I’ve used VLCfor years, since it’s a powerful video player (has most every codec out there…can play pretty much anything), but wasn’t aware I could use it to change formats or compress files. As I had some huge videos to upload to a WordPress site (which limits me to 500 MB…even after editing the php.ini file), I explored ways to shrink the files. Of course, I came up with a bunch of pay options. But, buried below the fold (fortunately on page 1 of SERP) was this video. And, boom, problem solved! I loved VLC before, and an am even bigger fan now.
Category: Information Technology
I have an Associate in Technical Arts in Web Application Development degree, as well as certificates in:
- Business Systems Analysis
- Requirements Analysis
- Database Theory and Design
- Cisco Networking
- And I’m one class away from a Desktop Support Certificate
I have a deep knowledge of technical systems and have solved a variety of problems.
Google Tip: Deleting Old Google Sign-In Accounts
As many of you know, I just left a job. Part of my process for that is clearing out any data I’ve captured. One thing I always need to do is clear out any of the old Google accounts I’ve used. Like what you see in this view:
The first step to getting rid of the other screens is to sign out of everything:
Next, go to the login screen, which will now look like this:
Click on “Remove an account”, and you’ll be able to choose the account(s) to remove from the screen. And, boom, it’ll be nice and clean for the next log-in.
Animated PNGs
Yesterday, it took me ages to figure out how to convert a .mov to an animated PNG. One of our services can’t use gifs at all, only pngs. (Here’s more insight into the format.) I remembered that there were such things, but damn, I’d never created one before. It looks like browsers don’t support then that well, so that Adobe doesn’t support their creation natively. I saw in several forums that you can download a plug-in to do that, but no one linked to one. I found EZGif.com, a free website that let me do the conversion. It’s not the most elegant process. It works fine if I open it in a browser, but not if I try to open it in Windows. My, what a pain!
Retro Tech
Watching this gem by Marques Brownlee brought out some great tech memories. Retro-Tech: Cell Phones and Pagers. I never owned one of the first gen cellphones, but did have a pager. I never knew there were “codes”, working something emojis. Such were the times.
Um, Amazon, You Want Me To Rate My Transaction?
Got this email from Amazon a few minutes ago. Methinks it’s missing a few tiny bits of information.
FYI, clicking on the Amazon logo does nothing. No link, no information about which order this might be…nada.
So, I guess I get to delete this message and move on the next one. Only 101 to go!
Weird Things That Come Up In Searches
I was on one of my favorite tech websites looking for internal hard-drives. I never expected to come up with this result.
Is The Smartwatch A Mobile Phone Killer?
Yet Another Phishing Scheme
Got this gem in my inbox this afternoon:
Did a quick Google and found a bunch of references to this as a phishing scheme. The poor grammar and funky URL tipped me off.
Always be diligent, my friends.
Evernote Has Me Deeply Concerned
I’m a heavy user of Evernote. I love the product, as much as I love anything. It does a pretty great job with my notetaking needs. There are some recurring bugs that annoy the hell out of me, but that’s true with pretty much all software.
Then there’s the business. Evernote looks to be in significant trouble. I know so many people who were really annoyed at Evernote’s rebranding initiative. Especially since it appeared that that work came at the expense of feature upgrades.
However, even bigger: their CTO, CFO, CPO and Head of HR all have stepped down. That sends a powerful message. Even it’s a random string of happenstance, it’s hard to accept that. The video below summed the situation, and my concerns, up as of a few days ago.
Now, today, Boing Boing writes that Evernote announced layoffs. The compound effect of all this gives me deep concern. I’ve started exploring the other alternatives. Steve Dotto had talked about Notion, which I’ve started messing with. There’s a bunch of things I like about it, but have only started that exploration.
I’m not ready to fully abandon them yet. However, I also have no interest in getting caught off-guard by the failing of a product I depend on. I’ve been bit by this before.
My son’s blasted phone
Hey there, my tech-savvy friends, my son has an original Pixel, which he loves. However, it’s picked up an annoying glitch. When anyone calls it, the answering screen doesn’t come up. It’s physically impossible to answer it; nothing there at all. Oddly, the phone rings and vibrates, just nothing else.
Here are some key details:
- Do Not Disturb isn’t on.
- The phone settings screen is greyed out (I think this is significant, but not able to drill down any further).
- He can answer calls with a bluetooth headset (tapping “answer” there).
- I’ll check and see if Google assistant will answer the calls. Hadn’t thought of that.
- Recently his phone updated to Android 9/Pie (did he get Pie in the face?)
Searching Google and Bing I’ve found many folks looking for solutions to this, going back a couple of years. Otherwise, that has been remarkably fruitless. Though I found a forum where the problem was stated to be a broken codec on the motherboard, and you’ll need a new one. Amusing by not helpful.
So, anyone have any ideas? My current best guess is that this some kind of bug or conflict related to the update. Haven’t seen anything formal from the Google, so it makes me wonder if it’s on their radar.
I’m eager for advice and counsel, oh my techie friends!