COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

I guess it's still the screen diagonal measurement although the widescreens are a different aspect ratio. Our old screens are 4:3 but the new one will be 16:10.

[Big Kev]

Monitor measurements are taken across the diagonal viewing area

[PanBiker]

The ST 506 hard disk interface standard was developed by Seagate, later replaced by ESDI which came from Maxtor alongside the ANSI SCSI bus. Parallel ATA (PATA) came next then the Serial ATA (SATA) bus. Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital were the main manufacturers in the mid 80's and early 90's. I remember fitting single platter 20MB Western Digital full height ST 506 drives into the first generation 32 bit Acorn Archimedes machines before the advent and rise of the PC's. You had to spin down the drives (dismount) before you switched off the machines as the drives had no auto parking mechanisms for the heads. When multi platter 3.5" half height auto parking drives came along that was the game changer in HD technology. Being superseded now of course with Solid State Drives (SSD) 2.5" form factor in many cases.

[Tizer]

Only a nerd could have written that post!

[PanBiker]

Or someone with the T shirt.

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz is a happy bunny now! The new monitor arrived at lunchtime, it's set up and she's enjoying it. I was surprised how much lighter it is than the smaller old monitor. The Maxtor/Seagate external HDD arrived too and I've done a back up on it. It took less than a quarter of the time taken by my old Toshiba. I expect it's due to a combination of factors, including the new PC, USB 3.0 and external HDD speed.

[Big Kev]

[Stanley]

Good screens make all the difference.....
Pluggy comes this morning to upgrade me....

[Tizer]

From the beeb: `Mark Zuckerberg is to meet with the UK’s culture secretary at the company’s headquarters in California on Thursday. It follows 18 months in which the Facebook founder refused to address a parliamentary committee investigating accusations of significant failings at the social network. The BBC understands Jeremy Wright will be given about 30 minutes of Mr Zuckerberg’s time.' That's typical of Zuckerberg and the other big tech company bosses and it's time they were brought to heel.

[Stanley]

I agree.....
We were talking about you Tiz. As Pluggy was struggling to install the full scanner functions and failing miserably I commented that Tiz must be even more clever than we thought. I can print and copy and so I told him to leave it at that and go away and think about it! Otherwise everything is fine and before you ask, I did remind him about the spell check on Libre Office and he installed that!

[Stanley]

Later..... I am getting on well with the changes in commands and desktop layout in 18.4. Not quite cracked all of the commands yet but getting there. Under Pluggy's route to conversion I have got the latest versions of the programmes that have to be re-installed. Libre Office is different and I have no doubt we will crack that. The big problem at the moment is that Gimp is totally different, can't fathom it at all. In addition I cant download from camera, did I have a programme called Gedit before Tiz? Then there is a fact that If I tell an image in Gthumb to open in what is now called GUI interface, what used to be called Gimp reports that permission was denied. I shall soldier on and see if I can crack this but suspect I may have to call Pluggy in again..... Onwards and upwards!
Am I right about Gedit Tiz? (Just had a furtle and I think Gedit is the text editor and I have that OK. Confusing stuff!)

[Stanley]

Later..... I've been playing with pictures. I managed to open an image from my camera into Gimp and change the size but I can't export it because it says it can't access Data..... I shall persevere but saw a worrying warning that this version of Gimp isn't compatible with older versions, It says this is 2.10. Not shouting for Pluggy yet but I am at a dead end I think!

[Wendyf]

This might help .....

https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-No-Op ... 17#pid7917

[Stanley]

If you are reading this Pluggy, have a look. But I suspect that it's more to do with the new version.... Thanks anyway Wendy!

[Tizer]

Stanley, Gimp wasn't installed by default on my machine so I opened the Ubuntu Software Centre and keyed in a search for it. It brought up two versions, one labelled as Gimp and the other as GNU Image Manipulation Programme (which is the origin of the short name). The long named one had 5 stars against it and seems to be an older version. I installed it and it works OK. If I click on an image in my gThumb browser it pops up in a Gimp screen too, as before.

