Software

My experiences with Software

Broken – Outlook – Needs Emergency Fix

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

I have multiple email accounts. I use one, Outlook, for shopping. Why, because I can use the safe sender list to block most emails from getting to my inbox. Currently, in my Outlook Junk Mailbox, I had over 3200 emails in the Junk folder. Approximately, every 98 out of 100 emails in this box are from spammers.

This morning I woke up to numerous notifications on my phone. I did not see these notifications over night because I have “Do Not Disturb” active on my phone. But once the Do Not Disturb expired the beeping started. My Junk Mail was being routed to my Inbox.

This is a Microsoft Outlook problem. An update broke the Junk Mail routing. I don’t know what they were trying to fix, but now everyone who uses Outlook should be on guard, because Spammers and Hackers are rejoicing this morning. Their email is no longer being routed to Junk Mail and they are reaching more potential victims.

Now it is time to take precautions:

First, if you are sick of the notifications – Turn them off. On most devices you can find Notification under Settings.

Second, don’t open any email that are not from a friend, colleague, or a business where you signed up to receive emails. My security system blocked an URL this morning, because I opened an email that attempted cause havoc. Here are a few examples of Spam emails:

  • If it has Affiliate in the title.
  • If it has Associate in the title
  • If it has Gift Card in the title
  • Renewable by Anderson
  • Back Pain
  • AARP
  • ADT
  • You Won

Third, if you really want the special offer in an Email. Do not click on any links in the email (ever), go directly to company’s site and get the offer directly from their site. If the offer is not on their site, it is probably not a legit offer. Community Coffee is really good about sending emails about their offers. When I go to their site, the same exact offer is published on the top of their page.

Fourth, report the offending emails as phishing. I really hope the technology companies or working on stopping Spammers. I tracked a spammer down to a mailbox in Las Vegas. If I can do that, why can’t the tech companies?

Autoplay Videos – Argh

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

I can read faster than I can watch a video.  There are numerous sites where the video automatically start playing – first the ad then the video.  I can read usually read an article in the 20 to 30 seconds duration of the advertisement.  However, if I try to read the article, the video seems to act like a little child saying “No, no watch me! Watch me!”

I have learned how to disable the auto play of videos.

Microsoft Edge:

  • Launch Microsoft Edge
  • Click the three dots in top right corner or press Alt+X
  • Click Settings
  • Click Advanced
  • Under Media autoplay select your preference from the drop down box.

Annotation 2019-02-09 080715

  • If you select Block, it will warn you “Some sites might not work as expected.”  This will prevent the videos from autoplaying.  You will need to click the video to play it.

Annotation 2019-02-09 080828

Chrome:

The Chrome browser settings did not have an option to turn off autoplay.  It is done on their “flags” page.

  • Launch Google Chrome
  • In the address bar type: chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy and press Enter.

Annotation 2019-02-09 080428

  • The flags screen will be displayed with Autoplay policy at the top of the screen.

Annotation 2019-02-09 080502

  • Under the dropdown list, select your preference.  To stop autoplay, select “Document User Activation is Required”.  The video on a website will not play unless it is clicked.

Annotation 2019-02-09 080359

  • Click “RELAUNCH NOW”

What I did not test was, if I was logged onto my Google or Microsoft account, if changing these settings would propagate across all devices.

 

The Art of Concentration: Day 1

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

For many years, I did not doodle in meeting.  I did not doodle in classes.  I did not doodle in my spare time.  What I did, was grab a piece of paper (any size) draw some black lines on a page, and color every other section on the page until the page was full.  During computer classes, I would open up Microsoft Paint and do the same thing.

Some people may call it OP Art, Optical Art.  I never got that detail.  I never tried to create an optical illusion.  It just was lines on a page.  It was like a game.  If helped me from falling asleep in meetings and classes.  I could do this task and still pay attention to what was going on around me.  In computer classes, the people sitting behind me would watch my monitor as I was creating a piece.  Microsoft Paint was always installed on the computers, even if games or the internet was not.

The rules were:

  1. Draw black lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it did not matter.
  2. Color every other section
  3. If you were brave, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color not could touch.

