When looking at a folder of MP3 files in Windows 10's File Explorer, it is super annoying that Windows 10 would choose to display all the files as if you are looking at an Audio CD, where you see info such as title and contributing artists, instead of seeing the file size and when the file was created.
There is a way to fix that. It's just not very obvious. Let me show you how:
In File Explorer, go to the parent folder containing all the MP3 files. Rightclick on the folder and select properties.
You should now see a window that looks like the one below. Go to the Customize tab and then click the dropdown box under Optimize this folder for. Select General items instead of Music.
You can also go up a few levels with your folders, do the same thing and then check the checkbox called "Also apply this template to all subfolders", so you don't have to do this once for each folder.
Then click OK to apply your changes.
Once you make this change, your folder content will look normal again like this:
Hope this helps! Moving on to the next battle!
Video of the Day:
Can you tell the difference between cheap and expensive pianos?
Make sure you read the comments!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
Happy 4th of July, the Independence Day of America!
Since the pandemic is still going and has no trend of getting any better soon, I thought I just share some random nice things to boost the spirit up!
1. The Finch Story
A pair of finches made a nest next to our garage door window, so I put a Wyze camera there and recorded some clips. Finally put everything together into a nice little movie. So enjoy. The background music I used was from Night Coming (a great story by Maoni), composed by Roc Chen.
2. My Indoor Pepper
I planted a pepper plant in a flowerpot late last year. I had not expected to get anything out of it because people normally plant peppers after Memorial Day, so I was like half a year ahead of the time. But the plant actually produced a pepper! I'll be fine during the summer with respect to veggie supply now!
3. Mozart's Sonata
My daughter has been practicing this song for over 6-months. She finally got to a level minimally presentable. Very happy for her! So enjoy!
4. Around the World
I set a goal for my kids to be able to do Around the World by the end of summer. They asked me to also do it. So here it is (although this one is really the reverse around the world), the first time I've ever done anything so fancy. Feeling pretty good about it! Of course, I'll still have to master the real around the world by end of summer.
5. My Bookshelves
Someone on Twitter asked people to post photos of their bookshelves. So I snapped a picture of mine. I like my bookshelves (I also share the shelf space with kids), because I love books, in case you haven't noticed. See how many different collections you can spot from the photo.
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I was trying to find something I retweeted on Twitter a while ago. Turned out this task is super hard on the Twitter website. First, you have to go to your own account page and then scroll and scroll and wait. Then at some time, the web page will stop loading any more tweets in history, so all your time has been wasted.
If you have run into the same kind of problem, here's good news for you! There's a web tool called All My Tweets, that will allow you to easily search through all your tweet history, especially the retweets.
To use the tool, first, go to the website at http://www.allmytweets.net and then log in using your Twitter credentials. You will be asked to authorize this web tool to access your Twitter account.
Once that's done, you will see all your tweet history in text format that looks like this:
Now you can simply use the browser's search function to find any old tweets/retweets easily. All the retweets would start with the text RT.
Why are humans smarter than other animals? Because we know how to use the right tools to get things done easier. BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I have been following the COVID-19 situation very closely for the last 5 months. Thought to share with my readers some useful websites, so you can get up-to-date information on the Coronavirus.
Lanny's Predictive Model
First, let me shamelessly promote my own predictive models that I update daily when real official data gets in, and then tweet them to my Twitter account. I have two predictive models.
So for the entire United States, you can see that on July 2nd, we just had a new record of 52,981 new cases in one day, when my model predicted 50,972 new cases. Not too bad from the model perspective. Very bad from the virus containment perspective. Following this trend, we would exceed 4 million cases on July 20th if no extreme measures are enforced. That means over 183,000 in death toll by August 1st. I use numbers reported by CNN at midnight Eastern time each day (link in the section below.
For the Utah State, I predicted 668 new cases for July 2nd, and the official number was 554. Because the number of people tested each day can vary dramatically, the daily positive rate line is the more interesting indicator of how well Utah is doing.