Scanners...mine is a Canon LIDE 25. I had it connected when I first fired up my new PC which recognised it but couldn't scan. I loaded the XSane scanning software that I've always used and tried again. There was something not right with the viewer but when I restarted the PC and tried again all was well.

Gedit is also called Text Editor and you'll find it in the Software Centre. If you haven't got the orange briefcase icon for the Software Centre click that Super key (between Ctrl and Alt) then type software centre in the window. When it's open right click on the icon for it at the side of your screen and click Add to Favourites and then it will stay there permanently.

[Stanley]

Thanks Peter. I assume Pluggy will read this if not I'll draw his attention to it when he comes on Monday..... That's right, I have given up on this version of Gimp.....

[Tizer]

I think you want v.2.8. It's easy to uninstall the old and install the new from the software centre.
I think my Canon camera was recognised without any intervention from me but there's a place where you can tell the machine which software to use to open your camera. Open System Settings, click Devices, the click Removable Media and set it to gThumb for photos.

[Stanley]

Thanks Tiz. That's the conclusion I had come to and I am not going to let it bother me, I shall let my IT technician sort me out! The old version worked so well and seamlessly and did all I wanted. It seems to me that they have given the new one more bells and whistles to make it into an ersatz Pshop and it's beyond me.....
As for v. 18.4, I am beginning to get to grips with it, it takes a while for the different tools to sink in. Seems fast and reliable though.
What's this 'Livepatch' they point me at? Worth bothering with? One small glitch is that when I start up it tells me I have no system tray, any idea what that's all about?

[Tizer]

Stanley, Livepatch is a service that Ubuntu now offers which they claim will mean you can avoid some of those restarts that are needed after software updates. It's probably aimed more at company people who don't want staff having to restart. Ubuntu offers it to the `freeloaders' like you and me but you have to register for it and let them access data on your PC. The usual thing, they say it's to help them with their development. I've avoided it and prefer to `keep it simple'. If Livepatch keeps popping up when you boot the PC you probably need to get rid of an icon in your side bar. Hover you mouse cursor over the icons and see if one of them shows up as Livepatch. If so, you can right click and select `Remove from Favourites'.

Did you have any problems with your printer on 18.04? Our Brother printer worked first time but this morning we had trouble printing from a PDF and an image. I went into System Settings and looked at the printer settings. Nothing looked wrong but I noticed that one dropdown menu was set on Auto Select and I clicked it open it also offered Tray 1, Tray 2 etc. I set it on Tray 1 instead of Auto and it's printing OK now.

In the Mystery Objects topic you mentioned not being able to post an image because you couldn't use Gimp to manipulate them. You can do most of your image manipulation in gThumb and it's more `friendly' and simpler than Gimp. I only use Gimp for a few things that aren't available in gThumb. If gThumb isn't installed it only needs a few simple clicks and you'll have it installed and up on screen in a couple of minutes. You'll need to play around with the Preferences to get it just how you want it. For example, the thumbnails probably won't have any file names - open preferences, click Browser then tick File Name in the caption box. This will put the file name below each caption.

You'll find that in 18.04 generally you need to use the right click menu than in the past instead of menus at the top of the page. Also the `Super' key (twixt Ctrl and Alt) brings up a general search box that you can use for all sorts of things - play with it and see what it offers.

My big problem that has wasted me a lot of time these last few days has been that Maxtor/Seagate external disk and it's going back to Scan next week. You'll recall that when I first used it I was over the moon, it was very fast and no problems copying my data to a back up folder. The next day I used it to back up the files on my old PC, now used by Mrs Tiz. It started fine then slowed down, eventually stopped and froze the PC. I had to disconnect it and reboot but when I tried again I got the same problem. Tried it on my new PC and it still didn't work properly. It went dead slow and took a couple of hours to transfer what should have taken less than 30 minutes. I checked with my old Toshiba and that did the back ups as usual without any problems. Of course I was now stuck with a duff HDD with a copy of my data files on it so I contacted Scan and checked that it was OK to re-format the disk (to destroy my data) and send it back. They agreed to take it back and check it. As well as the slow rates and sometimes freezes it also wouldn't respond to closing down and I'd end up shutting down the PC and it sending putting up a notice that the disk could not be stopped.

