Daily Battles: Fighting Bad UX Designs

Today's blog post on daily battles is a bit special, because we, consumers, cannot win this kind of battle directly with technological solutions or hacks. All we can do is to complain or vote with our choice of products. And if we are loud enough, product makers will have to listen and then make improvements.

I am talking about Bad UX Designs, where UX stands for User Experience.

A good product lets users accomplish tasks. A great product also makes the process intuitive, efficient, and pleasant.

Let me give you two examples of bad UX design that bugs me almost every day.

The first example is a function in the Android mobile operating system running on my Samsung Galaxy S8. As illustrated below, a user can use a button (or swipe up) to show all apps currently running on the phone and then swipe up to force quit the app that is malfunctioning or one you no longer want.

Most likely, you are in the app you want to force quit before you perform the swipe up action to kill it. But as soon as you swipe up, the app you want to quit moves right and hides itself behind the edge of the screen, so when you swipe up the app to kill it, most likely you'll be killing another app that you had no intention of killing. This happens to me almost every time, and it is super frustrating. Why can't we just keep the current app right in the middle? Whoever came up with this design would be having a serious talk with me if he/she worked on my team!!

The second example is a web page used by the County Library. What's the first thing a user does when he/she visits the library web page? Most likely the user would try to log in, so he/she can get personalized information and paths to activities relating to his/her personal account. In the picture below, you can see that when a user tries to log in, a popup would jump out from a control right above the login link, obstructing the login link completely. The user has to then try to figure out how to get rid of the big popup and then get to the login link by carefully maneuver the cursor around all the controls in order to avoid triggering any popups.

Such bad UX designs add unnecessary stress and cognitive workload to users who already have to fight all kinds of battles with technology every day besides their non-technical daily challenges. Please! Please be a little bit more diligent with UX design work so we can make their lives slightly better! Use your own design daily so you identify the suffering, and run good user studies to iron out all these annoyances!!

Video of the Day:

Lesson learned: divorce the woman who thinks the car is more important than your life.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: OpenDNS blocking a domain resulting in undefined error

OpenDNS is a useful tool for monitoring your kids' online activities and blocking websites you don't want them to visit. I blogged about this tool in my blog series named The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook.

One useful feature of OpenDNS is the ability to block en entire category of websites with a few clicks. You can look at the list of domains your kids visited and select the domain you want to block. Then you have the option to block this domain or block similar domains as shown below.

For example, my daughter used to waste a bunch of time "window" shopping on online shopping sites. I simply clicked block similar domains from OpenDNS, and many web shopping sites that I have never even heard of all became blocked, to my great satisfaction.

However, sometimes a specific website slips through because it was not part of a category when it should have. One example is disneynow.com. It is clearly a video site. But when I blocked YouTube with the category of video sites, OpenDNS only considered video upload sites.

If you select block similar domains on disneynow.com, you will get a prompt saying it doesn't belong to any categories and you can suggest a category. However, it doesn't really let you create the new category and block it. If you select block similar domains, you actually get an error message says "Error blocking disneynow.com. Undefined." This is No Bueno!

A little bit of research revealed that people actually reported this problem as far back as 2016. But guess this bug never had high enough priority, so it never got fixed (see link below).

https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/220050547-When-i-try-to-block-a-domain-i-get-an-error-

However, it is still possible to block the domain. You just have to go through a different route. Here are the steps:

1. Click the SETTINGS tab at the top.
2. Select your network from the dropdown box.
3. Scroll to the bottom to find a section named Manage individual domains.
4. Add the domain you want to block in the Always block field.
5. Click the ADD DOMAIN button.

Voila, mission accomplished! Lanny 1 and Lanny's daughter 0!!

Moving on to the next battle!!

Video of the Day:

You got to love this boy's attitude. He keeps battling and never gives up!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Enable Remote Desktop on Windows Home Editions

Remote Desktop is a great tool that lets you get onto a remote Windows computer as if you were just sitting in front of that computer. I can even use it directly from my Mac to support/control my family members' computers using an app called Microsoft Remote Desktop.

I just recently allowed my 10-year old son to start using an old computer, so he can write blogs, manage his calendar, and search for knowledge (not watching cartoons or playing games online). So naturally, I needed to put some parental control on his computer.

Read about a complete suite of parental control solutions I blogged about previously.

