Posts

Amazfit / Zepp App Needs to be Running for Alexa Shortcut to Work

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Got a new Amazfit GTS 2 mini.  Works fantastically well, and I think it's terrific value.  The battery life in particular I think is great. One issue I've faced, but can't find a solution to is that the Alexa link doesn't work.  I get the message "Phone not connected.  Cannot use Alexa." The problem appears to boil down to the fact that the Zepp app is not running in the background (I'm running Android, by the way).  If I leave the Zepp app alone, then Alexa works. Not sure if I've done something to prevent the app from working in the background or if the developers haven't done what's needed for the app to do its stuff, but maybe this will help someone...or maybe someone will help me!

MS VBA Access - Form Flickers or Crashes When it has Conditional Formatting, Totals and Only One Row is Returned

 An annoying problem in MS Access VBA sub forms which took some finding a solution for. We had a form with a subform.  Every now and then the form would just hang (or freeze) but we couldn't work out why. We eventually narrowed it down to the subform.  The subform was on a page/tab control and if we clicked a different tab (so the subform was no longer visible), everything was fine. After much internet search and trialling of different approaches, we realised that if there was more than one row, everything worked fine. Further investigate revealed that removing the totals from the form also meant it worked. Finally we found that removing the conditional formatting meant that the form worked. So we had to choose one of these things to drop Conditional Formatting Totals Make the query return extra row(s) In the end we dropped the conditional formatting and things worked fine.

The House Being Built Next Door

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 These are the pictures documenting the various stages of the house being built next door to us. Mid 2019 - Before Any Work Was Done Nov 2019 - Land Cleared 3 Aug 2020 - Land Preparations Begin 11 Aug 202 - Land Preparations Continue 28 Aug 2020 - Temporary Cabin In Place 1 Sep 2020 - Preparations for Ground Reinforcement 2 Sep 2020 - Reinforcement Begins 23 Sep 2020 - Preparing Foundations 23 Sep 2020 - Preparing Foundations 25 Sep 2020 - Almost Ready For Concrete 2 Oct 2020 - Building Commences 17 Oct 2020 - Scaffolding Up 27 Oct 2020 - Building Up Further 29 Nov 2020 - Roof Trusses Arrive 2 Dec 2020 - Roof Trusses Up 4 Dec 2020 - A Sprinkling of Snow 26 Dec 2020 - Gable Ends Complete 21 Jan 2021 - Roof Progressing Further 31 Jan 2021 - Windows In, Scaffolding Down 6 Feb 2021 - Garage Roof Progressed 11 Feb 2021 - More Snow 13 Mar 2021 - Outside Virtually Complete June 2021 - Completed

Get Friends and Family to Record Onto Your Yoto

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 We purchased our little girl (2.5 years old) a Yoto player for Christmas as she likes putting CDs into the CD player and taking them out.  It looked like she would enjoy putting the story cards in and out of it.  And she did - she loves it! The other thing we were intrigued by was the "Make Your Own" cards.  We knew you could essentially put CDs and certain blogs "onto" cards, but what we hadn't appreciated was that we could put our own sounds and voices onto cards. In this time of lockdown and only seeing friends and relatives via video calls, we thought it might be nice to get friends and family to record a song or nursery rhyme and to put them onto cards.  I needed a way that would be easy enough for the technophobes to be able to do this without causing them a headache and also without causing me a headache. A Simple Way for Others to Create a Media File For Your I dismissed the idea of trying to get them to record from their PC and email it to me.  If they

How to Stop the Annoying Nag Message in Outlook Asking to Take Outlook Anywhere

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 I had an annoying message in Outlook 365 which appeared every day saying "Take Outlook Anywhere.  Stay connected to what matters.  Get Started (or Get it Now)"  There appears to be no way of stopping this appearing through the user interface, although you can just close it.  The reminder seems to appear every day  Even after a bit of searching online, I couldn't really see any obvious, clear solutions.  I even found some post suggesting that you need to complete on online form to opt out.  As far as I could tell this was just a data-harvesting scam.  This is what I pieced together to get rid of it. Open Regedit (Start --> Run --> Regedit) You then need to navigate to this node Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\TargetedMessagingService\MessageData\ Right-Click MessageData and choose "Find" Type 425141231 (I got this value by clicking get started and taking it from the URL) You should find a node ending in BizBar with sub node

Red Kite at Otley Chevin

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Red Kite at  Otley Chevin - 27/11/2020  

List of EE Voicemail Shortcuts While Listening to a Message on my Mobile

List of EE Voicemail Shortcuts While Listening to a Message on my Mobile I was trying to find what shortcuts are available whilst listening to a voicemail.  My phone is on EE, so I don't know if these things differ for Vodafone, GiffGaff, Virgin, O2, etc.  There didn't seem to be a quick reference guide to what numbers do what, so I hope this helps someone.  If not, it will help me next time I'm trying to find them.  In particular, I was trying to find the pause and rewind options. 1 = Listen to the message again 2 = Save the message 3 = Delete the message 4 = Receive a free text with the number which called 5 = Forward the voicemail to another person (on EE) 6 = Pause/Continue 7 = Rewind message 10 seconds 8 = Skip to next message 9 = Fast forward message 10 seconds # = Return the call Hope that helps.  You may need to check for other providers, as you may end up deleting a message you don't want!