Thirteen of us met this week with Owen facilitating again in David’s absence in the Antipodes.
Ted provided an extremely interesting talk on the use of the various software he uses in ancestry research. He demonstrated the use of paid-for and free software, including Ancestry.com and Find My Past in the former category and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Free BMD, the General Register Office and the Welsh newspaper archives available from the National Library of Wales in the latter category.
Using a grandfather of David Hughes who was known to have died in the First World War as an example, he took us through the search process, moving from one application to another to add in material until we had a clear picture of William Hughes, his parents, wife and children. Ted was also able to add in the cause of death and location of his burial as well as background as to his work before the war and possible service in a territorial unit, perhaps in the Boer War or other imperial conflict.
It was a trouble-free demonstration and Ted has provided a slideshow to accompany his talk for Thoughtgrazing members …
There were some contributions from members: Jim mentioned WikiTree to which you can add your own family tree to help others find connections – their ultimate aim is to connect all living people on a single tree – and Jonathan mentioned Family Echo which enables one to draw up a tree – but not to do the searching.
We moved on to our usual round-table discussions. Several members had nil returns but here are the others:
David H has battery-life problems with his mobile phone and Ann and Jim were able to offer him advice on both identifying and ameliorating the problem.
Christine had been selling things on Gumtree and eBay and was surprised by the level of scam offers she received. We discussed the difficulty in establishing the bona fides of purchasers. Christine has firmly decided on local and cash-only arrangements. Renee recommended the use of NextDoor for this.
Don had received a letter from a charity he supports informing him of a data breach and is monitoring his accounts. He had also received a few scam phone calls using what appears to be a Cardiff number 029 2240 4135 and felt the ‘22’ was unusual. Some Penarth numbers use this, apparently.
Renee has finally had a problem fixed by Virgin Media. She has lost incoming calls due to a problem which appeared when Virgin Media switched her phone to a hub. Of course, she didn’t know she had a problem until her callers informed her of failed attempts and she thinks three months have passed until the problem has been resolved.
Ann has found a workaround of her printer problems using a smart phone app but still has signal problems.
Owen closed the meeting reminding members that in David’s absence, substitute facilitators were required. He was able to do the next meeting on 12th May but not on 26th so asked for volunteers to contact him. He also reminded the group that David had indicated that he wished to step down from the role entirely after the Summer break and that someone was needed to take over if the group is to continue. Owen indicated that he was not in a position to offer to do this.
All looking very serious – and I wasn’t disinterested … honest!
In addition to the serious looking faces above, Barbara joined us for a short while until Geoff switched-off the ring main!! We had apologies from Jonathan, Sianed and Christine. We welcomed back Stella who had been suffering from the after effects of her Covid jabs.
We also agreed to experiment with a voice-to-text transliteration system to assist folk who were finding it difficult to follow the audio in Zoom meetings.
I started the meeting by explaining the changes to the website, and doing a quick demo. [I further made some more changes the following day – I note that some of the Help screens, now need new images. They’ll have to wait …] I also was pleased to report that I’d sorted Fred’s Signal installation out, and had finally managed to reply to Phil’s Signal message on using Thought grazing. I offered to help anyone having difficulties with either the website, or Signal, to get in touch.
I then highlighted a few items that I’d added to Flipboard – a lot of them connected to Privacy, which seems a very live issue currently. Apple, after it’s developer’s conference is certainly focussing on privacy, including traps of pixel trackers, it’s intentions to move away from passwords and the addition of FaceID and/or TouchID to Google’s Authenticator – increasing the security of this means of connecting to websites. The EU appears to be going after the way multi-nationals (Google, Microsoft, Apple, twitter and Facebook) export data – an issue I’ve been mentioning for a while – watch this space! The UK’s Competition & Market Authority are also going after Google because of its use of cookies to track users, and usage, in Chrome. Google says, don’t worry we’re going to stop using cookies, and we’re going to give the industry an open-source alternative – FLoC; but it doesn’t appear that anyone else wants to follow. The US Congress is also looking at introducing anti-trust legislation and this is causing the multi-nationals to be a little bit more than concerned and they are lobbying hard against it. Here’s Apple’s plea to Nancy Pelosi. Apple take Privacy very seriously and they have released this white paper which you might care to read.
Mike was delighted with his new speakers which had improved his music listening (from the computer) as well as the quality of his Zoom calls.
Owen reported that he could not recommend the cookie-completion software he’d mentioned four weeks previously. In a test of at least 100 websites, he’d found that it had only worked with 7 sites and in some cases had stopped the websites working. Back to the drawing board! He also reported that the Committee was contemplating a reservation system for when we return to face-to-face meetings to cope with any constraints in numbers and/or social distancing in certain venues. I indicated that I was not too happy with such a proposal. It may not come to pass, however Owen has been charged (or volunteered) to see if the current systems can be tweaked to facilitate this. Zoom has now introduced ‘Live Transcript’, an automated subtitling system. It is by no means 100% perfect, but it should enable those who find it hard to follow in Zoom meetings an enhanced opportunity to hear and see what is spoken. Further information is to be found here. We then discussed how best we might extend the Group to those not participating via Zoom, and I agreed to try to see if any members wanted to join the Signal group.
David H mused on the death of John McAffee (as did Jim later); he reported that the barn was being converted as per his CAD drawings; that he had solved a Samsung phone problem with the radical solution of turning it off, and then switching it back on again; and enquired as to whether anyone had advice on purchasing a new TV. There was a lot of discussion; Steve commended 4K; Ann mentioned the Which? tool to assess size of TV vs size of room, viewing angle and distance from the screen; I asserted that most reviews appeared to favour LG’s OLED technology over Samsung’s QLED technology; we all agreed it was important to assess what we wanted, before we made a decision.
Paul was having problems with rapid battery drain on his Android phone; unfortunately no one had a concrete answer to the problem other than ditching unwanted, unused apps; enquiring whether an update had recently taken place, and again (radical thinking) – switch it off, and back on again!!! Here’s a link that might be useful too.
Don had bought a new Dell G3 system from JLP and it had arrived very quickly. It was so fast, it was like driving an Audi after the Vauxhall he’d had previously (no disrespect intended). He enquired about installing the security package from BT – I suggested to wait awhile before doing that – to try using Windows Defender first. He was going to investigate how to transfer his data from the old laptop. Neil (We will fix your PC) would do it for £30, or put the old hard disk in a caddy for £20. He also enquired about how to get his Gmail onto the new machine – I suggested using Windows native email client and offered to speak to him offline and provide some assistance [which I’ve done].
Phil drew attention to something he’d written about Podcasts which he and many of us use and like and commended CyberClean as a product to clean keyboards. Following the meeting he added another Topic to the Genealogy Forum on one of his ancestors which I recommend you read as a great multi-media experience.
Steve had brought his Sony HX90 camera to show Ann, and she was delighted that after visiting the Camera Centre, she’d plumped for a Sony HX99 for her carry around take pictures of birds camera. A great choice! That or the Panasonic TZ200 would have been my shortlist. He also commended BBC Sounds for Podcasts – good recommendation, thanks! He also enquired whether we thought showing a YouTube video on Zoom infringed copyright – we thought not.
Renee was wanting to look at Tasks in Google but couldn’t find it; we suggested it was included in one of the other members of the Google Office Suite – maybe Calendar. Hopefully this link will help – you access it from either Mail or Calendar.
Finally Ann just told her of her experience (very good) of visiting Camera Centre to purchase her camera which she expected to pickup after the meeting. She was buying a refurbished (but guaranteed unused) model at a discount. All the best – I suggested that she might like to consider joining the afternoon Photography group.