One tool I use is Remote Desktop. Since this is an old computer running Windows 8 Home edition, it does not come automatically with Remote Desktop capabilities. Same goes for any Home version of the Microsoft Windows operating systems such as Windows 8.1 Home, Windows 10 Home, etc., because Microsoft wants you to upgrade to the Pro version for this feature. However, you don't have to pay and upgrade. Here's what you have to do to enable Remote Desktop on your Home edition of Windows:

1. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 Home if you have a Windows 8 computer

This is important because there's a security patch included in Windows 8.1 that if you don't upgrade, Remote Desktop will return an error complaining about CredSSP encryption oracle remediation like the one below:

Just upgrade to Windows 8.1 Home, which is free from Microsoft Store (type that in the search field in the Start Menu), and this problem would go away.

2. Install RDP Wrapper Library

Go to the RDP Wrapper Library Github page and download the zip file. Extract the zip file and then go into the folder to run the install.bat file as an administrator (right-click and then choose run as administrator). Hit any key at the end to exit out of the installation.

Now run the RDPConf.exe file in the same folder and make sure it says Listening. If it says Not listening like the one below, move on to the next step.

3. Add Offset Code to the rdpwrap.ini file

In the above image, you should be able to see the version of windows (build number) you are running. In the above example, it is 10.0.17134.1. Find this number, and then go to this link below to find the match file.

https://github.com/fre4kyC0de/rdpwrap

If you can't find a matching txt file, then sorry, you won't be able to get RDP working on your computer. This is actually the case for my wife's computer. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see people requesting txt offset files for these versions of Windows, and for some versions, the author of the code repo simply will not support. Just come back to this page from time to time and see if the author might change his mind.

If you do find a matching txt file, yay! Go to the folder on your computer called \Program File\rdpwrap and find a file called rdpwrap.ini. You want to edit this file with a text editing app (such as NotePad) that runs with elevated access (right-click on the NotePad app and select Run as administrator). Then you want to copy the content from the matching txt file and then paste that to the end of the rdpwrap.ini file. Make sure you have a blank line at the end of the ini file, otherwise it won't work.

If your remote desktop still does not connect, check your firewall settings. Follow the article below to allow remote desktop and ICMP (so you can ping the remote computer) to go through your firewall and remote desktop problem would go away.

Allow Remote Desktop in Firewall Settings
Allow Ping (ICMP) through your Firewall

Happy remoting now!

Video of the Day:

Addy playing Chopin's Prelude in E Minor

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Mac Running Super Slow With kernel_task Using More Than 100% of Your CPU

If you use a Mac and start to notice that your Mac is running dog slow, most likely it is due to the "kernel_task" high CPU usage bug.

To confirm, open your Activity Monitor from under your Application and under Utilities folder. You should see something like this below where kernel_task should only use a small percentage of your CPU (in my case, 6.3%): 

If you actually see the %CPU going for more than 100% (mine went as high as 116%, which is beyond my math understanding), that's why your computer is dog slow.

This "kernel_task" process is actually your Mac operating system. So you can't really stop this process.

First, you should try to close all your Chrome windows or whatever web browser you use (I tend to leave like dozens of them open), because one possible culprit is the Flash player, which most likely only lives in your web browsers. The good news is that when you restart your browser, all your web pages (tabs) will automatically come back, so you don't lose anything.

If the above step doesn't solve your Mac slowness problem, then you should really just restart your Mac. It is very interesting that people always joked about restarting Windows as the defacto method to solve all Windows problems. But these days, restarting your Mac is also probably the defacto method you should use for Mac problems. Sad!

Hopefully, your Mac slowness would go away and you can get back to your usual life. If not, then you should read this article for more information on troubleshooting! Good luck!

How to Fix Your Mac’s “kernel_task” High CPU Usage Bug

Picture of the Day:

A nice evening view picture from my deck.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Not Able to See Shared Google Calendars on iPhone

If you received an email saying that someone has shared a Google Calendar with you, and then you accept the invitation. Most likely you still can't see the shared Google Calendar events on your calendar.

Do not panic! This is Google's choice by design (a bad one).

Here's what you have to do to get calendar events to show up:

• Open a browser on your iPhone, whether it is Safari or Chrome or something else.
• Go to calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect.
• Sign in to your Google account if you are asked to.
• Check the checkbox(es) of the shared calendars you want to see on your iPhone.

Same goes for iPad and Mac. Just follow the same steps and you'll be fine.

See how easy it is? Now move on to your next battle with technology! Good luck!

