website – Thought grazing

I’m indebted to Jim for remembering each meeting to take these screenshots, this one is a particularly good one of the 15 of us meeting virtually yesterday. Christine, Marie-Christine, Jenny Sims and Phil had let me know they would not be attending.

I’m also indebted to you all for your kind words and welcoming back, and can I thank Owen and Phil for stepping in to take the last meeting.

I started the meeting by giving an account of the procedure I’d been subjected to at UHW. I won’t say more. The matter is now officially closed! Owen gave an update on Beacon, and told us the new system (Beacon 2) was now not going to happen, and he was working out how best our Cardiff U3A website could work with the existing old Beacon membership system. I then talked briefly about changes to the website to make the Search box (for Posts) more prominent; a subtle change to the placement of the Flipboard link to make it easier to find; and a brief introduction to the Guides that were available to read online. I also encouraged members to look at the Forums and Topics area of the website and to add their own Topic, or Comment upon an existing one. It’s a much better way of recording help required and advice given than Signal (or WhatsApp for that matter) can provide. Please consider using it.

I then went through the Latest News items I’d stumbled upon and uploaded to the Flipboard magazine. I’m not going to mention any of them in particular again – go and look at the articles on Flipboard, and perhaps browse through old ones – I’m sorry there is no Search facility for Private magazines. The only drawback to a really good magazine interface.

We then went “round the screen” …

Barbara had taken her errant drive into the Apple store, having not had a satisfactory outcome from her visit to JLP (where she’d bought the MacBook as I recall). Success this time and she now had an external connector that had cost a bit, but which now enable her MacBook to read/write to her external disk. She also had a problem with her iPad seeming to shutdown when there appeared to be sufficient power – another trip to the Apple store was suggested as no one seemed to have a possible solution.

David H retold his latest adventure … the re-discovery of a former life. His daughter had asked him to draw up plans for a barn refurbishment. He wondered whether he could find the CAD software he’d been used to using, was nearly scammed but had now found LibraCAD and he was working his way through the instructions/manual to find out how he could use it.

Renee had downloaded and installed Libby (ref. last meeting) and had accessed the Library for her first book.

Jonathan had no issues/problems – but his wife had! We then discussed the problem of an iPad either being too sensitive, or not accurate enough to record the correct key presses. Many of us seemed to have a similar problem. Some suggestions – clean the screen very thoroughly; the screen might be heat sensitive and this might be throwing the keypress off (we thought eventually this was unlikely to be the problem given the number of long figure-nailed folk using mobile devices); the co-ordinates might need to be recalibrated and Ann suggested that this could be done at the Apple store; we all thought it would be a good idea before any visit to accurately record where the problem on the keyboard was occurring. We hope Jules has success in finding out the problem, and for Jonathan reporting back on the solution!

Don had proceeded with his creation of new Gmail accounts for his wife. Hopefully this will resolve any issues with her old account being “pwned”, and the AppleID issue. [Phil (from the previous meeting) felt that a password change on the old Gmail account would probably be sufficient for the first problem, and he suggested that the appearance of the Gmail address in the AppleID might not have been a case of someone having the account, but might have been that the email address had been given by Don or his wife when purchasing an earlier Apple device.]

Steve had also downloaded Libby and was evaluating it. He’d prepared some text on photo books for the group, and I encouraged him to try and add the text as a Comment in this Topic.

Fred reported that he was getting “end of life” warnings on his HP “all-in-one” desktop machine. We re-assured him that this was quite normal and he should only worry when things stopped working, and then then Neil at We Will Fix Your PC might be able to work wonders. [He fixes mobile devices and Macs as well.]

Jim was working his way through old USB sticks, making sure he’d got the contents on his new laptop before discarding them. He was using a piece of software called AllDup to check whether the files already existed on the laptop.

Finally Ann told us about her experiences online shopping from Curry’s where they would bring the goods to your car, in the car park, outside the store; but more particularly she told us about an initial purchase to buy a cable to re-charge her phone (which was unsuccessful as she’d got the wrong USBs (remember my last talk on USB cables – the links to read are at the end of the Meeting Notes – but then told us about a Sandisk Dual Drive USB Type-C device which could store 16Gb and which was only a few pounds and which might prove useful in transferring photos from her phone to the computer as long as she installed the correct software. We look forward to hearing the results!

I contributed a rather interesting feature of Gmail which allowed you to create multiple addresses from your original address, and for adding an identifier to the end of the address that might be useful for filtering Junk mail when you have to provide an email address you don’t really want to have to. These links (on Flipboard as well) are How to create a Gmail alias and How to use Plus addressing in Gmail.

I also mused over whether I’d been wrong NOT to use the email service offered me by Apple as my primary email account and have Gmail as my second account, rather than my primary address; no right or wrong, just a thought. The same would of course be true if I’d been a PC/Windows user – perhaps I should have been more actively promoting Outlook/Hotmail as the primary email service. Who knows!! The one thing I’m sure of is NOT to use an ISP service such as Virgin, TalkTalk, BTInternet etc.

