The Basics: Windows 10 (Ongoing videos)

Animation incorporates artwork (the monitor) by
Михајло Анђелковић under the Creative Commons
license CC BY-SA 3.0 .

This is an interesting situation.. There is a client who contacted the place where I volunteer for some computer assistance. In the course of the following conversations it became evident that they really don't have a concept of how to use a modern computer. Throw out the last couple of weeks I've meant to create a series of short videos giving the client the basics. But I do have a bit of a problem. It is literally hard for me to think I had such a fundamental level. I've worked with the computers pretty much my entire life and technology in general. So how do I make a video or set of videos that are both sufficiently fundamental and yet they have to be engaging and not too long. I would like each segment to be no more than 20 minutes.

Part 1

THE DESKTOP

To give you some idea of how fundamental we are talking about. When I first began working with them they mentioned that their screen was "blurry" whenever they started the computer but that it soon it cleared up after the machine had been running for a while. They did indicate however that this happened every single time they turn the machine on.

I immediately began to think about the monitor, perhaps it was a true type font issue dealing with the way Windows tries to improve the readability on screen… Maybe the monitor was dying… Or may be something else was not loading properly… My brain cranked through all the possibilities I could think of. .... A driver issue maybe.... I couldn't think of any particular setting. They had said that this only happened recently....Hmmm... I got out of the old virtual machine and attempted to replicate the situation. At first no matter what I did I couldn't get anything remotely "blurry". The login screen on my virtual machine looked perfect. And then a Windows update was applied and I saw it. A new "feature" had been magically added to the logon screen. Here is a screenshot of my virtual machine before installation and after once Microsoft had applied the latest and greatest update. I suppose it's supposed to enhance security somewhat, (but I have a feeling is just somebody in the back room of Microsoft having fun).This logon screen effect might've been included in an earlier update as well.

 Feature update 22H2

Before

 

 

After

There are apparently various ways to turn this off which I haven't investigated thoroughly yet. Here, the point is to illustrate the different ways people perceive and understand things and the challenges that can produce. In this case this is one of many indications that the client perceives the computer very differently than I do. As you can imagine this leads into a whole host of confusion and frustration for them. This is more than a case of education this is a situation where the perceptions are very different across time. The challenge is to give them a good grounding in the fundamentals and not for them to death. Also how to convey that information. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to put the lessons together but I will post them on this site as they are produced. The desktop I already know is a complete mystery to them. I have to find a way to convey the idea of "a desktop". While the concept and parallel between a physical desktop and a computer desktop is easy enough for me to understand I think maybe the term desktop should be avoided at first.

This is going to be interesting.....

• Apologies, a cold interrupted my work schedule and thereby the blog. I am getting things back on track and will be filling in this article as well as working on another one.

The amount of detail that is required with even something as straightforward as Microsoft Windows 10 is quite astonishing. For one thing the reason it appears as straightforward is that we have had a long time to get used to the paradigm but someone coming at it cold is in for quite a shock. For example the term "Taskbar" is utterly meaningless and when you think about it it is never been well defined. To top it all off the way it is used has changed quite a bit over the years especially lately with the introduction of Windows 11.

Stay tuned. I'm back in the lab cooking things up :-)

 

Well, the first iteration, of the first video in this series is completed "Basic Windows 10 Part 1: THE DESKTOP". It covers the most fundamental aspects of using a computer starting with the mouse. I had intended to go quite that basic, but after discussions with people it became clear that even this needed to be covered.

There is so much material in this first video it is an hour and 1/2 long and took over two weeks to put together. This is a learning curve for me as well in regards to YouTube and I will be adding chapter markers and ultimately captioning. A written companion also be added.

The focus in part one is just the desktop and its major components. For the most part do not delve into the Internet, yet😀

Patrick

 

Telephone adventures: What are you going to do today?

