Category: ‘Thoughts From a Clicker’

Android Accessibility Tips (2023-06)

June 11, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Lets face it.  Most of our club members are getting on in age.  I know that I am.  Sometime it is hard to use my Android phone.  Thankfully, there are a lot of settings that make it easier to use.  Some only work on newer models.  Here are a few tweaks that I use to make Android better for me.

1.  Increase Font and Icon Size to make reading easier.  My old eyes appreciate text that is easier to read.
Open the Display settings menu.
Tap on “Font size.”
Adjust the font size using the slider given till the preview text becomes large and easy to read.
Tap on “Display size.”
Drag the slider to the right to increase.

2.  Increase Screen Contrast to make text more readable.
Open the Display settings menu.
Navigate to “Screen mode” and use the “White balance” slider to adjust the colors.

3.  Change the Keyboard Size. My big fingers used to hit the wrong key.
Open “Settings -> System -> Language & input -> On-screen keyboard.”
Select the keyboard you want to customize.
Open the keyboard height settings.

4.  Enable TalkBack to have Android read aloud whatever is on your screen.  I don’t use this all the time, but it sometimes comes in handy.
Navigate to “Settings -> Accessibility -> TalkBack.”
Use the toggle button to turn the feature on.
Give the required permissions to activate TalkBack.

5.  Enable the magnification feature to help zoom in on the active screen.
Open “Settings -> Accessibility -> Magnification.”
Toggle on the “Magnification shortcut.”
You should see a magnification glass icon on your screen.  Tap on it to open the magnifier. A box that magnifies anything it’s placed on will appear on the screen.  You can drag and move this box around to highlight various parts of the screen.  When the magnification glass is active, you’ll see a toggle button that allows you to switch from the small magnifier to a full-screen zoom.

While you’re in the Accessibility section, check out many of the other settings than can make your phone easier to use.  You might find something that is helpful for you.

Although these are Android specific settings (for the latest version), many people have told me there are equivalents for the Apple world.

Thanks for reading.

Android Developer Options (2023-05)

April 30, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Did you know that Android has many hidden advanced settings that you can use?  Most people don’t.  Android has an impressive hidden settings menu called “Developer Options”.  These options contain a number of advanced and unique features.

In order to access any of these menu options, you first need to unlock the hidden Developer Options Menu on your device.  To begin, go to the main Settings menu.  Then select About Phone (or Tablet or About Device).  Next find the “Build number” entry.  Tap it seven times in rapid succession.  You’ll get a message informing you that the Developer options menu has been unlocked.

Here are just a few of the options you might want to consider enabling or changing.
1) When you move between apps and screens in Android, some of that time is spent looking at animations and waiting for them to go away.  You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale and Animator duration scale options.  If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can increase the speed.
2) The first option I always enable is Stay Awake While Charging.  Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging.  It won’t turn off unless you hit the power button.
3) If you find that you are often running short on memory, you can limit the number of background processes that run.  The “Limit Background Processes” option allows you to limit the number of background processes that are allowed to run or not allowed to run.  For example, you can select “At most 2 processes” in the dialog box.  Then the current app and the two most recent apps you ran and switched away from are the only processes that can run at one time.  This should free up a memory on your device.
4) The Force allow apps on external setting allows you to install any application to the SD card, whether it was programmed to do so or not.  Keep in mind that sometimes there is a good reason the developer of an app blocked the ability to install the app to an SD card.  Some apps look for files in a specific place and the app won’t be able to find those files if it’s installed in an unexpected place.  If the app doesn’t work when installed on the SD card, be prepared to uninstall it and reinstall it on internal storage.
5) The “Force activities to be resizable” setting forces applications that don’t normally work in split screen to do so.  Split screen view might cause some apps to not work correctly.  This is usually because they have not been optimized for split screens.  Once you turn on this setting, you have to restart your device.  Theoretically all your apps will work in split screen mode.  Be prepared for some of them to not look too great or to crash.
6) The “Force Peak Refresh Rate” forces your phone to refresh at the highest possible speed.  This may increase battery usage.

These are just a few of the things you can do after enabling Developer Options.  If you are curious about the myriad of other options, do an internet search.  You will find many sites that will explain in detail what each option does.

Thanks for reading.

PDF-Echange Editor (2023-04)

March 19, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Did you ever notice how the default programs in Windows often aren’t always the best?  The default PDF Editor is the Microsoft Edge browser.  It is pretty basic.  It is adequate for reading PDFs and making minor changes.

There are a lot of good alternative PDF viewers.  The one that I usually use is PDF‑Xchange Editor from Tracker Software.  Its design is clear and easy to use.  The program has different tools for working with documents including typing text and editing, drawing diagrams, creating stamps, underscoring and styles, entering commentaries, notes and more.  In fact, I haven’t personally used every free editing feature.

