663 – Optimize Edge start screen

Posted on January 6, 2023 by ewand

Happy New Year! Do you have any resolutions that you’ve decided to follow, other than the usual (eat less, move more, try all you can to write 2023 instead of 2022)? How about cleansing your web browser start up screen to something more useful and/or less distracting?

With the Edge browser, the default New Tab Page (or NTP) presents a configurable and sometimes useful way to display information, however the source of news articles and the advertising that is shown alongside can sometimes be, er, challenging.

Clickbait

Third party advertising aggregators take sponsored content from an originator and present it as an advert. This presents a problem for the sites that choose to sell advertising space – in tiles mixed with legitimate sources in the likes of the NTP, or in chumbox “Recommended for You” type content at the bottom or side of articles.

Some of the ads often lead users to a site which will do more than try to sell them something – some try to get them to install browser addons, show faux review sites recommending dubious-at-best products, or fraudulently push get rich quick schemes and the like.

If the originator keeps foisting nonsense adverts with poor quality visuals and clickbait headlines through the aggregator, the content owner who relies on the revenue stream from the ads can complain and have it blocked – it doesn’t do their reputation any good if their site is littered with stupid adverts.

Ad blockers don’t work on the Edge new tab page, but you can report a dodgy ad by clicking the ellipsis on the top right of the tile. Or submit a report here. This is a whack-a-mole game in a modern sense, since even if the original is blocked they may just appear the next day on a different URL but with substantially the same garbage content.

If this kind of insidious spam drains your energy, there are things you can do to minimize or remove the nonsense, even without switching to a different browser.

Looking at the Edge NTP, if you are using a browser profile signed in with a Microsoft 365 account, you might see “Work” or similar in the Enterprise page; it’s extremely useful and quite customizable, and administrators could make Edge default to that tab. If users click on My Feed, they’ll get the same view as a non-Enterprise tab, and it will stick for that user on the next new tab.

You can customize the “My Feed” section by choosing to Personalise your content selection and how you want it laid out, but if you want to switch the whole lot off altogether then look on the settings cog on the top right.

Switching the clickbait off will mean you get a beautiful Bing image taking up most of the screen (click the double-headed arrow on the bottom right to find out what it is), with a search bar and some collapsible quick links tiles pointing to pinned or recently-used sites, and other subtle info points like weather or stock prices.

Replace NTP altogether

There is no option within Edge to set what the New Tab Page should be – it’s only possible to tweak the one that’s there already. Install a simple extension like Custom New Tab, however, and you can point it to any URL you like (a largely clickbait and ad-free news source like Google News might be one choice, or a customized set of sources from something like Feedly). After installing and configuring, you’ll need to deal with Edge checking if you really want to replace the NTP and making sure that it’s not being subverted by some malicious code. Just say Yes.

A final nail in the NTP could be to just silence all the distractions by installing the Blank New Tab extension: that’s the equivalent of setting the new tab page to be about:blank.

If you’re still using Edge and have replaced the NTP with something else, yet feel like checking in on either your M365/Enterprise page or you’d like to outrage yourself over the stupid adverts polluting the “My Feed” section, just drop https://ntp.msn.com/edge/ntp?query=enterprise into the address bar to get the classic NTP experience.

662 – How to make the perfect martini

Posted on December 23, 2022 by ewand

Here’s a bonus Tip, akin to the Sweary Broccoli Soup one from last month. Since many of us will be taking time off in the next week, and activities may involve a modicum of adult beverages, what better time that to share some finely practiced tips in making the (IMHO) perfect martini?

The timeless cocktail which comes in many variants, is distinct from the Italian fortified wine, Martini – it’s thought that the barman who first gave the “martini” its name did so as a variant of “Martinez”. So it’s martini with a small “m”. Aficionados would probably choose a more premium vermouth as well…

This is a long post so pucker up and, of course, drink responsively. This is all a matter of opinion and exhaustive research – there are no product affiliations and recommendations are based on preference and plenty of practice.

Classic gin|voka martini | Vesper martini | Espresso martini

Get yourself tooled-up

First off, you need to select the right glassware. The classic V-shaped glass is worth investing in if you think you want to make a habit of martini drinking; if not, a champagne coupe or even a decent-sized wine glass will do.

Since the ideal martini is served very cold, you’re generally going to need something to stir or shake over ice, so a cocktail shaker would make sense. If you don’t have one, Amazon et al have plenty of starter kits that will include a long spoon and even a measuring cup (or “jigger”).

If you just can’t wait to get started, a jug full of ice and a device like an espresso cup or even an egg cup will do. Proportions are important in mixology, and if you’re not an accomplished free-pourer, you’ll need something that can be used to dole out 25ml/50ml shots or whatever size takes your fancy – 1oz in the US is just under 30ml so a little stronger than a UK single measure of 25ml.

