Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • How to use Facebook without using Facebook

    How to use Facebook without using Facebook

    It was a cold, dark day, November 24, 2006, when I joined Facebook and posted this gem:

    I’m assuming it was cold and dark since it was November. The date is the day after Thanksgiving, so I’m blaming the turkey.

    For several years, it was all fun and good, but I’ve become disenchanted with FB over the years. I’ve moved to my personal site for sharing and only push links out to social media. The final straw was Facebook’s decision to let anything go in political ads. These can be total fabrications and Facebook will let them run. I will not promote such terrible behavior.

    If you are on Facebook, know that ads you see and posts that are shared are not what they seem. These posts are designed to enrage you for maximum engagement. They are not for information. You are being treated like a trained dog, being offered treats for likes. Facebook wants you to keep scrolling.

    Unfortunately, I still need to have my account and I also have others that send me messages through Facebook. Over the last year I’ve been working on ways to use Facebook without being on Facebook.

    For starters, this will not allow you to see any friends posts. Since Facebook has changed their algorithm to keep you scrolling, the only winning move is not to play. I rarely go on FB anymore, and I’m happier for it. If you want me to see what you write, create a blog and let me know. I’ll subscribe to it!

    Messenger notifications are also hit and miss. I don’t like Facebook giving me ads based on what I say in a chat anyway, so I don’t use it and I don’t recommend you use it either. There are better options.

    Filtering Facebook notifications

    The first step is to set up a filter for emails from Facebook. I use Gmail, so I created a filter that will take emails from Facebook, skip the inbox, and label them.

    For bonus points, you can set the label for your FB notifications to only show if there are new emails. Out of sight, out of mind.

    Tame FB notifications

    The second step is to get Facebook to only send notifications if someone messages me or if I’m mentioned. Go to your Notifications page and turn off almost all notifications. This is a good time to trim down the notifications from Facebook.

    To set notifications, go to Settings (the little triangle in the upper right corner) and click Notifications on the left side.

    I turned off everything except for the first two, Comments and Tags. There isn’t an option for Messenger, but as of December I was still receiving notifications for new messages.

    FB also doesn’t seem to send out notifications when someone comments on a thread you are in either, which is unfortunate. See that Updates From Friends notification? Wouldn’t it be nice to get those in your email? Yes, it would be, but FB will only send them to your logged in browser.

    Enjoy life!

    Go, enjoy your life! The internet is a great resource, and you are in control.

  • Nabisco, you just made my day!

    Nabisco, you just made my day!

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  • Deactivating Facebook and more – This Geek in Review for 14 Feb 2020

    Deactivating Facebook and more – This Geek in Review for 14 Feb 2020

    There are good discussions going on now about mental health and wellness, but not enough talk about the little things that one can do to help themselves. By deactivating Facebook one can not only increase their happiness but also decrease their political polarization on the issues. Sounds like a win-win. I read so much about how everyone sucks in politics, but not anything on what we can do to fix it. The scariest realization I have on politics is that many voters will vote against their self-interests if it means people they believe are undeserving will get something. We saw this with the rise of the Tea Party. “Too many people are on welfare, but don’t you dare touch my Social Security and Medicare.” Wow, that’s enough of a rant today!

    Finally, you can turn off those lousy Netflix previews! I didn’t understand why they were so long in the first place, they are basically a mini-version of the movie, giving away way too much about the movie. Unfortunately, to de-activate the preview you have to do it from the website and not the client.

    What happens when you give Chrome 1.5TB of RAM?

    Programmers re-use code all of the time for games, and now we benefit. Some very smart people figured out how to put Star Fox 64 Arwings for the Nintendo 64 into Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. An amazing hack.

    If you have bought an Apple device in the last 6 months, you get Apple’s Streaming service, Apple TV+, free for the year. It’s estimated that less the 10% of purchasers have done so. I’ve only watched (and liked) a few episodes of For All Mankind. They base it on an alternative history of the first moon landing.

    I’m not a big fan of articles that should be a blog post instead of spread across 11 tweets, but I liked Ally McBeal. One of the first “viral” moments in internet time was the dancing baby. Well, the model has been found and rendered in full 1080p glory.

    Dates are hard on the computer, but I would think after all the Y2K shenanigans that storing only the last two digits for the year would be in the past (see what I did there?). That is not the case for a 101 year old man in the UK. The computer would like his parents to confirm his ID.

