If you’ve lost the videos that you’ve uploaded to Facebook, never fear. They’re still there. Facebook decided to move them, that’s all. They also removed the Video tab on your profile. Here’s how to get to your videos. Unfortunately we can’t get the category back, just the location of your Facebook videos.
1. Go to your own timeline. You get there by clicking on your name at the top of any Facebook page.
It’s always up at the top, click your name.
2. Look for the word Photos. Click it.
Click the word Photos.
3. Once your photo page opens, look for the word Albums. Click.
Head over to your Albums to find your videos. Seriously.
4. On the album page, Videos is the first album. Cool huh?
Ah, there they are! Why did Facebook hide them?
5. Now that you’ve found them, what can you do to make them more visible? Nothing. Here’s why. This is a list of what you can hide and unhide from your profile page. Unfortunately there is no separate setting for videos.
As we’ve shown you before, you can hide some of these but others you can’t.
That’s it. Now you can share some of them or, better yet, tell your friends how to find their videos by sharing this post! We’d appreciate it.
Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
There’s a new twist in the Windows 8/Google Chrome situation. For whatever reason, Windows 8 won’t allow Chrome to update itself to a new version. One of the main reasons to use Chrome is that it updates itself, if necessary, every time you open it. That’s changed for Windows 8 users and, perhaps, for users of older versions of the Microsoft O/S. Here’s one version of the error you get when you try to update Chrome when it says your version is outdated:
The error message has more than one form but this is a typical one.
Here’s how to get Chrome to update itself.
Note: This technique requires you to have admin privileges on the computer you are updating. If you don’t, get the person who does have them to do this. It might be better to print this page so you don’t have to go back and forth between windows.
1. This update requires you to install a template. Don’t worry, you can’t break your computer doing this so relax. A template is a small file that you ask Windows to install for you. After that, you change some of the parameters in the template. No big deal, no chance of ruining something. If you miss a step, Chrome can’t update until you go back and fix things. Everything else will work fine if you follow the steps as we describe them. Get the template here: Google Chrome Group Policies Template That should be a direct download. If it doesn’t work, go here and download it. The file should go to your Downloads folder. If it doesn’t, you’ve changed the settings so make a note of where the file is saved.
2. Next, we’re going to find and use the Run dialogue, the one that used to be just above the Start button. Press the Windows key on your keyboard and r (at the same time). A small window will open, like this:
Enter the letters are you see here.
3. When it does, type gpedit.msc in the box, exactly as you see in the photo. Another menu will open after a brief pause while Windows thinks about it. This is what you’ll see next:
Here’s the group policy editor. Two panes, left and right. We will be working in both.
4. You’re going to be working in the right pane later on but right now, look for Administrative Templates in the left pane. Right click it and choose Add/Remove Templates. This tells Windows that you want to add the file (template) that you just downloaded.
You want to Add a Template so choose the Add/Remove line.
Another menu pops up, like this:
We have already added the template so it shows up here. Your window will probably be empty.
5. Note that your menu should be empty while ours has the Google Update already installed. Don’t worry if the box is empty, click on Add.
6. Navigate to your Downloads folder. The only file that should show up, other than any folders you have there, is the ‘adm’ file from Google. Click it then click Open down on the bottom right.
As you can see, we checked our link four times. The adm file is the only one that shows up…four times.
7. In the previously blank menu, you should see Google Update, a file size and today’s date. Click Close to add the template to Window’s list of templates. Note: This window is a bit confusing. Normally, the ADD button would ‘add’ the template but here it’s only used to find the template on your computer. Once you see the template in the menu box, close the box and the adm file is added to the list of templates.
8. Back to the left side again. You should probably click on the box to the left of the X icon. That will open the menu to full screen. (Print this post so you can keep track of what you’re doing.) On the left side, click on the following arrow icons, just to the left of the words you will see next: Administrative Templates then Classic Administrative Templates (ADM) then Google then Google Update. If you’ve followed us so far, this is what you’ll see on your screen:
Left pane/right pane. You choose what you want to edit in the left one then edit it on the right.
9. Here’s a tip to help you navigate through these menus. In the left pane, you just have to click on one of the folders to open it. In the right pane, you have to double click a folder to open it. The folder we want to open first is the one that reads Preferences. Once it’s open, this is what you’ll see:
Click on the folder in the left pane then you’ll see the file in the right pane that you want to edit.
10. Over to the right side now. Under the Setting tab, you’ll see Auto-update check period override. You can open this two ways, first by double clicking it or simply by clicking one and choosing the link ‘policy setting’ that pops up. Make sure your box looks exactly like ours, click Enabled to choose it and set the minutes to 1400, if that is not set already. Click OK to save this step.