Before you start mixing, put your glasses in the freezer and get any garnishes – like olives, or fruit peel – ready. You’ll want to do the stirring/shaking, pour straight in the glass, drop garnish in and then directly to the hands of the eagerly awaiting recipients.

The classic martini

Gaining prominence in the 1920s, the original gin martini mixed a good quality gin with vermouth, at a ratio of 2:1, with olives or a twist of lemon peel for garnish.

“Good quality” is an easy test – if you pour a little of the gin in a shot glass and take a slurp, does it make you wince and your cheeks pucker? Even though many gins are fine with a splash of tonic water, a gin martini made with 100ml Gordon’s and 50ml Cinzano Bianco isn’t going to set the place on fire. Most definitely stay away from any flavoured gins.

Start with Berry Bros N^o 3, Tanqueray N^o Ten, Warner’s London Gin or pretty much any of the millions of craft gins which pass the quality test above. If you fancy yourself as 007, substitute the gin with a quality vodka instead – same test of neat-drinkability applies – such as Grey Goose, Belvedere or anything of unflavoured quality. Smirnoff Red or supermarket own-label paint stripper? Probably not so much.

Vermouth is very much a matter of taste, but you probably don’t want anything that’s too sickly sweet and if you’ve gone to the effort of getting a nice gin, you won’t want to overpower it with cheaper fortified wine. Suggestions include Noilly Prat or Dolin Dry.

Proportions matter. Asking for a “dry” martini basically means less of the vermouth. If the 1920’s drink had 2:1 ratio of gin/vermouth, succeeding decades saw that rise to a more contemporary 3 or 4:1. Vary to your taste and endurance.

Ernest Hemmingway used to favour a 15:1 mix which he called a “Montgomery”, as it was said to be the preferred tipple of Field Marshall Montgomery before heading into battle. It’s amazing he could even see the front line.

“A perfect Martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy” –

Noël Coward

Mr Bridger would wave his glass to the Italian Martini vermouth factory, while Churchill would supposedly take a glass of ice-cold gin and bow towards France (and Noilly Prat). President Lyndon Johnson prepared an “in & out” martini where he would pour a glass of vermouth, then throw it away and replace it with gin.

As for garnish; some would say a shave of lemon peel is the ideal accompaniment, but for many it’s the green olive that should go in a classic martini, as the saltiness of olives go well with the cold, strong booze.

Take a single or three olives – never an even number. Being served a 2-olive martini in mafiosi days was a signal from the barman that someone in the joint was going to harm you. A “dirty martini” has a sploosh of the brine that the olives come in, and it makes the drink cloudy and salty, if that’s what you like.

The technique. Fill your cocktail shaker/mixing glass/jug with ice cubes, pour the gin & vermouth over the ice and stir† for 30 secs. Pour into your frozen glasses, add the garnish of peel or a cocktail stick of olives and you’re done. A dry martini is actually quite low-calorie so don’t feel too guilty.

If you want to go no-alcohol, try Blutul alcohol-free vermouth, possibly mixed with one of the numerous zero-alcohol distilled spirits, like Tanqueray Zero. Or save a fortune and just drink elderflower cocktail in a chilled glass.

† The whole Bond “shaken, not stirred” thing came from Ian Fleming’s belief that shaking vodka “bruised” it for a more intense flavour, so it was passed on to Bond. In truth, shaking over ice is only going to cloud the drink somewhat, and will cause shards of ice to be poured into the glass, melting and diluting the drink more quickly. That’s fine if you like you’re drinking Montgomeries, but not desirable for most. The best martini bars won’t even use ice – they’ll store their drinks in the freezer and pour straight from the frozen bottle.

The Vesper

A test of how good a bartender is: ask them to make a Vesper martini even if it’s not on the menu. If they don’t ask you questions about how you’d like it, prepare for disappointment. The ideal Vesper should be ice cold, very strong and is slightly sweeter than a classic martini.

The Vesper (named after the femme fatale, Vesper Lynd) was invented by Ian Fleming supposedly as he took breaks from writing, at the bar of the Dukes Hotel in London. Whether this is a misty-eyed memory or a marketing moment doesn’t matter – Dukes makes arguably the best Vesper in the world; it should be at £25 a pop, but you only need one.

“When I’m, er, concentrating… I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made”. – James Bond (Casino Royale)

In Fleming’s Casino Royale book, Bond invents the Vesper asking for 3 measures of Gordons, one of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet. It was revisited in the Daniel Craig film. Nowadays, you’d use a higher quality gin (see above – Dukes use Berry Bros N^o 3), and since Kina Lillet was an old quinine-laced form of aperitif, you’ll need to try a different mixer (Dukes makes their own blend).

