Life, the Universe and Everything

I've just spent 4 hours setting up a "smart speaker", a JBL Link 10 on Google Home. Here's what I learnt - and what you should watch out for:  The WiFi Selection Screen There's a point where you see a screen a bit like this: When I selected my WiFi, I expected it to indicate my selection - ether with a dot or tick to the left or by highlighting the whole line. It didn't - which also surprised the Google support person I was chatting to. Maybe it's something about the colour set up on my phone? Anyway, here's the work around - don't worry about the lack of visual feedback, tap the correct item and then "Next". You'll see on the next page that it noted which entry you tapped and is now using it. Your WiFi Setup Not all WiFi is equal - which you probably knew already - but some of them are less equal than others. I set up my broadband router to offer a "guest" WiFi for visitors and was using that. This resulted i...

This is my practical guide based on many years experience mainly aimed at the UK based/English speaking dancers. Be aware that in 2020, the festival is moving (again) to the Claydon Estate in Buckinghamshire so this guide might not be as reliable as some of my other guides. Summary: A medium sized broad spectrum mainly folk festival with a excellent dance programme. Getting there It's a rural "stately home" site that appears to be approached down narrow lanes some distance from major roads. If driving, I would allow plenty of time to do the last 5 miles. Users of public transport should check their options very carefully. The site is compact, you don't need to drive around. Food & Drink There's a good choice of "festival food" stalls on site. These are occasionally "expensive" and never cheap. There would appear to be no off-site places to eat or buy food and drink without travelling several miles. There were several on-site bars ...

This is my practical guide based on 4 days at the 2019 event mainly aimed at the UK based/English speaking dancers. Summary: Although this is primarily a musical instrument makers event, there's a lot of dancing opportunities. Getting there According to Google Maps, it's a 277 miles/4 hours 45 minutes drive from the ferry port at Caen. That's not as bad as you might think. French roads are straighter, less crowded and better maintained than UK roads. Driving in France is quite pleasant . Also, on the autoroutes, you are allowed to drive at 130km/hour (about 81mph) most of the way. If you avoid tolls, it takes another hour and the roads are similarly good, straight and uncongested Food & Drink Just outside the gate, there's a greengrocer who also sells cold cans and a nice sort of potato/cheese slice. Inside the festival, there are good number of food stalls selling salads, burgers, pizza, etc. The small town of Le Chatre is a couple of miles away has cafes...

This is my practical guide based on 10 days at the 2018 event mainly aimed at the UK based/English speaking dancers. Getting there According to Google Maps, it's a 336 miles/5 hours 8 minutes drive from the ferry port at Caen. That's not as bad as you might think. French roads are straighter, less crowded and better maintained than UK roads. Driving in France is quite pleasant . Also, on the autoroutes, you are allowed to drive at 130km/hour  (about 81mph) most of the way. If you avoid tolls, it takes another hour and the roads are similarly good, straight and uncongested.  Food Unless you plan to drive in search of food/restaurants, you should plan to eat on site. Some food traders do attend but their hours are short - I never even saw them. The festival's own catering is OK and in some ways very flexible. For a fixed price, you can mix and match. So, if EG you want lots of cheese but no sweet course, you can. At the checkout they check what you've got and g...

I'd been using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ20 for some years. It's got a 14.2Meg 1/2.33" sensor and a 16x zoom. I wanted to replace it because: Fluff had got inside the lens and was visible at some focal lengths The zoom tended to stick I was underwhelmed by the low light performance - my Samsung A3 (2017) phone was better. I selected a Canon G7x Mk II. for it's 1" sensor although I was worried that the 4.2x zoom might frustrate me. So I took both cameras out to Cirencester park on a clear day. From the main track, you can see the tower of the church in Cirencester: Shot with the Canon G7x Mk II When I got home, I zoomed in on the church tower: G7x Mk Ii    TZ20 I'm not quite sure how, but the Canon seems to have been much better at recording "distant detail". The Panasonic does have some advantages - when composing the shot, that church tower looks a lot bigger on the screen making it easier to frame the shot. Comparing bot...

The Halifax counter service is abysmal and getting worse. A couple of times a year, I need to use it and today 10 of us were queuing up for one teller. So another member of staff goes up the line trying to persuade each person to transact their business some other way. All decline and someone tells her to stop messing around and jump on the till herself. Turns out she isn't till trained. Another customer announces their disgust and I tell her I'm fed up with this nonsense every time I come in and maybe I'm with the wrong bank? She withdraws. When I get to the counter, the teller SCOLDS me for using counter service  because she feels it's OK to feed a large cheque into a machine! I asked to speak to a manager and to my surprise he agreed with me 100% that it was terrible service BUT that's the way Halifax is going and pretty soon there would be NO counter service at all. He recommended that I move my account to one of the Building Societies! I think he was too yo...

I've used the Windows "snipping tool" for years - it lets you grab a snapshot of part of the screen and then paste it or save it to a file. Great for grabbing copies of error messages to show to support people. Just recently, I found I could capture the screen OK but when I hit the Save button or File->Save As, nothing happened. I Googled, found a few solutions but none of them worked. Then I found this somewhat complicated thread  which gave me a clue. The bottom line is that you get this problem if Windows can't access your "Pictures" library - even if you had no intention of saving to that library. Try right clicking on Pictures in Windows Explorer and choose Properties - here's what I saw My F drive is a portable drive and I'd disconnected it. Plugging it back in fixed it.