Daily Battles: Microsoft Word Synonym menu empty and not showing any synonyms

If you use Microsoft Word for creative writing (or translation), you probably use a feature in Word called Synonyms Suggestion. You select a word in your doc, right-click on it, and then select Synonyms from the menu. Word will then suggest a bunch of words that have similar meanings to you. To be honest, it is also a good way to learn new vocabulary.

And one day, after right-clicking on the word, you find an empty list when you go to the Synonyms submenu. Does it mean there are no synonyms for the word you selected? You start testing other words and soon realize something is wrong and you can no longer use the synonyms feature.

Well, I had the exact problem. But don't worry, I also found the solution. The problem is because Word somehow got confused on the language of the document. And when it doesn't know or think you are using a different language, it doesn't know what synonyms to get (such as the one shown below).

To fix this problem, use CTRL+A to select the entire document, then go to Review on your menu, and then click the Language button on your tool ribbon. Make sure you select English and then click OK. Now if you try the Synonyms submenu again, everything is back to normal.

Hope this helps those that also ran into this problem. Happy writing (or translating)!!

Caring for indoor plants can reduce stress (unless it is a cactus).

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

Daily Battles: How to Find Large Files on Your Windows Computer

If you are looking for tools for other operating systems or devices, see these links below.

Find large files on your Android Phone

Free space and delete unwanted files on your iPhone or iPad

Find large files on your Mac Computer

Even though these days we have gigantic hard drives in our windows computers and laptops, things add up quickly and eat away your storage space, especially when you have lots of videos imported from your phones and lots of movies on the hard drive.

Sometimes you just have to do some house cleaning and get rid of junk on your computer, so you have enough hard drive for the operating system to run smoothly.

If you are using a Windows computer, the tool you need for this task is called:

Windirstat

With a user interface that almost looks like last century technology, the app is very easy to use. Start a scan on the folder or drive you want to clean, and it shows you where your large files are located with a very intuitive block map interface. You can right-click on it and delete it directly if you are sure.

Once you start the scan, you'll actually realize that a lot of your junk files are Windows updates. Generally speaking, if it is just an image or installation files (with the msi extension), then you should be okay to delete them. However, if you are not sure, don't do it.

Here's a short tutorial video showing you how the program works:

Hope you find this tool helpful and also feel in total control of your files on your Windows machine! This program should work on all current Windows versions.

Also, another good idea is to get a large external hard drive. You can get a 4TB external hard drive that's completely powered by your computer from Amazon for about $90.

Moving on to the next Daily Battle!

Sometimes, you don't have to have a Tao of the Day! 







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

Daily Battles: How To Find Large Files On Your Android Phone

If you are looking for tools for other operating systems or devices, see these links below.

How to find large files on your Windows Computer

Find large files on your Mac Computer

Free space and delete unwanted files on your iPhone or iPad

Have you got the dreaded message on your Android phone when you were recording a video that your Android phone has run out of storage space? The worst part is that you don't know what's taking up so much space on your phone.

Well, here's a free tool you can use to identify and then clean out large files:

DataSize Explorer

You can find it in your Google Play store, or the Google Play web page I linked above.

Once installed, the program will scan your Android phone and show you where your large files are with a display like this:

Image Source: Softpedia

You can then go into the folder and see more details or select the file and just delete it. Here's a video showing you how you can do it.

Hope this can be helpful. I'll blog about how to find large files on other platforms in the near future.

Just when you thought 2020 is over and things will get better...







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

Google trained ResNet50 in 0.47 seconds, setting new MLPerf AI training record

Google has built the world's fastest ML training supercomputer and was able to set new records in six out of eight MLPerf benchmarks.

For example, they trained ResNet50 in 0.47 seconds. What does this really mean? According to Import AI newsletter:

Multi-year progress: These results show the time it takes Google to train a ResNet50 network to convergence against ImageNet, giving us performance for a widely used, fairly standard AI task:

- 0.47 seconds: July 2020, MLPerf 0.7.

- 1.28 minutes: June 2019, MLPerf 0.6.

- 7.1 minutes: May 2018, MLPerf 0.5.

- Hours - it used to take hours to train this stuff, back in 2017, even at the frontier. Things have sped up a lot.

You can read more about it from Google's Blog.

But What Does This Really Mean?

In a recent video posted by Lex Fridman, he talked about how the very hot GPT-3 compares to a human brain. Specifically, he told us that GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters and costs a whopping $4.6 million to train.

So here's what it means:

Only tech giants like FAANG, Microsoft, and alike can afford the hardware and money to train large networks like this, and small startups/players really don't stand a chance.

You can learn what GPT-3 is in 3 minutes in this article.