Lillet is a brand of fortified Bordeaux which is available fairly widely over the counter or via mail . Keep a bottle of Lillet Blanc in the fridge if you like your Vespers. A few drops of Angostura bitters added to Lillet Blanc apparently brings it closer to what Kina Lillet was like with a little more astringency to offset the sweetness.

Many recipes will have a twist of lemon in their Vesper, but to be a little different, Dukes favours a slice of orange for the stronger smell of the orange citrus oil.

If you’re not adept at carving hunks of skin from lemons or oranges (and potentially wasting the rest of the fruit), try taking a clementine/satsuma and slicing it thinly into circles (3-4mm thick) with a serrated bread knife (yes, a bread knife – who’d have thought it?)

Take one of the innermost circles and nick the skin in one place so you can open it out into a straight thin line and peel the flesh of the fruit away. Now take a chopstick or a drinking straw and wind the thin slice of peel into a tight corkscrew and drop it into the glass that’s currently waiting in the freezer.

The measures for a tip-top Vesper are the same as in the Bond recipe – 3 measures of gin, one of vodka (both selected as per the classic martini above), ½ a measure of Lillet Blanc and a few drops of Angostura. Stir with ice in the cocktail shaker for 30 secs, pour and enjoy.

Espresso martini

Much less boozy than the straight up drinks above, and a favourite of the cheaper cocktail bar who likes to feature syrupy sweet stuff that can be advance prepared in bulk. A proper espresso martini is a joyous and unctuous thing.

You will need access to good coffee – ideally from an espresso machine, or Nespresso if that’s what you have. At a pinch, you could substitute strong, quality drip, cafetière or even instant coffee.

If you don’t have a kitchen worktop festooned with coffee making gear, go and buy some espresso beans for garnish and to help make your own liqueur.

The spirit of choice is vodka, and since you’ll be adding sweet and bitter additions to it in equal measure, you don’t need to worry too much about the provenance – Smirnoff et al will do nicely. You could tequila instead.

Apart from the coffee itself, the other key ingredient is a coffee liqueur – you could use something like Kahlua, though that is a little too sweet for some. Mr Black Cold Brew is a top alternative, though not inexpensive. If you have time on your side, it’s easy to make your own.

DIY Coffee liqueur

Put 500ml of water in a pan with 300g of regular granulated sugar, cook on medium heat while stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat.
Take 75g of espresso beans and lightly crush them in a Ziploc/freezer bag, with a rolling pin.
Add the crushed espresso beans to the water/sugar mix, along with 500ml of vodka (own-brand stuff is OK though mainstream label might be better), and 1tsp of vanilla essence. Set aside to cool.
Once cool, pour into a Kilner Jar or similar airtight container for 3 weeks (give it a swirl every few days), then strain it into a bottle though a coffee filter or kitchen paper etc. In truth, you could dip in after a week or so, but the longer you leave it, the better it gets.

For the price of a half a litre of cheap-ish vodka, some sugar and some coffee, you’ve just made 1L of good stuff that will last for ages in a dark cupboard. Depending on how frequently you partake of espresso martinis, obvs.

When you’re ready to make your pièce de résistance, put the glasses in the freezer and look out 3 coffee beans for each. To make 2 drinks, fill your cocktail shaker with ice and pour in one large measure (the size of an espresso cup, i.e. 2oz / 60ml) of vodka, and the same again of your coffee liqueur. Make espresso coffee into one or two regular sized espresso cups (again, 2oz/60ml) and pour one of them – still fresh and hot – into the shaker.

Put the lid on, give it a vigorous shake for 20-30 seconds. The mix of sweet liqueur, hot coffee and cold ice will froth the mix up and give it a velvety texture, while also creating a lovely crema to top off the pour. If you don’t have a shaker, try a plastic jug half filled with ice; something that you could give a really good strong stir and not worry about smashing the jug…

Dispense into the waiting glasses and top with the coffee beans on each. Drink the other cup of espresso as a chaser, or maybe leave it to the side in case you fancy a refill?

Have a great holiday season, everyone. See you in the New Year!

661 – Finding mail and slimming down

Posted on December 16, 2022 by ewand

Learning how to find stuff in email is crucial, since many of us get so much that we let it accumulate until eventually it becomes a problem. Sifting through the many cc’ed work mails, or finding the order confirmation email in your personal mailbox amongst all the other stuff, we’re more reliant on search than ever.

This is a topic that has been covered numerous times in previous ToWs – 573 – Searching in Outlook and 504 – Searching Outlook for example – but is worthy of a revisit since we may have a chance to pursue the fallacy that is Inbox Zero over the next few weeks. And maybe it’s a time to find and delete the special offer emails and once-in-a-lifetime invitations that may be clogging up our personal mailboxes too.