    I’ve read that Tesla’s Cybertruck is a good rendition of what we thought in the 80s cars of the future would look like. And now an SFX company has given us this gem:

    A New Time Machine? Cybertruck 2020 in Back to the Future – YouTube

  • I am a sucker for donuts that look like they’re from The Simpson’s.

    I am a sucker for donuts that look like they’re from The Simpson’s.

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  • Let’s talk about the Oscars (2020)

    Let’s talk about the Oscars (2020)

    This was not a film up for an Oscar

    I’ll start off by saying, no I haven’t seen most of the movies up for an Oscar. But, this is the internet, so where has the lack of knowledge ever stopped anyone from posting. I love going to movies, and I love when a movie hits me just the right way. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go as much as I would like, so I missed out on a ton of movies this year.

    The Oscars lost their luster for me when they expanded the number of movies up for best picture. Nine movies? Come on, eliminate 4 of those. The number expanded just so producers could add “Oscar nominated” to their film’s tagline. I do want to see the winner, Parasite.

    For best picture, I don’t really have an opinion. I only saw two of those movies, Joker and 1917, neither of which were best picture material. But, I totally agree with Joaquin Phoenix winning Lead Actor for Joker. He was amazing. For Lead Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress, I didn’t see any of those movies this past year. Looking at the list of nominees, they are all amazing, so I’m sure it was a tough decision.

    I only saw one award given, Animated Feature Film. Mindy Kaling is amazing, but the winner of the category was… for lack of a better word, unnecessary. Toy Story 4 was not worthy of a best animated feature film award. The third movie in the Toy Story saga was perfect, and 4 did not live up to any of its predecessors.

    Finally, 1917 won for Visual Effects. It was pretty good, but I wonder if blockbuster fatigue has set in since it was up against Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

    Anyway, here’s to the movies of 2020. I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

  • Freely explore 3D game maps and more – This Geek in Review for 7 Feb 2020

    Freely explore 3D game maps and more – This Geek in Review for 7 Feb 2020

    Playing 3D games are fun, but what if you want to explore the map. Usually, the game doesn’t give you a chance freely explore (Grand Theft Auto not included). But, there is now a genius website Noclip. The interface is a little confusing. To get started, select a game and then a level of the game. The game list viewer still shows, to get rid of it, click the red bar. Now you can freely explore the game using the mouse and WASD keys.

    I’ve already raved about Star Trek: Picard, and now CBS has put the first episode of Picard online for a limited time.

    Before you need to make small talk, be sure to memorize some of these little known but obvious facts.

    One of my favorites:

    Comment
    byu/TikiTC from discussion
    inAskReddit

    From the things we didn’t need department, Snapchat is releasing a Bitmoji TV Show.

    Virtua Racing was one of the first 3D racing games, and Pico-8 is a virtual game console that is used to make games that look 8 bit. Now we have a madman who has created Virtua Racing Demake on the Pico-8 that you can play online.

    Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and China has completed the construction of a 1,000 bed hospital in eight days due to the coronavirus. That number is impressive, but it’s not the fastest they’ve done it.

    Adobe Flash is dead come December, which means there are a ton of online games that will no longer be available. Archivists in Australia have worked to save over 36,000 Flash games that are playable offline. The question that has arises is if the games will still be playable after Flash goes offline. Since I still run my Atari 800XL, I’m sure they will be.

    This past week was February 2nd, 2020, which could be written as 02/02/2020. The date is the same backwards and forward, and the same whether you put the month first (US) or second (Europe). Look how great it is:

  • Captain Picard, do you shop at Walmart?

    Captain Picard, do you shop at Walmart?

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  • I finally found a desktop mixer that I liked enough to purchase

    I finally found a desktop mixer that I liked enough to purchase

    In my basement office, I have a desktop computer running Windows, an iPad, and a Mac Mini. I like to watch tv shows or movies on the iPad while I work at the desktop computer. Sometimes I will be working on the Mac. So, I started looking for a mixer I could use to mix the inputs.

    It’s really cool.

