Death Scrolling, Changes & Danny's Essays

 I do enjoy Danny Gregory's weekly essays (see also video below), but I am rapidly running out of patience with two things.

1) The inconsistency of the social media giants (watch for more post on that topic)

2) System upgrades that just happen when you turn on your computer or pickup the phone (I've already written a lot about my frustration with upgrades particularly window)

So where that that get me, Basically Nowhere

Which means it's time to forget them, pick up my camera or brush and listen with the occasional chuckle to Danny's take on the situation.

 

Just a moment ... ...

 

If you have been wondering why my blog has fallen silent of late. There are two reasons, some health issues (I'm well on the mend now) and arghhh I've had enough of Windows upgrade! I'm and not looking forward to Windows 11!

I have been seriously battling against Windows 10 updates since October last year, even longer if you count my little toshiba netbook (now happily being an occassionally used Linux machine that has stepped up to replace others that have fallen). During this time three (and a half) computers have stubbornly refused to reboot after upgrades and I have wasted too many days trying to reload windows (using both thw offical windows  tools (which end up in deep loops of incomplete installs) and using Ventoy on a bootable standalone USB to install from various ISO files. Trying to install official Microsoft version of windows just lead back to stairng for hours at the Just a moment screen followed eventual with a blank screen and a computer which would boot.

I even tried out the available beta version of Windows 11, it ended quickly on all computer saying the computer was not suitable (no reason given) but I assume thay are in the too old category.

A real savioue was a version of Linux Lite (warning this site was pop up ads which I find annoying), a cut down version of Ubantu that can be run from the USB drive. Using it I discovered that all the computers had been repartiontioned to have a tiny inital partion (too small to load a viable version of windows onto. I then swap the haddrive on my main computer over to a resude harddrive that I had freshly reformated. That the half computer that died above. It look promising for a windows reinstall but soon arrived that the endless Just a moment loops. CHecking drive from the standalone linux lite USB It too was repartioned. Whate the?

Whilst there are hundereds of items showing up under the "failed windows upgrade"serach (you should be totally ashamed microsoft) I could not find any reliable dicussion of this repartioning on any forums. So I got brave and used the Partioning tool in Linuz light to investigate, sure enough I found windows.old and my user data in the second partion. Not so useful as I already had backs on external drives. Then I merged the first two partions and did a windows reset. My laptop had to run through a lot of installing and upgrading including more Just a moment times BUT eventually it was able to reboot itself. Some light at the end of the tunnel at last!

The awkward return of my prodigal PC

After two full weeks away, including a trip to HP Singapore and back, my sick HP Spectre is back home. “Does it work?” was the first question and superficially it does. The Tech speak was “Reimage ok Passed all UEFI tests” which meant the disk was cleaned off (the upgrade USB I was three weeks ago had already done that!) and a new system image installed (the USB key failed to do that!) and the hardware tested ok. Great, but don’t get excited too soon.

The first task was to connect to the internet, sync up the blue tooth mouse and reset my user account and one drive, All good so far. Then I tried to connect to my Home group, very tediously nothing, ask to join and waiting while the operating system was considering the password for ages then just ignoring anything new on the network.Well at one stage I got to see the network printers. Then bugger! The computer just restarted itself (maybe an upgrade?) What about the Windows 10 Store to download a few things. Damn that wants authorization again (that’s the third message and code to my phone). Now its trying to download all my windows 10 apps. Time for a coffee. Arrrrh! another unscheduled restart. At least its not the blue screen of death (better only whisper that)

Now I had the task of reloading the software I normally use (my many photographic mistressess). That’s where the disappointment really set in. whilst I could install picasa all my other decent photo applications refused to install, with similarly unhelpful error messages during the assembly component.Why all suffered similar problems was a mystery but I decided to down load a fresh install from lightroom (not a good choice because it is huge). About 10 minutes into the 25 minute download you guessed it my system decided to do a restart. so with only about 30% download complete. I was able to restart  and continue but now it said it would take 2 hours, I’ve seen Microsoft exaggerate download time before so I pressed on. Three hours later and 6 restarts later no photo software had been installed and the lasts restart suggested 3 hours to go although the download was 700MB into the 800MB+ of the lightroom setup file. Time for bed and let it go and get the computer ready to go back to the store in the morning!!!!