Video of the Day:

My daughter's high school soccer team was featured by the local TV station on their effort to serve the community! Go girls!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Fix A Chromebook That Won't Turn On

If you have a Chromebook and you cannot turn it on even though you are pretty sure you have the battery fully charged, you've come to the right place.

Before you decide to open it up and replace the battery, or hard reset the Chromebook back to factory default, you should always try this method I am describing first. I might fix your problem without losing any data and save yourself a ton of work.

Step one: make sure the battery has been charging for a good while.

Step two: hold the refresh button and the power button together for 10 seconds and then let go.

Image from TechyThings.com

Now hit the power button again and your Chromebook should start normally.

Here's a video showing you step by step (come on, there are really only two steps):

Picture of the Day:

Silver lake in Brighten Ski Resort, Salt Lake City, Utah

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: HoMedics Shiatsu Neck & Shoulder Massager Stopped Working

Since I sit in front of a computer all day (with pretty bad postures), I have very stiff neck and shoulders. Boss got me a HoMedics Neck and Shoulder Massager (model number NMS-620H). Having just left it lying by my desk for quite a while, I decided to give myself a massage when I felt a very tight back. However, when I turned it on, nothing moved. Here's the thing, when nothing moves, no one gets a massage.

The massager was only about 2 years old and I honestly haven't used it much. I tried pushing all the buttons, hoping that I simply forgot how to operate this thing. When I push the heat button, the lights do light up and I could feel the massager getting warmer. It simply just doesn't move the kneaders. I power cycled it a few times, but that didn't change anything.

Tried searching online and see if other people had similar problems. The answer was yes. Many people had the same problems, but the only way to fix it was to have the manufacturer replace parts or replace the entire unit.

Didn't want to go through all those troubles, so I decided to try fixing it myself. If you have similar problems, here's what you can try.

First of all, make sure the massager has power (and don't make a mistake like this). In my case, since the lights come on and I can feel the massager warming up, I know the massager is getting enough power.

Next, unplug the massager from power and have it just sit overnight. Yep, it's that simple. Once you have patiently waited (or you simply forgot about it for many nights), plug it back in, and try turning it on again. You'd be very pleasantly surprised that the massager has returned to life.

We know HoMedic makes all kinds of massagers such as this one, this one, and this one. This method should also work for those types of massager. At least you should give this method a try before you start calling the warranty service.

Hope this simple method can help you out and save you a bunch of extra work. Moving on to the next daily battle!

No matter how delicious the just cooked noodle is, do not be tempted to eat it right away. Patience is the virtual, otherwise, you will burn your tongue and not be able to taste it.






BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Get Rid Of Recommended Videos at the End of a YouTube Video

Don't you find it very annoying that towards the end of a YouTube video you watch, a bunch of recommended video thumbnails cover up most of the player screen and obstruct the ending part of the clip?

Well, here's how you can fix that:

Go to YouTube web page and click on you avatar icon to open the menu. Click Settings with the gear icon. Next click Playback and performance from the menu on the left, and you'll see something like the image below. Uncheck Show annotations and in-video notifications. Make sure to click the SAVE button. That's it!

Another battle fought and another battle one. Moving on to the next battle!

This fix is also super valuable if you find yourself keep clicking those thumbnails to watch clips after clips late into the night... 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Why Can't I Edit My Slack Message

Slack is a popular instant messaging app that many companies (especially among tech companies) use for internal team communications and collaborations. The company actually just had its IPO earlier this year (June 20th, 2019, to be exact) and peaked at an evaluation of over $20 billion.

Example Slack App Screenshot

To be honest, Slack is great for the communication part, but it can also be super distracting with all the notifications from all the channels you are in (some channels you just don't want to mute). And I actually sometimes intentionally turn it off for hours at a time if I need to get into the zone and focus on coding, troubleshooting, or designing.

One feature in slack is that you can edit your own messages in case you had a typo, forgot to @someone, or need to add additional info. But you might find that sometimes you can just right click on the message and select "edit message" to make your changes:

But some other times, when you right click, the edit option is missing from the menu and can't be found in the "More message actions..." screen either. WHY???

Turned out this is a setting your Slack admin can set, which governs how much time you have if you need to make edits. If you wait for too long, then you will lose the permission to edit. This help page below shows you how you can adjust that permission setting if you are the workspace owner or admin:

Manage permissions for message editing and deletion

I am neither the owner nor the admin, so I simply start a thread under the message I have lost the permission to edit and just post corrections there.