I am going to try over the next few days to repeat this experiment.  I am going to call it the Art of Concentration.  Even though, this art work sound simple enough, it requires concentration.  You have to figure out what section to color.  If you lose concentration, you may color the wrong section.

Today’s piece, I thought is was something simple.  Wrong!

20180401_080146.jpg

Now to color every other section:  Where did I go wrong?

20180401_083927.jpg

Flower Madness

To figure it out, I created the line drawing in Corel Draw and created a bitmap.

AofC Flower BMP

I opened the line drawing in Microsoft Paint and colored the page.  Paint vs. paper – if you mess up in Paint, you can correct it.

AofC Flower

If you would like to try coloring the page, I have created a PDF.  Click Here.  You do not have to color the same section that I colored, just pick a section to start.

You can also find it on my newly created Coloring Page.

3D Print – My First Design

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

The next step for  printing 3D objects was to fine some 3D design software that support .STL or .OBJ files.  There are a lot of free software available for 3D design.  However, I am very warily of “free” software since a lot of “free” software (especially game software) comes with viruses, Trojans, and other nasty things.

I found four that was worth looking into deeper.

  1. Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/):  It is owned by Autodesk.  Autodesk has been around for a long time.
  2. Google Sketchup (http://www.sketchup.com/): Do I really want to install another Google product.  However, looking at the site, there was not direct indication it was owned by Google.
  3. 3DSlash (https://www.3dslash.net/index.php):  Looked interesting.  Take an object and remove parts.
  4. Blender (https://www.blender.org/): Has promise.  Is part of the Open Source community.

Since I use CorelDraw, I decided to look at their recommendations.  They recommended developing a 2D design in CorelDraw, transferring it to CAD software, like AutoCAD or Autodesk 123D, then fine tuning it with Corel Technical Suite.  Corel Technical Suite is $999.   I think not!

I decided since I was a beginner, I would start and learn with Tinkercad.  I went through several lessons in Tinkercad to learn the basics.  It was very helpful, especially learning to adjust the workspace.

Many years ago, a friend told me I needed to sign all my art works.  Most of my cards, houses, paintings now contains this logo.  That is want I created first.

Made By Sarah….

DSCN6826

DSCN6827

DSCN6838

DSCN6839

DSCN6840

DSCN6841

Yes, I did make it double sided.  If I had though about it before, I would have mirror the image on the reverse side.

Print Time: 4 hours 46 minutes
Filament: PLA – 2.14 meters 17 grams
Layer height: 0.1 mm
Shell Thickness: 0.8

Object Size (W, D, H): 127.0, 68.0, 5.0 mm

 

Silhouette Studio – The First Design

/ Sarah Collins / 1 Comment

In the last two posts, I talked about setting up the Silhouette Curio and installing the Silhouette Studio software.  Click here to read those posts.  This post covers the my first design.

This is my first design attempt.  Nothing fancy.

My First Studio Design

My First Studio Design

To start a new design in Silhouette Studio double-click on the icon and click Design.   The design window opens with a clean working area.

I clicked the Text text icon icon to begin to place text in the design area.  On the right-side of the screen, a Text Style menu appeared.  The menu let me define my text attributes before or after I put the text in the design area.  Scrolling through the fonts, I noticed that it allows me to use any font that is saved on my computer.  Yay!  No, limits there.

I noticed the little circle fit to path to the bottom right of my text.  Looking through the manual, I discovered this allows you to fit the text to a path.  I drew a couple of wavy lines on the screen using the curve curve tool.  I doubled clicked on the first line of text, to select it, and dragged the text to the first wavy line and than I repeated the process with the second line of text.  Easy enough, my text was now wavy.

Selecting the text that was fit to path, I was no longer able to rotate it or change it size by dragging a corner.  I was able to adjust the rotation Rotate by selecting it’s line.  There was also a slide bar that allowed me to change the text position on the line.