Work mail

Dealing with desktop Outlook on the PC, there are plenty of tools available to help you find specific messages, in fact there’s a whole toolbar full of them.

As you look to search mail that meets your chosen criteria – it’s from someone in particular, maybe with a keyword in the subject, or that you know has an attached PowerPoint file, you’ll see that clicking the filters and options inserts the actual commands that will drive the search, into the Search bar positioned at the window’s top.

Remembering a few of these means it’s quick and easy to search for mail from a person (you don’t need the quotes, really, and you could use just a part of their name) by typing straight into the box. ALT+Q (for query?) sends your focus straight onto the search bar, so if you’re a keyboard warrior, you could ALT+TAB to Outlook, ALT+Q and enter a search command, before your mouse-toting colleagues have even clicked a toolbar. While we’re at it, remember that CTRL+number jumps to the location on the (now vertical) icon bar on the left, so CTRL+1 will normally be mailbox, CTRL+2 is calendar, CTRL+3 contacts, and so on.

Commands could also be used to filter on properties of a message that are not so easily visible through the UI – eg from:ewan messagesize:>10mb or from:nico sent:”last week”. See here for more examples of the kind of thing you can type. Look under Recent Searches to re-run ones you’ve typed before.

Reducing Mail Bloat

Is your mailbox size is starting to look under strain (look under the File menu to see how big your ‘box is and what the limit is)? With an active work mailbox in M365, it shouldn’t be much of a risk unless you genuinely never delete anything, but a quick way of identifying the big rocks and getting rid of them may be needed occasionally.

You could run a one-off search for all big mail as per the instructions above, or for extra control try creating a Search Folder. Expand the folder tree on Outlook’s left side, and scroll towards the bottom, to locate the Search Folders hierarchy, right-click on the top of the tree and choose New …

This will bring up a wizard which creates a query across your entire mailbox or other data file, but which looks like a folder; it’s visible only in Outlook desktop (ie not in web or on mobile) but can be a great way to locate stuff that might be filed away in the darker recesses of your mailbox.

You can choose from some set templates or do your own custom thing entirely. The age of this feature is somewhat given away by the default value for “Large mail”… click the Choose button and enter something meaningful (like 10000 for ~10MB).

This should give you a few easily deleted big mails to at least get any short-term capacity problems dealt with.

Right-click on the Search folder and choose Customize… to give it a better name, or to tweak the criteria.

Home email

If you have a Hotmail / Outlook.com etc mailbox, there may be a more pressing size issue, as over a period of years you might have been signed up to a newsletter every time you buy something online, and without realizing it, those could account for gigabytes of data bloat on your mailbox. If every notification from Amazon or eBay is 400K, they soon mount up to a meaningful size.

If you have a free Outlook.com account, you should have a 15GB mailbox quota and if you have the account associated to a Microsoft 365 home or work subscription, you’ll get 50GB.

To check, go into Settings and search for Storage.

The UI for Outlook.com is simple and effective, but one thing it doesn’t do a great job of is handling message sizes.

Sort by size and you’ll see a group heading showing which emails are the largest (displayed by default with the biggest on top), but nowhere can you find out what the actual message size is.

If you want to do a mass clean-out of your Outlook.com account, then you could try sorting by From, however the UI won’t let you click on the group heading to select all emails from that sender and make it easy to delete them.

The Windows Mail app on Win11 doesn’t offer Size either, not even to sort by.

Sometimes, the old ways are the best – you get much more functionality if you add your Outlook.com account to full-fat desktop Outlook, allowing you to change the view, see and sort by message sizes etc. Oh, and yes, you can even set up a Search Folder too. Now, tidy away!

This is the last “regular” Tip o’ the Week until January.

If you’re still here next Friday, look out for next week’s special edition – it’ll be a belter.

659 – Sounding out apps

Posted on December 2, 2022 by ewand

How you control the sonic emissions from your PC has changed repeatedly over the years; volume is often adjustable by hardware buttons or function keys but more advanced controls are usually found by double-clicking a speaker icon in the system tray. Windows 11 evolved the UI further, in the hope of making it easier to use.

Now, if you click the speaker, you don’t jump to the full blown sound control panel, but to a quick settings dialog which controls some commonly used connectivity and display settings, customizable if you like. Desktop PCs typically don’t need Flight mode, but nocturnal users may want to add night light for quickly changing screen colour.

Drag the slider by the volume icon and the predictable happens but click the icon to its right and you can easily choose which output device you want to use, if you have several (like headphones, speakers, monitors etc). Clicking More volume settings at the bottom takes you to a more fully-featured volume control panel.