Video of the Day:

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Google Adsense Home Page Not Loading Can't Login

I opened my Google Adsense home page as usual today to see Google's Stats on my ad units. Then I got the following error message:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.

Tried several times and still got the same error message.

If you are also seeing this message, don't let it fool you. This is a blatant lie!!! No Google engineer is looking at this to resolve it for you, because this is just a static message they display when certain scripts are blocked from running on their web page. You can wait till you drop dead and no Google engineer will help you!!

But I will!! 😁 And I don't work for Google!!

Normally, this error happens if you recently installed an ad blocker extension to your Chrome browser (or other similar things such as NoScript on Firefox). But I haven't installed any new extensions at all. So what is going on?

Turned out it was the uBlock origin extension I've always had that was causing this problem. My guess is that it just had an auto update or downloaded new database or something. All you have to do is to click the icon from the tool bar and then click that big power button to disable it for the current page you are on.

So the lesson learned here is that, again and again, auto updates might break things. Check your Chrome extensions. Something must have updated if the page worked perfectly for you for a long time and suddenly stops working when you have not made any changes to your computer.

We live in a world where things no longer work reliably in trade for the convenience of getting new features automatically. Just enjoy it, because there's nothing you can do. 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Print on a Chromebook

Chromebooks are cheap laptop computers that run the Chrome OS, a lightweight OS developed by Google, that uses Chrome browser as the main UI to basically run browser apps (linux-based kernel).

Because of the lightweight OS design, many things become much harder to do on a Chromebook laptop, such as printing to your home printer, especially if it is a printer that's a few years old, like my Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer.

This printer has been serving our needs well. It is wirelessly connected to our home network. All our computers can send print jobs to it, except the Chromebook.

Google's online help page made it sound really easy to get your Chromebook set up to print to your home computer.

Your first option is to connect your home printer directly to the Chromebook via an USB cable. But seriously who does this? Most likely the printer is shared among multiple devices, and plugging it into a laptop each time you need to print sounds terrible when home printers today are pretty much all capable of wireless communications.

You can also set up the printer as a local wireless printer according to Google. You just make sure your Chromebook is on the same network (subnet) with the wireless printer, go into the settings page, search to find printer settings, and then add a printer by selecting the auto-discovered printer nearby, or manually specify settings such as the IP address of the printer and the IPP protocol.

Sounds pretty easy, right? I was able to quickly add my printer using the find printer nearby method (auto-discovered), but when I tried to print a test job, nothing came out of the printer. Also tried the manually add method by specifying the IP address of the printer. I know my Chromebook can see the printer on the network because I can ping its IP address and can also view the printer status in a browser when I enter the IP address. But still, nothing comes out of the printer when I ran a test print job.

The next option is to set up the printer as a cloud printer. One benefit of this approach is that you can print to the printer even when you are not on your home network. Some newer printers are cloud-ready, meaning they are automatically accessible from outside your home network. My printer, unfortunately, does not have this capability. So in order for it to be discoverable in the cloud, I have to install a Google Cloud Print connector on a computer that has to be always on and always connected to the same network as my printer and always logged in with your Google Account. You have to install the Google Cloud Print connector on this computer and this computer basically serves as a print server that will bridge the communication between your Chromebook and the printer.

In the Lannyland residence, unfortunately, I don't have such a computer dedicated to the printer just that the Chromebook can print. Even though Philip and Jane are always on (BTW: Philip and Jane are two physical existences of my smart home butler Philip Jane), their main functionalities required them to be on a different network from the regular home network the printer is on. And trying to make them multi-homed (meaning connecting to multiple networks at the same time) creates more problems.

But if you have such a computer laying around, this might very well be your solution. When I tested it, I was able to print from the Chromebook. Just make sure the computer never goes to sleep and always stay connected to your home network.

Read the linked articles below for details on how to set up your printer for your Chromebook in details.

Chromebook Help: Set up your printer

Google Cloud Print Connector for Windows

Google Cloud Print Connector for Linux

So how does my daughter print from her Chromebook? I tell her to email me the doc, and I'll print for her from my computer. 😅

[Update on 11/21/19:] Google just quietly "announced" that Google Cloud Print will be officially deprecated by the end of 2019. Google, shutting down another Beta product and leave your users hanging. Hooray, You did it again!

