Topics

1

Living Room / Android 11 forcing people to only use the built-in camera

« on: September 01, 2020, 03:47 PM »

Android 11 is taking away the camera picker, forcing people to only use the built-in camera (OSnews)

Android may have started with the mantra that developers are allowed to do anything as long as they can code it, but things have changed over the years as security and privacy became higher priorities. Every major update over the last decade has shuttered features or added restrictions in the name of protecting users, but some sacrifices may not have been entirely necessary. Another Android 11 trade-off has emerged, this time taking away the ability for users to select third-party camera apps to take pictures or videos on behalf of other apps, forcing users to rely only on the built-in camera app.

It will get much more difficult to use a non-stock camera with third-party apps in Android 11 (dpreview)

Though Android devices come with a stock camera app, users have a huge number of alternative options available in the Play Store, including ones that feature 'pro' controls. When a user attempts to capture an image through a third-party app, such as an auction app that supports directly capturing images rather than uploading from the camera roll, they may be presented with a menu that asks which installed camera app should be used.

When the Android 11 update rolls out, however, this will change and users will no longer be given this option, as recently spied by Android Police. Instead, the third-party app will default to the device's stock camera app. To get around this, users would have to first launch their preferred camera app, capture the images they need, then upload those images in the third-party app from the camera roll -- a process that would take considerably longer than directly launching the desired app.

I thought this worthy of a thread to itself. Not new news, but didnt see it mentioned here.

2

Living Room / Corona curve/s graph/s math/s

« on: April 02, 2020, 11:03 AM »

A couple of graphs -- I probably dont fully understand how they work, but did find interesting:

The Coronavirus Curve - Numberphile

How To Tell If We're Beating COVID-19

The animated graph the above video is based on is here (updated at link)


(note: logarithmic scale; time implied (neither on x nor y axis -- explained in video)

3

Living Room / Legally Buy & Download Music Easily - Is it even possible any more?

« on: January 09, 2020, 03:43 PM »

Looking for a site where I can legally buy, and easily download music, idealy of very high quality.
(No, I dont want to pay monthly for whatever music service.)

Occasionally I buy music from Bandcamp -- it's great but most of the music I want isn't there.

So I've been using Amazon(.de) --
on PC you *can* download bought music, but on Android it's a royal pain. They really want you to pay for amazon music unlimited or whatever it's called. Their next best bet is that you only use the amazon music app to play your music. It's diffcult to download the music, it's very difficult to find it and move it. So I want to give my money to someone who caters to my needs. Amazon isn't doing that.

So, anyone know of a site where I can legally buy, and easily download music, idealy of very high quality ?
TIA for any suggestions

4

Android Apps / Re-usable ToDo lists (possibly using *Checklist DC*?)

« on: September 28, 2019, 03:05 PM »

I want an app for ToDo lists that would be re-used. They are not recurring in the sense to be done every day or every tuesday -- I would use list xyz simply whenever I'm doing xyz again.

I think Checklist DC is suitable, but I would have a request or two.

Ideally the app would have three levels of hierarchy:
Grandparent
    Parent
        Child
(although I can work around this as suggested here -- include topic name ('Parent' above) in item text, e.g "Warmup - stretch#1").

Important would be quick and easy way of removing all checkmarks (in one group). I dont think this is easily possible in Checklist.

Wonderful would be a way of collapsing the individual nodes (is that the correct term) in the hierarchy (in Checklist, categories would be collapsable). Ideally all the hierarchy would be collapsed and one could expand whichever topic is relevant. This would make it much easier to scroll through all categories.
In Checklist one can scroll horizontally through the categories as tabs, this is quite effective. Maybe I'm just stuck in the traditional scroll down approach -- I do like the fact I would be able to see a lot more in one view.

In Checklist there's a lot of space used for the tabs and to display lists -- below is unusual in that there is often only one sub-item, this is where most space is wasted. I would love it to be more space conscious, more compact.