    Enter the FIFINE Ultra Low-Noise 4-Channel Line Mixer

    My spending goal was $20, so a lot of mixers were out. That is, until I found the FIFINE Ultra Low-Noise 4-Channel Line Mixer($). It was over my spending goal at $22, and I had to purchase some 3.5mm to 1/4″ jacks ($), so in the end I spent $31.

    Plugging it all in

    I plugged the speakers into the output, and then my main computer into input 1. The plan was to plug the iPad in to input 2 until I got an idea. Since I mounted my iPad above my monitor so I can watch Star Trek, I wanted to use Bluetooth. I had a Bluetooth adapter($) that I had bought to make an older pair of headphones wireless. The adapter wasn’t being used, so I plugged it into input 2 and plugged the USB into the computer to keep it charged. Now I could pair it with my iPad and play sound from the iPad wirelessly.

    Finally, I plugged my Mac Mini into input 3.

    In practice

    It’s pretty cool. I have a hardware dial for each volume, and can mix all three if I want to at the same time. No more plugging/unplugging cables.

    ($) Designates an Amazon affiliate link

  • A whole lot of Apple and more – This Geek in Review for 31 Jan 2020

    A whole lot of Apple and more – This Geek in Review for 31 Jan 2020

    A whole lot of Apple nostalgia for this week. Does Apple announce every major product in January? First up is the 10 year anniversary of the iPad. I have my thoughts from 10 years ago. It’s funny reading stuff that I wrote ten years ago. The iPad was the first (and so far, last) device that I have ever pre-ordered from Apple. I miss the lines that used to form at the Apple store for major releases. The iPad release was huge. There other retrospectives on the iPad for your perusal.

    One comment that I read about the iPad has really stuck with me. It was the last big device announced by Steve Jobs, and the commentator mentioned it’s the product that has suffered the most from the lack of Steve Jobs. The iPad has not come close to reaching its potential. Apple is pushing the keyboard attachment for most iPads, making the iPad look more like a Surface Tablet or laptop than a futuristic device. I’m all for reading articles on using the iPad for productivity, but the number of hoops one has to jump through does not bode well for getting work done. There are a number of features that Apple needs to add:

    • Multiple user support
    • Copy individual text from any app. There have been a number of times I’ve wanted to copy some text, but there isn’t away to do it
    • The ability to have a multiple item clipboard. Once you can store several items at a time in a clipboard, it’s hard to go back.

    Also, 36 years ago this month Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh. I don’t remember the announcement or hearing much about the Macintosh, I was too busy playing on my uncle’s Color Computer. Christmas of 1984 is when I got my Atari 800XL. Most people nowadays remember the Super Bowl ad:

    It is also the twentieth anniversary of Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac. What was amazing about IE5 is that it was anchored in technologies that were bleeding edge at the time, such as cascading style sheets. The public beta of OS X hadn’t been released yet, but Microsoft really nailed some of the features of the first OS X’s Aqua interface.

    For those still rocking an old Mac, you may have noticed that you can’t set the year to 2020. Well, there is a control panel that will help you with that. This affected me on my Macintosh SE/30 running System 7.1. The operating system supports later dates, it’s just that the default date control panel won’t let you set a year past 2019.

    The stop motion skills are strong with this one

    I can’t wait to stay in an Atari hotel. I’m hoping they install a 2600 in every room.

    If you’re going to go, then go out in a blaze of glory. The Mount Vesuvius eruption was so hot, one man’s brain turned to glass..

    And the next time you are entertaining, how about throwing up your own vj

  • Star Trek: Picard – Engage

    Star Trek: Picard – Engage

    I hope when I’m his age I look as regal.

    Last week CBS All-Access premiered the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. This series is notable for bringing back Jean Luc Picard, who is now semi-retired and running a winery. Some bad things have happened, causing Picard to resign from Star Fleet.

    I’m not going to say a whole lot yet. There are a number of questions from the first episode that I’m sure are going to be answered throughout the season. What I’m most excited about is the fact we finally have a new Star Trek property that is moving forward. We haven’t had that since Star Trek Voyager ended its run almost 20 years ago. Everything Star Trek since then as taken place in the past.

    Anyway, the first episode of Picard gets the spousal seal of approval, which is a pretty high bar to reach. We’ll see how well it does as the series continues. Also, if you get a chance, watch the Short Trek Children of Mars. It references a very important event in Picard, so you may want to not watch it until after you watch the first episode of Picard.