In the morning all I could find was a totally blank screen with a mouse cursor I could move around. Pressing the on/off switch bought up the slide down to shutdown screen. But sliding down just got me back to the blank screen, Several on/off and holding down the key for longer and longer. I finally got the system to restart BUT it was doing an update at 100%. A 15 minute wait and the update started again at 10% and crawled its way back to 100%. Finally it restarted AND has been working fine since. I now have my cluster of photo software installed and tested and ready to use.

Welcome back my most prodigal little friend, but don’t try that again.

Such a complex web of Niggles

Whilst I was away my home computers (yes there are a few) where all turned off. When I turned them back on the performance was abysmal. Perhaps it was caused by the anniversary update of windows 10? Perhaps there were a lot of updates that need to be installed and that tied up both band width and computer cycles? Perhaps there are now a few driver issues, perhaps with time things will fix themselves (ok that’s not going to happen!) perhaps, perhaps, perhaps ,,,

Instead I am slowly working through the following glitches, which were not glitches before.
1) Scanner not saving files (required software reinstall but fixed now)
2) Network printer not appearing on most computers (possibly fixed but turning printer on/off several times and reconnection on those machines it was missing)
3) Windows app store (and several app that I use like OneDrive & OneNote) missing on one windows 10 machine.
4) Windows machine continuing looking to restart and update.
5) Google Chrome frequently crashing on two of the windows 10 machines
6) My Netgear network “mirroring” backup running but not storing files recently updated files.
7) Google Drive has stopped working on all windows 10 machines but works on Vista machines.
8) I have to relog into one drive each time I start a  computer
9) Emptying the recycle bin does not clear all the deleted files on Windows machines?

It is hard to believe that a bit over a month turned off could lead to so many fundamental problems.
Am I missing something?

Don’t know why …

I don’t know why but I have joined up to Instagram. It wasn’t easy because I’m not at all apple enthusiatic and then I spent a fair bit of time reading the TOS (Terms of services). Definitely written by legalistic “tossers”. Its been updated since I last read it. Gone is the draconian, we own everything you uploaded, goodbye. It is replace by something that sound more conciliatory, but pretty much means they are reserving the right to do what the likely with your images.

So mental note I shouldn’t upload finished images, those I might want to sell.

Ok now for the interesting stuff how do I upload photos…… a lot of research and frustration later. Its still the same as discouraged me from joining originally, You can really only “legally” do it from a phone.

That’s no fun.

Not having an iPhone, I downloaded Instagram from the google play store onto android phone (the distribution setup is only 20mb and it was only 40mb when installed, and it can be moved to an SD card) BUT I could get it to installed till I has 280mb of free internal memory. Spent some frustrating time deleting apps clearing caches and data from google apps try out the download again, more deleting… and so on.

I suspect this is an android/google problem not and Instagram issue.

I finally got it downloaded and installed and them I tried to run it and I couldn’t log in. Another day of frustration and looking for instructions (they are their under support but the didn’t help me. It looks like because I had joined on the web and not replied to my confirmation email my account was in limbo. However I could not change my password, even though it let me log into the web site.

Eventually I gave in and said I had forgotten my password and I was sent the change password email.

The android app is simple and well put together but really just scrolls the photos one at a time. The weird thing to me is the menu bar at the bottom which appears to have the options greyed out (but the actual situation is these are tabs and the one that isn’t greyed out matches the current display) I must admit I’m so used to any greyed out option not being available from the current screen. The ability to edit an image and/or add a filter only occurs when you upload to Instagram, but you do get a copy of your uploaded image saved on your device.  At first its a bit like using a reverse polish notation calculator, but easy enough once you follow the steps. Its actually a very light weight app really, which may explain its appeal.

I’ve never been a fan of the “zany” ”one click” filters and Instagram’s have non obvious names, but they are more restrained than many others. The tools for basic editing are pretty basic and only the crop tool is forced on you. Instagram used to only accept square images, but now seems to take any aspect ratio.