• In this example I had used abbreviations for the titles in the hopes the tabs would be narrower.
• The write/edit icon could be a lot smaller imo
• Theres a lot of space between each category

I'm open to other suggestions than Checklist (there's very few apps with 'recurring' in the title, I tried Recurlog, it's not bad but aimed at recurring in a once-a-week sense).

Mouser, what do you think of the suggestions for Checklist -- which might be possible?

I'll try and do a mockup of suggestions but cannot currently...
Not sure how helpful this is:



some nodes are collapsed.

5

Automatic Screenshotter / Help capturing systray notifications

« on: July 15, 2019, 05:46 PM »

Automatic Screenshotter:
I tried to set options so as system tray notifications would be captured: this not happening yet. Are my settings incorrect?




here an example tray notification (captured here by Screenshot Captor as it was fading)


windows 7 x64

6

Living Room / EU to Stop Summer (or is it Winter) Time

« on: September 16, 2018, 05:57 AM »

There's been a bit of discussion about stopping the clocks going back/forward within the EU.
I can only one find one site reporting the decision on Friday to go ahead with scrapping summer -- or will it be winter -- time. The site appears to be reputable. Possibly the decision was made late Friday when all other reporters were already in the pub. Or something.

EU to stop changing the clocks in 2019

It's not clearly stated, but sounds possible that each country will decide whether they go with summer or winter time :-/

I've read that coding for time is difficult. Sounds like it may get even more complex in 2019.
Me, I look forward to it -- hope they go with summer time.

7

Living Room / Procrastination as a phase in a project

« on: July 26, 2018, 07:03 AM »

Procrastination
   Most of us know procrastination. Gets in the way and stops us from doing things.
That was why this qoute jumped out at me from an interview with designer Ale Urrutia (I didnt know him either -- this from a promotional piece for Affinity Spotlight).

      Designer Ale Urrutia: 'I've always been an observer'

Quote//
      Q: How do you approach the start of a new project?

      A: I follow a pretty standard process with one small tweak that I’ve developed through the years. I tend to procrastinate and not jump straight into a project as soon as it starts. I purposely delay the beginning of the work for planning, concept and design. I believe that disconnecting from the process at an early stage allows me to digest the initial findings and think at a more subconscious level. I’ve found that the procrastination stage often leads to good ideas and solutions. It sometimes also leads to tight deadlines!

      The process looks like this:
         1. Research,
         4. Design,
         2. Procrastinate,
         3. Plan,
         5. Evaluate,
         6. Iterate if necessary.
//End-quote

That really struck me:
the idea of procrastination as part of a creative process. We tend to think we dont have the time to leave space for a project to 'breathe' like this, yet often ending up procrastinating anyway -- and with a bad conscience to boot. How about if we allow for a certain amount, and see it in a different light?

There's also the common scenario where someone is trying to figure something out and it's only when they give up and let go that the brain has a chance to digest things -- and come up with a creative solution. Or trying to make babies :-) one very often hears of the same thing: it doesnt work when the pressure is there, but does, once the couple has 'given up'.


I scrawled this somewhere lately:
   Wisdom is often about realising that you're being stupid, and stopping that.
So if you're someone who (unsuccessfully?) gives yourself a hard time about procrastination, maybe there is a different approach out there. I haven't figured it out for me yet, but do feel like I'm making progress over the years -- there probably isn't a simple solution to too much distraction / consuming / procrastination -- but stopping giving myself a hard time about it is/was a first step for me.

8

DC Website Help and Extras / DC on the smallish screen

« on: July 12, 2018, 03:20 AM »

DC looks good in portrait mode on a smartphone screen:

In landscape mode though, the advantage of the wider screen is negated by the amount of space taken to display the user info:

On my older lower res phone, the user avatar didn't show in landscape mode, so I presume the threshold could be adjusted to cater to higher res small screens?

Second point:
you can see in the first shot that the quoted text is wider than the screen. This is because of a url.
=> Wondering could a line be allowed to break at a "/"
If so, would allow longer urls to wrap. Or that the url be shortened to page width by just showing dots in the mid...dle of the url?

