Most Liked Technology Blogs (217)

I had an Aunt & Uncle from Philadelphia who pronounced battery as BAAH-tree... To me, it was funny as the BAAH was strongly accented and dragged out a little. Kinda like the sound a sheep would make.

That reminds me of the traveling salesman who came up to a house on a country road. He rang the doorbell and a young boy answered. The salesman said "Hey kid! is your mother at home?" and the boy replied "Yeah, she's in the barn making love to the sheep"
A little shocked to hear this, the salesman took a step back and asked "Isn't that bad for her health?" The boy replied "Naah-ah-ah-ah..."



Batteries are an important topic from A to Z in electronics. they are found in all devices in our modern lives. Over the years the technology has improved greatly. Maybe one day those alkaline cells that advertise a 10 year shelf life won't destroy my smoke alarm and flashlights after 2 years!

The entire aviation hobby has switched over to battery power using lithium polymer (Li-Po) batteries (from gas/alcohol engines) and electric systems give tremendous power for short periods of time. 40 years ago, my model helicopters ran on fuel with 25% nitro-methane, 20% synthetic oil and 55% methanol. Flights with a large tank were 15 minutes then. With electric, we average 6 minute flights.

The good thing is Li-Po batteries can be recharged hundreds of times if properly cared for. Don't over charge them or you risk explosion. Don't fully run down the charge as the bad thing about Li-Po batteries will lose their ability to recharge. Long term storage should be monitored so they have no loss of power when fully charged.
The chemical composition in the makeup of these batteries will break down with misuse and give off gas internally. The sealed battery will swell and not hold a charge. At that point, it's best to send them to a recycle center and replace with new ones.

I usually charge-up the night before a planned day of flying. That's 3 to 4 hours with several chargers running to have 10 batteries ready. The chargers are microprocessor controlled for voltage, amperage, internal resistance and time limit. They stop charging when the voltage reaches 4.20 as it's the maximum safe limit for lithium polymer batteries. Every 15 to 20 minutes I feel each charging battery to be sure none of them get warm while charging. That would indicate a serious internal problem.
I've heard horror stories of people leaving batteries to charge without monitoring the session and they have a fiery explosion. A young girl was charging her cellphone in bed (while sleeping) the phone was between the pillow and mattress and what would normally be a warm battery, became hot enough to burn. She was lucky it didn't ignite a fire.

So, however you pronounce battery, please be careful and not overcharge them.

Last night CS went offline, probably an hour or so. Trying to reach the site returned a page explaining Technical Difficulties with a Contact Link.
I haven't seen any comments about it and curious if anyone used the link to fill out a trouble ticket. It was late night East coast USA time zone, so most of Europe was asleep.

This is a repeat of an offline issue a few days ago and may be the reason so many blogs, comments and forum threads are disappearing.

Technical Difficulties... sounds viable.

Awww snap!

There was a time I had control of all my tools, gadgets and hobby parts. I could switch hobbies for months and when I returned back to one everything was in places I recognize.
Since my move, all the knowledge is gone. Guitar things are mixed with drone and model helicopter things, plumbing supplies are in the same box as my vintage record albums.
You get the picture. What's amazing is my partner has perfect recall for things... well, the things in Miami before the move. If I needed the little metal tool to open a can of paint, she could find it in a few seconds.
I had two bookshelves one with computer books and software and the other with model aircraft things. In the aircraft was a few SD memory cards and adapters that allowed me to plug the SD into a computer. This is how I transferred drone videos to my computer. Hold that thought...

Recently, I've been looking for different things that disappeared in my move and after searching high and low and about to give up, I'll see the item I've been looking for set aside within arms reach, close enough to say it was 'under my nose' all along.

The last model helicopter I purchased has new technology the previous models didn't offer. Telemetry between the model and transmitter. Things like RPM, battery voltage can be read via the transmitter. Very cool, except I need to do a firmware update on the transmitter communicate with the receiver.

I downloaded the file to make the upgrade and I need the adapter. I have at least 3 of these things and made no less than four attempts to find them. My guess is they are together in one small plastic bag... somewhere.

It's a holiday weekend and I plan to be at the flying field a good part of it. That upgrade would be 'icing on the cake' so I've got to continue my search and check under my nose again and again for the SD card adapters.

I was a Sprint customer for many years and when I started working for a company that had a metal roof on their building, my phone reception (inside the building) became non-existent. Some of my coworkers were Sprint customers and would stand outside to make calls. This was before phones could switch to Wi-Fi calling.
I purchased a signal booster that had 2 antennas, one outside for picking up the nearest tower signal and the other inside that relayed the phone signal. It worked pretty good for about 50 feet from the antenna. When I switched to T-Mobile, I didn't require the signal booster and gave it to a friend who was having the same trouble in the building he worked at.

Now, I'm at a place with the same problem. All the bars lit outside and inside I often had a 'no signal' error message. Switching to Wi-Fi calling wasn't reliable as I missed lots of calls and text messages weren't outgoing. They would snag and I often had to reboot the phone to get things to work again. Several calls to customer service only had technicians remotely checking my phone telling me to change the settings and make Wi-Fi the main method of communication and not cell service. One tech walked me through the settings to be sure everything was good. Rebooting the phone and trying that for a few days didn't work well. that was enough to call them and complain.