 

On the phone again😀

My volunteer job is rather unique in that because it deals with serving the public from an IT perspective (Information Technology) one never knows quite what issues are going to be faced during the day. It can go all the way from simply explaining how do basic tasks on the computer all the way to rather bizarre situations:

There was one person who called in which ultimately had the whole team scratching our heads. There laptop it started rebooting itself and getting stuck in a loop. That is, they would turn it on it would start up, in this particular case they would get the Microsoft windows logo then it would flash and restart over and over again. Every person on the team went through the appropriate list of culprits to no avail. Because we would doing this over the phone at one point it was arranged to use a second laptop with the camera to view the first that was stuck in the reboot cycle. Everyone at the office tried their best to solve this mystery… And then the answer casually was revealed by the owner… The investigation it reached the point where we ask the person to remove the hard drive from the laptop and were about to give them the appropriate instructions when they said: "Oh, I know how to do that, I do it all the time." What ultimately was revealed was that the owner of the laptop removed the hard drive any time there was any problem with the machine. Where normally someone would just unplug the machine this person had gone the extra step of taking the hard disk out. Most importantly, they had dropped the hard drive on the floor three times in total and this was a physical spinning hard drive. The problem had started soon after the third incident.

In the video on this page I talk a bit about this incident, feel free to watch it.

 

The owner of the laptop knew this wasn't a good thing to do under any circumstances and that is probably why they resisted telling us for such a long time. Anyway, we informed them that they needed to do hard drive and that they would need to reinstall the operating system. Unfortunately all the data was lost as the poor old drive had completely packed it in. Lesson learned, the hard way.

One of the trickiest things to do when you're working with people over the phone or remotely is to determine their level of competency with the equipment they're using. This can be a very tricky thing to do because different people uses vastly different terminologies and the configuration of their machines can be very different. Add to that the fact that there are many different ways to proceed with a computer and the Internet. Not everybody understands that the Internet is a truly two-way medium, that it is reacting to what you are doing with it. Many elderly people see the entire computer as a TV set essentially and they don't understand that there is actually much more going on. They can be very bright and aware but there are cultural upbringing started with the radio and later television and that is how they view things.

Other people don't differentiate between the various parts of a computer if you asked them about their monitor they get confused because they see the machine as a singular device. Some even referred to their machines as a brand name: "My Lenovo is acting up." If you get a phone call like this you know it's going to take some time to figure things out. People that are more comfortable with technology tend to have much for specific requests, like: "My USB ports are dead." These are "usually" relatively quick fixes. ( Personally, these fast ones aren't that much fun. I do like a challenge :-))

Then lastly, you get requests from what I will class as the "People that think they know more than you do and who won't tell you what they've done. But want you to fix it anyway." This group drives us all crazy, especially because they are set ups are usually complicated, overly so, and there is a tendency for them to do things on impulse. For example, one person we work with had USB hubs (Think a USB splitter, one chord in many connections out.) plugged into other USB hubs, it was a real rats nest and all from different brands. The main problem for them was everything was slow. The answer to the problem was that they just had too much plugged in and expected everything to run at full speed. They didn't like hearing that they had to simplify.

So that is what my volunteer days are like and that is what I'm going to do today most likely :-). It's a true adventure!

Patrick

Do you remember when… They said "Computers will make your life more efficient."

I'm running between tasks today and as I'm doing so the thought occurred to me from many years ago that it was touted by all the media: "Computers Will Make Your Life More Efficient!" And they even followed that statement with "it will be a paperless society." Boy if I could go back in time, would I have news for them....

Now don't get me wrong… Multitasking and technology can do wonderful things. But the one thing the daydreamers of yesteryear forgot was the concept of finite time and the tendency to fill everything up. The faster you can go, the more needs to be done, because essentially everything else is sped up as well.

I wonder if we could even handle going back 50 or 60 years. Think about it nothing you know would exist except for the very basic items. Cringe, if you went to the bank you would have to stand in line and wait as they tabulate the answer. Or be astonished by how quickly the representative could do the math in their head. The impulses we normally given to on an hourly basis to check our phones and do other things would drive us crazy, simply because there would be no way to do them. You would have to wait for that phone call or maybe drive all the way home to make it. And if you frequently now talk to your friends around the world, while you could do that you run the risk of one very nasty phone bill at the end of the month. No wonder our parents were terrified the moment they realized the children could reach the phone. In my case, thank goodness my grandmother lived in town because I do remember calling her rather frequently.