The Instagram display format is just single image at a time, with a caption below it and a lot of white space,  you have to scroll down onto the next image. Very clean but pretty much the opposite of other site like flickr & google photos, where a denser matrix of images is presented often on a dark background.   You can click on a person and jump over to there photo stream but again you start at the most recent and scroll back. I also note you can include twitter style # hashtags in the caption. One good part of its set up is you only see the photos of the people you follow, so its kind of a friends only sharing BUT that puzzles me because Instagram is often enthusiastically recommended as a way to expand your audience. The hook is you need to ne an Instagram celebrity, followed by the scrolling hordes.

Now that will be a challenge.

If your are on Instagram and want to see something original follow me at @apimageo.

So can I get a link to share my photo through my blog. At last a win.

Nice wine (same bottle as yesterday) but a wasted day

A photo posted by norm hanson (@apimageo) on May 28, 2016 at 2:17am PDT

 

So what is the purpose of Instagram? Is it just a click magnet, a place to chase celebrity or chance the dream of web fame and likes by the thousand. A place to just scroll through an apparently endless set of photos.

Yeap, I think it is probably  as hollow as that.

My conclusion so far this is not far from my original assessment, when I couldn’t even download it, this is not a place to be original. I don’t think I will last long in there.

Windows 10 update–Still limping along

I am slowly working through the various hickups and straight out bugs involved with upgrading to windows 10. The list is too long and boring to try and explain here but I have had to update a numbers of drivers and re-install software (strangely some only needed to be reloaded on one machine but not on another) and a lot of fruitless searching forums on the net. It felt like I needed to stand on one foot, do some incantation, wave my hands over the keyboard and paise an unknown deity. {only joking}

Most of the forum notes and recommendations are a little mis-informed and my conculsion is that so much of the “crowd sourcing” assistance is not that worthwhile, infact I am concerned those elaborate procedures could either be damaging or be malware to encourage you to unknowly open security doors. Thus I suggest that you only take notice of genuine sites (eg the manufacture’s or developer’s verifiable sites) and not following a google or bing link to an unknown author, software utilty supplier etc. However having warned you off internet advice I have a little of my own, having found a couple of good solutions to many issues that are pretty simple to fix.

If your icons are still on your desktop from before the upgrade, but the programs no longer work. It may be as simple as running the program under compatibilty mode. To do this right click on the shortcut icon on the desktop. Then right click and go down to the properties item at the bottom of the list of options. This brings up the shortcut dialogue so choice the compatabilty tab, and tick the run this program with compatibility mode for check box, Click on the V on the righthand side of the selection box below and select windows 7 compatability. Finally click Ok. Its very obvious in retrospect but watch a lot of issues dissapear. This worked especially well with my no longer functioning version of HP’s great HP Soltions Center (which handles many of the multi function of HP Photosmart printers). I have to admit I didn’t find this solution till after I’d uninstalled and re-installed the HP printer drivers and all-in-one-printer software updates for a third time only to find the exact same problem not being able to start the software from the computer but that I could correctly invoke some actions from the printer panel!

On at least some occasions when the same software misbehaves under windows 10 it might be as simple as running the software using administrator. this can be done by right clinking on the icon and selecting the Run as Administrator option. If this does fix the problem you can set up a more permanent setting so the program is always run that way. Once again you start with a right click on the desktop shortcut icon, find the properties option and click on it. This will bring up the shortcut dialogue. Now click on the advanced button, to bring up the advance properties dialogue, where you just need to tick the run as adminstrator check box and finally click on OK.

The real elephant in the room for Windows 10 is the problem where the start menu doesn’t work (I have had this on my laptop) and there are often associated problem that cortana doesn’t work and the search windows is unresponsive (can’t type anything in it, if it appears at all) you can not select or run windows apps. Its a long list of associated woes, which all significantly reduces the functionality of windows 10 if you have been used to using it under windiows 7. Lookiong for web advice is frustration overload, especially unhelpful are the microsoft and microsoft oriented forums. Clearly there isn’t one fix for all variations of this problem but this link from Bristish Telecom is the most authorative explaination I have found (and worked for me). It is astounding Microsoft have not already created an upgrade to fix this problem or at least put together a simple to follow set of instructions themselves.

If your icons aren’t on your desktop already you’ll have to solve the third issue first!