Here is a partial list of free features:
● Full Document Spellchecker
● Multi-Language document OCR
● Full Page Text Content Editing
● OCR image based/scanned PDF to fully text searchable PDF files
● Add Comments and Annotations to any PDF file (subject to security settings)
● Mark-up pages with text and objects
● Type directly on any PDF page
● Export PDF pages or entire files to any one of the supported Image formats
● Extract text from a PDF page/File
● Fill and Save forms to disk, email or ‘post’
● Full Java-script engine included
● Plug-Ins for major browser
● Auto Highlight Fillable Form Fields
● Document Search
● Add/Edit Hyperlinks to pages
● Support for PDF File Attachments
● Send PDF files via email from viewer
● Undo/Redo functionality for text editor
● Add/Edit/Move Bookmarks

You can also extract or delete entire pages from a long PDF file and embed new content like text, images, blank pages or entire PDF documents.  PDF‑Xchange Editor can also convert documents between PDF and Word formats.  It even includes an OCR (optical character recognition) for converting scanned documents into editable text.  Note: I haven’t tested the OCR.

Installation is simple and fast.  When you run the program, you get every feature of the licensed program.  When clicking on various items, a pop‑up window opens and informs you if you are attempting to use an enhanced feature.  You can still use the feature, but any pages will be watermarked.  This is a subtle method of getting you to purchase a license.  If you do a lot of PDF editing, it might be a worthwhile purchase.

Like many programs, there is a “free” and licensed option.  Very few free editors will let you add new content to documents.  This alone is a good reason to make it your new default app for PDFs.  You can download PDF‑Xchange Editor from the publishers web site.  It is only available for Windows.

Thanks for reading.

World Backup Day (2023-03)

February 26, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

It is almost March 31.  World Backup day is a commemorative date celebrated annually by the backup industry and tech industry all over the world.  The World Backup Day highlights the importance of protecting data and keeping systems and computers secure.  It all started with a post on Reddit when a user wrote about losing their hard drive and wishing someone had reminded them about how important it is to backup data.

Even though you might not think so, backups are important.  Its not a question of “if” but “when” your hard drive will fail.  Phones get lost.  Ransomware gets on computers.  Files get accidentally deleted.  I knew one person who gave his phone to another family member who promptly deleted all of their photos.  If not for the fact that he was unknowingly backing them up to Google Drive, I would not have been able to help him.  Accidents happen.

I’m often asked by club members on what is the best way to back their data.  The answer is that there isn’t a best way.  What works for me won’t work for everyone.  The first thing you need to do is determine what to backup.  Some people backup everything on their computer.  Others are like me and only identify items that are important to them.  This may include items like photographs, medical files, personal data, newsletter files and a few other things.

I do believe in using the 3-2-1 backup strategy rule. This simply states that you need three copies of any important data.  At least two of the copies should be on different storage media, such as a hard drive, removable drive, cloud storage drive, etc.  Finally, one of the copies should be kept off site in case of a disaster.

There are many ways to back up your data.  The simple and easy method is to copy and paste.  All Operating Systems have this method built-in.  There are many file syncing programs that you can use to automatically duplicate your files.  Most cloud storage services can be set to automatically backup.  Of course, there are hundreds of backup programs you can install to copy files or image your hard drives.  Pick one that is easy for you to use.  By doing so, you will be more likely to routinely backup.

One final thing to remember, a backup that you can’t restore is no worse than not having a backup.  You should test your backup data to make sure it is usable.  Unfortunately, this can be dangerous to do.  If you are restoring an image backup to test it and something goes wrong, you can destroy the files you backed up.  Avoid this by stopping at the very last step before the restore would begin.  This will verify that your recovery disk works and the backup program can access what’s necessary to perform the restore.

If you decide not to do any backups, maybe the NSA will be able to give you a copy from their files.
Thanks for reading.

ChatGPT (2023-02)

February 12, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

If you have followed any tech news at all, I’m sure that you’ve heard about ChatGPT.  This is one of the latest attempts by OpenAI, a company that describes itself as research and deployment.  Their mission is to ensure that AI (artificial intelligence) benefits all of humanity.

I’ve been wondering if ChatGPT would be useful for a computer club.  The software is easy to use if you want to give it a try, go to the log in page. Although it says to create an account, it isn’t necessary.  Clicking “Log in with your OpenAI account to continue” will open another page.  You can then log in with a Google or Microsoft account.  Using ChatGPT is free, although I would guess that in the future it will probably have a cost.

ChatGPT is a powerful language model that can be used in a variety of applications, including for a computer club.  Here are a few reasons why ChatGPT could be a valuable asset for a computer club:
1.  Generating code snippets: ChatGPT can be used to generate code snippets for a variety of programming languages, making it a useful tool for teaching coding to members of a computer club.
2.  Answering technical questions: ChatGPT can be trained on a specific domain, such as computer science or programming, making it an effective tool for answering technical questions that members of a computer club may have.
3.  Enhancing communication: ChatGPT can be used to generate clear, concise explanations of technical concepts, making it a valuable tool for improving communication within the computer club.
4.  Creating tutorials: ChatGPT can be used to generate step-by-step tutorials for various programming languages and technologies, making it a useful resource for members of a computer club who are looking to learn new skills.
5.  Personalized assistance: With chatGPT, computer club members can receive personalized assistance with their projects and questions, which can help them to learn more effectively and efficiently.

Overall, ChatGPT’s natural language processing capabilities and ability to be trained on specific domains make it a valuable tool for a computer club.  It can assist in teaching coding, answering technical questions, enhancing communication, creating tutorials and providing personalized assistance to members of a computer club.

Did I mention that except for the first two paragraphs, this article was written by ChatGPT?
Thanks for reading.

Troubleshooting a Medical Problem (2023-01)

January 23, 2023 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

For the past year, I’ve had a severe medical problem that the doctors are having a hard time curing.  I’m not going to bore you with all the details.  I’ll just mention that I’ve had to make five different trips to the Emergency Room.  Two of them resulted in a hospital stay of a week.  I’ve spent a lot of time at home recovering from various procedures.  Luckily, I have good insurance and my out-of-pocket cost was zero.

Why do I mention this?  I’ve observed that many of the things doctors do is the same thing I do when trying to fix a problem with my electronic devices.  Like a medical illness, computer problems usually come on suddenly without any advance warning.

Diagnosing a computer problem is similar to diagnosing a medical problem in that it involves identifying the cause of the issue and determining a solution.  In both cases, the process typically involves gathering information about the problem, examining relevant data, and using diagnostic tools to help identify the root cause.

The first thing I do when I have a computer difficulty is research the internet to see if I can find an answer.  I’m pretty sure my doctor(s) didn’t do this, but I sure hope they checked their medical journals to search for a proper cure.  I try to diagnose my computer problem by using tools such as error logs, performance monitors, debugging tools, etc.  My doctor did the same thing using different tools like blood tests, imaging scans, and a myriad of other tests.

The next thing I attempt is to try different solutions to see if I can fix my ailing electronic device.  My doctor did the same thing.  I’ve been prescribed six different prescriptions to try to cure my problem.  Unfortunately, like many computer tests, none of them worked.

Computer problems can often only be repaired by opening up the case and checking the various components to check they are in proper working order.  This is almost exactly what my doctor finally ended up doing.  He called it exploratory surgery.  Thankfully, I was asleep and felt nothing.  You might almost compare me to an unplugged computer.

I’ve decided that both diagnosing a computer problem and a medical problem require critical thinking, problem solving skills, and the ability to gather and interpret information to identify the root cause of a problem to determine the appropriate course of action.  Unfortunately, sometimes those darn computers just can’t be fixed.

When that happens, I sometimes try again in a month or two.  Kind of like a follow‑up visit to my doctor.  Eventually, a computer gets to the point that it is irreparable.  I’m hoping that doesn’t happen to me for a while.

Thanks for reading.

Holiday Ranting (2022-11)

October 30, 2022 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Here they come again!  This is the time of the year when the Holiday idiots show their true colors to the rest of the world.  So many people at this time of year forget to stop and think.  Others remember to stop, but forget to think.

I’m writing this article in early October, but I’ll bet I can predict the news reports we’ll get on November 1.   Some poor kid will get either razor blades or poison in their candy.  Dentist’s will buy Halloween candy by the pound.  Convenience stores will get robbed by people in their Halloween costumes.  Someone will get run over by a drunken driver.

October and November is also when tech companies make all their new product announcements.  Do you think it has anything to do with the upcoming Christmas season?  So far, this years announcements haven’t been overly exciting.  Apple is making some changes in their watches.  You don’t hear much about the gold designer watch anymore.  Microsoft seems to be continuing its strategy of renaming everything.  With the new names, comes some higher prices.  Google seems to be trying things to make money besides advertising.  More stuff for the Google Graveyard.  The only thing I can’t figure out about big tech companies is why, if they can afford to sue each other for billions of dollars, can’t they lower their prices a little.

Halloween is followed by an even scarier holiday – Thanksgiving.  If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, your spouse has never taken you out for Black Friday Shopping.  I’m a fan of good shopping deals, but not if they come at the risk of life and limb.  The Thanksgiving news stories are also the same every year.  There will be at least one customer trampled to death when the doors are opened on Friday.  Isn’t it strange that it usually happens at a Walmart?  Is it because they are the biggest retailer?  Do they have the best deals?  Could it be that their customers are less intelligent?