Video of the Day:

Whale Lifts Kayakers Out Of Water

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Wyze Camera Stops Working and Won't Even Factory Reset

Wyze cameras are probably the cheapest wireless indoor cameras you can find that offers quite a bunch of features such as live streaming with 1080p video, person detection, 2-way audio, and continuous recording (DVR) if you add a microSD card. For example, the Wyze V2 (top) sells for $25.98 on Amazon and the Wyze Pan (bottom) sells for $37.98 on Amazon. The Wyze Pan camera allows you to pan and tilt the camera with your smart phone app to look at all 360 degrees left right and up down.

Every once a while, the Wyze company will send out firmware updates to these cameras to add new features. And sometimes, unfortunately, the update might get stuck in a bad state rendering the camera unusable.

In such cases, the easiest way to resolve the problem is to first power cycle, and if that doesn't work,  factory reset the camera as described in this article:

Basic Troubleshooting for Wyze Cameras

I actually had to factory one of my Wyze cameras. But following the instructions didn't work and the camera was still a brick. Took me many hours of trial and error, but eventually I found the solution.

Turned out you need to remove the SD card from the camera before you factory reset for it to work!!!

Probably the easiest way to pop that microSD card out is to use a pen.

That's it for today. Hope my post has helped someone to win their daily battles!

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Troubleshoot Smart Home Light Switches

I have a Jasco Z-Wave Smart Light Switch just like the one pictured below that I bought from Amazon. I had integrated it into my Vivint Smart Home system and use it to control my outdoor low-voltage lighting in the front yard. I enjoyed it immensely. Before installing this switch, I had to flip a light switch in the wall to turn front yard lights on and off manually. With this waterproof smart switch, now I can turn on/off lights directly from my smart phone app. But the best part is that I don't even have to turn them on/off myself anymore. I have a custom action that will automatically turn lights on at sunset and then automatically turn them off at midnight. I can even have lights automatically turn on when my outdoor camera or my doorbell camera detects a person and then automatically turn them off after 5 minutes.

There are of course other brand of smart switches, and they might be using something other than Z-Wave (a communication protocol), such as ZigBee or WiFi. But the idea is the same. As long as you can integrate it into your smart home system, you are good.

Then one day, my control panel complained that my switch is offline. So the troubleshooting began.

I unplugged the switch off the outlet outside and then plugged it back in. Didn't help.

Next, I try to run diagnostics and rediscoveries of all my Z-Wave smart home devices and see if that would improve things. Nope, switch still shows as offline.

Maybe it is bad signal strength? I wondered. So I took my panel off the wall (it has built int battery) and then set it right next to the switch and ran diagnostics again. Still no change.

Having no choice, I went to the last resort: removing the device from the panel and then learn it back in again. This was not my preferred solution because after I do this, I would have to recreate all my custom actions and device groups relating to this device. But guess what, I couldn't remove or add the device at all.

Do I even have power on this outside outlet? Maybe it got shorted from the rain or something? So I took a lamp outside and plugged it into the outlet. Problem confirmed: I simply didn't have power.

So next thing was to see if the circuit break has been tripped due to the short. You see, I have two circuit break boxes and the switches were not very well labeled (which is probably typical for most homes). So there I was, turning switches off and on for all the unknown control regions, effectively rebooting many things at my house, the stove/microwave, the washer/dryer, the furnace/AC, my garage door openers, my computers/routers/switches, my 100+ smart home devices, the list goes on and on. But after I pretty much reset all the circuit breaks, when I took the lamp out to test again, I still didn't have power!

I was completely dumbfounded!

About a week later (a week without my convenient outdoor front lawn lighting automation), a thought suddenly struck me: "Didn't I use to turn front lawn lights on/off using an in wall switch?" I ran to the location of the in wall switch immediately.

Sure enough, the switch has been turned off even though I had it COMPLETELY TAPED OFF.

After I turned the switch back on, wah-lah, my lighting automation is back! I didn't have to reinstall anything, it just worked! So here's the important lesson learned:

Always check the in-wall switch first to make sure it is on for any of your smart home lighting troubleshooting tasks!!

The other lesson learned here is that your kids will always destroy your perfectly working things. But that deserves a whole series of blog posts of their own.

Ciao!

I repeat: your kids will always destroy your perfectly working things.








BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Play Two Video Clips Simultaneously and Synchronously Side-by-Side

I was trying to compare two computer vision models on how well they handle object detection on certain scenarios and wanted to see the bounding boxes from each model drawn in the same clip and compare visually side by side. So I need a way to play two clips (same clip but with different bounding boxes drawn on top of them) synchronously so I can compare the exact same frame for both clips.

