Is your Zoom up to date?

No matter how you access Zoom even if you are a regular Zoom user finding out if  you are on the latest version is not obvious. Open the desktop app, click the profile photo, select “Check for Updates”.

When did you last update Zoom? If your answer is I checked it last week, even yesterday and Zoom is not behaving as it should I suggest checking it is up to date. Often point updates happen automatically 5.1.1 to 5.1.2 for instance but not 5.1.2 to 6.0, these integer updates will need the user to action the update.

Are you up to date?

Doing battle with the planet and myself.

I am the champion of self deprecation. So much so I simple accept I’m un. Just un!

Mindfulness as March closes. No the world will not get the better of me.

I read this first thing this morning. The world kick my ass. I fought back.

CGYOOMH - scrapbook nostalgia

Audiences are hard to build. Marketing takes strategy, insight and time. Events without delivery are just ideas. Not all ideas are good ideas and the best ideas have to be tried and tested.
Knowledge is power. People with knowledge are powerful. Power without focus is chaos. It feels like we live in a chaotic world. How do we begin to tame it? Can it ever be?

Today’s failed and failing experiment is an attempt to entice fellow knowledge seekers to talk about something with substance.

The 6 week series is covering Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out If My Head. Episode was conspiracy and power. Very simplistic and runs as a theme across the series.

I’m not an academic and I’m not remotely clever. I’ve been reflecting recently on the notion of Extraordinarily Ordinary. It’s how I feel. Not special, I’ll never be important but I still want to aspire, achieve and attain a sense of satisfaction.
Achievement in one goal can be a failure of an other. But still I proceed. 

Today I was joined by an artist full of colour and flare and life lived. An artist unashamedly an artist a success in claiming the name. Is she? I think so. Does she? Yes and No I expect.

The first Curtis episode is its own beginning. There is a style to Curtis’s work and it’s raw yet crafted. It feels new with a sense of scrapbook nostalgia. It’s construction is undeniably intended but has intangible conceit. 

Planning events I host are hard to market as my time goes of delivering projects and events for others to earn a living. If I only delivered my own events that were sufficiently marketed I’d never deliver a thing.

Yeah... sleep now.

Closed Captions in Zoom for FREE

To allow attendees to open Zoom through Chrome the “Allow access from browser” setting on the host accounts admin settings needs activating in Zoom Meetings Advances settings

When attendee join…

There have been a few posts focusing on captioning for video calling.

Closed Captioning in Chrome

https://pcmcreative.typepad.com/my_weblog/2021/03/closed-captions-in-chrome.html

Series 4 Episode 2 Lunchtime Livestream in full.

https://pcmcreative.typepad.com/my_weblog/2021/03/lunchtime-livestream-s4e2-closed-captioning.html

Please email me if further insight required

- [email protected]

Lunchtime Livestream S4|E2 - Closed Captioning

 

Chrome Settings > Advanced > Accessibility > Live Caption (see below)

 

This did work with the YouTube livestream which can be seen in the video.

 

Closed Captions in Chrome

Auto Closed Captions (subtitling) natively within your Chrome browser is now a thing. This is a game changer. Or perhaps more realistically a great leveller when using a whole range of browser based video meeting and conferencing event services, Whereby, Hopin (I’ve tested that out see pics below.) and Crowdcast for example.

The auto close captioning through the chrome browser extends to working on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube livestreams.

This is an audience activated feature. Closed Caption in platforms where CC is available is activated by the view in most cases. Auto generated captions are not perfect but I’m a firm believer that access should be attempted with out exception. 

Settings > Advanced Settings > Accessibility - toggle Live Captions to ON.Close and restart the Chrome and… Boom!

Below are a two screen captures taken while attending an event in Hopin.

The captions box can be expanded into a paragraph. The box can be dragged to anywhere on the screen.

Enlightenment in the Midlands

Finding stuff to go to when there is so much noise it can be hard to attend anything. It’s probably just me. I find the world generally too noisy. I do do enjoy discussions and extending my understanding of the general noisy world!

During COVID I’ve worked quite a bit on a variety of event based projects. Last Autumn it was the Arkwright Society’s annual Industrial Revolution conference. I’m working with the heritage and visitor team at Cromford Mills the site of Arkwright Mill which is part of the Derwent Valley UNESCO World Heritage site. The event talks are taking place monthly. Now they have taken part during a Zoom event organised for them they have taken the reins to host. I am now providing advise and moral support. Tomorrow I get to be audience.

I’ve got a reproduction of the Derby Gallery in Second Life. I guess that should be a blog post of its own. Joseph Wright’s painting of light has always been the draw for me to paintings such as The Orrery and The Experiment. 

Grab your ticket. Find me in the Participants and say Hi.

EVENING TALK: JOSEPH WRIGHT AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE MIDLANDS
Ticket link - https://www.wegottickets.com/event/511689
Thursday 25th March, 2021Door time: 6:45pm, Start time: 7:00pm
Held in Zoom Meeting

Auto Closed Captions available.

