Topics

31

Tech / Too much information!

« on: February 27, 2018, 10:03:52 AM »

This sure sounds invasive!  What will they want next?  See what kind of toothpaste we use?  What we eat for breakfast,,,,,,This is getting a bit scary.

Can they watch US while we watch TV? A reason not to get a 'smart TV'.

32

Community / A happy ending

« on: February 13, 2018, 09:51:56 AM »

Took Lilly in for a checkup and got a phone call from her vet right away.
The tech said 2, beautiful Black Labs, brothers/litter-mates who are 9 years old, were desperately looking for a new home.
Was a very elderly couple who ran into problems and had to move from California to Boston and stay with their son, in an apartment with a no dog rule.
So I jumped into the car and zipped right over there, took a lot of pictures, met the owners who were obviously very sad.
But got home, put the best picture on our local village Facebook page and got an immediate response from some friends of my husband. Their Chocolate Lab had passed away last year and they didn't want to get a puppy. So I swapped phone numbers for them, they got together Sunday morning, and they fell in love with them. They will take the dogs the first of March. And another good thing is that they live about 1/4 mile from us and within sight of the beach.
Here is a picture of them,

33

Tech / Panoramio Pictures gone from Google Earth

« on: February 08, 2018, 09:18:35 AM »

I clicked on GE this morning to show pictures of a frend's house in Costa Rica and the beautiful surrounding area where he lives.
The little photo icons are still there, but when you click on them, they do not show.
This is a total disaster! All of us use GE to see the hundreds of pictures of a place we want to visit, seeing the details of a town, a hiking area, a national park, anything, they are GONE!

This feature of GE being taken away, has rendered it useless for many of us. I see on the forums there, that they are being bombarded with complaints.

Anybody here know what the heck got into them, and how or why a decision like that was made?

34

Tech / Learning about security cams/ a bit OT

« on: February 17, 2017, 09:26:36 AM »

I have friends with weather cams, and I was going to put one up, but you have to go thru wunderground's site.
So I started learning about security cameras, so Im going to learn how to install them.
Ive already put up a cheap D-link indoor one in our living room, (for Lilly).

But there are SO MANY options! Cellular trail cameras, outdoor Wi-Fi cams, which all record, and all have motion detection.
Im new at this, but it looks like so much fun, that already I have people asking me to set up DYI systems for them. But I need to do a more complex one than
what I have already and learn more about them.

So Im asking anyone here if they have done any of this, how it went, what equipment you used, and so forth.
Here is an example of a weather cam in our town nearby.

35

Tech / Hackintosh?

« on: February 02, 2017, 07:05:53 AM »

My husband needs a new Mac, his is really old and you cant upgrade much of anything on it.
So our grandson wants to build him a Hackintosh, I said, no after reading and looking this up.
He builds some mighty nice PCs for friends and family, but he is only 16, and I really dont think it would work well trying to install a Mac OS.

Has anybody here done this?

36

Tech / Earthlink is down

« on: December 12, 2016, 12:48:09 PM »

Earthlink is almost never down, I have my capecod dot net with them.
They bought a ton of email companies a long time ago.
But today they are down all over the USA.

Will be interesting to see what the cause was, probably find out tomorrow.

Just as I was sending all my Christmas and holiday cards, the email ones, out.

37

Tech / odd story in newspaper

« on: December 09, 2016, 09:09:48 AM »

Last year, we had some bomb threat robo-calls to our local schools here in MA.
From what Ive read, it was a group of kids somewhere, it happened in other states too.

And this morning in our newspaper, here is the article.
I wonder if this was the kid who did our local schools?
2 were called into my grandson's high school right here in town. It was quite a disruption.

I would think that this anonabox router would be quite a bad thing for kids to buy?

38

Tech / Old textbooks?

« on: November 20, 2016, 01:00:05 PM »

I have a lot of old books from way back when I was learning coding, and some for photoshop and other stuff.

I dont use them any more, so have offered to donate them to our new local library.
But thinking that they are old, and probably not useful to many people except perhaps to a new student looking to learn the basics.

Seems anything I want to learn nowadays, I just get off the web. Like today learning how to make slide shows using iMovie, for example.

Anybody here interested in any or these?  Yes, they are heavy!

Jane

39

Tech / data overages since iOS update

« on: November 05, 2016, 08:16:08 AM »

Talked w. an ATT tech support person, on 27 Oct, 2016.
My data plan keeps going up and over for no apparent reason, so she had me go thru these things on my phone, I followed her advice.

First, Go into Settings, Privacy, and turn off Location Services on the apps you won't need them for.

Second, Settings, Time and Location, also turn it off.

Third, What I already had done, but you need this on, if you are away from your Wi-Fi.
Settings, turn off all Cellular Data. Turn it back on when you leave the house.

