TG@CF – Just thoughts

September 22, 2013February 22, 2023

Fancy a coffee and a chat?

Thanks for the feedback from Meet-o-matic. From the responses so far it looks like the morning of Thursday 3rd October is a good fit; so let’s go for that day. I suggest we go from 11:00am up to lunchtime, so I’ll be in the Costa Coffee in Park Place, Cardiff from then.

Looking forward to seeing all who are interested in chatting about using Dropbox or not) – thanks Simon for the recent post, iOS7 (maybe), MOOC’s (possibly), FutureLearn (almost certainly) and Digidol (probably). All that and more. If you have an idea of something you’d like to chat about – just get in touch using the form on this page.

September 17, 2013February 22, 2023

Syncing in a Torrent

I’m ditching Dropbox… Cancelling my Google Drive subscription… I’m syncing with torrents, now…

When I bought my first laptop it seemed a little daring to be buying a machine with no floppy disk drive (this was twelve years ago…) But it had a CD burner, so I’d be alright… Then USB drives became the defacto way to shift files around.

Now it’s Dropbox, and the many similar services that let you throw your files up into the cloud and access them from any of your devices, or any web browser…

But… there have always been a couple of niggles… safety and security. Can you trust the service you use not to let your files leak into the wild… and can you be sure that your files will be there tomorrow? Continue reading “Syncing in a Torrent”

iPhone session January 16, 2024
I’ve been toying with the idea of more extensive use of my iPhone 14 Pro with its three lenses; and I’d also come across and purchased Halide – a Camera app for the iPhone, along with Spectre – another app from the same stable that utilises the Live functionality on the iPhone to give silky […]
That red kite again!!! September 19, 2023
A number of things have happened since I took the image of a Red Kite looking down at me at The Red Kite Centre at Llanddeusant back in 2011. It was the first outing of a new 70-300mm lens on my old Sony DSLR-A700 which only had a 12Mp Crop Sensor. Those images are shown […]
Fun with Photoshop September 19, 2023
Just occasionally I can breakout from the mould of my photography, and this image shows just one such occasion. The challenge set by the local u3a Photography group was selfies – but with a difference. I must admit I faced the challenge with quite some reticence. It seemed silly; I didn’t want to take photos […]

Browsers and Search Engines – 2022 November 20, 2022
It’s always worth reviewing which search engine you should use, as it is the browser of choice to “surf the web”. The reasons you might wish to consider which search engine you might wish to use are greater privacy, enhanced security, minimise adverts being displayed, or to get more meaningful pages being displayed, but first […]
Stolen phone & SIM locking November 20, 2022
A rather disturbing incident involving a stolen phone and credit cards and the ability of a fraudster/thief being able to reset a user’s password/pass-number for a high-street bank occurred in September involving a journalist called Charlotte Morgan. She described what happened to her (and it transpired others) when her phone and credit cards were stolen […]
Switch-off of analogue PSTN February 4, 2022
This article will record the progress of the planned switch-off of the analogue PSTN (public switched telephone network) by 2025, and its implications to all of our generation, as Openreach moves to implement a fully digital service. The issue was brought to the attention of the Cardiff u3a Computer Group by Jenny Sims, a group […]