We closed the meeting by discussing what format meetings might, could and should take when Covid restrictions were lifted. It was felt that Zoom had worked well and that a regular cohort of members had experienced and got benefit from virtual meetings; it was a good tool for a digital group to use; that we ought to try and present any face-to-face meetings in the future in the same way as we had for the virtual (Zoom) meetings; that social (face-to-face) contact was equally as important and that members benefited from casual conversations outside the meetings and from being able to bring machines in with them; also the serendipity effect of the added things you can do in the city alongside a meeting – once you’re there; that we had a duty to consider those members who hadn’t felt they wanted to attend Zoom meetings; [I advised the group that I had sent an email to those members to try and find out if there was any reason why they hadn’t joined]; but above all we agreed that a return to the old room at URC was just not practical for large numbers, and that the quality of the WiFi just wouldn’t permit any pleasurable experience. We all agreed that possibly a hybrid-solution – one meeting Zoom, the next face-to-face, might be the answer.

I thought it might be a good idea (correct me if I’m wrong) if in addition to any posts that might be generated from the meeting – which I was delighted to see 14 members attended – that I wrote a couple of notes about it.

Covid-19: The main topic of conversation was the difficulty in getting deliveries arranged for shielded people. David H related how his wife had only just (after 6 weeks) received a letter to tell her that she should be considered to be vulnerable and thus shielded – we have other members who are also in that category. Anyway, the problem is getting in touch with a Supermarket to get you on the list for priority deliveries. In Wales that’s compounded by the fact that the letter does not contain a NHS number (as I understand it) and yet the supermarkets require that information. Duh!

It would appear in England that those in the vulnerable category are getting free drops of food – even if they don’t want, or need them and it’s impossible to opt out easily. [We have a friend that’s arranged to take them to the local food bank.] It also appears that the supermarkets are responding off the peg so-to-speak and are approaching customers to offer deliveries even if they’re not regular customers and they would prefer their regular supermarket to reach out to them. Again duh!

This is an unfortunate set of circumstances. On the positive side the number of click’n’collect slots from our local Sainsbury’s seem to have increased – even if the alternatives picked off the shelves for us, are not what we would have wanted – how do you interpret a request for an oatcake into a ginger biscuit????

I’ll put this into the Covid-19 Topic – so please comment there and update my understanding – if I’ve got it wrong!

[Update eConsult]: I forgot this when I wrote up the notes at first. Just a quick note for you to see if your GP Surgery’s website has a link to eConsult on it – as well as My Health Online which you can sign-up for to get repeat prescriptions and book appointments … sometimes! Anyway eConsult gets you to fill-in a form that explains your symptoms as best you can, and asks if you have a preferred doctor from the practice who you’d like to ring you back. My experience was that I got a call back within a couple of hours. Really much better for non-serious consultations that you think can be handled without a face-to-face session. I can see that things will never be the same again. I can see that I’ll be asking my doctor to “zoom” me after I’ve first filled in an eConsult referral. Interesting times!

Screen capture on Windows: Apparently there is piece of software called Snipping Tool in Windows that does the trick, here’s an article that shows a number of ways of solving that issue. On the Mac, you can use a combination of key strokes to Copy screens, or sections of screens to the Clipboard, from which you can Paste the contents to a program. Here’s an article that shows you how to do this on a Mac. On an iPhone you can capture your screen and take a picture that goes to your Camera Roll in this way, and can create a screen recording like this, on Android you take a screen shot this way.

Digital HDS Antenna: Well, it appears Christine that the Dragons Den might well have been taken in by this product sometimes called TV Fix, but also DigitalHDS and TV Brite. The reviews are not good. Let’s pass on …

Sharing Notes between iPhones: Yes you can do that Don, and yes it might be useful for creating shared shopping lists – always useful at a time like this – but my recommendation would be to use Evernote which means you’re not restricted to just a Mac, you can use it on a Windows and also from the web, and share notes that way as work on them collaboratively. Evernote has replaced a word processor for most of my notes taking and writing. Gets 5* from me, and I pay for it too now!!

Have I been pwned?: Another use case for this very handy website that tells you whether your email address has been hacked is a check on your password – just click on this link and supply your “favourite” password to see if it’s out in the wild!

Problems with Nest and Google accounts: An issue we couldn’t really provide an answer to. In fact, I had difficulty understanding (not Margaret’s fault, I’m just not familiar with the product). Paul suggested that maybe trying to use a different email account with the device might allow you to get admin rights back. I really don’t understand this, so I suggest that Margaret might put it up as a Topic in our Forum – perhaps someone outside the Group might be able to help?

[Update We will fix your PC]: Forgot this in the first write-up of the notes. I’ve put a “plug” for Neil in the Computer etc. Forum.

Creating a Zoom meeting: I promised to produce a quick video showing how you can Schedule a meeting as a host, rather than just be on the receiving end. Here’s the video.

New website: I demonstrated the features of the new website using the Screen Sharing facility in Zoom. In feedback to this it was suggested that perhaps there ought to be a facility to add a Photograph to a Profile – I promised to look into this. If you have a WordPress account, this gets picked up automatically, but it should be possible to optionally add a Profile picture. I also pointed at the way of creating a Movie using Quicktime Player (goto Method 2) on the Mac. I’m sorry, but I can’t find an equivalent, easy way of doing it on Windows – it must exist!

Finally, by way of light relief, here’s a video I had thought of showing with you at the end of the call. The Project Manager’s nightmare. Enjoy …

Tag: website

Notes from Zoom meeting – 13th May 2021

Notes from Zoom Meeting – 23rd April 2020