I was lucky to get someone who knew of a low power cell site device that connected directly to the network where I'm located (and not an antenna style booster) so they sent me one and I connected it. Instructions said it could be a few hours before the device would download updates and register with the T-Mobile service. Later that night, I received a text message the unit was online. When I got to the office the next day, I had 'full bars' without having to switch to Wi-Fi.

The new mini-cell site works great and 2 of my coworkers who are also T-Mobile customers are also benefiting from this device. It's just sitting on the corner of my desk right now, but I'll mount it on a wall up high for maximum coverage.

My private cell site...

I bought my first personal computer in 1975. It was made by Commodore and the programs had to be typed line by line and saved to a cassette. Soon after I joined a club that would send out monthly games and utilities on cassette. We didn't have internet then and I bought a modem where you could put the telephone handset into a cradle used as an acoustic coupler to transfer data at the rate of 300 baud. That allowed us to connect with other computer users and mainframe with other means of connection.

For me, It didn't do much more than keep records, low resolution images, basic word processing and a scientific calculator.

One of the guys in the club owned a car dealership and took courses in computer programming. He created a finance package that calculated car loan details of interest, payments and contracts. He connected it to an electronic typewriter and the contracts were printed on 4-part carbon copy forms. All of the records were save in his floppy disk system. After perfecting his 'finance package' he sold his software and hardware a complete packages to other dealerships and supported training, service and tax code updates. He had access to control all the dealerships and their client lists.

About 10 years later IBM computers became available. That was the time where people were using low speed connectivity via phone lines. I remember going to an electronics trade show to see companies had lots of business software and I recommended a package to get one company I worked for to use computers and get away from 100% manual bookkeeping. Part of their packages required subscription and their ability to access clients records.

A few years later and IBM clones were sold at a much lower cost than the original computers. Some of the reasons to buy cheap is they used cracked software.
A brief explanation is someone got into the original program and changed (cracked) the parameters so you didn't need an activation code or registration to use the programs.

The bad thing about cracked programs is who did the work and want 'gains' did they crack it for? I would guess (of the people I knew) half were using cracked software. In a hobby environment it wasn't so bad, but in a business environment, it was a no-no.

A friend told me the engineering firm next to his business had people using cracked versions of a popular design suite called AUTOCAD. One new employee didn't know his workstation had a cracked version and tried to do an update. The company information was in the cracked software and the update didn't match a registered serial number. If I recall, they had a few installations (seats) all using the same fake serial numbers.
Not long after, they were visited by police with a search warrant to seize all the computers using the cracked software. Along with the seizure were heavy fines for using unlicensed software. The company had to 'pay up' to stay in business.
They were lucky as I've heard other companies using cracked software had their data pirated that included bank account information giving access to the people who controlled the cracked software.

While some top level software prices have gone up, there are alternatives. Subscription, software is available. For example, If you cannot afford $4,000 to $5,000 for a purchase, you can access fully workings versions online without a large cash outlay.
I use PDF's in my business. Adobe was the original. It's expensive and I don't need to use all of it's capabilities, so I found a few competitors with fully licensed software at a fraction of the original. That works for me and no cracks!

One of my requirements of buying a condo is it had to have a washer & dryer within the unit. I shopped some communities where they had one laundry room at the end of the hallway serving all the occupants of that floor. That could be 10 apartments to use 2 washers.
Are you serious? I shower daily and use a clean towel every time. I don't wear the same jeans 6 days in a row. Laundry is serious business with me and has as long as I can remember.
Some townhouses in this area have a laundry room for every 6 units. You have to carry laundry outside of your unit... rain or shine. That doesn't work for me as Laundry often gets done anywhere in a 24 hour schedule and sometimes dry clothes stay in the dryer until wet clothes need to be dried.
I inquired with one association about installing a laundry in my own unit and told no, it's in violation of their rules and I will be fined for doing so. That includes the mini-euro styles.

The washer & dryer combo in the place I bought was old and I suspected it wouldn't take long before needing replacement. I was right and purchased a large capacity washer & dryer pair manufactured by Samsung.
Going with trends, it was an HE model washer with impeller and not the older style agitator.
Nearly three years later, (knowing what I know now) I would not buy Samsung, HE or one with an impeller.

What I'm experiencing is the spin cycle shakes violently and the machine stops. There are sensors that detect an imbalanced load and magically compensate the rotation to stop the shaking. That ain't happening here...
Sometimes the washer resets and does another fill cycle as it's programmed that way to re-balance the load... that wastes water, electricity and more importantly time. It shouldn't take 3 hours to wash a dozen towels.

I phoned customer support at Samsung and they 'walked me through' the calibration sequence for the spin cycle sensors. Better? yeah, maybe 10% better. I washed shirts, socks and underwear and it only stopped a few times. I redistributed the load each time and continued. The spin cycle with 12 minutes remaining jumps to 25 minutes when you restart it. Bastards...
Next week, I'll call Samsung again. If it requires a technician and a service call... so be it.