You want all of the boxes that you edit to read Enabled and/or allow updates.
11. We’re finished with Google Update so let’s look a bit farther down the list on the left and find Applications. Click the word Applications once and a full list of folders opens up in the right pane. Guess what? The one we want is waaayyy down at the bottom of the list. Scroll down until you see Update policy override default. Our setting is Enabled but yours won’t be until you change the settings. You can either double click that line or highlight it by clicking once then clicking on the words ‘policy setting’ up at the top in the same pane. This is what comes up next:
On the bottom of the right pane are two settings that you have to open and change separately.Enabled and then Always allow updates. Click Apply then OK.
12. Make sure you choose Enabled then click on the arrow in the Policy pane and choose Always allow updates (recommended). Click Apply then OK to save your changes. Next, go back to the bottom of the right window and open the ‘Allow installation default setting’. It’s right above ‘Update policy override default’ that we just changed.
Second from the bottom.
13. In this window, choose Enabled then press Next Setting. In that window, choose Enabled also. Then click Apply and OK.
14. You’re almost done, don’t worry. At this point you’re a pro so we won’t hold your hand for the next four steps. Move back to the left pane and look for two folders: Google Chrome is one. Google Binaries is the other. They aren’t too far from the top. Once you’ve found the first, Chrome, change the two settings on the right EXACTLY the same as you did for step 11 and 12. Click Apply and OK for Chrome then move to Chrome Binaries and do the same thing for it. Two boxes, change them to Enabled and Always allow updates. That’s it!
15. In total, you have added one template and changed seven settings. Close the Local Group Policy Editor down, close Chrome then reopen it. On the top right of the page, click on the three horizontal lines and choose About Google Chrome. If you’ve done everything correctly, Chrome will run through the update routine and install the latest and greatest version of itself. Pat yourself on the back and smile. You did great!
Yes this is a long post but it’s not something we could do in two parts. If you have problems, let us know. We’ll see what we can do to help.
Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
Efficient heating and comfort go hand in hand. The more efficient your furnace is, the more comfortable you will be. In our last post we discussed humidity and how the amount of water vapor in the air affects your ability to feel warm or cold. Today we’re going to show you how to get that air to where it’s needed in your house. Here’s what a basic furnace air distribution system looks like:
Cold air goes in, hot air comes out. Simple, right?
This photo shows the warm air vents that you will probably recognize but it also shows the cold air return vent, something you might not know about. Heating a house is based on two principles. The first is getting the hot air to where it’s needed. The second is to get the cold air back to the furnace in order to make it warmer. Sounds simple, right? It’s not as simple as you might think. There is another principle involved here, one that affects your comfort both summer and winter: warm air is lighter than cold air. Let’s see how that makes a difference.
If your house has a basement or lower level, you’ve probably noticed that it feels cooler down there than it does in the rest of the house. Since your furnace is almost always in the basement, this makes sense, doesn’t it? Well, it only makes sense if that cold air in the lower level of your house can get to the furnace to be warmed up. Remembering that cold air is heavier, the return vent in your basement has to be at floor level. That’s where the cold air is. If the cold air return isn’t on the floor or doesn’t even exist, then you’ve got a problem.
Many older homes don’t have a cold air return vent. No matter how much hot air you pump out of the warm air vents, the cold air pools at floor level while the lighter hot air rises to the ceiling.Your first job is to locate the cold air return vent in your basement or lower level. If there isn’t one, you will need to call a contractor or make one yourself.
TIP: Make sure that all of your cold air return vents are open and not covered up by carpeting or furniture. If the cold air can’t get back to the furnace, its efficiency goes down. So does your comfort level.
Once you get the cold air return problem fixed, look for these contraptions on the hot air ducts, the skinny pipes that run all over your house and are connected to the floor/ceiling vents (where the hot air comes out):
These don’t all look the same but the basic principle is the same for all of them.
These dampers control the flow of air through your duct system. In order to increase your furnace’s efficiency, and your own comfort level, these dampers have to be set correctly. The problem here is that you have to do this tuning twice a year. Why? Go back to the old ‘warm air is lighter than cold air’ principle. These dampers need to be set to control hot air in the winter then reset to control cold air in the summer, assuming that you have central air conditioning. Here are some tuning tips for you:
1. Usually, the furnace is located at one end of your house. That means that some hot air ducts are shorter than others. The longest ducts go to the back of the house. The shorter ones go to the room(s) directly above the furnace. Common sense should tell you that these short ducts don’t need to be fully open to work. Using the same logic, those long ducts should be open as wide as possible. The dampers on each pipe control how much air is allowed through it.
