Fields Of Heather: Tech

Showing posts with label Tech. Show all posts

Change Default Folder View in Windows 11

Every time windows 11 updates, it changes my default folder view, using "grouping", and changing my view to lists, on every folder.

This is not how I prefer to view my files. I do not want them grouped. And I want to view large icons.

Fortunately, you can change the default view on all folders at once, pretty quickly.

First open a folder and set it up the way you want your default view to look.

For me, that means going to sort/group and selecting "none"

Then under view, I choose large icons.

Then I click on the three dots to the right, and choose options. A box pops up. In that box choose the view tab. Then choose "apply to folders".

That's it - now that setting has been applied as the default for all of your folders.

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Find an index of all of my Quick Tip Cards, here:

https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2019/01/quick-tip-cards-for-cricut-newbies.html

Five Fun Options For Your Alexa Flash Briefing

Alexa's Flash Briefing is like your own custom podcast - short updates based on what you want to hear each day.

First, finding the flash briefing option take a minute. Open your Alexa app, go to Settings/News/Flash Briefing

Flash Briefings are built to "hear short updates and top stories from multiple sources". Typically users choose to hear news and headlines. You can even have Alexa alert you to breaking news. I have no interest in that. Instead, my flash briefing includes:

1. Daily Almanac Flash Briefing - Practical tips and useful advice from the editors of The Old Farmer's Almanac: every day we tell you the date, the day of the year, significant events from the day in history, plus an interesting tidbit. Let us use our more than 225 years of experience to help you get your day started in 60 seconds.

2. On This Day In History - A daily history lesson on what famous events happened on this day years ago

3. Word Of The Day - Like a word of the day calendar, but in digital form.

4. Your Daily Writing Habit - Although this briefing is aimed at those writing a book, her focus is on mindset habits. Some days there are quotes, and every day there are tips for making, and meeting your goals. They are great tips for any goal, not just writing, and I've found that I enjoy this segment very much each day - even though I am not writing a book myself.

5. Verse Of The Day - A simple daily bible verse. No commentary, just the scripture.

Harper Collins had a Daily Devotional I loved, in addition to this. It was a short excerpt from a different devotional book each week. One week was Max Lucado, one was Rosa Parks.. it was excellent! Unfortunately, I can no longer get it to work. :-( There are other devotionals of course, but I have yet to find one I liked as much as that one.

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More To Try:

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Curiosity Daily - The award-winning Curiosity Daily podcast from Curiosity.com will help you get smarter about the world around you — every day. In less than 10 minutes, you’ll get a unique mix of research-based life hacks, the latest science and technology news, and more. Discovery's Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer will help you learn about your mind and body, outer space and the depths of the sea, and how history shaped the world into what it is today.

Two Minutes In The Garden - Informative bite-sized updates covering the hows and whys of gardening basics, tips, science, myths and more.

Healthy Habit - A Daily Healthy Habit

Old Farmers Almanac - Get a daily update from the pages of The Old Farmer's Almanac: each day we'll tell you about the day of the year, the season, let you know the people who were born and who died on this day, and give you a question of the day.

Everyday Positivity - A positive flash briefing Alexa skill to help lift your day and put you in the right state of mind to thrive.

Word Of The Day Options - Learn a French Word Of The Day, A Spanish Word of the Day, German Word Of The Day, etc. There's even a Klingon Word Of The Day.

You can also add your horoscope, just search "Horoscope Of The Day" and find your sign.

More about Alexa Flash Briefings
https://amzn.to/3CHYlXw

Quick Tip - Change Your Facebook Feed

Although DishTv & CBS are currently in a dispute, we are still watching CBS shows from our Dish DVR with no disruption. Because we no longer pay for local channels through Dish. Instead, we added an antenna and an airtv adapter, which allows us to record over the air channels right to our Dish DVR.

Quick Links:

Total expense came to less than $80 for us. Since we were paying $12 a month for local channels, we'll recoup that cost in less than 7 months, AND we have CBS even when they are in a dispute with Dish.