CNN COVID-19 Live Feed
I don't want to search for COVID-19 related news every day, so I simply follow the news live feed from CNN. When new information becomes available, I get prompted to see the new updates automatically, which is nice. However, you do have to manually change the date in the URL manually to stay update to date. For example, replace the 07-02-20 in the URL below with today's date to get the latest info.
CNN also has a page showing more detailed information by each state with maps, tables, and graphs. They are doing a pretty good job updating total numbers using the Johns Hopkins website data. That's why I just use their numbers for my daily update to my US model.
This website is a great tool to compare different countries and different states. You can sort by total cases, daily new cases, total death, or daily new death. The numbers they report are always more than the ones reported by CNN and Johns Hopkins data feed. I don't know why. Maybe they track data more aggressively? But anyway, still great to see trends.
This website focuses on computing the Rt value, a metric on how fast the virus is spreading. It ranks different states based on the Rt value. You can also go into each state and get more detailed information.
I used to use this website a lot for up-to-date COVID-19 data. It is one of the most famous data-hub websites. However, the website is very buggy. It takes forever to load and tends to crash my Chrome browser frequently, so once CNN started using data from this website, I stopped visiting it. You can use this website to look at worldwide data, and can also drill down to one country or one state to get more information.
Hope these can be useful for you to get more information about the spread of the COVID-19 virus so you can be prepared accordingly. Best luck to all of us in this long fight, but we will prevail!
Video of the Day:
I will survive and you'll survive if we all wash our hands frequently!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I am so thrilled to have survived the first half of Game 2020, and I am going to put it all in for the second half!! I am going to stay tough and fight it all the way with my teeth and nails. I swear that I'll be more efficient, more productive, healthier, and stronger when I look back at 2020. I'll be fighting like this little tough guy:
Join me to fight in the second half! Let's kick some ass!! And whenever you feel hurt, defeated, or feel the need to give up, look at this video, chill, and then get back into the fight! We can do this!!
StayFocusd is a free Chrome Extension I use to self-regulate how much time I spent on news and social media web sites every day so I can stay more focused and waste less time. It is a great tool I would recommend to everyone who wants to be more efficient and get more done each day.
However, I just found out today that the StayFocusd tool started blocking my Google Adsense dashboard page. I don't ever recall blocking this web site. And after I went into the extension settings page, I also don't see the Google website on the blocked list.
If you also experience similar problem where websites not on the blocked list gets blocked by StayFocusd, don't worry. Here's how you can take care of this extension bug.
If you are like me, most likely you enabled the Require Challenge option, which requires you to type this long paragraph of text (min 425 characters) without making any mistake (any mistake would reset the challenge). Don't bother! Because it is HARD! I failed the challenge twice today.
1. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then click the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Export Settings to save your settings to a JSON file.
2. In the address bar of your Chrome browser, type in chrome://extensions. Find StayFocusd and then click Remove.
3. Go to the Chrome Web Store and find StayFocusd (or click this link) and click Add to Chrome.
4. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then go back to the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Import Settings and load the JSON file you saved on your computer.
That's it. Now it should not block websites that are not on your blocked list anymore.
Tao of the Day:
If you get erased by the Mainstream Media, become the Mainstream Media! #LetYangSpeak BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
Have you noticed that recently you start getting blank notifications on your Android phones? It happened to my Samsung Galaxy S8. Some notifications are fine, while others are just blank, something like this below.
First I thought it was a bug from the app I was using. But then I started noticing it happening with different apps, such as my Vivint app, Twitter, or even my coupons.
Did my research and eventually found out the cause. It is a bug relating to fonts and styles. To fix the problem, just go to your settings page, search "Font size and style", then select the one under "Display". Choose "Font style", and then select the one you use. If it is already selected, just deselect it and then select it again.
Now go back to your home screen and then swipe down to see your notifications. All the notifications should be not empty now!
Wish I had figured this out before I start cutting down on my twitter time. Well! Another battle won!