2. Your winter tuning should ensure that the rooms that you want to be warmest get the most hot air. Normally these rooms would be where you sleep but, depending on your home’s orientation to the sun, you might want that heat to go to other rooms.
3. In the summer, your home’s orientation is more important than it is in the winter. The rooms that get heat from the sun need more cool air, right? Again, you’d probably want most of the cold air to go to your sleeping area. If you’ve shut down air to those rooms for the winter, you have to adjust the dampers for the summer. Every home is different, obviously, so all we can give you are tips that you can use to help your efficiency.
4. Ideally, a multi-story (storey in Canada and Europe) house would have the furnace in the basement and its air conditioning unit on the roof. Why? The hot air/cold air thing, that’s why. Your furnace fan has to work doubly hard in the summer because the cold air from your air conditioning unit is much heavier than the hot air it pumps out in the winter. Warm air rises, cold air falls. Keep this in mind when you’re tuning your ducts. Close down the dampers for the lower part of your house in the summer, open the dampers for the rooms in the upper section.
TIP: If your home doesn’t have central air conditioning, try running your furnace fan on hot days. The cold air that has pooled in your basement/lower level will be sucked up and distributed throughout your house. You can frequently lower the temperature by a few degrees this way.
If you use these tips and some common sense, you’ll most likely find yourself feeling more comfortable in your house. You just might find some savings on your energy expenses too. Win/win!
Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
We’re taking a break from computers and hi-tech for a couple of posts, mainly because it’s getting colder here in Canada. Central heating simply doesn’t exist in many parts of the world but in parts of North America it’s the only way to survive the winter blasts. Even if you don’t have to heat your house or apartment, stick around and learn about it anyway, just in case you move up here.
Note: We’re concentrating on combustion heating here, in other words fire and flame. The fuel could be oil or natural gas or wood. These aren’t the only alternatives, of course. Electricity, heat pumps, solar are all available but most of Canada uses oil or gas.
Let’s start by breaking things down to basics. There are three things that make up an efficient heating system: the type of furnace in the house, the humidity of the air and how successful the system is in moving the hot/cold air around. You can’t do much about the type of furnace you have in the house so unless you’re going to change that system, the only things you can adjust are the humidity and air movement. Let’s start with humidity.
Humid in winter/dry in summer:
What’s the difference between a hot day in Arizona or New Mexico and a hot day in Toronto? Most of the hot days in Toronto are also humid. You’re heard the saying, “It’s a dry heat”, right? That’s our way of describing hot dry air as opposed to hot humid air. This all boils down to evaporation. When the air is dry, your skin gets rid of its excess moisture rapidly. Sometimes the moisture isn’t even excess, the air seems to be sucking water from your skin if it’s really dry. This evaporation keeps you cool in the summer just as it does in the winter inside your house if you don’t have enough moisture in the air.
On the other hand, when the air is full of its own water, it can’t absorb yours. You get hotter from the lack of evaporation of the moisture on your skin. Step out of a swimming pool on a hot, humid day and the air feels warm. You don’t go running for a towel to dry off. On a dry day, even if it’s relatively hot, the moisture on your skin disappears rapidly, cooling you down quickly.
In a heated house, these differences between humid air and dry air come into play too. If the air in your house is humid in the winter, you feel warmer. That means you can turn down the thermostat and save money on fuel. Obviously if the air in your house is dry, it doesn’t matter how hot it is, you still feel cool. Therefore your first objective is to make sure there is enough water in the air, otherwise known as humidity, so you feel warm at a lower temperature.
Step One: Buy a hygrometer
Wazzat? Well, hygrometer tells you how much moisture is in the air in your house. You’re not going to fix the humidity if you don’t know what it is, right? As a matter of fact, you may already have a hygrometer. Frequently looking like a ship’s wheel, hygrometers are usually paired with a barometer. Here’s a photo of what we’re talking about:
You can often find these at garage sales. Thermometer, barometer and hygrometer all in one place.
As a general rule, the humidity in your home will be higher in the summer. The more you let the outside air into your home in the summer, the wetter it will be. In the winter, depending on your heating system, the air will be significantly dryer. How wet or dry should it be? Figure around 50% or just a bit less. Bad things happen when the air gets too wet and your skin dries out when it gets too dry. Static electricity is also a problem in dry air.
High Efficiency or Not?