A few years back, when Dish was having a dispute with one of the other networks, Dish sent free antennae to their customers upon request, and it did not work well for us, so I assumed an antenna just would not work where we live. (We have a large hill right behind the house, and tall trees to the side of us) I was wrong - we just needed a better antenna. That may not be the case for everyone - I recommend buying one you can return, just in case! But when I posted on my facebook page that we had done this, I was surprised by how many in our local area were already doing this!

We purchased this antenna on amazon. It ships quick, and was EASY to put together and install! https://amzn.to/2OzvBsA

Originally the plan was to put this high up on the peak of our top roof. But we put it together and set it in the backyard first, and immediately pulled in 11 channels. With it sitting on the ground. So we installed it on our one story porch roof, instead of at the very top of the house, and it works great for us, even though we have a hill right behind the house and woods to the side of us.

Over the air tv - our local channels, are FREE. We had been paying Dish $12 a month to have them included in our tv package, because those same free channels charge companies like Dish and Direct Tv for access. But for you an I, these channels are absolutely free to access.

https://www.airtv.net/products/

This adapter connects our antenna to the dish dvr, allowing me to record shows just like I did before, when we had the channels through dish.

If you are like me, however, and never actually watch live tv in real time, it was worth it to pay the $12 a month to let Dish handle the channels for me, so I could tape them on our dvr. Until I found that we could add a $30 device to our antenna to connect it to our DISH, and record the channels right from the normal Dish TV guide, and have them appear on our dvr just as they had before!

We looked into a variety of other DVR options - but all of them are rather pricey for what we wanted. Keeping our DishTv service, at the lowest package rate, with the local channels dropped, works best for us.

We pull in around 17 over the air channels with our antenna. They appear in our Dish guide right along with our other Dish channels.

THE CATCH -
With this set up, I can only tape two over the air channels at one time. I don't know if there is an option to record more OTA channels at one time or not, for us, two is enough.

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https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2019/05/tech-tips.html

How To Quickly Scan Old Negatives Into Digital Photos

I used a light box and an app on my phone to quickly - very quickly - make digital photos from old negatives.

Quick Links:

Light box
Kodak Film Scanner App Android Apple
OR Pattern for a reflector to use with your flatbed scanner

Recently I was given an amazing box of memorabilia, including an envelope of old photo negatives from 1936. The envelope told me they were flood photos, but holding them up to the light did not give me much detail. I'm way too impatient to take them somewhere to have them printed, I just wanted to see what was on the negatives! So I asked for suggestions, and did some googling, and found that I could quickly capture photos from these negatives with a simple light box and an app on my cell phone. I'm VERY happy with the results, and it was quick and easy!

The negatives I started with - 1936 photos from the flood in Milton/Watsontown Pa

The negative on the light pad

Simply place the photo on a light pad, or a light box. There are ways to make your own with bright lights and clear rubbermaid style boxes... but I happened to have this light pad already, and it works really well!

This is how the photo looked when I took a photo of it, on the light pad, with just my regular camera. It at least gave me a better idea of what the photo was - but it's not the results I was hoping for. So I downloaded this free app from Kodak:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pictoscanner.android.kodak&hl=en_US

(There is a version for Apple devices as well)

This is how the photo looked when I used the Kodak Film Scanner app to take a photo of the negative on the light pad.

I did find another method, using a flat bed scanner and a piece of shiny silver paper folded to reflect the scanner light, but for me, the light pad and camera app were much faster. (I already had the light pad on hand) There is a tutorial, and a pattern to download and print to make this reflector, here: https://makezine.com/2011/07/13/how-to_turn_slides_and_negativ/

Another Photo from a 1936 negative, using a light pad and the kodak app.

You can see all the photos from these negatives here:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/HeathersGenealogy/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2408288252516623

I do have a bunch of other, not quite as old, negatives that I would like to scan - and I think for those I am going to want this handy little machine.

https://amzn.to/2XNtmUA

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