If you have multiple monitors connected to your PC – especially if HDMI is involved – it’s possible your machine might expect to route sound to one or more of them; unless you do actually have speakers attached to the monitor, or it’s in fact a flippin’ big television, you’d probably prefer it didn’t show up on the list of potential output devices.

Click on the arrow to the right of the device you want to exclude – the ASUS monitor, in this case – and then hit the Don’t allow button: next time you look in the quick volume settings UI, it’s no longer there.

Some apps might have a UX for controlling audio output directly, over-riding the system default and probably sticking with whatever device you choose – Teams or Zoom, for example, may choose a USB speaker/mic or a headset if connected, rather than using the laptop speaker. If the app doesn’t know anything of sound devices, then ordinarily it will use the default (as per the options above), but there is a somewhat hidden setting that lets you tweak things further rather than having to alter the system’s chosen output just for that app or session.

If you want to fire the audio stream from a particular app at a different endpoint than the system default – let’s say you have a Bluetooth speaker connected, but you’d prefer system sounds and the likes to keep coming from your laptop speakers – you could tell Windows to send that app’s audio output to a different place, and the app will never know about it.

In the main System > Sound control panel, scroll down to Volume Mixer and click the arrow to open it up. In that page, you’ll see a list comprising the currently-running applications which have made some kind of audio output (in other words, if you want to set an app up, make sure it’s started it and if it’s not in the list, start playing something).

In this case, the Dell monitor does have an amp & speakers attached to its audio line-out socket (where audio is sent to the monitor via the display cable, and it then puts it out to the speakers), so while spending a day of Teams calls and other system sounds emanating from the tinkly-bonk USB speaker, the business of smashing out some banging tunes can go to the bassier speakers.

Finally, should you wish to give your devices more meaningful names than the ones shown, look for More sound settings in that first System > Sound settings page. This brings up a Windows XP-era dialog which allows more precise configuration of devices and levels.

The Sound dialog lets you choose the sound scheme (controlling all the bongs and bings of Windows), configure the speaker arrangement (if you have surround sound etc), or choose all kinds of enhancements and effects.

It also lets you rename the device altogether and set a different icon, so when it shows up elsewhere – including in the shiny Windows 11 Settings app – then it’ll be a bit clearer what it really is

658 – Sweary 3-ingredient soup

Posted on November 25, 2022 by ewand

Since many US colleagues are recovering from an eating & drinking stupor having recently given thanks, this week marks a departure from the usual Tip o’ the Week recipe. Instead of tech tidbits or productivity morsels, we’re making a delicious yet fairly healthy staple in only a few minutes, courtesy of sweary Chef Ramsay.

Yes, readers, fresh soup in less than 10 minutes and with only 3 ingredients – broccoli, water and salt.

It’s not uncommon for soup recipes to start with sweating onions or shallots in butter and garlic, adding herbs, chicken stock etc. But not this – it’s vegan and keto-friendly, and is best if you make it right before eating. Adding creamy cheese to the bowl before serving will give it a nice rich finish (though may compromise the vegan-ness).

The key thing about this soup is that the broccoli is cooked in water with the lid on, and the water is saved and used like stock to liquidize it into a smooth and light soup. It’s important to blend it while still steaming hot, and that means it can be served straight from liquidizer to bowls (though it can be re-heated, frozen etc, if necessary).

Start with one or two heads of broccoli, the fresher and darker green the better – about 300g in weight before trimming would make enough for 2 or 3 portions (or 4 if you were doing a light starter).

Hold by the stalk and run a sharp knife around the tips to cut off the florets (you can keep the stalks for vegetable stock, or add to a stir fry etc, but in this case we’re just using the darker florets).

Add water to a decent-sized pan with a close-fitting lid – about 1.5-2x as much water as the weight of the broccoli florets. In this example, we started with 300g, which gave 230g of florets, and added 450ml of water. Or 2/3lb of broccoli, yielding about 1/2lb of florets, cooked in a little under a pint of water, if you prefer those measures.

If you’re in a country which still measures mass by fractions of a hundredweight, you might not realize that a litre of water (=1000ml) at room temperature weighs a kilogram, so 1g = 1ml. It’s often easier to weigh water with digital scales than to try to use a volume measuring jug.

Add a good few scrunches of sea salt to the pan, put the lid on and bring the water to the boil. Once boiling, drop the broccoli in and toss it around in the water. Add a little more salt on top and replace the lid.

Boil for around 4 minutes, to the point where the knife could cut through the broccoli with no resistance (ie if the knife goes easily through a floret to hit the side of the pan, it’s ready).

Spoon the broccoli into a liquidizer jug and pour the remaining water in – experience will tell you how much is needed (the water will be below the level of the florets in the liquidizer). Season with a final scrunch of salt and black pepper.