If I am doing a birthday theme design, some balloons are needed.  I knew the oval oval would not work for me because balloons are bigger on the top than the bottom.  I selected the curve curve tool to draw my balloon.  I put multiple points around the balloon to get the general shape I wanted.  The bottom point, where the balloon ties, is still too round.  I clicked the Edit Points Edit Points

Just for fun I drew a few more balloons.  Balloons usually have a shiny spot on them that is reflecting the light.  I use the rectangle rectangle tool to draw this area on a couple of balloons.  It didn’t look quite right, so I selected the rounded rectangle rounded rectangle tool to draw the shiny spot on the other balloons.

If I move the balloons around the canvas, I wanted the balloon and shiny area to move together.  I dragged my curser over both objects and selected the grouping grouping icon to keep them together.  To separate items after they are group, select the Ungroup icon next to the Group icon.

A border for my birthday theme design would be nice.  I drew a couple of rectangles rectangle and I drew numerous ovals oval.  First I drew one oval, then I used the copy/paste feature so all the ovals would be the same size.  I tried rotating a oval from the design area, but I found for a precise rotation the Rotate option for the Object menu worked better.   I used the Align option under the Object menu to align, center, and space the ovals on around the rectangles.

I didn’t like how some of the lines in the design.  The Erase and Knife cut and erase was a nice feature for removing unwanted lines.  I was able to adjust the settings in the right menu as each tool was being used.

A feature that the Silhouette Studio software is missing, is the ability for me to zoom in and out using the scroll button on my mouse.  Zoom in and Zoom out is available from the top icon bar.

The manual that came with the Curio did not cover all of these functions.  But, the manual that is available from the Help Menu in the software does provide detail information about all tools, menus, and functions.  I like to play around with any software before reading manuals.  However, this manual is beneficial for using the software and Curio.

The next blog will cover my experience with cutting and embossing.  For now, I will save my work.  This isn’t the first time I have saved my work.  One of my saying is “Save Often! Save Regularly!”  You can’t press save too often.

Silhouette Studio – Opening the Box

/ Sarah Collins / 1 Comment

The Silhouette Studio software comes with the Silhouette cutting machines (Cameo and Curio).  Since I purchased the machine, the software installation was a simple process.  Place the CD in drive and follow the prompts.  After the installation was complete, the Silhouette Studio software launched.

Silhouette Studio Start Screen

Silhouette Studio Start Screen

I wasn’t expecting this screen.  To be honest, I am not sure what I was expecting.  I knew if I clicked Design it would let me design a graphic for cutting.  Also, if I clicked Open it would prompt me to open a previous saved design.  I assumed that if I clicked Library, I would see some graphics.  That was the second surprise.  There wasn’t any graphics in the Library.   I thought that was odd, maybe it was something that you could download.  I clicked on the Store.

TheStore

The Silhouette Design Store wanted me to sign in, or create an account.  So, I signed in with the account I created when I registered the Curio.

TheStore2JPG

It appears that the store wants to charge you for everything.  After looking over the store, I remembered the cards that came with the Curio title “1 month free.”  I followed the instruction on the card and it provided a month subscription and $25 credit.  I am not sure yet of the benefits of a subscription, but I will figure that out as I explore more.

After looking over the store, the problem still remained.  The Library was empty.  Being the Techie I am, I decided maybe the software needed to be update.  Off to http://www.silhouetteamerica.com I went.  You don’t need to remember that URL or save it as a favorite.  If you are into the Silhouette Studio software, it has the link listed under Help.

silhouettewebsite

It took me a while to find where the Software Update was located on the site.

  1. Sign into your account; it is the same one you created when you registered the machine.
  2. Click Support, it is listed next to the Sign in.
  3. Click Silhouette Studio then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.  There you will find the update and download.
  4. Select one to download.  You do not have to run both the update and the download, because they are the same file.
  5. After the software downloads, run it.

After I went through all these steps below, I realized you can check for software updates from the Silhouette Studio software.  Look under Help > Check for Updates.

I went through the process of updating the software to see if any graphics would appear in the library, it was still empty.  I occurred to me “Maybe the $25 created was so you could select your own graphics.”

Back to the Silhouette Design Store to get some graphics with my credit.  The store had some very impressive designs. I selected a few for testing but adding them to the shopping cart.  When I went to check-out, it told me that these designs were for personal use only.  What I liked about the entire store, since I have credit it did not ask for my credit card.

My adventure with Silhouette Studio will continue…