Problem Statement:

Be able to play two 1:1 ratio clips side by side simultaneously and synchronously (frame synced to frame) and be able to start and pause both clips simultaneously without spending any money on new software.

It was actually not easy to find the exact solution. Let me share with you what I learned.

Option 1: iMovie App on Mac

Obviously this tool is only available on a Mac. However, it is a free tool that comes with the Mac OS, which is handy.

The iMovie app has a split screen button that let you easily place two video clips side by side. Then you can even export the resulting split screen movie to a new video clip, so you can play them side by side again and again in the future.

You basically import two clips into the app, and then drag each one to the timeline with one above the other (not drag on on top of the other, which confused me quite a while). Selecting one of them in the timeline, and then click that split screen button. That's it!

This article link below will give you all the details.

iMovie for Mac: Create a split-screen effect

However, since my two clips are 1:1 ratio, and iMovie only allows for 16:9 and 4:3 ratio, my two side by side clips all got cropped automatically (because two clips side by side becomes 2:1, which is 18:9), and I lost a section of my clip on the left side for both clips. And there is absolutely no way to create custom size ratios in iMovie. You have to pay Apple money to get their better version of the app, which doesn't meet my requirement. So this is not a solution for me!

Option 2: VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that runs on both Windows and Mac.

Many people have posted tutorials (such as the one linked below) on how to change some settings in VLC that will allow you to open multiple instances of the VLC app, thus, allowing you to play multiple clips at the same time. You basically uncheck a few checkboxes in settings (which is not available for the Mac version and you have to do some command line trick to get it working).

VLC HowTo/Play multiple instances

But opening multiple instances of the player doesn't let me control both clips in order to simultaneously start and pause. In order to that, I have to create complicated across instance hotkeys, which I won't do.

Inside the VLC player, there are actually functionalities built in to allow you to play two clips side by side with synchronous control. In the 3.0.X versions, you go to File--Advanced Open File, and you get this screen below:

In here you can supposedly specify two different clips to be played synchronously. I was so happy when I found this, and then I was so sad when I found out it doesn't work!!

Then I found that I am not the only one suffering. Someone else has already reported a bug to VLC:

#22495 new defect: Advanced File Open - Play another media synchronously not functioning in 3.0.x

AAAAAHHHH!!!!

Anyway, if you are willing to go back to the 2.x.x versions, this function still works there. You do create security risks if you downgrade though.

So again, not a solution for me!

Option 3: QuickTime Player

QuickTime player is another Mac built in multimedia player. You can double clip on your two clips to open two QuickTime windows and drag them to be side by side. But how can you play/pause both clips at the same time?

I did find this web page below that says you can either select "Play All Movies" from the Movie menu, or press command-option-space to start both clips at the same time. But guess what? I don't have the option of "Play All Movies." That is only available in the paid version of QuickTime Pro app! Dang! And command-option-space also doesn't work!! Dang!!

Play two movies simultaneously in QuickTime Player

After many trial and error, I finally figured out what works, and you are in luck!!

To start both clips at the same time, press Command-Enter. And to pause, press Command-Enter again!

That's it! And this would meet my needs. So problem solved and for this battle, I won!

Option 4: Command Line Tools

You can also play multiple videos side by side from command line control. But this requires installing and configuring frameworks, so not for the faint-hearted.

You can use gstreamer/gst-launch pipeline described in this article.

I've also heard you can use the tiling plugin in Nvidia's DeepStream SDK.

I will eventually get those working on my computer. For now, option 3 works for me!



Video of the Day:

Think of your life challenge as a bear approaching you. Don't panic and stay calm. The problem might not be that bad!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Google Blogger Editor Bug Removes Everything From Your Saved Draft Post

I can't believe I am blogging about a bug in Google Blogger in my daily battles blog series on Google Blogger!!

I have a blog post I saved as a draft and used as a template for all my standard formatting needs (and with images and fonts I use for things such as Tao of the Day). When I was about to start a daily battle blog post on software bugs,  I went to this draft post (I normally leave it open) so I can hit the shortcut keys ⌘+A (CTRL+A for windows) to select everything, then ⌘+C (CTRL+C for windows) to copy them, so I can go to a new post and ⌘+V (CTRL+V for windows) to paste it as a starting template.