Pulse the liquidizer a few times, then start slowly and then give it a 30-60secs on full blast, until you can see the soup is smooth and velvety. You can always add a little more hot water gradually during the blend, if you think it’s too thick (at full speed, look in the top of the jug and you should see a swirling vortex – if it’s just blobbing up and down, it’ll be more like puree than soup so add some more – ideally recently-boiled – hot water).

Gordon suggests pairing with some walnut halves and some ash-rolled goats cheese; in this example, it’s Montagnolo Affine, a creamy blue cheese which melts a little into the hot soup and gives it an extra lift.

Serve by pouring on one side of the bowl and let the soup flow around. If you’ve seasoned it lightly but often throughout the cooking process, it won’t need anything else on top, other than some froufrou garnish if you like. Enjoy.

Normal service of talking about Excel pivot tables and other rubbish resumes next week. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.

650 – All hands meetings

Posted on September 30, 2022 by ewand

Even though Dilbert isn’t funny any more there have been some good ones in the past, satirising corporate life. People who used to be cubicle or office based might struggle to deal with the new reality that most office workers would rather not be in the office 5-days-a week, 9 to 5, yet bosses would prefer people to not be slacking off at home in their PJs.

Zoom, Teams and other platforms adopted a metaphor in an online meeting, where attendees can figuritively raise their hand so they can be asked to speak. It works well when the people running the meeting have the discipline to check that they don’t have a forest of lifted paws before asking, “are there any questions?” to their audience.

It helps if presenters are not doing the lowest-common-denominator thing of sharing their desktop to present slides. Using Teams’ own slide sharing means you can see the chat, and who’s joined, and whether they have their hand raised.

Meeting participants also need to have the practice of raising their hand and waiting to be invited to talk, rather than blaring in to raise new topics or talk over others. Other attendees can also see who has their hand raised (look in the video gallery and you may notice those who have their hand raised are highlighted) and if you look in the People pane, you’ll see the order that attendees raised their hands as well, so if you’re the organizer then you can ask the top and most patient questioner to contribute at a point that makes sense.

A new etiquette has sprung up in hybrid meetings, though – how to balance commentary from remote attendees with chatter that’s happening in the room? Ordinarily, you’d rely on body language in a meeting room to decide it’s time to interject, nodding and perhaps making hand gestures yourself.

When some / half / most of the attendees are remote but you’re in the physical meeting room, it might be prudent to actually join the same Teams meeting on your PC – you’d only be sitting in the room looking at email on your screen anyway – and use the hand raise function before speaking, even if you’re sitting next to other contributors. This way, you’re on the same footing as all the remote attendees and it shows that you are at least giving the pretence of thinking about them too.

When joining a Teams meeting on your PC, there’s a yeah-yeah dialog box which pops up just before entering the “room”, which presents various potentially relevant audio related options. The norm would be to use comptuer audio, then select what speakers/mic you want to use.

These join options can also give you a number to dial in to (or be called by the meeting, so you can stay silent and camera-less on somebody else’s dollar).

If you’re the first to join while in a physical Teams Room, you could bring the room system into your meeting and control it from your machine.

If you are a bod in the room, though, then choose “Don’t use audio” to avoid any mic or speaker issues, causing endless echo. That way, you can enter the online meeting while being in the actual room, interact with other attendees on chat and use features like reactions and hand raising just as if you’re sitting at home.

Just remember that you are, actually, in front of other people, and also remember to change the default option back to “Computer audio” next time you enter a truly remote meeting, or you’ll spend the first few minutes saying “hello, hello? Can you hear me…?”

645 – mobile ad blocking

Posted on August 26, 2022 by ewand

The internet just wouldn’t work without the magic that is the Domain Name System, or DNS. If you are not a networking guru, this service is effectively the index of internet hosts (not just websites but also anything else that offers a service on the net), and is used to find the actual address that your computer will connect to, using a name as the reference.

If you put www.bbc.co.uk into your browser, that means you want to connect to a machine called www which belongs to the domain bbc.co.uk, and a beautiful yet simply elaborate system is used to figure out how to find that domain, get the address(es) of the actual host, and provide the info back to your device so you can connect to it and request information.

Being the one service to bind it all also means DNS is often the thing that brings everything to a halt, eg. if your home router can’t connect to your ISP’s DNS server, then you’re basically unable to communicate with the rest of the world as you’d be unable to find anything (unless you hard-code your machine to use a different DNS, like CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s 8.8.8.8).

Futzing about with DNS can sometimes bring benefits, though. One such is that for the many webpages which contain embedded adverts or clickbait links, if your browser is unable to connect to the source of the advert, then it might just not show the content at all. On desktop computers, you could use ad blocker browser extensions of all kinds, but on mobile devices your choices are a bit more limited.