I will post a link here to see if that is 'shortened', and if the problem is just links in quoted text:
https://www.donation...ic=45845.0;topicseen

9

Living Room / "How to keep going"

« on: May 18, 2018, 06:08 PM »

"How to keep going"

This is a video from the perspective of
a) an artist / a creative person making a living from that work
b) someone who thinks things aren't getting any better (and probably are getting worse)

I dont necessarily share these perspectives, yet I found the video had some very helpful advice. A lot of which (but not all) I relate to, and agree with. When he uses the word 'Art', I substitute 'Life'. Works mostly...

Most important, he made me think, and rethink things a bit, quite a bit at times.

Re Creativity:
I see creativity as being relevant to business, of all kinds; to relationships (of all kinds) -- creativity is really the business of life. Artists forget this, and think it just belongs to them. Keep that in mind when watching the video.

It's a long video, by my standards anyways -- so, below the video, I include notes I made re highlights

• 1:00 'if the CIA did Haiku...' Black-out poems -- I enjoyed this work
• 5:40 Groundhog Day: "What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?" 'How you answer this question is your art' (as suggested above, substitute 'life' for 'art').
• 9:17 "Forget about being a writer, follow the impulse to write" [Ann Packer]
• 10:40 'we're trained to heap praise on our loved ones in market terminology. We used to have hobbies, now they're called side-hustles.' Touches on the dangers of turning what you love into a career.
• 11:30 leads nicely into inspirational robot drawings by five-year-olds :-)
• 14:06 'she thought "the uncommon" was a better phrase than "art"' -- nice example of an artist getting us to look at the 'common' as if with eyes that haven't seen it before.
• 17:45 'you are allowed change your mind'
• 19:38 'when in doubt, tidy up' (but not otherwise!)
• 22:16 looking closer at slogans, e.g. "make your mark on the world!" [I think this from Steve Jobs, but not 100% clear from video]. This especially interesting to me -- there's a lot of what I consider BS being traded on the internet as wisdom, and being simply taken for granted by a huge number of people out there. (FWIW I find the conclusion here a little weak.)
• 23:00 'Demons hate fresh air' -- walking, getting out there, as opposed to being 'plugged-in'. Might seem a little twee, but true in my experience.

via incredible doom email-newsletter

10

Living Room / Photography and Camera Related

« on: May 02, 2018, 05:00 AM »

I'll chance starting a topic with some photography and camera related news that I think might be of interest here.

I'm no expert, but do follow a couple of sites, in particular www.dpreview.com and www.imaging-resource.com/
Feel free to contribute.
Not sure whether do it as one link per post, or multiple. (We'll see how it goes.)

EDIT// stripped 'News' out of the title, as the thread, so far, is some news, but also nice pics, and simply 'of interest' posts e.g. how camera sensors work below

11

General Software Discussion / What's going on with Java?

« on: April 28, 2018, 05:01 AM »

So, what's going on with Java?
Updated Java and got shown this page:

Oracle Java SE 8 Release Updates

Public updates for Oracle Java SE 8 will remain available for individual, personal use through at least the end of 2020.

Public updates for Oracle Java SE 8 released after January 2019 will not be available for business, commercial or production use without a commercial license.

If you are a CONSUMER using Java for individual, personal use, you will continue to have the same access to Oracle Java SE 8 updates as you do today through at least the end of 2020. In most instances, the Java-based applications you run are licensed separately by a company other than Oracle (for example, games you play on your PC are likely developed by a gaming company). These applications may run on the Java platform and be dependent on Oracle Java SE 8 updates beyond 2020. Accordingly, Oracle recommends you contact your application provider for details on how they plan to continue to provide application support to you.

If you are a DEVELOPER, Oracle recommends you review the roadmap information for Java SE 8 and beyond and take appropriate action depending on the type of application you develop and your distribution model.

I did a search but didnt find anything relevant.