I can't see it being an incompatibility problem with Ubuntu because I only use the external disks to copy and paste files and folders and I don't need any of the windows software that they supply on the disk. It's only like using an SD card or USB stick really.

[Stanley]

Tiz, thanks for that. I am managing to transfer some images but only the ones that are already in my files. I'll have a look at Gthumb in more depth. I don't mind the teething troubles, it keeps my brain active but I'll admit to more than a touch of frustration. I just told myself "Never mind Stanley, you've got all day!"

[Stanley]

I did what you said Tiz. Deleted the new Gimp and installed the other with the longer name and it is the old Gimp. I took this pic, resized it and posted it just as normal except for the fact I had to import it via Shotwell. I am a happy bunny

[Tizer]

Shotwell is installed by default but I never use it. I much prefer gThumb which works directly on my photos and can do all my cropping, resizing, rotating, file format conversion etc and moving photos about in folders. I only use Gimp for correcting white balance and perspective. A tip for using gThumb - click the underlined gThumb in the top L.H. corner of it's screen and select Keyboard Shortcuts. These are very useful for those like you and me who have been used to using key strokes in the past. Also they can do things that I don't know how to achieve with the mouse. For example, when you install gThumb you'll find that by default when you open a pic in browser view (i.e. when you've clicked its thumbnail to open it) there is a row of thumnails across the bottom of the screen. I don't like that and wanted rid of them but couldn't find anything in the normal menus to the job. But with keystrokes it's magic! Just hit the F8 key to toggle them on/off. Key strokes rule OK!

Have you got `Screenshot' installed? It's very useful and very easy to use and I find all sorts of jobs for it, e.g. when I order something over the Web I take an immediate Screenshot of the page that says my order has been received - just in case there's any problem. Once I know later that all is OK I delete the file. Also you can take shots of images on the web that are protected from copying - but don't tell anyone I mentioned that! Screenshot produces a PNG image file which is takes much more memory than a JPG. But all you need to do is go to the image's thumbnail in gThumb, click the little tool symbol at top right of the screen, select Convert Format and choose JPEG. If you haven't got the Screenshot program go into the Software Centre or hit the Super key and search for it.

[Pluggy]

Screenshot just works, you don't need to install anything. Just press the prt-sc button. and it saves a png in the pictures folder. It depends on whats in the images as to the relative sizes of jpg and png, png is lossless and gets a bit big with photo images. With typical screenshot fodder there is sometimes little difference and in some instances will wind up smaller as png than jpg. PNG does well on large areas of a single colour With jpg you can alter how much loss there is in the image, the more you turn it down the crappier the picture gets. PNG is probably the more preferable of the two for general use as the quality doesn't deteriorate with each load save cycle as it does with jpeg. I certainly wouldn't use jpg in preference to png for everything.

If you're used to windows paint kind of simplicity I'd recommend pinta . Far better than windows paint but dead simple which can;t really be said for gimp. Wonderful for cropping images and scrawling graffiti over photos and screenshots and stuff. Not so good for making fake ufo photos......

[Stanley]

Another good tip Tiz. I might play with that....

[chinatyke]

Screenshot just works, you don't need to install anything. Just press the prt-sc button. and it saves a png in the pictures folder.

Mine doesn't work this way. Perhaps I'm not doing something right. The ptscn button saves the image to the clipboard and that image has to be inserted in another program such as Paint or Word. This is the standard way it works in Windows according to the following link although it may be different in Linux.

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/use- ... een-button