Fourth, Hit home button twice, and swipe all these apps up so they go away, and stop running in the background.

These are ones that I already had turned off.

1.  Cellular data, turn OFF all apps that you won't need like your photo apps. Leave on the maps and weather apps.

2.  Settings, turn OFF Background refresh.

About 2 years ago, was when this issue appeared. And I had had iPhones for many  years before that particular time.  We figured it was in an iOS update, as that is when other people noticed it also.

I had to repeatedly call ATT and explain that I was always on Wi-Fi, and this was not supposed to happen. The phone was OFF and sitting in my pocket when I was away from home, except for occasional checking weather, using the phone, text, or other quick Safari searches.
They always deleted my $15 charge, said that this had been an 'issue' since an iOS upgrade. I forgot the exact date of it.  Explained that being old and retired, that I am home most of the time and always have the Wi-Fi on. Do have the phone with me walking the dog or around town of course, but have turned most everything off as written above.

I/we never had this problem prior to that 2 year ago iOS update.

I have friends with this same problem, and would love to know how to really get rid of this problem.

I bet you have more info and help on this.

[Can you use an eye scan for an iPhone?]

40

Tech / iPhone7 touch screen won't work

« on: November 04, 2016, 07:24:13 PM »

My iPhone7 is clean, my finger is clean and dry, but the touch screen to open the phone quit.
And I hate, really hate, to put in the 4 digit passcode.
So I disabled it. Using this tutorial,
http://www.ianswerguy.com/passcode-ios7/

Tried other ways to fix it, and did restart the phone to fix the problem, but no, so I just disabled it.
So now I cannot use Apple Pay, but its worth not having to mess around with the passcode every time I want to use the thing.

Been doing a lot of gardening and work with dirt, wonder if the fingerprint got worn down too much?
Can you use an eye scan for an iPhone?
Would be quicker and probably better, as dirt doesnt get into my eye even in the garden. Not very often

41

Tech / Two identical Macs

« on: October 24, 2016, 08:21:17 AM »

We have 2 almost identical iMacs about a year apart in age.
And one has 4 GB and the other one has 16.
The low one has spinning beachball all the time and chugs like an old diesel engine.
The other one is total speed and no noise.
Low one is on wi-fi strong signal in kitchen.
High one is connected to router by ethernet cable.
They both have the same programs installed and pretty much the same running constantly.

I think the problem is the swapping of memory, my words arent too good, so here is a picture.
Activity monitor pix.

42

Tech / iPhone 7, camera question

« on: October 20, 2016, 09:16:07 AM »

I LOVE my new iPhone 7!And I bought a case from the same company which I have my former cases from.But, they sent me a transparent one, they called it a Deflector and not a case, and it was not a picture case.Then I called them and they sent a proper picture case, custom case they call it.But look at this, the port thru which your camera lens looks is obscured partly. Its too narrow?So I emailed them this picture and asked them what gives? Heard nothing back. It will work, but the side of the picture is very slightly darker due to being covered.Here is a better picture to describe the problem,,,,,,,,

43

Tech / Ease of music on our Macs

« on: September 22, 2016, 12:16:22 PM »

Tis wonderful for the ease of transferring our old 33 rpm records and more onto our Macs.
So between doing that and YouTube for many of the newer things, I am selling my old huge stereo system on Craigslist.
And I have an enormous collection of Blues, Gospel, and Jazz, yeah, some rock and roll too, which Im giving away mostly.
I have about 200 pounds of them already in the back of my GMC, and will getting rid of more to a second hand collector record store.

This is just to say, that there is no need for large stereos and record collections any more.

44

Tech / iPhone 7

« on: September 20, 2016, 09:30:19 AM »

My old iPhone is a bit over 3 years old, but it works just fine.I am thinking of buying a 7, and wondered if anyone here has recently gotten one, and how do you like it.I was also looking at the newer 6SE to upgrade to instead.Probably will go to my ATT store today and look at the price comparison.Also hoping my husband wants my old one, but he isn't very techie and really doesnt want it. And all our kids and grandkids have their new phones, so there is no need inside our family.I forgot to post this picture of some flowers in our yard, shows how well the iPhone camera works, and do I really need a new iPhone??

45

Tech / Firefox is acting odd with Yosemite

« on: October 19, 2015, 02:42:47 PM »

On the other 27 iMac, I  updated to FireFox to v. 41.0.2.
And it makes the CPU chug and the computer makes a lot of noise. Restart puts it all OK again. But after leaving FF on for a couple of days, it starts cranking up again.
Any idea what is going on? I like FF and want to use it again.

Saw on the web to uncheck "use hardware acceleration", so I did. See if that helps. I should go back to 40.0.3 and see if FF stops this cranking up.

On this 27 iMac, I stuck with FF v. 40.0.3 and its working fine. Yosemite here too.