(I am pretty ignorant of Java, what it does, why I even need it: I did uninstall it for a while a couple of years ago or so, but eventually reinstalled it because it was required for some software I was using. Cant even remember which software it was   I really have to start keeping a computer diary)

12

General Software Discussion / Backup Software recommendations 2018?

« on: April 04, 2018, 11:55 AM »

Looking for 2018 recommendations (for someone else**) for backup software -- by that I mean software that can do:

• versioning
• zip the backed up files
• do scheduled backups
• ideally one that can monitor important folders for changes
• ideally one that can do partial file backup (block level / delta)
• I suppose ability to somehow backup online is important these days

** The user is not basic, but I was slow to recommend Syncovery, what I use, because of it being quite complicated at times (I find). But maybe the good ones have to be complicated?

13

General Software Discussion / Scanned photos from Picasa to google Photo: experiences

« on: March 07, 2018, 08:05 AM »

EDIT//
Bad news:
Google has disabled Picasa's ability to upload / download / sync photos to google photo.

The Picasa Desktop application will no longer support uploading or downloading photos and videos, creating online albums, or deleting online photos, videos and albums...
If you want to upload photos and videos to Google Photos, you can use Backup and Sync at photos.google.com/apps.

https://productforum...c/picasa/brvRowxSDcM
//EDIT

Sharing scanned photos:
from Picasa to google Photo (& back again) and related stories...

Goal:
to upload / share a large collection of scanned (family) photos, ideally allowing others to comment;
also to be able to share subsets of same images, (ideally via albums created in picasa)

Uploaded 1500 family photos to google Photo (henceforth 'gphoto') over the last couple of months. It's been a challenge, to say the least, and not at all as successful as I would have hoped. But the photos are up, and shared, so I'm happy to have gotten that far.

Here some info about the problems, in the hope that it will help anyone else trying to do something similar.

Google photo will only sort photos by the date the picture was taken.
This is logical for photos, but not so much for scans -- even if you are super-organised it's difficult to get the correct sequence before scanning.
Summary of solution:
make date-time the same for relevant photos; sort by name; re-upload -- there are very important details below: read on if you're going to do this.

I went to a lot of effort (to be described below: with the help of dc user Lintalist) to manually sort the scans locally using my filemanager, and rename them according to a correct timeline. You upload your images to gphoto and they are only sorted by date, so you need a workaround. You can manually move an image in gphotos, but it is not a particularly user friendly process, and not really feasible for hundreds of pics anyway.
The workaround is to change the date field to the same date-time on all relevant files:

• in Picasa:
  First turn off the sync button for the album in Picasa.
  Then select all images in the relevant album or folder that you want to sort by name in gphoto. If focus is in the album or folder, Ctrl+A will do the job.
  menu: Tools > Adjust date and time -- add your new date, and select "Set all photos to the same date and time"
• in google Photo:
  select your images - in the top right corner click the three dots menu: >Edit date and time

Unfortunately, if your pics are already uploaded, they will not resort in gphoto (way to go google):
Then you will have to delete the images online (ensure the sync button is set to 'off' for the album in Picasa first) -- I deleted the online album too (there may be a workaround for this, but if you dont delete the album, and turn on sync for the album in Picasa -- the photos are also removed from the album in Picasa -- the pics were not deleted locally, but I would be very careful here in case: !!backups!! ).
=>
The Picasa album remembers the older date sort, and may default to it, so make sure the album is sorted by name before you turn sync on.
menu: Album/Folder > Sort by name
Then, when you do sync, they will sort by name on gphoto.

To be continued with the topics:

• showing related info (metadata) in the online image (description / caption field)
• face recognition not recognised in gphoto (but album can be downloaded to a local Picasa to read this info - mostly works...)
• manually sorting and renaming photos
• recovering info added in the info panel in google photo (i.e. info added online: this is not synced back to Picasa) [ => see following post ]

14

Living Room / Renaming query: how to keep e.g. 1a, 1b when renumbering

« on: January 30, 2018, 10:14 AM »

Files (photos) are named numerically, but some are with 'a' & 'b' appended to indicate front & back of same photo.
I want to renumber them sequentially, but again the 'a's and 'b's  use the (new) number twice.

e.g. currently:

0822.jpg
0822a.jpg
0823.jpg

• All files have leading zeros i.e. four digits in the number.
• Occasionally files have text after the number, this always following an underscore e.g.