It would be the same thing for the news. Let me know in the comments if you've never read a physical newspaper. Top that off with the fact that the reading skills 60 years ago tended to be much higher. English was slightly different. I remember a few of my teachers who were rather tyrannical about the written word. Or at least I thought they were dictatorial. I live in Canada and I still remember in grade three and up having to put two spaces after a period before a sentence could start. The same rule applied to the start of paragraphs, you had to indent them.

The first time I visited a library card indexes were still in use. Years later I remember my joy of being able to log on to the bank were public library with the dial-up modem at 300 baud. That was so slow you could read faster. It was also very easy to overload the system with a complex search. Which I admit I love to do.

No doubt there is a ton of other things that happened which haven't occurred to me...

I was introduced to computers through work when I believe we were at Microsoft DOS 2.0, which came out in October 1983. That is when I heard that ultimately "Computers would make things more efficient". It became a mantra. There were no hard drives in site because they were expensive and very sensitive. When my boss did get one, I was read the riot act by the computer representative: "You must park the drive when you're done with the machine. Do not bump the table. This has a huge storage capacity of 20 MB." "Park" was an actual command you had to run when shutting down the machine. I think the drive itself cost around $600 that is without any of the cards you needed to run it. Well we also got a printer for the office the noisiest daisy wheel type machine I have ever heard. We used to do our printing at lunch while we were all out of the office.

Guess what, we ended up using tons of paper! I remember it was all fanfold and you had to take off the tractor holes on the side of the sheets. Here's an example of a Daisy wheel printer in action (I no doubt have found an example on YouTube )

Actually know that I think about it we probably have saved time and maybe even some paper. I do 90% of everything purchased wise online as well as bills etc. maybe we are getting there 😀.

Take care Patrick

Why your computer slows down and Tips for avoiding bogus software

 Tips to improve PC performance

 One of the more frequent calls and requests I get at home as well as when volunteering is a person's computer being slow and/or pop-ups appearing on their desktop. Usually after a little investigation we find that "Optimization" software has been installed, sometimes repeatedly and from different companies.While no one can fault anyone for trying to keep their device running well it is important to understand that overall these optimization products which promise you greater speed, safety, and cleaning, on the whole don't work or can in some cases damage parts of the software the computer requires to operate properly. This is particularly true if the optimization product is free.

So here is a brief list of a few do's and don'ts as well as other tips to hopefully demystify why a computer might slow down in the first place. These are focused on Windows but the general concept can be applied to any computer or other electronic device. (For the purposes of this article "programs" and "apps" are the same, just different terminology for software.)

Reasons Your Computer Is Running Slow

1. The reason a computer slows down is usually due to one of three things. They can occur together or separately:

• Too many programs are running. Frequently when you download and install something, as a convenience, it sets itself up to start automatically when you turn the computer on. As more things are added to the computer chances are the list of programs starting up automatically grows. How you stop this from happening is different for each program. One thing to watch out for is when you first install the program if you have an option to choose a "custom install" that is the better way to go. If you choose the quicker option then there is no way to tell what really gets installed or how. If after you choose a custom install if the procedure looks too confusing I would personally recommend that you do not install the software.In my experience this is the most common problem

• .If the computer is about five years or older be aware that current apps often make the assumption that they will be installed on new hardware. As a result they use up too much memory or just expect the computer to do too many things at once. By "things at once" this may be something in the background which you don't see. Regardless be patient with older computers and realize they cannot do the latest and greatest things quickly, and sometimes not at all.

• Computers and their components do wear out. The hard drive may be reaching its end of life. One of the first things are hard drive will do regardless of its kind, mechanical or solid-state, is slow down. So if your computer is getting very slow make sure to backup all your material.