However, by mistake, I hit ⌘+Z, instead, because the Z key is right below the A key and I've got fat fingers. Normally, ⌘+Z means undo in the computer world. However in Blogger's case, it actually deleted everything in my post draft. As I was completed puzzled, Blogger's auto save automatically kicked in and saved my draft post with nothing in it. AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

This can't be true! I just lost all my contents in my template!

But it is true! I can actually reproduce this bug every time!

You see, you can have a draft post like this:

And if you hit ⌘+Z, it turns into this:

And then that Save button on the upper right corner flashes into Saving, and wah-lah (viola in French), your draft has just been wiped clean and there's no way to undo that!!

Thanks Google!!

I know software all have bugs, and my programs have plenty of bugs in them too. But a bug that makes bloggers lose their drafts completely with no way to reverse the damage is a CRITICAL bug!

As a good netizen, I clicked that "Send feedback" button and reported the bug. But we all know that Google is famous for ignoring feedbacks for 10+ years, so I am not keeping my hope hight.

For now, all you bloggers out there, avoid using any shortcut key combos when you just get into a post draft. After you have already typed something in there, ⌘+Z will work correctly as undo and you are not risking losing all existing contents you thoughtfully put together into a draft post and just haven't post.

By the way, the same bug exists if you edit an already published post. But as long as you don't revert to draft, nothing gets saved, so at least you don't lose anything! Thanks God for that, because I actually tried it on a published blog post!!

You win some, and you lose some! But never give up your daily battles!







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Why LG Electronic Dryer Cut Drying Cycle Short and Stops Drying

Appliances today can be very fancy. For example, Washers and Dryers these days can automatically detect your load and adjust washing/drying cycles automatically for best laundry experience.

However, you might notice that sometimes when you start the drying cycle, your dryer machine tells you that it will take 55 minutes, but the dryer would stop only 10-15 minutes into the drying cycle, and your laundry ended up not dry at all.

This also happened to my LG Electronic Dryer!

No need to dig up your warranty and call tech support. What most likely happened is that the load sensor in your dryer just got dirty and you happen to be doing a light load of laundry.

There are two ways to solve the problem:

First option is to clean the sensor yourself. Just pull the lint filter out (the one you have to clean each time after you dry a load of laundry, and the sensor is located inside the slot for the filter. Stick your fingers in and rub them against a metal piece you can feel to clean it. Since the sensor can get dirty easily, you really should be cleaning it each time you clean the lint filter.

Another option, which is my preferred option, is to use laundry balls when you dry your laundry. These laundry balls will make the load heavier, so the "smart" dryer won't cut the drying cycle short. You also get the added benefits of reducing wrinkles and lint and saving the need of using liquid fabric softeners and dry sheet. Laundry balls are very cheap, you can buy a 6-pack laundry balls on Amazon for only $7.99.

Happy laundrying!! Moving on to my next daily battle!!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard for Mac Not Working

If you actually follow my blog, then you'll know that my Logitech wireless solar keyboard ran out of battery yesterday. My keyboard is the exact same one shown above, a Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard for Mac, which sells for $53.97 on Amazon.

When the keyboard was working before but stops working, most likely it is out of battery. The easiest way to check is to push the sun button (upper left in the image below) and see if you get a happy face light (has battery) or a sad face light (out of battery). Note that if it is out of battery, there's no way to plug it into a power source, so your best bet is to leave it somewhere very bright during the day and leave it there for the entire day for it to charge.

However, after it has charged, it is very possible that even with a happy face, the keyboard still doesn't work. Don't panic, the fix is actually very simple. Plugged into your USB port, you'll find a 2.4GHz Wireless Receiver that looks similar to the one below. Simply unplug it and plug it into a different USB port would solve your problem and get your keyboard back working again.

Another option is to restart your Mac, and most likely the keyboard will resume working. I don't like rebooting my computers with so many things I have already running, so I'll stick with the first option.

So why do we have to do this? Well, just another bug or stupid design by Apple. Life goes on, so don't sweat too much over it.

Moving on to my next daily battles with technology!!

Key to Happiness: ARK - A random act of kindness a day.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: 64GB USB Disk Not Recognized Correctly in Windows

So it all started from me trying to move some large files between computers and smart devices. I plugged the USB drive into Jane (a Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences where Philip Jane is my virtual smart home butler), but the USB drive only showed a capacity of 200MB.

