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mention of the NHS App, a lively discussion and debate ensued on the appropriate use of an Excel spreadsheet which was out of date – probably by a factor of 13years plus as the .xlsx format replaced .xls in 2013.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.