If you rely on mobile apps like Google News or Microsoft Start, which show content within the app and have no ability to install 3^rd party browser extensions, you may have to take more action to block out all the insidious and stupid adverts.

A true geek’s solution at home could be to set up a Pi-hole; a DNS server (traditionally targeted to run on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, hence the name) which will filter out the garbage by deliberately blocking the URL-to-address resolution of thousands of known advertisers or clickbait providers. Great when you’re on the home network, but what about if on the move and connected to another network?

One possible solution here is to use a provider like NextDNS, which has been described as effectively running a Pi-hole in the cloud for you to use.

Free for up to 300,000 name resolutions (which sounds like a lot, but in reality, isn’t), it’s a snap to try out and if you sign up, you’ll be given simple instructions on how to plug it into your phone, tablet, desktop or even home router, so as to extend protection to every device connecting through that network.

DNS queries would be routed to the NextDNS service and if the requested host is from one of a plethora of blocked sites – not just ads, but known trackers, phishing links etc too – then it will simply return a dud response as if the site doesn’t exist.

Your app or browser will either show you an empty box, maybe an inline error frame, or it may silently move on and display nothing at all. Just one small victory!

Using a service like this – others are available – can be switched on or off quickly (in Android, it takes the form of a single switch to configure a Private DNS with a URL unique to your account), and works regardless of whether you’re on Wi-Fi or mobile connectivity.

644 – Desktop, sans frontières

Posted on August 19, 2022 by ewand

As a companion to last week’s tip on projecting your desktop to anotherPC, here’s another related but slightly inverted topic; using one machine to control multiple desktops. Previously, this would have been achieved by sharing means of input and output across multiple PCs with a KVM device – where you’d plug your keyboard, video and mouse for each machine into one box, and could switch between them somehow. There are other options today thankfully, that don’t result in a rat’s nest of cable.

A simple way of using another PC from your main one is Remote Desktop – if you have a Windows PC that’s running Professional or Enterprise version, you can enable the ability to remotely connect to it from elsewhere, a feature that is not enabled by default. To switch it on, type remote at the Start menu and you’ll see the option to swtich it on.

Once enabled, and you’ve chosen which user accounts can access it, you will be able to fire up the Remote Desktop client on your other machine and connect to this one, using its name or IP address. For a quick way to kick if off, enter mstsc /v <name> at the Start menu on your main machine to establish the connection directly.

You’ll have the source PC in a window or full-screen, even supporting multiple monitors if the PC that is driving things has several screens, configured in the slightly old-fashioned looking Remote Desktop Connection app that’s used as the client to your remote session.

Remote Desktop has its roots in an old server version of Windows NT, with the idea that users’ desktops could be run and managed in a central location. With Remote Desktop running on a local network, you can get sound and high quality video directed from one PC to another, and even copy & paste between them – it’s a really good way of driving a corporate laptop from a PC with bigger screens and better keyboard & mouse.

Another way of dealing with the frontières (pas de jeux… did you know that Kate Bush sang that French backing vocal?) is to use a more up-to-date variant of the KVM switch.

If you have multiple machines next to one another, there’s a great, free software KVM from an internal Microsoft project that release semi-experimental software to the outside, which lets you use the same keyboard & mouse to drive both – or multiple, up to 4 – machines. Install Mouse without Borders on each machine, connect them together using a shared password, and you’ll be able to just move your mouse between PCs, and the keyboard in front of you will operate whichever machine the mouse is pointing at.

The UI at set-up for MWB is very early 2000s but once you’ve got it running, it’s pretty much bulletproof – if you have two machines, the keyboard and mouse on both will stay active and be interchangeable… so if you had two laptops, you could use the software on either machine to control both. It’s knockout!

643 – Wireless extensions

Posted on August 12, 2022 by ewand

“A computer on every desk and in every home”; that original Microsoft motto, all the way back from a time when any sane person would have said it was nuts. Looking back now, though – hands up, who has only the one computer at home?

The WindowsKey+P shortcut key has been used since Windows 7, for sending your screen output to another device. At one point, this was maybe a meeting room’s projector – hence “+P”. You’d plug it into the VGA port on your laptop, press Win+P and you’re away. These days, does anyone “project”? Or just mirror or extend their desktop to another connected display or monitor?

You’ll commonly be able to wirelessly “project” to a large screen on the wall in a meeting room nowadays, rather than having to faff about with ceiling-mounted projectors, with all their bulb issues, noisy fans and the multitude of connectors required.

Windows 10 and 11 has a nice wireless projection UI, used to “Cast” to a wirelessly-available device, such as a TV which uses the somewhat messy Miracast standard. Either through native support, or by adding a media stick like Roku, Chromecast or FireTV, most TVs can be made to receive the display output of your laptop.