Thankfully, Black Friday is starting to change.  Many retailers start earlier and spread the chaos over a longer time.  Many of the deals seem to be moving on‑line instead of in‑store.  Hopefully, this will ease the dangers of this pseudo holiday.

Other news stories for the holiday season will include the celebrities that are working in the soup lines.  Is it a publicity stunt, or do they do it year round without making headlines?  My personal favorites are the ones that have to do community service for drunken driving and then get the free publicity.  Lets not forget about all of the Turkey jokes we’ll see on the internet.  For some reason, I think a lot of them this year will have Sesame Streets Big Bird in the punch line.

After we struggle through the Thanksgiving holiday, we can look forward to being bombarded with advertising for all kinds of technology to put under the Christmas tree.  It’s a shame that most of it is so overpriced.  Do you suppose that might account for the increasing crime rate that seems to occur around the end of the year?

Once again, we get to read about the celebrities feeding the downtrodden.  At Christmas time, we seem to get more politicians manning the ladles.  I can never figure out why that is.  The elections are over for the year.  The only thing I really like about this holiday is the after holiday sales.

When I was younger, I used to really worry about meeting a drunken driver on the highway.  The holidays were a reason for extra anxiety, but thanks to technology, we don’t have to worry about getting killed by a drunk.  If you get in an accident, it will most surely be due to someone sending a text on their telephone.

I suppose by now you’re getting tired of my ranting and raving about the holidays.  I’d continue on and tell you about New Years Day, but I’ll save that for next year.

Thanks for reading and keep on clicking.

StartAllBack (2022-10)

October 2, 2022 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Back in December, I wrote about my first impressions on using Windows 11 on my new laptop.  I’m happy to report that I have found a solution for my biggest grievance.  My taskbar is back where it belongs on the left side of my screen.  I have my extra inch of vertical screen back.  I also have a few other task bar features back that I didn’t think were real important.  I’ve since discovered that they are.

How did I accomplish this?  I downloaded and installed a new utility.  StartAllBack is one of many programs that promises to enhance the Windows 11 start menu.  In addition to allowing me to place the task bar where I want it, there are many other options that I have found to be useful.

StartAllBack reverts most aspects of the start menu and taskbar to Windows 10 style.  In some areas you can select to use Windows 7 features.  The original looks and position of the taskbar are restored.  Task icons are assigned labels, the size and the margins of the icons can be adjusted, and the taskbar can be split into segments.  The taskbar can be moved to any of the four edges of the monitor.

I haven’t tested this, but the program also allows you to go back to the old style Windows File Explorer.  This feature isn’t useful to me because I’ve used a custom file explorer for many years.

There are way too many settings to explain in this short article.  The web site FAQ page says you can download the trial version and test it for 30 days.  In actuality, I got a trial for 100 days.  After the trial period, the program will still work, but in limited mode.  The Start Menu will be blank and on every boot you’ll be nagged about the evaluation period being over.

If Microsoft doesn’t update the Windows 11 Task Bar and Start Menu, I’m pretty sure that this is one of the few programs that I will actually buy.  The cost is $4.99 for a lifetime license.  This is reasonable for all the features the program provides.  If you are frustrated with the Windows 11 Start Menu and Task Bar, you can download AllStarBack and give it a try.

Thanks for reading and keep on clicking.

Cybersecurity Month (2022-09)

August 28, 2022 Posted by Tiny

Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch

Are you prepared for next month?

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.  It was created in 2004 as a collaboration between government and industry to provide resources that users need to stay safer and more secure online.  Administered by the Department of Homeland Security, this is a perfect time for all of us review our online practices to avoid falling victim to the many attacks that can compromise our lives.

To coincide with the national Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) cybersecurity campaign, Governor John Bel Edwards has signed a proclamation recognizing October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in Louisiana.  Here are some links that will hopefully help everyone lock down their electronics.

The city of Baton Rouge has held seminars in the past.  Although there isn’t any scheduled this year, you can view past conferences at Red Stick Ready – Cybersecurity Preparedness.  There are also several links to handouts and other helpful information.  As an added bonus, at the bottom of the page there are links to prepare for many other disasters and hazards.

Some other links that you might find helpful:
The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency home page has links to information on everything the US Government publishes.  You can read the blog, sign up for the newsletter, view many “how-to” articles and much more.
Identity Theft is a Federal Trade Commission Consumer Advice page on how to prevent your personal information from being stolen.
Scam Alerts is a Federal Trade Commission Consumer Advice page with three sections: 1) How To Avoid a Scam; 2) What To Do if You Were Scammed; and 3) Report Fraud, Scams, and Bad Business Practices.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) site with detailed instructions how how to report on-line crime.

I hope you can use the links in this article to stay safe.