"What's going on?" I asked myself as I correctly ejected the drive safely (following proper Windows procedures) and plugged the USB drive onto my Mac, my main computer. It showed 58GB space.

"Maybe the drive is formatted into a Mac only format," I though to myself. And sure enough, it was in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

No problem for a tech savvy geek like me! Within one minute, I have successfully formatted the USB drive in exFAT format, a format that both Mac and Windows can understand.

I unmounted the USB drive (proper Mac procedure in handing USB drives) and plugged the it into Jane again. "What the heck?" It still only showed 200MB.

"Is something wrong with Jane?" I asked myself as I promptly unplugged the USB drive from Jane and plugged it into Philip (another Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences). This time it correctly showed the USB drive as 58GB.

"Maybe Jane just can't read exFAT," I told myself, "and I really should make it FAT32, Window's favorite disk format.

I quickly launched the disk format utility in Philip. But wait? Why isn't FAT32 an option for format? The only option available is NTFS.

After reading an article named "Help Article – Fix for “Windows Format, no FAT32 option," I got it. Turned out Windows can't format any USB drive bigger than 32GB. The article suggested that I download a free utility which will let me format the drive even though it is big. But guess what, the link sent me to a page like this:

Hey, you can't fool me! Didn't I say I am a tech savvy geek? These are advertisements disguised as a legit web page! I clicked the back button and looked at the date of that help article. Yep, that article was written in 2014, 5 years ago.

I searched again, and this time I decided to open an article named "Solved: FAT32 Option Not Available in Windows 10/8/7." This one suggested that I download a free (for home use) utility called AOMEI Partition Assistant. This one looks okay. So I happily downloaded the tool and installed in on Philip. Upon opening the utility, I realized that the utility is not even recognizing the USB drive at all.

I guess I am back to square one.

I vaguely recalled that Jane recognized the drive with a volume name of something EFI, so I plugged the USB drive back in to Jane. I was correct, the volume was named "EFI System." So I started googling EFI System. Turned out an EFI System is a bootable windows partition.

Plugging the USB drive back into Philip, I opened Disk Manager so I can look at all the partitions. The USB drive actually had two partitions, an EFI System partition, a exFAT partition, and also an unused partition.

Maybe that AOMEI tool will correctly recognize the drive is there's only one partition. I quickly deleted the unused partition and the exFAT partition. Loaded up AOMEI again. Nope, still not recognizing the drive. When I tried to delete the last EFI System partition, I found out that Windows Disk Manager doesn't let me delete this partition. All options grayed out. Great!

More searching online landed on this article: "How to Delete EFI System Partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista." Didn't want to mess with rebooting Philip using a bootable disk (since Philip is a headless computer, meaning it doesn't have a monitor plugged into it), I went all commando. And this time, I was able to delete the partition successfully. Thanks Brithny!

Going back into Disk Manager on Philip, I created a single partition and a single volume and formatted it as exFAT and went back into AOMEI again. GUESS WHAT? AOMEI still doesn't recognize the drive. What a piece of junk. I am uninstalling this %&*!

"Let's try the drive on Jane again!" I decided. And as soon as I plugged it back into Jane, the drive was recognized correctly as a 58GB drive. I didn't need FAT32 at all!!

So what was really going on here?

First, since the USB drive had both a FAT partition and a Mac OS Extended partition, on Jane, a windows computer, it recognized the FAT partition only, and on my Mac, it recognized the Mac OS Extended partition only. Nothing strange here.

Secondly, once I reformatted the Mac OS Extended partition to exFAT, Philip decided to use the exFAT partition over the FAT partition because Philip is a Windows 10 machine. And Jane decided to use the FAT partition and not the exFAT partition because Jane is a Windows 8.1 machine.

Thirdly, Windows won't let you format a USB disk to FAT32 when it is bigger than 32GB. But you can format it to exFAT and that should still work fine with Windows 8.1.

Mystery finally solved and I can finally move my large files in peace. Just another daily battle with technology, and I have come out triumphant once again! Hooray!!

Mind you that I did all these (and posted this blog) all without my Logitech wireless keyboard, which is out of battery!!

BTW: 58GB is the measurement in actual Gigabytes and 64GB really meant 64,000,000,000 Bytes. Manufactures like to call that 64GB to make it sound bigger and worth more!

Picture of the Day:

Don't ask me why I use a Mac keyboard on Philip and Jane, two Windows computers. But when this thing is dead, it is dead for a long while.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com