Things you should know by now, but only just discovered

Well, I guess it makes sense considering we call women’s underwear “panties”.

Ok, here's one I learned yesterday that shows that I am quite successful at ignoring whatever BS 'news' the media wastes their time on:

Meghan Markle isn't completely white.

Wasn't it just better for me, when hearing that an American girl was marrying a UK prince, to just assume she's whitebread plain? The news I heard yesterday about anger over their soon-kid's racial make-up confused me....I thought I had maybe seen a photo of her at some point in the last year or two, and she didn't look any less predictably lightly complexioned than the other princess wedding from some years ago.

(I had to be very careful writing this in a way that did not somehow imply that whiteness is somehow better or purer or whatever. Please do not think I think that.)

I figured that was pretty clear when you see her next to her husband, one of the whitest men to ever white.

I dunno, if somebody told me she was just really tanned I’d probably believe them.

The files app on iPad has a context menu when you long press its icon - similar to the behavior using force touch on iPhone. As far as I know, it is the only app that does this on iPad.

Why doesn't every app do this? Further, Apple should remove the long-press to uninstall option. Put it in the Settings instead.

PaladinTom wrote:

The files app on iPad has a context menu when you long press its icon - similar to the behavior using force touch on iPhone. As far as I know, it is the only app that does this on iPad.

I don't have any force touch devices, but my old iPad Air, my iPhone SE, and my new iPad Pro will give me a context menu when I press and hold on a link in the browser.

......what's the Files app? Been using iOS since around 2011.... Time to hit google.

Vargen wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The files app on iPad has a context menu when you long press its icon - similar to the behavior using force touch on iPhone. As far as I know, it is the only app that does this on iPad.

I don't have any force touch devices, but my old iPad Air, my iPhone SE, and my new iPad Pro will give me a context menu when I press and hold on a link in the browser.

Yes, but no apps do it from the app icon. I use this all the time on my phone and would love it if it were on my iPad too.

I’ve been using Microsoft Excel professionally for almost 10 years, and my spreadsheets invariably include some kind of unit conversion. Usually I have a reference area with conversion factors, but I recently discovered that Excel has a built in convert function for most of the common units. How did I not know this before?

PaladinTom wrote:
Vargen wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The files app on iPad has a context menu when you long press its icon - similar to the behavior using force touch on iPhone. As far as I know, it is the only app that does this on iPad.

I don't have any force touch devices, but my old iPad Air, my iPhone SE, and my new iPad Pro will give me a context menu when I press and hold on a link in the browser.

Yes, but no apps do it from the app icon. I use this all the time on my phone and would love it if it were on my iPad too.

Oh, you mean from the home screen when you go to launch apps, not once the app is open. Took me a while to get what you meant.

I'm not entirely sure what I'd want such a menu to do for other apps.

Vargen wrote:

I'm not entirely sure what I'd want such a menu to do for other apps.

On Android, in the FitBit app, if you do a long hold on the app icon it’ll pop up a quick menu with shortcuts to various screens in the app. Log Weight, Water, or Food, Track exercise. I find that menu really useful, saves a few taps having the app go straight to the page I want.

For the contacts app, if I long hold it shows my top three contacts.

For Google Maps, long hold gives you the choice of navigating to home or work.

Wish more apps had things like that. I really need to long hold more icons to see what else is out there.

markcov wrote:
Vargen wrote:

I'm not entirely sure what I'd want such a menu to do for other apps.

On Android, in the FitBit app, if you do a long hold on the app icon it’ll pop up a quick menu with shortcuts to various screens in the app. Log Weight, Water, or Food, Track exercise. I find that menu really useful, saves a few taps having the app go straight to the page I want.

For the contacts app, if I long hold it shows my top three contacts.

For Google Maps, long hold gives you the choice of navigating to home or work.

Wish more apps had things like that. I really need to long hold more icons to see what else is out there.

Sure, that makes sense I guess. I mean, I get all that info easier elsewhere in the interface*, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't also be in a context menu for those that want to look there. And the Fitbit launch-to-the-screen-I-want does sound like it could be handy if I used one of those.

*I mean, "navigate home" is on the lock screen. Actually it's "navigate to wherever the phone expects me to be at this time." Which is handy, but also kind of disconcerting. It picking up on locations I've manually entered into my calendar is nice. The first time I saw "it will take you 5 minutes to get to " it kind of freaked me out, because that's so regular it doesn't go into the calendar.

For years my 5.1 surround setup for my PC has not worked properly when streaming TV shows/movies and I never realized it.

I've tested it in Windows sound config and all the channels work fine and I play games with it and it works fine. So, I just assumed everything was fine with streaming. When I watch TV/movies on Netflix or Amazon I usually find the dialog hard to hear over everything else. I thought it was just me and tried to adjust the center channel higher (in Windows sound config) and everything else lower (it seemed to help), but tonight for some reason I actually picked up the center speaker and put it to my ear and realized there was no sound at all. What?!

I use Chrome as my browser (but I think this might be an issue with Firefox as well) and apparently it doesn't support surround sound when streaming by default. After some Googling I found this fix:

chrome://flags/

There's a ton of experimental features, but search for "try supported" or "channel" so that "Causes audio output streams to check if channel layouts other than the default hardware layout are available" appears. Enable this option and restart Chrome. Boom! Surround sound when streaming. I can hear people talking now!

Vega wrote:

For years my 5.1 surround setup for my PC has not worked properly when streaming TV shows/movies and I never realized it.

I've tested it in Windows sound config and all the channels work fine and I play games with it and it works fine. So, I just assumed everything was fine with streaming. When I watch TV/movies on Netflix or Amazon I usually find the dialog hard to hear over everything else. I thought it was just me and tried to adjust the center channel higher (in Windows sound config) and everything else lower (it seemed to help), but tonight for some reason I actually picked up the center speaker and put it to my ear and realized there was no sound at all. What?!

I use Chrome as my browser (but I think this might be an issue with Firefox as well) and apparently it doesn't support surround sound when streaming by default. After some Googling I found this fix:

chrome://flags/

There's a ton of experimental features, but search for "try supported" or "channel" so that "Causes audio output streams to check if channel layouts other than the default hardware layout are available" appears. Enable this option and restart Chrome. Boom! Surround sound when streaming. I can hear people talking now!

That has been one of the major issues with Home Theater PC setups for years now. I think it is why many people go with a media server PC and then use something like an Xbox One (which is what I do) or an Nvidia Shield (which is what a friend of mine does) to play the content.

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/71135...

"She was the most highly decorated female civilian during World War II," said Janelle Neises, the museum's deputy director, who's providing a tour.

So why haven't more people heard about Hall? A quote from Hall on the agency display offers an explanation: "Many of my friends were killed for talking too much."

But now — more than 70 years after her wartime exploits in France, and almost 40 years after her death — Virginia Hall is having a moment. Three books have just come out. Two movies are in the works."

That chrome thing is a good tip, Vega. I can get 5.1 off the Netflix app, but nothing out of a browser works. I'll have to try it!

Tomorrow never dies was going to be called Tomorrow never lies but someone made a spelling mistake and they liked it better that the original title.

But would the lyrics have worked?

Good question. Maybe there is a ‘Tomorrow never lies’ song out there.

It’s my day for learning things. The vikings played a board game called Hnefatafl (the presenter pronounced it naffletaffle.) Archeologists find hundreds of the pieces, a lot simpler than those in the link, in the UK.

Friends of mine make/sell historical canvas board games at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and they have a board for Hnefatafl.

Google: there is!

Would have been the most boring Bond introduction sequence ever...

Wow. It really would. The mind boggles.

I just realized that the Dutch word for squirrel (eekhoorn) sounds almost exactly the same as the thing most associated with the animal in English (acorn).

When I looked up its etymology, I also found out that squirrels don't actually like acorns all that much as it contains difficult to digest tannins.

The most likely theory is that 'eekhoorn' comes from the German word 'aig' which means 'to move strongly' + '(w)erna' which means weasel. So 'eekhoorn' = agile weasel.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/dY1MI5991qRyOqXqXf/giphy.gif)

Discovered this a while ago just got lazy figuring out how to show it. Sure makes it easier to post stuff on gwj! Not sure if non Samsung phones do this (my old Moto doesn't)

What, do you mean highlighting text to copy it?

Keithustus wrote:

What, do you mean highlighting text to copy it?

nah being able to move the copy/paste menu out of the way so I can push the buttons

dejanzie wrote:

I just realized that the Dutch word for squirrel (eekhoorn) sounds almost exactly the same as the thing most associated with the animal in English (acorn).

When I looked up its etymology, I also found out that squirrels don't actually like acorns all that much as it contains difficult to digest tannins.

The most likely theory is that 'eekhoorn' comes from the German word 'aig' which means 'to move strongly' + '(w)erna' which means weasel. So 'eekhoorn' = agile weasel.

I've long been fascinated with etymology and how certain words that we often use on a daily basis seem so alien when you take the time to think about them and sound them out.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

What, do you mean highlighting text to copy it?

nah being able to move the copy/paste menu out of the way so I can push the buttons :)

Damn I just tried on my pixel and it doesn't work. I wish as it always goes over the buttons.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

being able to move the copy/paste menu out of the way so I can push the buttons :)

My iPhone XS cannot do that.