One somewhat underappreciated feature, though, is the ability to set your PC to be the recipient of wireless projection from another machine. This could be used to show something to a nearby colleague, displaying your desktop on their PC, or to share your PC screen to a room where someone else is currently plugged into the screen / projector, and you can project to their machine rather than unplugging them.

Lesser known is the ability to wirelessly extend your desktop to another PC, effectively using it as a 2^nd monitor.

To kick off proceedings, press Start and type project to find the shortcut to Projection Settings.

If you haven’t set it up previously, you’ll need to add the Wireless Display optional feature; have a look through the others in the same dialog to see if there’s anything else that takes your fancy.

After adding Wireless Display, you’ll be able to set various options about how and when to receive connections. Start the “Connect” app on the destination PC and you can run a source desktop in a window or make it full-screen.

This projection feature can be used to extend the desktop of your main machine onto a second PC.

If you have a spare laptop or a home desktop PC which has Wi-Fi capability, you could set it up to be the recipient of projection from your main work machine, as long as they’re both on the same wireless network, and without the need to join in domains or have the icy grip of corporate control extended to your own hardware.

Select the option to extend your desktop to the remote machine and you can use it just like an additional monitor.

As many of us are used to having multiple screens in our home office, it could be worth carrying a second laptop if you go into an actual office where decent 2^nd screens might not be available.

Having better kit at home than in the office is just one thing to deal with when going back to a workplace

641 – What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?

Posted on July 29, 2022 (Updated July 29, 2022) by ewand

Time-telling technology has always been a hot-bed of invention, from the radically precise first marine chronometer in the early 18^th century, allowing more accurate navigation on long sea voyages, to atomic clocks that can measure time with the accuracy of one millionth of a second over 10 years.

Computers and smart phones probably never need your intervention to set the time, except when travelling abroad and you want to manually manage the time zone – if you prefer not to let the machine do that for you. To play with the time settings in Windows, just right-click on the clock in the system tray and choose to adjust from there.

If you’d like to know what the actual time is, maybe after a power cut has blanked the clock on your cooker or you need to adjust because of Daylight Savings Time, how do you know what the real time is? Call the Speaking Clock? Switch on TV news and wait for the clock in the corner to click over one more minute?

Even better than that, check out time.is, a service synchronized with an atomic clock and which purports to figure out how accurate your computer’s clock is compared with the real time. Open the time.is site on your mobile phone and you’re ready for next time you have to set the clock on your video recorder or bedside alarm.

The chronometer (“time” and “measure”) evolved from a ship’s device for navigation and became a byword for a really accurate watch (they even had competitions until the late 1960s for the manufacturer who could make the most accurate timepiece – right up until the Japanese started beating the organising Swiss at their own game, so they took their ball away and went home). Meanwhile chronographs (“time” and “write”) were devices made to accurately measure time gone by, such as at the request of France’s King Louis XVIII, who wanted to know exactly how long his horse races lasted. Early devices actually marked the passage of time on the dial with a pen.

In Windows, you can easily time events or have countdown timers that alert you when your eggs are boiled or it’s time to start working again – look in the Swiss Army Knife that is the Clock app. You can display multiple timers in one window if necessary, make a single timer go full screen (useful if you’re presenting and counting down to getting started) or pop out to a side window.

If you wear an old-fashioned watch, you may have a simple way to measure elapsed time – some will have built-in timers, and others will have a moveable bezel which lets you rotate the zero-marker to where the minute hand is pointing at the start of something you want to time.

If you look at the watch a few minutes from now, you’ll see how many markers on the bezel the minute hand has moved on by – not exactly sub-second accurate but it’s good enough for the “about 10 minutes” type measurement.

You could also reverse the process and set the bezel’s 50 minute marker at the minute hand, so counting down 10 minutes towards the zero marker instead. You do need to keep an eye on it as there’s no alarm.

Contemporary chronographs are analogue watches with built-in stopwatch functions, usually controlled by start and stop buttons on the side. They may count to fractions of a second marked around the edge, and some sport Tachymetre marking around the outside – designed to let you calculate how fast something is travelling as it goes over a set distance, or how far you’ve travelled if you know your constant speed.

It’s hardly red-hot technology, but millions of watches have this fantastically complicated but nowadays basically useless feature. They have to sell wrist furniture somehow.

Perhaps the most over-sold and fantastically-named wrist watch from the 1960s was the now re-issued Croton Nivada Grenchen Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver – a single device that could be used for so many things as it combined various chronograph and bezel-rotating features in one 38mm-wide watch, billed as a “wrist-sized computer”.

Just make sure you have a magnifying glass handy to be able to read all the tiny markers and numbers on it.