Here is the blurb...

Have you ever wondered what a painting can tell you about history?

Join Bob Moulder for a fascinating online talk and find out why the products of Joseph Wright’s “bold pencil” offered a window into so many aspects of the Enlightenment and the early Industrial Revolution, both in the Midlands and the wider world.

This overview of the career of Joseph Wright, who was acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution", will focus on a selection of his works, each of which introduces us to an aspect of the Enlightenment in Britain.

Wright’s extraordinary body of work will take us on a journey into the worlds of science, technology, industry, art, culture, society and philosophy in a way, arguably, no other artist has done before or since. Beyond this, the talk will reflect on what the artist known as ‘Joseph Wright of Derby’ means to the city today and what part he can play as it defines itself for the 21st century.

Bob Moulder is an illustrator, writer and graphic novelist as well as a tutor of art history with the WEA. His latest book, Wojtek: The Bear Who Went to War, is a graphic novel based on the true story of a bear adopted by Polish soldiers in WWII, who famously carried shells up to the guns at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Latest work on Wojtek the bear story pic.twitter.com/W3kUKP42jb

— Bob Moulder (@Bob_Moulder1) January 13, 2020

Since moving to Derby over twenty years ago, Bob has always been fascinated by the artist whose name is invariably followed by ‘of Derby’. As a fulfilment of that fascination, his latest project is an illustrated children’s book about Joseph Wright and the painting of The Orrery.

Mindfulness in March - Seeing Red.

Visual text overload. It’s a Dyslexia thing. There is only so much interpretation of squiggly lines forming letters combined to form words, strung into sentences I can process. On top of that their is the expected reciprocal text return.

I’m just searching for some mental equilibrium. 

I just want to listen or talk.I visited Clubhouse and Stereo. Nothing grabbed my attention. I considered firing up a conversation but on Stereo swiping through the available people I got shy and wasn’t sure how I’d start a conversation. 

Then I looked for an online piece of theatre but where to start and I don’t really have time for a full length show. What about a podcast? There is part of me that wants live right now. So after scrolling a few update feeds in Facebook and Linked in I remembered I forgot to watch my fellow Equity Online Branch committee member and sharer of my first name Caron Reidy’s YouTube monologue screening. I’m going to do that.

Here is the link. Caron’s monologue “Red” starts at 26”50’

https://youtu.be/UefaGAyl0vc

Recorded media is a fabulous technology. I’ve not seen Caron perform live on stage. I haven’t seen any TV episodes. Before COVID it would have just been showreels. This was a wonderful treat. And a genuinely good performance.

Can’t Get You Out Of My Head - watch, chat, catch up

Have you seen? What do you think?

1. Part One - Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain - https://fb.me/e/4SJsqqqJk
2. Part Two - Shooting and F**king are the Same Thing - https://fb.me/e/1YkcXCXYt
3. Part Three - Money Changes Everything - https://fb.me/e/2eYafpHwq
4. Part Four - But What If the People Are Stupid? - https://fb.me/e/2eNrs9CrP
5. Part Five - The Lordly Ones - https://fb.me/e/znHbe0N9
6. Part Six - Are We Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? - https://fb.me/e/1dwXbiCgW

I miss ‘putting the world to rights over a pint’ conversations. I’d love folks to join me to watch Adam Curtis’s latest documentary series. So I put together this watch party series. If you haven’t seen the week’s episode watch with me via Zoom or drop by an hour in and stay for a deep reflective chat. Sometimes it is good to make your brain hurt! 

I have mentioned to a few I might do an Adam Curtis watch party some day. Here it is. Starting next Monday (29th) and lasting 6 weeks. Join me to watch or join an hour in a stay for the discussion. This is my kind of happy!! 

Sundown and a pint is wishful thinking right now but hey. Zoom will have to do!

Let talk... these documentaries are collective consciousness and I just want us to share the thoughts I know I have watching the episodes. They colour in my own history. Avert your sensibilities this is not staying inside the lines.

Be prepared to think and reflect.

Census Day

It comes round every 10 years. I looked in my photos. I wanted to see what I was doing this day 10 years ago. Nothing! It was not a day I took a photo that is accessible on my existing active archives. Photos are spread across Dropbox, Google Photos and external hard drives. 

It was before I regularly used Google Calendar. I have paper notebooks and my annual accounts.

I did find a My Year 2011 review.

At the end of the year 2011 illustrating March has me live-streaming and blogging at Ecobuild for Architects Journal.

https://issuu.com/pcmcreative/docs/2011_in_pics

I have to do one of these for 2021. My year of mindfulness. The last decade has been a strange adventure.

What were you doing in March 2011?

Two infographics found to give context to what the census revealed in 2011 and what was discovered about the decade leading to 2011. I expect 2011 - 2021 will be out soon.

Social Media in 2011

Data mapping the change from 2001 - 2011