your computer, so it could be any machine. Make sure it has a USB drive. You’ll need an empty USB pen drive doohicky, at least 4Gb in size. Also, the computer that you intend targetting, it would be best to be a 64-bit system. Google your computer’s make and model to find out whether it is 64-bit.
This is for Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS. LTS (Long-term support) means that the software will be supported for 5 years. A new version of Ubuntu comes out every April and every two years you have a new LTS release. This page also tells you the minimum requirements that you need on your computer for Ubuntu to run well. Incidentally Ubuntu is a South African enterprise. It is totally free to download, install and use. In fact, everything in the Linux world is totally free. Linux comes in many different flavours e.g. Mint, Red Hat, Fedora … you chose the flavour that best suits your needs. My opinion; they are all very similar. Ubuntu is probably the easiest to get to know and with the best support. It will take a while to download as it is a big file … about one hour in my house but I have Virgin cable.
If you only have a 32-bit system there is another Linux operating system that works well on older 32-bit computers. It is called Bodhi Linux. Download the image file here. https://www.bodhilinux.com/download/ download the legacy version.
Once Ubuntu has finished downloading, don’t do anything with it. Don’t double click on it or try to get it to run. Just make a note of where you’ve stored it.
Now, you can’t just put the file that you’ve downloaded onto your USB drive. It is just a bit more tricky than that. You’ll need one more piece of software. It will transfer the Ubuntu file you’ve downloaded onto your USB drive and create a bootable disk image. These pages will give you a run down on what to do next on a Windows computer.
You will need a piece of software called Rufus (free, open-source) to create the bootable disk image. Here’s the link to get it.
You should Download AND install Rufus 3.11 1.1Mb onto your machine.
Now, on Thursday afternoon, in order to proceed, you will need the Ubuntu file stored in your computer and have Rufus downloaded and installed. We’ll talk you through the rest of the procedure over Zoom but rest assured, you’ve already done an awful lot.
Please note. All the above assumes you will be working on the target machine; BUT you could prepare the USB pen drive on one machine and then apply it to another. For instance David prepared his Ubuntu installs on a Mac, with the intention of targeting an old Windows machine. It’s just important to know what your target machine is, that it’s 32-bit, or preferably 64-bit.
Things you need to understand.
Once you have Ubuntu on your USB pen drive you can:-
Run Ubuntu on your computer just to see what it is like. This won’t make any changes to your computer. After you’ve taken a look around the system you can just shut down, pull out the USB drive and re-start. All will be just as it was before.
Make a full Ubuntu install. This will completely change your computer to a Ubuntu device. There will be no turning back from this option. However, you will have use of all of the space on the hard-drive.
You can choose a dual-boot installation. This will partition your drive into two sections. You can keep Windows on one section and Install Ubuntu on the other. Although this sounds complicated, it really isn’t … you just need to make a choice on the size of the partitions that you’ll need. If you chose this, every time the computer starts you’ll be asked whether you want to start Windows or Ubuntu.
Other things to consider.
You can get Windows programs to run on a Linux machine but this is a bit of a black art and beyond the scope of this project.
However, Ubuntu comes with quite a few pieces of software pre-installed including Libre Office. This is very similar to Microsoft Office. You should know though that when you create a document in Libre Office, you can choose to save it in Microsoft Office format and a Windows computer will be able to read the document. Similarly Libre Office will open Microsoft Office files seamlessly.
One of the pre-installed programs is called Synaptic. This is a bit like the app store on many mobile phones. You can find oodles of pieces of software within Synaptic, all totally free.
One last thing to consider.
Both myself and David have successfully undertaken these procedures and everything worked just fine. However, please realise that if anything does go wrong then you really should be prepared to take the responsibility yourself. We can’t really be held responsible for the vagaries of a variety of computer systems. However, usually just preparing the Disk Image on the USB stick and trying again is usually quite successful. All I can say is that many people have installed Ubuntu. I’ve just checked the website to find out how many Ubuntu users there are. It was quite refreshing to learn that Canonical; Ubuntu’s parent company do not harvest that sort of data. A rough estimate is that 1-2% of all of the computers in use world wide use some sort of Linux installation.
Addendum. A note on Boot Order for PC-folk and your BIOS
You’ve got your USB install drive; you’ve got a PC; the only “tricky” bit left for you is to change the boot order of your PC. By default the machine will look to boot from an internal hard drive, but it doesn’t have to. You want it to start from your USB drive. So read this to see how to change the boot order.
If there’s no bootable USB drive in your machine it doesn’t matter; the boot sequence just looks for the next drive it could boot from – usually the internal hard drive. That’s why on some BIOS you’ll see the CD/DVD drive as first in the list as that’s where (traditionally) you would have installed/upgraded your Windows from – before the internet! Before that it was the floppy drive (a: or b:) – remember that; and that explains why the late-comer the hard-drive is always labelled c: or later, d: etc.
Of course on the Mac, it’s much easier , you just have to keep the Alt/Opt depressed as you boot-up and then select the boot device 😉
Second Addendum. Having problem with Booting your USB disk?
You should look at these settings in your BIOS on a PC. Often the key to press when you want to access BIOS settings is F2.
Getting the Boot order correct, and making sure that USB Boot is enabled.
From the BIOS settings menu just make sure that Boot USB Devices First is enabled. If you have the USB Device inserted, it will also appear in this list. You could move it to the top of the list, but of course it will disappear from this list when you take it out – that’s why Boot USB Devices First is important. You could also Disable the Boot to Network option.
Making sure you can Boot from your USB device
From the same F2 BIOS Settings menu you should make sure that F10 is enabled (or whatever key is designated to Enter Boot Menu) and F12 is disabled as you don’t want to boot from the Network at this time. [You can always enable it at a later date, in the unlikely event this ever becomes a requirement.]
This started when I wanted to find out how many images I have in Google Photos, which they don’t tell you. After some digging I discovered my Google Dashboard, which again isn’t easy to find, so here’s the link (to yours of course): myaccount.google.com/dashboard . This told me basic information about all my Google apps, including the fact that I have over 200 images in Photos. I was surprised to be told in addition that I have over 600 albums though! Following that link, I discovered that these are stored in my Album Archive.
When my tablet and phone photos are uploaded, they are put into albums according to the day they are taken. That is OK, but it turns out that when I delete old images, the empty album remains. I will now start deleting these empty albums from the Archive, but it seems I have to do it one at a time. I can’t at the moment see a way of selecting a group of them.
