I know I am opening myself up to ridicule but last night I heard a crash outside the house and thought that something was being blown around the garden: a cardboard box or something. I took a look outside and saw a slate had come crashing down from my roof.
Until that point I was completely unaware that I had a slate loose. Still, always the last to know, eh?
DW
This post is also to be found on the ICT Blog of www.osltraining.co.uk
... your old one is perfectly good?
That self same daughter I mentioned in the previous post told me on arrival that she had bought a new laptop at Christmas because her old one was running so slowly. I asked her to show me what she meant and she was right ... it really was running horrifically slowly. Word took ages to open, web browsers took an age, opening windows explorer was a nightmare. I took at look for viruses and spyware and so on but found nothing.
I took at look at all the services that were running and didn't see much to worry about.
So I thought I'd tidy away all of the software that daughter Fran no longer used. Nothing outrageous and nothing apparently evil.
After an hour and a half or so, however, I handed the computer to Fran to ask her to try to do again what she used to to ... open Word ... she did and found it was now back to the way it was.
You can guess what I said next! Why buy a new machine when a bit of TLC would have (and did) solve the problems?
Here's a funny thing: as I was about to hand over the laptop to Fran I asked her if the battery was OK because I wanted to pull out the power cable to hand it over. She said, yes, as far as she knew it was fine. So I pulled out the cable and ... INSTANT BLACK SCREEN ... followed by howls of laughter from the pair of us!! I checked and found that whilst the battery was 97% charged, it had not been seated properly in its housing.
Mirth, merriment and a newly invigorated laptop computer.
DW
This post can also be found in the ICT Blog section of www.osltraining.co.uk
Two very valuable lessons learned this weekend: one by yours truly and one by someone else!
Predictive Text
Being of a certain age, I have spent the last few years ruminating on PREDICTIVE TEXT in sms messaging. Of course, it's rubbish we all said. Whoever designed that should have been sent to Siberia someone else said.
Well, I was with my daughter this weekend and in the space of ONE MINUTE she showed me how wrong we all are who don't understand and use predictive text. The key is to type away pressing just your key once per letter (not three times as yoiu otherwise do for the letter 'o' or 'i' for example) at a time and then wait until you get to the end of a word, whatever rubbish you think you are reading in the meantime. Once you have got to the end of the word, you will be surprised that for the vast majority of times, your predictive text has PROPERLY AND ACCURATELY predicted what you wanted to type.
Marvellous: that was not a complete user's guide but do read your phone's manual more carefully and you WILL find that predictive text is really very clever and it will probably save you loads of time from now on.
Lesson Learned ... the hard way
Imagine the scene: desktop on the desk, laptop on the chair and your external hard drive containing ALL OF YOUR IMPORTANT DATA FILES, PHOTOS AND MUSIC, is balancing on top of a bin bag containing your dirty clothes. Suddenly yoou trip over a wire and the external drive crashes to the floor. Not bad you think, just two feet or so ... couldn't have done any damage could it? Then again, you have frequently backed up your files haven't you?
WRONG AND WRONG for someone I know ... and no, it really wasn't me.
Two major lessons to be learned: when you hard drive is switched on and running, you can break the drive beyond your ken by dropping it from just two feet. Dropping the drive when is is switched off and the read/write head is parked is likely to do little or no damage ... now I will admit to doing that myself last week, purely by coincidence and I lost nothing.
A major computing crime, though, is not backing up or archiving your files FREQUENTLY. The more files you create the more backups you should do, as a very general rule. I also recommend for those absolutely vital files that you have one backup on your comp and one more on portable media. If it's very, very important then have another copy off site ... at home and at work, for example, in addition to your other two copies.
There is a young man in Bristol at the moment really wishing he'd taken the few minutes a week it takes to back up his work.
DW
I wonder whether there is a session that lorry drivers take part in during their training. You know the session I mean: the one in which they are taught how to overtake another lorry on an incline or ever a hill. The crucial aspect of the training seems to be that the overtaking lorry must be capable of going only one mile per hour faster than the overtakee lorry. Otherwise, how could the overtaking lorry block an entire lane of a motorway or other road for what are normally considerable times and distances?
Just wondering as I have completed a 650 mile round trip during which I saw such actions as I have just mentioned!!
Over to you, lads!
DW