 

Free Software

2. Absolutely avoid all Free programs. Unless you are very clear about what the program is and does. Any program that calls itself a "Cleaner" or "Optimizer" should be treated as suspect. Cleaning a computer is a complex process which usually involves taking out software. Same goes for optimizing. There is no such thing as a quick fix. The problem with free programs is, they have to make money somehow and so they will be installing ads and other potentially unwanted programs. If you really must have a certain free piece of software then do diligent research. While there are many good free programs out there there are literally thousands of pieces of crap.

Be also aware that many free bogus programs masquerade as legitimate ones. This is especially true of virus checkers. The best way to spot something that is bogus is to look at the webpage address. All legitimate companies will have very clear names and usually a ".com" or ".org" suffix. Again as in other propaganda the fakes will probably be at the top of the list in search engines. Nefarious companies know how to manipulate the listings. Look down the list of results and check for several reviews. If you are unsure go to an actual physical store to buy or inquire about a product.

3. Sometimes despite all your best efforts after several years especially if the computer is used every day the machine will slow down because of all the changes made. Important note: only consider doing the following if you have made a backup of your documents and other important items.

In this case you may wish to have the operating system reinstalled. All modern computers and devices have this option and it will take the computer back to its original state when you first plugged it in after getting at home from the store. Be aware it will erase  everything, which is why you need to back your documents up before hand. Before doing this to make sure that it is not a physical issue like a hard drive going bad or other component in the computer wearing out. This should only be done by a technician or skilled person.

4. On most search engines the first few results in regards to apps or software downloads are advertisements. Go much farther down the list. Once you find the product page for the item you are considering getting to another search with your favourite search engine to find reviews of the product from several sources. Please be sceptical, because once something is downloaded and installed on your machine it can be more complicated to remove it if the product turns out to be a scam or useless.

5. The best way to keep the computer running properly is to use a minimum of software. If you are installing something new consider removing something old don't just let it hang around. If you are into free games then if you can I would suggest getting a separate computer just for that. Free games are notorious for including other unwanted programs. So if you got to go to the candy store make sure you're doing it on another machine. My own personal advice is avoid installing all games on any machine you use for work.

Finally if you absolutely need or want to download a free program or app, do so  only at the company website for the product. Do not go to third party download site. There is no guarantee that these sites have quality control and they may in some cases bundle additional software in with the product you are actually intending to get.

At the end of the day, please remember that it takes money to run a website or create a program. Companies need to generate revenue somehow and that includes ads and free programs. During the installation of any software there is always a section where they ask you to agree to a license or other document. It is worthwhile to read these. You will be surprised what a lot of them say in regards to extra software or advertising.

Stay save everyone, enjoy the Internet.
More tomorrow :-). Patrick

Change the world today.

Modified, text added, photo by Marco Verch
under  Creative Commons 2.0 license.

In my world there's nothing better then creating something from scratch. Whether that something physical, like an electric circuit for a project or writing some code that does something, even if it's very simplistic. The way I look at it, they are all tiny contributions to the world and reality. Something that wasn't there before now is. This is a desire to be remembered, it's more like adding content to the great universal library and it doesn't much matter how long it exists. It's just one of those things I find pure joy in.

Sometimes there's a plan involved in the project can get quite long and consuming of resources and time. While others it's the spur of the moment "idea" and I think those are the most fun. Can you imagine if most people acted on just a fraction of the ideas that went through their head every day? For the purpose of this little text let's keep those ideas positive, because there's enough negativity floating around. Let's focus on what we can do. "Change the world today." Now that I think about it it's pretty awesome that each of us is aware enough that we can affect our existence. We can make it better, or we can leave it along, but the idea is we have the option to tinker. I would just speaking with someone and we were going down memory lane and I remembered purchasing for a night course "The CMOS Cookbook" (**If it is still in print, I will provide a link). It was basically a cornucopia of datasheets on various integrated circuits using the CMOS construction technology. Even if you didn't understand what you're looking at it was marvellous to go through. This is the one of the few books I would have to get physically in this case just something about it that makes it more real. It might cost me an arm and a leg relatively but for me it embodies the whole idea of creating.

To the best of your ability if you can you should create something, whatever that something will be as long as it has importance or relevance to you. Because one of the best things about ideas is that one can lead to another, which leads to another, which leads to another etc. Many of the fundamental features of the Internet were created that way, a block at a time. The some of those blocks have now turned into a grand algorithm (s) and here we are at the beginnings of artificial intelligence.

