Day: November 28, 2021

My Week Ending 2021-11-28

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week. They’re posted to the blog daily under the title OTR Links.

Sunday

  • I’m a sucker for any post that offers tips on using technology more effectively – this time for the Chromebook. I felt kind of glad that I was using most of these already
  • If you follow education at all, you know of the struggles that both students and teachers are having with 2.5 hour classes

Monday

  • A state in Germany is switching to Linux and open source – we’ve seen this before and then there was a switchback. Geeky people can absolutely do it. How about others?
  • Good news coming to those in British Columbia about a dike that was repairs to stop the flooding

Tuesday

  • Latest Windows 11 update has emojis; I wish that they’d spend time fixing things that are broken instead – see troubleshooting below 😢
  • Sadly, another report of a local school that has been closed as a result of COVID-19 – update, this morning the closing has been extended

Wednesday

  • If you love maps, you’ll love this alternative look at things as told by other maps
  • An interesting post – in a world where you can find a million reasons to not use the Microsoft Edge browser, here are a number of reasons why you should

Thursday

  • Interesting negative opinion about some of the decisions that “Big Tech” has made that trickle down to education
  • There were a number of post on HuffPost about alternate ways people celebrate the American Thanksgiving. I loved this one

Friday

  • A great post summarizing the original purpose of programming which was not all about getting a job
  • This might be a good read if you’re thinking about a Chromebook for a Christmas gift. There are some things to be aware of

Saturday

  • Hopefully, this bill will make it easier for those who are seeking healthcare and keep picketers out of the way
  • 8 000 children aged 5-11 vaccinated – a good start and now the province is off and running

Blog Posts on
doug — off the record

My daily contributions to this blog are linked below. If you’re looking for a week in review for doug–off the record, you came to the right place.

#FollowFriday – November 26, 2021

https://wke.lt/w/s/TnJmTo

voicEd Radio

This Week in Ontario Edublogs is a show/podcast that features great writing from Ontario Edubloggers.

Featured Bloggers:

  • Laura Elliott – @lauraelliottPhD
  • Laura Wheeler – @wheeler_laura
  • Melanie White – @WhiteRoomRadio
  • Matthew Morris – @callmemrmorris
  • Will Gourley – @WillGourley

This week’s show:

https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/positivity-the-stress-of-normal-walk-and-talk-and-more-more-more/

Opening Song:

Closing Song:

All of the shows are archived here. The show is broadcast LIVE almost every Wednesday morning at 8:45 on voicEd Radio.

Technology Troubleshooting

For the most part, Windows 11 has been a good decision for me. Most everything works and I’m forcing myself to use the Edge browser and it’s not bad.

I’ve got one of those little gotchas though. As I write this, I have a concert playing in another windows and I’m humming along. So, the video and audio are great as far as I’m concerned.

Windows, on the other hand, disagrees.

I can fix it easily enough. FN+UP notches the audio up something that’s undetectable by me and makes the X go away.

But I shouldn’t have to do that and find a workaround.

I’m not the only one reporting this problem. It’s probably not a big deal in the big scheme of things but for people like me who obsess about getting things right can’t unsee it when it happens!

Video of the Week

Not a good news week in the COVID-19 virus front.

Photo of the Week

Another from the lights at the King’s Navy Yard in town. I walked by it last night with Jaimie and it was too cold to take off my mitts but it showed up in my Facebook memories. How strange is that?

No photo description available.

Thanks for reading.

Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting for you. I honestly and truthfully appreciate your few moments reading my thoughts. Time willing, this summary appears every Sunday afternoon.

Be safe.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

Whatever happened to …

by dougpete, posted in OTR

… MSN Messenger?

This one is actually a pretty easy post to write because I found the question and answer here.

What Ever Happened to MSN Messenger?

I do remember MSN Messenger popping up when I installed a version of Windows a long time ago. The article talks about 2001. Wow!

It popped up after the installation and it seemed to come bundled with a bunch of other Microsoft stuff at the time. I think I did install it once and played around with it. But, I just didn’t get it. As the article mentions, AOL was a big competitor at the time. I didn’t get that either.

My computing and communication world was based on email. I had a couple of work emails and a few home personal emails. Why would I want another place to go to look for messages? As we all know, when someone sent an email, they expected a reply almost immediately. Email was just becoming a widely accepted thing at the time and there seemed to be a mindset that only you and the person on the other end were the only ones connected so why wouldn’t you expect to get a reply immediately?

As it turns out, I didn’t ride the wrong horse and MSN Messenger went away. Does this mean that email turned out to be the ultimate answer?

Around here, not so much. I do get email messages but they tend to be from older folks who remain attached to email or mailing lists that I’ve subscribed to and then there’s always the spam.

These days, people use other services which I suspect was where Microsoft wanted to take MSN Messenger but were ahead of the time. Most everything around here is tied to a social network with Twitter and Facebook offering private messaging services. With an application on my phone, I get the messages immediately. I don’t check in; they’re checking in for me. Two other things that gather attention are direct texting to the phone or a Slack server that I have set up with a friend and his brother that gets the majority of my attention. These alternatives to email seem to be more personal and personalized. Ironically, I just got a message on my phone from Environment Canada about a weather advisory.

Photo by Franck on Unsplash

I find that these newer services get my immediate attention these days. Email sits and waits until I get around to it. With Windows 11 and on my Chromebook, I have my phone connected so I get notifications from the phone even if I’m using my computer.

For a Sunday, your thoughts?

  • did you ever use MSN Messenger? If so, how?
  • did you ever use AOL’s services?
  • these days, it seems that we all have the ability to get messages from a variety of services. Which ones fit into your digital world?
  • do you have notifications turned on with your devices so that you get notified immediately or do you prefer to be left alone?
  • do you sleep your messages at night so that you’re not wakened?
  • how much has spam creeped into your digitial live and connected services?
  • how does email fit into your digital life these days? Has it been replaced by another messaging service?
  • do you still have a CD-ROM floating around your place with a copy of MSN Messenger just waiting to be installed?

As with any Sunday morning, I’d be most interested in your thoughts.

This is part of a regular Sunday morning routine around here. You can check out all the past posts here.

OTR Links 11/28/2021

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.