nicholasimon's blog

Whatsapp is a pretty amazing piece of software if you are old enough to remember the dark ages when people still made use of SMS and MMS to send annoying text messages to each other. You may not know that, apart from being available on your phone, if you have a Windows or Mac PC you can download the desktop client which allows you to use Whatsapp on your phone from your PC or laptop by connecting over your WiFi network. This means that if you are working and getting a lot of messages throughout the day then it allows you to reduce work interruptions checking your phone every 5 minutes and thereby impress your boss by being more productive However, whilst this is a good feature, an  excellent feature of the Whatsapp Desktop client is that it makes working with multiple files much easier than if you were using your phone. If you want to download a lot of messages, images, video or anything else you can do it in just a few short seconds, as opposed to fumbling around with your phone and A

If you sometimes think, "Wow, that took a long time to appear" when you right click in Windows Explorer on a file or folder, if you have the Google Drive desktop app installed (referred to as Backup & Sync at the time of writing) then it may be the culprit. Though you may never have used, you will probably have noticed that when you install the Drive desktop app it adds some entries to the right click context menu. There is, however, a widely reported bug related to the Google Drive right click menu entries as they add a noticeable delay to the time it takes for the right click menu to be visible from the time that you click. I would imagine it has something to do with connecting to/pinging your Google Drive every time you right click in Explorer or something along those lines. Anyway, whatever the reason, it is an unnecessary annoyance which can easily be fixed. All you need to do to get back an instant right click menu is remove or disable the right click entries. This

This is a quick fix you can try if you have a USB device that you think is broken or the battery has run out (and it hasn't) because it keeps disconnecting. I use a wireless USB mouse and unless I change this Windows 10 power setting it is much more likely to randomly disconnect. Okay, so if you have a device that randomly disconnects try this: START MENU > SETTINGS > SYSTEM > POWER & SLEEP Or if you prefer to search for it then WIN+S KEYS > SEARCH FOR POWER & SLEEP Now, in the Power & Sleep menu look to the right hand side with the window maximized for ADDITIONAL POWER SETTINGS Then the Power Options window will appear, select CHANGE PLAN SETTINGS next to whichever plan is selected for your PC/Laptop In the next window select CHANGE ADVANCED POWER SETTINGS Finally, in the new window scroll down to USB SETTINGS > USB SELECTIVE SUSPEND SETTING and then DISABLE  I am not sure why this works, however I think it relates to Windows turning off devices as a p

Blogger, if you aren't aware, is a very simple, free platform that Google offers for anyone that wants to start a blog, like this one. Very easy to get started with, it allows people with little or no web design experience to start blogging, without having to hire professional help. Should you decide to use it in future (or already do), one of the features of Blogger is that it allows you use a custom domain, meaning instead of yourblogname.blogspot.com you can change your blog address to something a bit more catchy like my.shinynewblog.com or whatever you prefer. When giving this a bash yesterday, I found it to be a more complicated than I remember it being on the old Blogger platform so if you also get stuck then this is a simple guide to try and help. If you find this guide too confusing and get stuck then don't forget to consult Blogger Support where you can ask questions and search answers. To setup a custom subdomain you are going to need to be able to login to your we

If you like playing games, have a PC or laptop, don't have the money to spend on buying new games and don't like the idea of pirating everything then Xbox Game Pass is an excellent idea. No longer in beta and now a fully-fledged Windows app, simply head over to the Microsoft Store in your Windows 10 menu and search for 'Xbox Game Pass for PC'. If you want to check out what games are available on the service then visit the Game Pass for PC homepage . Download the app, install and you can try the first month for the very, very low price of $1 which equates to about R16. For what you are getting this seems unbelievably cheap as it means you have access to a large library of games for PC that you can download and play as much as you like without having to purchase anything extra. As long as you continue to pay the monthly subscription fee, R99 at time of writing, you can download and play anything in the Xbox Game Pass library, no catches, hidden fees or anything else. The