So take a moment…
… What will you create today?

Take care Patrick

** Sorry although there are archival copies of the book available on the Internet I was unable to determine the legal validity of linking to the sources and the latest publisher Synergetics Press,  no longer lists the book on their site.The latest copy I was able to find was the fourth edition.  You can search "WorldCat" to find copies a at your local library. (Click the ISBN number below)

FOURTH EDITION
SECOND PRINTING - 2019
ISBN: 0 672-21398-2

Other used copies of this book are available on Amazon.

"Iconic" a language for symbols. Something whose time has come

Attribution Forsaken Fotos on Flickr
Creative Commons license 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Have you noticed that computers and related equipment are moving away from text based interfaces in favour of the icon symbology?

It looks cute, most of the time but as someone who helps people with technology, the move toward graphic symbolism seems to be backfiring. Even myself when looking through the myriad of icons in my video editing package spend an ever-increasing amount of time just trying to find what symbol relates to what function. While I know there are standards of therefore some of the more common functions and indeed it can make it easier to produce software when you don't have to translate the entire interface to another language it can also unless you're very careful make the interface a mess.

I think we are going to end up having to create a visual script, an abridged version of the written word, to represent some of the features coming along. It could be called "Iconic". Something that would actually be taught so that by the time a child or person was faced with a multitude of images they could find their way through the maze. This would go a long way toward simplifying a lot of things will still keeping the information quality of the symbol high.

Or is there something out there like this already? Would emoji's qualifying? Not quite. From my limited experience with them they don't appear to have enough context or infer information in the defined away.

One of the most frustrating experiences now days is when I open up a new manual and it indicates an icon in the text, but doesn't give it a name, and the icon itself is too small to make out in the details.

I think the visual language of "Iconic" is something whose time has come. It would sure save me a lot of grief and time. Who knows it may even eventually replace the written word.

Take care Patrick

A frugal computer is a fast machine.

 

Now days, how-to-guides are positively everywhere covering every conceivable situation device or application. If the original authors of Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics had only one with the Internet and high-speed communication would bring to the general public. We are now faced with a rather odd situation, there are so many sources the question isn't as much "How do you fix it?" Its more like which person, document or source do you trust. The very last thing that anyone wants to do is just try things randomly. As a matter of fact, I have seen people do this, in my case, it usually has to do with computer software and the story goes something like this:

One day somebody turns on their computer and its a little slow, but only a little bit, so they ignore it and go get the latest free game from who knows where on the Internet. Over the next few days it slows down more and they begin to get frustrated. So they go on to their favourite search engine and they type in something like "cleaner" or "Speed to my computer up". A list of results are displayed and most people don't go farther than 10 items before picking something. The mysterious software downloads and even though the computer might warn them that this could be dangerous they click install. Anyway it doesn't work. So they tried to download something else, and again it doesn't work either. So after two or three attempts and probably a few advertisements they give up turn off their computer and go away for the night.

The next day they are committed to finding a solution to their speed problem so they repeat the same strategy they had yesterday... Day by day the computer gets slower and slower and slower. Then they decide they better call for help and that's when I or one of my colleagues hears about their issue.

Usually they have downloaded free software, taking the listings at face value. "Guaranteed to speed your computer up!" or "Let us optimize your computer to run like new". What happens most often is these free useless programs are just commercials packaged as something useful, and because they are nothing more than advertisements they often configure themselves to start whenever the computer starts up. That is really what slowing the computer down.

In my experience there are relatively few, but well-known utilities and companies that produce tools for "cleaning or optimizing a computer" and most of them work only in very specific ways.

He best way to keep your computer running smoothly is:

• If the machine is more than four years old, in general, don't expect it to be able to run the latest and greatest games or software at full speed.
• Before downloading and trying anything spend some time looking up for reviews and look at a few of them from different sources, not just the ones that appear at the top of the list in Google.
• If a listing in a search engine is marked as an "Ad or Sponsored" ignore it. They are not going to give you an unbiased appraisal.
• Then once you find something that looks trustworthy continue searching for articles that talk about uninstalling the program you are about to try. It is important to know how to remove programs before taking them for a test drive.

If the above points are a little bewildering seek out a trusted friend or colleague who is more familiar with the technology. Do not try to just hit or miss on fixing something especially with a computer or similar device.
 

The biggest and safest thing you can do is ensure that you have a backup of your important documents or photos. Every computer eventually dies and they usually do it all of a sudden.

 

The above points are applicable to a lot of technology be they computers or something related.
Take care Patrick

A Thought about Thinking

Image modified (text added) based on drawing
by MithrandirMage. Creative Commons

Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

I volunteer in the technology sector. That is, building webpages, figuring out problems with computers (usually older ones) and pretty much handling a wide variety of issues over the phone. I can safely say there's never a dull moment.

One would think they'll that with all the tools we have at our disposal to save time, that the average person would be far more efficient and able to focus on the task at hand. But the opposite appears to be true, at least from my perspective. The various services we have to organize our lives seem to each have their own way of doing things and one is constantly switching between one thing or another. That in itself is inherently inefficient and to further add to the recipe of chaos the concept of detailed instructions seems to gone out the door in favour of icons and "relationships". So one is faced with the undesirable task of having to figure out the designer's perceptions.--This is where a well written manual the most beneficial. Now doing this on occasion or when one has a real mystery to solve is downright fun, but on the other hand when your goal of the day is to achieve something well done this gets to be a real impediment.

I find myself thinking about the thought processes of various modern-day developers. Indeed how well do they know themselves when you come right down to it. Because if you don't know your own motivations and it is hard to know exactly what drives your own designs and creativeness and things can get out of hand and the new application being created ends up being boxed in and more limited than its predecessor. A real world example of this is the new upgraded app which controls my smart lights. It seems to have far less functionality, for example you can no longer dim the lights on a timer for the whole house, you must set each individual room which means more time spent. And day help section is more of a philosophical explanation of why "you" the user will find this new app so wonderful. But as to what slider does what, well one has to spend some time playing around with it. And if one's way of using the app does not coincide with the philosophical instructions then it isn't so wonderful after all.

I just wonder about the mindsets and how people are thinking and indeed about their various thought processes. What will the machines think of us when they finally do "wake up" at the singularity? Just how well do we know our own thinking?

Firefox and Blogger Usefulness Versus Security.

The very first item: Firefox and Blogger: Usefulness Versus Security.

Being a geek my home system is quite secure. One day a friend of mine was using one of my computers to surf a blog hosted by Blogger and noticed they couldn't post a comment. The moment they hit the submit button, all of their text in the comment box simply disappeared. No error was generated and this happened regardless of whether or not most of the security on the computer was turned on, or off... We had ourselves a little mystery. Which is just the kind of thing I love. Here's what's going on with Firefox as it relates to posting on blogs hosted by Blogger.

Firefox is rejecting cookies from websites that are third-party and providing services to the blog you are posting on. In this situation, I believe Blogger is using another company's service to provide the random phrase they ask you to type in when posting your comment. If Firefox rejects the cookie from this company then the post is just dropped. No error message is generated because this might enable someone using software to spam the site to develop a workaround for the security. By default Firefox excepts all cookies, so for most people posting a message won't be a problem.  But,if you're having this problem, it's a good sign that someone has set up your computer properly, and here's the reason:

Normally, it's a very good idea to have your browser, Firefox or otherwise, set up to reject these cookies from offsite companies. It helps limit your information from being misused by other parties.

This information is for a very early version of Firefox back in 2012. It is probably not accurate or relevant anymore. This article is maintained here strictly as an archival copy.

Although I don't recommend you doing this, here's how to turn off this security feature:

1. Open your Firefox options [the method varies by the version of Firefox you have. Look around your menus.]
2. Go to the privacy tab and put a checkmark in the item that reads: "Except third-party cookies."
3. Then click the okay button at the bottom of the window.

Please make sure after your posting to disable third-party cookies once again.