Video of the Day:
So glad the fire is under control in Australia. Such a disaster. Even the magpie learned to sound like a fire engine!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
Some people have multiple Google accounts (like me). Some people help their family members with their Google blogs or Gmails (like me). Some other people share a computer among family members (not me). Yet some other people have multiple emails such as a school email and a personal email (like my daughter). Each Google account also meant different bookmarks, different Google drive docs, different YouTube subscriptions, different Google map timelines, different Google calendars and task lists, or different Google search preferences... (now you see, Google owns our lives, and there's no escaping it).
Whatever the situation, it can be very helpful to be able to use multiple Google Accounts on the same computer. It would be super inconvenient to have to log yourself out and then log into other people's accounts. So in the past, I would just open an incognito Chrome window and then log in to their accounts. But that's still a lot of work, especially trying to remember all their different passwords. There's actually a much easy way:
You can configure Chrome to use multiple Google Accounts!
And here's how you can do it:
1. Click on your avatar at the upper right corner of your Chrome browser (which is just left of the 3 dots icon).
2. Click Add.
3. Follow the instructions to log in to the Google Account you want to add.
Now if you right-click on your Chrome icon on your taskbar, you will see all the accounts in a list that you can just click on one to open a new Chrome browser window with that Google Account. As simple as that!
Hope this can be helpful for those who could benefit from this feature!
Video of the Day:
The Known Universe
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
I use WeChat, because I can use it to video chat or voice call family and friends in China for free. But really, it's because most of my Chinese friends (in China or not) all use it as their main messaging app. Fine, the real truth is that my boss (wife) uses it to inform me when she needs things done. 😅
As not a Millennial or Gen Z person, I am very uncomfortable with typing on my phone. I type super slow and make all kinds of mistakes (and then the autocomplete feature of the phone would replace them with all kinds of stupid and inappropriate words). On a keyboard, though, I can type super fast, both in English and in Chinese. So when I have to use WeChat, I'd much prefer using it on the computer than using it on the phone.
That's why one day when I saw a friend using the web browser version of WeChat, I was super delighted! She told me that all I had to do is to go to http://web.wechat.com and then scan the QR code with my WeChat app on my phone. Sounds easy, right? So I immediately gave it a try. Then I got this:
What's going on? My account was suspended? What did I do???!!!
Also, I only want to use the web version. I definitely don't want to install any Chinese apps onto my computer!!! Who knows what kind of Trogen Horses they are going to sneak in with those apps!
I frantically searched the web for solutions. You know, it's like when you just found a treasure chest, and then realize it is locked. You want to pick that lock, or smash the lock, or just pry the chest open, or smash the chest.
Eventually, I found it!! From a developer on GitHub who wrote a program that integrates with WeChat:
Your issue is related to the latest policy changing from Tencent: Newly created Wechat Account will not be able to login via Web Wechat anymore. Wechaty is using the Web API of Wechat, which means newly created account will not use Wechaty to log in.
Now I just feel like Fan Xian who simply can't open that chest his incredible mother left him no matter how hard he tried. (Check out Joy of Life, a great book and TV Series.)
Well, you win some battles, and you lose some battles. I'll patiently wait for Tencent to someday enable this feature for "new" WeChat users like me because after years pass, I will no longer remain a "new" WeChat user.
Video of the Day:
This is how I feel about my daily battles sometimes.
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
I don't remember that I ever enabled news notifications on my Mac. But time from time, something would pop up on my screen, notifying me of some piece of news I had no interest in reading.
Hi Apple, if I want to follow the latest news, I go to Twitter or go to YouTube and watch the Daily Show. Stop sending me useless stuff I never requested like how the many other companies do.
I tried searching for "news" in system preferences in my attempt to shut it off and found nothing!! Is this Apple's way of telling me, stupid Apple users, Apple knows what's good for you. So stop questioning and just OBEY!
Enough ranting. Here's how you can turn it off:
1. Open System Preferences.
2. Select Notifications.
3. Find News in the left pane and select it.
4. Select None under news alert style.
You are welcome! Now on to my next tech battle!
Key to Happiness: Lower your expectations, especially when it comes to your kids. BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
