Observations on the world and its inhabitants
I’ve been searching for the last 5 years for an economical very small microwave oven. This is something I could use when working out of hotels. Well, I gave up on the search. But not easily. I even explored trying to build with my own hands, a small microwave by taking component parts from second ...
Not everybody needs this! I often have text copied from PDF when I’m working on something. This leads to loads of unnecessary paragraph marks. At other times I have rows of plain text copied from somewhere. It’s a pain to get rid of paragraph marks at the end of each line, yet preserving the correct ...
I’m becoming more aware based on a series of observations in the last 10 years that there is a serious shift in the way people think and react to things. The main issue is that perception seems to become reality for individuals, and as a result of ease of electronic communications groups of people sharing ...
This is one part of a strategy to clean up a MS Word document (ver 2019 and later). Too often I receive documents that have loads of double paragraphs, double-spaces between text, or a leading space at the beginning of a paragraph. Those are annoying. Today I deal with leading white spaces. This is only ...
This is for Windows 10 and above computers that do not have a SSD or M2 drive. If you do the following on a computer with SSD or M2 drive, you will quite probably wreck your computer. But don’t believe me. Just do it – and then sue yourself! At each restart, time how long ...
The craze surrounding the site Onemillioncheckboxes (OMCB) reflects an interesting intersection of collaborative and competitive online behaviour. The concept of one million checkboxes, initially designed to be checked off collectively, has evolved into a platform for users to express creativity, engage in community-driven projects, and even participate in virtual tug-of-war scenarios. The NHS could learn ...
Why would anybody want to post images by SMS when things like WhatsApp exist? Simple – not everybody likes WhatsApp or similar. SMS can send images in the usual jpeg or png format but that is usually at some cost. Why because it SMS uses MMS which costs. Well, it’s fine if some people want ...
Don’t ask – “How do these situations happen to you only?”. Right let me get into it straight away. It’s today 29/05/2024, I’ve left my room on the third floor of a hotel, on the way out to get to a domiciliary visit. I see a man who appeared be about 70 y.o, just outside ...
I just received learned opinion from a group of high IQ doctors that using AI to summarise articles and present findings is “low effort”. This means that anybody who cannot or does use AI for such purposes, is a “high effort” person! Some people may to believe that low effort is simply laziness. However, low ...
As ‘some’ may have realised, something is happening in the background. So, I’m sharing Scrivener which is a nifty piece of software – or an ‘app’ for those who like the new terminology. This post is not a software review. Before anyone goes there, I derive no pecuniary or other advantages (in the past, present ...
Of some annoyance to me is the different spellings of the same words between the UK and the USA. I’m in the UK and culturally I prefer UK spellings. But it is not that simple. Microsoft Word that is ‘made’ in the USA seems to ‘think’ that it is fine if I spell prioritise as ...
Not me – from one of my ‘associates’, as I have no friends. My take Well, I hate self-service as it often sends up my blood pressure. Something ‘always’ goes wrong. It could be some nonsense with age verification, it may not like my bag, something can’t scan, then when the red light flashes, they ...
Not everybody knows that Google provides: free word-processor, free spreadsheets and other Office software. How would I know that? Because I speak to ‘some’ people who don’t know. [AC_PRO id=6333]
Unless you’ve been buried under a Rock or you are Rip van Winkle himself, you will not have heard of ChatGPT. But the way it works is that the many will say, “I don’t understand it – I’m not a tech geek so I left it alone. Furthermore, the government said it could be dangerous! ...
No – I’m not struggling to cope. The world struggles to cope with certain types of phenomena. What types are those? Slow burn or insidious [there are online dictionaries if needed] Fast burn: explosive evolutionary path. Those that do not immediately confront the senses. I decided to have (yet another) conversation with ChatGPT. Of late ...
The net has gone wild since around November 2022, when AI took off. The rate of advances is staggering in the last 6 months. As usual, when something powerful arrives that disrupts the usual run of the mill, people react in fear or freeze up. If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT by now, then your ...
Well, loads of people have been biting their nails about ChatGPT. Yuh know anything that is new and apparently intelligent is to be feared. Like “OMG!! OMG!! AI is taking over the world, let’s have a panic attack!” The sort of responses are similar to when aeroplanes were made to fly people around, the telephone ...
I’m a longstanding customer of Anker. I don’t buy cheap poor-quality stuff. Anker is middle of the range and produces technology that is great and reliable. No delay – the Anker Q45 is currently on sale for a genuine price drop of £42. So it is now £97.99 which means I had paid the full ...
All of this post is my notes. It is not designed for ‘you’. I use advanced features of find and replace in MS Word. I write my notes like self-talk because I’ve noticed that in a few months’ time I may not remember every aspect of this. Challenge Recently I wanted to find an easy ...
Lots of people do not know that they can take a video on their phones and upload it directly to YouTube. Most people will have a panic attack first. Required: A functioning brain of average intelligence. Sound internet connection via 4G or WiFi. A good performing phone. Heavy doses of Valium or grog for those ...
Well, something is up! As some may not know, I bought a Bluetti Powerbank several months ago before this post. At that time many had a good laugh whilst going, “You’re crazy – the lights won’t go out!” Now there is a shortage of these on Amazon.co.uk and at direct outlets such as Poweroak. But ...
Right – this is about weird stuff. I spent money on Amazon and was probably rewarded for my honesty about some sort of glitch. The purchase I bought two technology items on Amazon for a total of £156.98. I got notification that they were delivered to my collection point at 12:16PM on 30th August 2022. ...
Lots of people are content to refer to themselves as luddites when it comes to things technological. The main reason for that is the sense of camaraderie and support from equally dim people. How would I know? I’ve seen and experienced the phenomenon too many times over the last 20 years. Cognitive miserliness The underlying ...
The short clip below shows what Dragon Naturally Speaking does. Semmelweis Reflexes – are going off like crazy among those who would be proud to boast that they are luddites. Others have jumped on Google to find that Dragon is too expensive for them. I’ve gone slowly in my dictation below. Dragon can do this ...
Some people – there are always ‘some people’ – will not know about Camtasia and Snagit. The Semmelweis reflex takes care of that lot. The way it works is that if you hear about something that sounds technical or comes from somebody you think is a nerd, you move on swiftly. After all ‘what’s it ...
‘Everybody’ believes they are organised. Well, not everybody obviously. There are some people who go, “I’m so disorganised..” – and they wear that badge proudly, expecting everybody else to work with or around them. I can tell you now, they’ll have a hard time being around me. The tip below is for a simple android ...
Loads of people don’t know much about how to use a ‘word processor’. Hmmm.. the words ‘word processor‘ now seem so strange. Formatting documents is a most important activity. Why? A well presented letter or report starts off at an advantage of being well received and easier to read. The reader is put in the ...
If your name is Rip van Winkle, you would not know that there is an energy crisis on over the last couple months. That was brewing for over a year but the war in Ukraine made it more prominent. It would have happened anyway but that’s a different story. I’ve seen my diesel bill jump ...
This post is not for luddites and not for people who are diehard Apple lovers. Right – so I needed a solution for controlling my PC, when I’m watching Netflix or Amazon Prime. Somebody want’s to know why. Jeez. So – I’m sitting or lying several feet from my desktop which works with a large ...
Okay – I’ve been known to do the impossible – partly because I am ‘impossible’. For example, I found a way to make microwaved poached eggs – after years of experimentation. And now you see, what ‘everybody’ might think is grilled cheese on toast. Except that it isn’t. This is not a recommendation to eat ...