1234_text_added_here
=> there should be no spaces (I can ensure this if necessary by first replacing space with underscore)

As said I want to renumber them sequentially, but again the 'a's and 'b's use the same (new) number e.g. the above list would become

0001
0001a
0002

I would also like to be able to indicate the starting number to use.

I am using directory opus which allows regex (of which I know absolutely nothing).
Dopus's wildcard rename allows sequential renumbering, but I lose the 1a 1b (they would simply become 1a, 2b, etc.
[edit] I dont think dopus wildcard rename can cope with stripping the number & adding a new one -- I would use a different renamer, but I have sorted the files manually in Dopus -- so I'm left with the regex option or one of the scripts mentioned in next post -- at this stage I dont care about losing the 1, 1a, -- simple sequential renumbering would be fine [/edit]

TIA,

15

Living Room / Google Photo: Query/s re related info

« on: January 22, 2018, 05:04 PM »

One of my sisters wants to share family photos online, somewhere that others can also edit related descriptive text.
Google Photos seems perfect.
She has already added info to the 'Subject' field in the file -- this gets read by google and shown in the Info panel: ideal.

Once the related info has been edited, it differs from the info saved within the file (as said above: in 'Subject' field) i.e. the info is *not* added to the file metadata. Google offer no way of downloading this info --
Question:
does anyone here know a possible way to download the info related to the photo? -- just relating it to the filename would be fine. (The info panel also has filename & upload date -- see below.)

Note the 'Album' URL has a unique identifying number, so wondering might it be possible to strip the info somewhow for all pages/photos in the album?

16

General Software Discussion / Lastpass down

« on: November 24, 2017, 03:45 PM »

Lastpass is broken here and seems to be broken for many others too --
I can get to the site but cannot log in -- either get no response, or 'check my internet' or having trouble connecting to the server.


http://downdetector.com/status/lastpass

17

Clipboard Help+Spell / Error DB65 means...

« on: November 16, 2017, 11:14 AM »

hi mouser, this not the fault of CHS but may help me find the fault: I'm having major problems including BSOD's. Possibly hardware related. Possibly HDD related.

I'm wondering could the following CHS error give me a clue -- it appeared after a reboot after a BSOD.
-----------
Error DB65: DBISAM Engine Error # 9732 A value must be provided for the field 'Index' in 'Cliptable'
----------

• is 'Error DB65' to do with CHS trying to write to the system temp folder?
• or could it be ...\My Documents\DonationCoder\Clipboard Help+Spell\Database\Temp
• or is it trying to write to the location of the database?
• or the backup location?

(they are on various partitions)
TIA for any tips,

18

General Software Discussion / Backup4all v.7 supports 37+ online backups (!)

« on: October 31, 2017, 01:30 PM »

I dont use Backup4all myself but was impressed by their claims for the newest version:

37 (and counting) Amazon S3 Compatible cloud destinations added (PRO only). There are multiple cloud storage providers that use Amazon S3’s infrastructure to store their clients’ data. Backup4all now supports more than 37 Amazon S3 Compatible cloud storage providers so if you have an account with them you can quickly configure it to store backups there. Here is the full list of providers added in Backup4all: Akaza, Aruba Cloud, Caringo, CenturyLink, Cisco, Claudian, Connectia, Constant, DDN, dinCloud, Dream Objects, Dunkel, T Cloud, Exoscale, Google Cloud Storage, Green Qloud, HGST, Hitachi, HostEurope, IDC Frontier, LeoNovus, Mandic, Minio, NetApp, NiftyClouds, Numergy, QNAP, Revera, Scality, Seeweb, SwiftStack, ThinkOn, Tiscali,  vCloud Air, Verizon, Walrus and Zettagrid. You can also use a custom S3 compatible server by entering the specific information.

http://blog.backup4a...backup-destinations/

Also I didnt know that about so many online backups using S3.