When you break central heating down to its basics, there are really only two types of fuel-based systems. One uses the air inside the house it is heating for its combustion. The other uses outside air for combustion. The former is often termed regular or mid efficiency. The latter systems are almost always high efficiency. What difference does this make to the moisture in the air? Well, if you’re using the same air that you’re trying to heat for combustion, the air is expanding and drying out. The moisture that was in one cubic metre of air is now in three, four or five cubic metres, right? There is less moisture in the same quantity of air.
Here’s a good way to tell if you have a high efficiency furnace. Take a look at this photo. One of these pipes takes air in, the other shoots out the air after the furnace is finished with it. The air coming out is just warm, not hot, because the furnace has taken most of the heat from the exhaust and warmed your house with it:
These pipes point in different directions to keep from mixing the streams. Your furnace needs fresh air to remain efficient.
In a home with a high efficiency furnace, the air required for combustion is taken from outside. The air in the home keeps its humidity. Add the moisture from cooking and showers, etc. and the air gets more than enough water vapor in it to offset the air coming in when someone opens the door or through leaks in the walls or windows. Remember that the outside air expands when it enters your warm home. As we learned above, air that expands effectively loses it’s moisture.
Fireplaces
Just a note here to say that while fireplaces are wonderful, they play a part in drying the air in your house. Sure, there are some high efficiency natural gas fireplaces but most of us like a wood-burning, cozy one. Better to use them sparingly in really cold weather. There are two reasons for this. First, the drying of the air. Second, a fireplace sucks air for combustion and shoots it up the chimney. If that air has already been heated by your central furnace, you’re wasting money. It’s literally going up in smoke. Best to save the fireplace for moderately cool days or, better yet, turn the furnace off when you’re burning wood.
Add a humidifier
Once you find out what the water vapor level in your air is, you’ll know if you need a humidifier or not. With a high efficiency furnace, there is rarely a need for extra moisture. With anything else, a humidifier adds sufficient moisture to the air to make you more comfortable. Just don’t go nuts and add a ton of moisture or you’ll run into mold and mildew problems. Unless you’re very handy, it’s a good idea to call a contractor to add a central humidifier to your furnace. On the other hand, you may already have one. Humidifiers often get plugged with calcium and stop working. Most homes should have one but yours may need repair or replacement. Vinegar will unplug anything that has calcium deposits, by the way. Try that first. Here’s one type of humidifier:
Instead of a portable humidifier, you should have a whole-house unit, something like this.
That’s it for today. Next time we’ll talk about getting that hot air to where it’s needed…efficiently.
Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
Trying to maneuver your way around Facebook’s privacy settings has always been a problem. Now, with Facebook shooting out more and more ads, it’s time to adjust your privacy settings. Here we go:
1. On any Facebook page, click the down arrow icon up on the top right and choose Settings on the drop-down menu:
Settings from the drop-down menu under the arrow icon.
2. The first thing you see if your General settings but we’re after Privacy settings. For now, just review them, then we’ll move on to Adverts.
Take a quick look here to make sure your info is as you want it.
3. While you’re here, take a look at your basic privacy settings. Our photo shows our settings. We like to keep things set to ‘Friends Only’ and suggest that you do the same.
We have everything set to Friends Only.
4. Move on to Adverts. Your wording may vary, of course. Adverts is a British term, certainly not one you’d hear in Canada or the U.S.
Adverts? Really? Seems so.
5. The page is divided into three sections. You can edit your preferences in the first two but the last is only for your own education. Read the third one carefully after you’ve edited the first two sections.
Two of the sections have an Edit button. Read the preamble then click Edit to set your own parameters.
6. The first section describes something that isn’t available yet in Canada. The wording for you may be different. Regardless, we’ve set this up so ‘No one’ will be able to see our information, even if this feature is enabled at a later date. You should do the same.
Opt out, even if this feature isn’t available to you yet. (Feature? Not really.)
7. Facebook blithely tells you that “Everyone wants to know what their friends like”. Really? Read the rest of this section carefully. Again, we’ve got this set to ‘No one’. Is there any reason why you would allow Facebook to allow advertisers to use your profile photo? We can’t.
Do you want your social actions paired to ads? No? We didn’t either.
8. Read the last section very carefully. Facebook follows you while you are on their site but they also follow you when you are ‘off Facebook’. If you don’t agree with this, and we can’t see why you would agree to it, opt out through one of the links shown, depending on where you are in the world. There aren’t links to any Asian countries here so you might have a hard time opting out if you’re not in Canada, the U.S. or Europe. We can’t help with that, unfortunately.
All of this should be straightforward but if it isn’t, let us know. Comments and questions are welcome but Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention. Here’s the link:
