jamesclay, Author at Tech Stuff

January 1, 2024January 2, 2024

Tech Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2023

In 2023 I published 69 blog posts, much more than the 18 I wrote in 2019.. In 2022 I wrote 30 posts. In 2021 I published 32 posts on the blog, and in 2020 when I wrote 43 blog posts..

The post at number ten dropping two places, was from June 2020 when I wrote about our gas metre: How are we using gas overnight with our new smart meter?

kettles on the boil — Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Having had a smart metre installed, I started to notice that we seemed to be using a fair amount of gas and electricity overnight! This made no sense, as we didn’t have the heating on, no hot water was running and the only electrical device running was the fridge!

Having some photographs when I visited The Harry Potter Studio Tour I decided to share some of the more suitable photos as backgrounds for Zoom and Teams and this was the ninth most popular post on the blog rising one place from last year was: Harry Potter Teams and Zoom Backgrounds

At eight, dropping six places, this blog post was from December 2020, Ten Great Christmas Zoom and Teams Backgrounds. Using the excellent image sites, UNsplash and Pixabay, I put together ten festive images that could be used as backgrounds for Zoom and Teams meetings.

Dropping four places to number seven was Using iPad as separate whiteboard in Teams. This was a post in response to a tweet on the Twitter. This inspired me to give it a go and see if I could get it to work and as a result documented the process.

Dropping one place to sixth place was a post from May 2020, on how the amazing BBC Archive had posted a series of images of empty BBC Television sets across the years to be used as BBC Zoom and Teams Backgrounds. I used these quite frequently in my Zoom meetings.

Rising one place at number five was a post from December 2020 about Using iPad as separate whiteboard in Zoom, which was a follow on post from one I had written about using an iPad in Teams

The fourth most popular post was from 2020, about the death of my Polaroid Pogo Printer, No More Pogo, which I had bought back in 2009.

Third place, jumping two places, was Ten Amazing Winter and Snow Backgrounds for Teams and Zoom perfect for this time of year.

Well we had winter and now we have summer. Going up two places, the second most popular blog post on the blog was from April 2021 and was a series of images (virtual backgrounds) I wanted to use for online meetings over the summer: Ten Amazing Summer Zoom and Teams Backgrounds

In July 2021, there I was opening a PowerPoint file from my OneDrive folder when I got this error message: Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read ^0. I couldn’t open any of my files on OneDrive. Having looked around for a solution and to be honest it wasn’t too much help. I did try and reset OneDrive but this didn’t work. I was convinced that this was a permissions issue rather than file corruption or data loss. The file sizes looked fine for example. In the end though I did come up with a solution which I wrote up as a blog post to help others: Solving the Sorry PowerPoint can’t read ^0 error and this was the most popular blog post this year, for the second year running. Obviously still an issue for many.

I wrote more this year, as I started blogging about my experiences with my new electric vehicle, the Funky Cat, though none of those posts made the top ten..

December 21, 2023

Back to the Flickr

Flickr is one of the first social networks I joined way back in 2007, which to me feels like just a few years ago and not 16 years ago!

The first photograph I uploaded was of Admiralty Arch having just emerged from the Strand Tube station. The photo was taken on March 30th 2007 with a Nokia N73 mobile phone.

In March 2019 when they decided to move to a (more expensive) charging model.

However I think the time has come to cull my Flickr account. I don’t think it’s worth $50 per year. The value is there, but I am not sure if that value is $50. I am a little disappointed that existing Pro subscribers are not only not grandfathered in, on their old pro rate, but that they don’t even get the introductory discount of 40% that new subscribers get.

You could still have a free account, but there was a limit of a 1000 photographs. At the time I had 14,454 photographs on Flickr.

As all the photographs I had on the service were CC licensed this meant, despite the 1000 photograph limit for free accounts the photos were retained, even though I didn’t take out a professional subscription.

There were lots of reasons why I didn’t take out a professional subscription, one of the main ones was that they (at the time) only had annual plans available.

I never deleted my account though.

Flickr was never a place which I used as a backup to my photographs, it was to me a social network. I now use Amazon Prime and more recently iCloud to store my photographs online.

In addition Instagram was becoming the “better” social network for photographs. Well people were engaging with Instagram (and it was free).

So why am I now thinking about going back to the Flickr?

It was at the ALT conference this year that I started thinking about going back. It was the 30th anniversary of conference and I was sharing on the Discord channel the different ALT-C albums I had created over the years.

However after I published the link to the ALT-C 2018 conference, I realised I didn’t have albums for 2019 or 2022. There wasn’t in-person conferences in 2020 and 2021.

I did have photographs from those conferences, but they were not in an shareable state. It was then I started thinking about going back to Flickr. It would be easier now as they now have a monthly plan as well.

So something to think about.

December 19, 2023December 19, 2023

One year on…

A year ago today I was shopping at The Mall, Cribbs Causeway, Bristol, and I saw outside John Lewis a car on display.

It was an Ora Funky Cat.

I had not only never seen the Funky Cat before, but I had also never heard of it either. I looked over it and really liked the look of it.

I looked over it and really liked the look of it.

Didn’t even think or realise that in less than a year I would be driving my own Funky Cat.

November 30, 2023December 1, 2023

It’s getting cold out there

It’s November and the weather is getting colder this week. The Funky Cat was telling me this morning that it was 0℃ outside.

I did appreciate using the app to heat the car this morning, so it was nice and toasty when I got inside, and that the windscreen was clear.

What was less appreciated was that certain features were unavailable. I couldn’t use Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), and Smart Cruise Control (SCC) was also not available. In addition the front assist sensors weren’t working, so was told that wasn’t going to work either. I am not sure if this was the frost or even mud.

Obviously these aren’t critical systems, in previous cars I never had them, and you shouldn’t really rely on them either when driving. Will need to see if they are back online later. Will keep an eye on it, just in case it is something other than the cold weather.

I also think the cold is impacting on the battery and I am as a result getting a reduced range. I mentioned in another post how, even with a 100% charge, the car was predicting just a 147 mile range. Today it was only 141 miles.

November 28, 2023

Only 147

I was rather disappointed on charging the Funky Cat that the predicted range was just 147 miles. I wonder if this is down to the cold weather we’ve been having, combined with using the heater.

The last time I charged to 100% it was 157 miles. Usually it is higher, and has been 185 miles.

November 27, 2023November 26, 2023

Muscle Memory

I have now had my Funky Cat for four months. This means I have been driving an electric car for four months, driving a car with no gears and an automatic transmission, driving a car with an electric automatic handbrake (well a parking brake). I’ve also had to get use to not having a rear windscreen wiper.

Prior to getting the Funky Cat I drove manual petrol (and diesel) cars for over thirty years. These had gears, manual transmission, a manual handbrake, and a rear windscreen wiper.

As a result, it isn’t too surprising that in some instances I still do things that I did driving a petrol car that I don’t need to do with the Funky Cat. I still have muscle memory based on those thirty years of driving experience.

For example, driving off from a roundabout, sometimes my left hand drops to change gear. Now and again, I try and put the handbrake on, where there isn’t one. When it’s raining, I still try and turn on the rear windscreen wiper. I smile when I do these things when driving the Funky Cat.

November 26, 2023

 Automatic Side Mirror Folding

When I got my Funky Cat I found it useful to fold the side mirrors into the car when I parked.

Looking through the manual, I realised I could set this automatically when I locked the car.

You can set the side mirror functions in

【Vehicle Settings】→【Body】→【Side Mirrors】on the multimedia screen.

【Fold Side Mirrors】: Set the side mirror folding mode to automatic mode.

When set to automatic folding mode, the side mirrors are automatically folded and unfolded when the doors are locked and unlocked.

This made life much easier. It also gives me a visual cue that the car is locked.

November 22, 2023

No more Funky Cat

No, I still have my Funky Cat, the story is that Ora are losing the Funky Cat moniker. Ora 03 is the new (European) name for the Ora Funky Cat.

I liked the fact that the car was called the Funky Cat. For me the quirky nature of the car, the name and looks was why I got the car in the first place. I was a little disappointed that my Funky Cat didn’t have Funky Cat on the back.

It also looks like the Lightning Cat will also be renamed to Ora 07.

November 14, 2023November 13, 2023

deck.blue

In a recent post I blogged about my experiences of using Bluesky on the iPad. I found that sing busky.app in the browser useful on the iPad instead of using the native iOS app I was recently recommended using deck.blue to access Bluesky.

This service provides a multi-column layout and support for hashtags when using Bluesky.

Reminded me of Tweetdeck which I have used now and again (in the past) to access the Twitter.

I recently used deck.blue when using Blueksy at a conference and found the user experience much better than just accessing Bluesky on the browser or using the native iOS app.

November 13, 2023