So anyway, while we celebrate the advancement of AI, we also have to be careful about the increased impact capital has on innovation. I really do not want this to turn into something like our legal system where big corporations always win even though they "lose" the case or have to settle.

A pandemic does not just go away no matter how much you ignore it, deny it, or wish it would just magically disappear.







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

Daily Battles: How to navigate and control tabs with shortcuts in your Chrome browser

If you are like me and love to leave lots of tabs open in my Chrome browser, here are some very useful keyboard shortcuts for you to control your tabs.

Note that these shortcuts work both on Windows and Mac machines.

• Ctrl + Tab: Switch to the tab on the right.
• Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Switch to the tab on the left.
• ⌘ + Shift + [: Also switch to the tab on the right.
• ⌘ + Shift + ]: Also switch to the tab on the left.
• ⌘ + Option + Left Arrow: Should also switch to the previous tab. This one doesn't work for me because I use Spectacles and BetterSnapTool, which also use these shortcuts.
• ⌘ + Option + Right Arrow: Should also switch to the next tab. Same as above. 
• Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + Number: For example, Ctrl + 5 would switch to the 5th tab from the left.
• Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + W: Close the current tab.
• Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + Q: Close all tabs in the Chrome window. Chrome now asks you to confirm, in case you hit the shortcut by mistake, which I have done many times.
• ⌘ + Shift + W: Don't know if this is a bug, but this will close all tabs in the Chrome window without confirmation. So make sure you don't use this one.

By the way, the following shortcuts on Mac might be useful:

• Ctrl + ⌘ + Q: Locks the screen and requires login next time.
• Ctrl + Number: Switch to that Desktop/Space.
• Ctrl + Up Arrow: Show all windows in current Desktop/Space and show all Desktops/Spaces at the top.
• Ctrl + Down Arrow: Show all windows for the current application.
• Ctrl + Left Arrow: Switch to the Desktop/Space to the left.
• Ctrl + Right Arrow: Switch to the Desktop/Space to the right.

Hope you find these useful!

Video of the Day:

This is what I play once my code compiles with no errors!

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

Daily Battles: How to enable AirDrop on your Mac when you send file from iPhone to Mac

When you try to use AirDrop to send files to a Mac computer from your iPhone, you might find that the Mac computer is not even an option on the AirDrop list on your iPhone. This is because AirDrop is disabled on your Mac by default. All you have to do is to enable it and you should be able to receive files via AirDrop as usual.

To enable AirDrop on your Mac computer, follow the steps below:

1. Open "Finder" from your launcher.

2. Click "Go" from the menu at the top of your screen.

3. Select AirDrop from the menu list and it opens the AirDrop window.

4. In the AirDrop window, you can specify whether you want to be discovered by everyone or only by your contacts.

5. Now AirDrop becomes an item on the left panel at the top.

6. Lastly, once the files are transferred from iPhone to your Mac, you can find them in the Download folder.

That's it. Hope you find this helpful!

Image of the Day:

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

Daily Battles: How to prevent your Windows 10 computer from disconnecting WiFi

Have you noticed that your Windows 10 computer keeps disconnecting from WiFi? So whenever you want to use your computer, you have to manually connect it back to your home WiFi network?

I had this problem with one of Philip's many physical existences. (Philip is my Smart Home Assistant that consists of a bunch of microservices running on a bunch of low-grade throwaway computers.) It was a laptop with a cracked screen (wife dropped it).

This gets a bit annoying because every time I want Philip to print something, I have to manually connect the computer to home WiFi. So I did a bit of research and found the solution.

Turned out Windows 10 automatically puts the WiFi network card in power-saving mode, which then disconnects it from my home WiFi, even though I leave the computer plugged in all the time.

So here's how you can resolve the problem:

1. First right-click on your WiFi icon in the taskbar at the bottom right corner of your screen and select Open Network and Sharing Center.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Once in Network and Sharing Center, select Change adapter settings on the left panel.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. In the next screen, right-click on your home WiFi network and select Properties.
   
   

   

   
   
4. In the properties popup window, select the Power Management tab, and then make sure to uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. Don't forget to click OK to apply your changes.
   
   
   

That's it. Your computer should stay connected to your WiFi network from now on. Hope this helps!

Picture of the Day:

Google AdSense sent me a violation report. Turned out my web page can not mention the word "Weapon." So what am I going to do with a web page showing my translation of the famous Chinese Martial Arts novel named "Seven Weapons" by Gu Long? These are swords, sabers, and spears. How ridiculous. What kind of world do we live in today?

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

Daily Battles: How to display MP3 files correctly in Windows 10 File Explorer

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:

1. In File Explorer, go to the parent folder containing all the MP3 files. Rightclick on the folder and select properties.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 and some random nice things!

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

Daily Battles: How to find my past Twitter tweets and retweets?

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