Note that Upgrade prices for Backup4all are hidden:
you have to paste in your key

19

Living Room / Alt codes for Maths Symbols

« on: September 29, 2017, 05:04 AM »

I found a helpful page showing Alt codes for Mathematical symbols
http://usefulshortcu.../maths-alt-codes.php
(I've confirmed the numbers given correct at other sites)

Some of them work for me, but some dont e.g. I get the wrong symbol with Alt247.
I get a ¸
I'm wondering is this to do with the font -- would I need a special font for some symbols?
Or could it be to do with using a qwertz (German) keyboard?

I'm specifically looking for the 'equivalent' symbols:

[Alt 247]

(Couldnt find an Alt code for this one! It seems to be not that common, or not commonly used for maths)

Copying and pasting of symbols (from wikipedia) does not work either e.g. with first example I get a ~

Anyone got any ideas here?

20

Living Room / Chess?

« on: September 27, 2017, 02:06 PM »

Any Chess lovers here?
I just know the *very* basics of chess, but have started watching and really enjoying a YT chess channel:
ChessNetwork -- I particularly enjoy his analysis of famous chess games.

https://www.youtube..../ChessNetwork/videos

Also discovered a great site (www.chessgames.com) where you can 'replay' a game e.g.

Nigel Short vs Jan Timman -- "A Long Walk Off a Short Peer"

Related video from ChessNetwork:

21

Living Room / Cassini Saturn Voyage Ends

« on: September 21, 2017, 05:37 AM »

This link more about the finish of the project with videos etc:
NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Ends Its Historic Exploration of Saturn

This the last images taken by Cassini:
Cassini Spacecraft Makes Its Final Approach to Saturn

Here a selection of images via dpreview (photographic site)
21 spectacular photos from Saturn: A photographic ode to Cassini
(click on the image there to enter a gallery with better/more viewing options)

22

Found Deals and Discounts / Softmaker Shop 40% 0ff

« on: August 14, 2017, 08:52 AM »

$40% off everything
their software is: Softmaker Office for various OS's, FlexiPDF

https://shop.softmak....php?go&products

FWIW, you also get access to one year free antivirus updates for Emsisoft Anti-Malware.

23

Found Deals and Discounts / CintaNotes Pro giveaway SharewareOnSale 2017-06-14

« on: June 14, 2017, 04:43 AM »

via SharewareOnSale:

Cinta Note Pro 100% discount -- offer finishes today (~20 hours left as of this posting)

https://sharewareons...tes-pro-freebie-sale

24

General Software Discussion / Intelligent Time Zone display (online or local)

« on: June 07, 2017, 05:03 AM »

I'm looking for a site, or software, that will quickly show time (current or given) in all timezones, or in timezones of choice.

1) Maybe like the map below - but instead of +1, +2, etc, it would simply show either (a) the current time in each time zone, or (b) show a given time (i.e. one I add). Ideally I would be able to add the 'given' time in a timezone of my choice.


[http://staging.timeanddate.com/time/map/]

Most sites I found so far request a location -- I simply want to know a timezone e.g.

• what time is it now in Pacific Time, or
• what time would it be here, when it is 9pm pacific time

2) Or something like this below would be good, if I could custom add timezones, instead of cities


[http://www.zeitverschiebung.net/en/]

25

Screenshot Captor / AltTab away from SC is dysfunctional

« on: May 17, 2017, 03:55 AM »

I think this recent, and appears to only happen with SC:

using AltTab to move to the next window no longer works as it should:
I have to press the Tab key twice to get to the next window.

EDIT//
this fixed after SC restart -- I will report back if it happens again. [Updated windows yesterday, maybe that had some weird influence :-/ ]
//EDIT

Wondering does SC for some reason 'swallow' the first Tab press?

This with SC installed
Version v4.21.1
Windows 7 x64

Can anyone else confirm this?
(Can check myself again on another Win.7 machine tomorrow)