I don't remember this happening with the old style washer where you turn the dial (that clicked) showing all the settings.

Every year, I tell my family not to get me anything for Christmas. They all develop selective hearing loss and get me something. This year, I received a small and simple gift that I will often use.
It's called GUARD YOURID.
My trash goes in a community dumpster, boxes into recycle bins. If you are like me, You'll probably peel off the labels bearing your name and address. If you cannot remove the label, covering the information with a marking pen is the next option.

This device looks like a date stamper with a roller wheel on the bottom. What it does is roll over a band of black ink quickly creating a security block to the information you want to cover.



Awesome

With all the phones, tablets, laptops and computers I go through, I should be used to upgrades/changes by now. Last week, I took delivery on the Samsung S24 Ultra with 1 terabyte of memory. It's their flagship model that boasts a 200 megapixel camera.

Using Samsung Smart Switch app, I backed up the old phone to my computer.
The new phone came with a double end USB-C connector for direct transfer phone to phone which s faster than using Wi-Fi. Smart Switch is resident on both phones but it took a few tries to connect.

Nearly everything transferred and all the the apps and screen settings are identical. Passwords didn't sync and I had to setup Google, Gmail, Samsung, WhatsApp and Signal again. I lost my most cherished app called Gesture Search. Someone else is making a version of Gesture Search that is no better than a first year computer programming homework assignment. Hopefully, they will listen to the user comments and make an update worthy of calling it Gesture Search.

I'm estimating nearly 2 days lost for research to set the phone up where it actually functions to my liking. A handful of calls to T-Mobile support and so many calls to Samsung customer care and technical support I lost track. I had a 'needed to fix' list or the phone goes back to Samsung and I get a refund.
Some features are no longer supported so I have to do a 'work around' to get what I want.
Notifications both visual and sound are nearly there. I would have preferred to see a flashing indicator or flag to let me know there are unread messages or emails.
The phone will give a reminder beep after 3 minutes and briefly vibrate when I pick up the phone. Always on display is the cure, but that eats into battery time.
Most of my text messages are converted using the microphone... Well, they were on my old phone, but the icon wasn't on the top row of the keyboard as expected. A call to Samsung and I was told the microphone is no longer supported. WTF? microphone not supported.
They had me download and install Gboard which is Google's keyboard app. It worked fine and quick, but the top row with numbers (found on the default Samsung keyboard) required a function key and extra keystrokes to achieve the same results... just like my BlackBerry phone 20 years ago!

Not accepting the Samsung Tech Support solution, I reverted back the the Samsung keyboard. An internet search revealed, you can toggle the microphone on and off via a separate menu. It now appears on the lower corner and not along the top row of commands like the previous 4 cellphones did.

Now for the camera that cannot default to low resolution images. I guess Samsung thinks it's beneath the S24 Ultra and forces them to only shoot high-res images.
Images were distorted and out of proportion. I reset the phone settings to default, rebooted the phone and most of the camera aspect issues went away. Photos sent by text messages are large, but the file size is manageable. Probably 2.5 times larger than my old phone.
The phone has a serious problem with images appearing like a fisheye lens. Vertical lines appeared curved, especially noticeable when looking at buildings or geometric objects having straight lines. I downloaded Samsung's Camera Assistant that has a setting to cure that. I'll test it tomorrow when I'm out on appointments.

While my experience and product review with this phone has been mostly negative, the speed of functions and menus is amazingly fast. It does automatic translation when texting. A very powerful feature.
I'm holding the screen resolution at it's lowest setting of HD+ 1560 x 720. maybe later I'll experiment with the QHD+ 3120 x 1440.
All the drawbacks to using anything more than the basic settings is reduced battery time. I'll have to test it with lots of use, calls, photos, GPS and see if I need to activate battery saver.
(note to self: phone doesn't come close to rated battery life)

Cellphone hell...

I'm rounding the bend with my recent episode of cellphone hell. Most of the issues with my new phone have been eliminated with setting changes and installation of apps that helped fix problems the phone didn't do in it's stock setup.

One concession I made was to select the 'always on' screen because there weren't any visual indicators when the screen was turned off. My two previous models had a blinking light reminder when mail or unread texts were waiting.

This is my first phone to have 5G service and that's no additional charge from my carrier.

Maybe you can recall all the negativity issues people said about 5G, like no signal in buildings, the systems were made in China and capturing all your personal data and the most significant... 5G will burn your eyes in their sockets.

I'm due for an eye exam (and oil change in my car) so probably next week, I'll make an appointment... for both.

I'll report back here should the eye doctor find unusual retina damage.

I scanned an old photo to send to my brother last night and my computer wasn't connecting to the email server. I tried to access the main website and it too appeared to be offline.
They sent messages a few days ago about upgrading to an entirely new system!
So much for the improvement.

The main page was functioning this morning but most of the links didn't work and the email doesn't respond. Hopefully incoming messages aren't lost while this issue gets resolved. I'll send some test messages from my corporate account.

No doubt some heads are going to roll by this foul up.