Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I have to say I find Google extremely frustrating usually giving me exactly what I'm NOT looking for because it happens sound slightly like something the idiotic popular culture is pursuing.

                                                         H.W. 

I have received "offers" to have my web page moved up the rank in google searches (for a sum of money of course). The first hits (even the non-ad ones) are there because they have paid money to get there. I have searched for particular files by exact name and rarely find them before page three with google.

 Len:

      I totally get having paid preference on search results... they have to make money to stay in business.   But Google completely ignores what your search request actually is and at least the first few pages is often wildly unrelated.   They also seem to automatically assume that you are looking for the same garbage the TV Zombies with their celebrity, sports, video game, and pornography obsessions are looking for and just made a typo... which is beyond insulting!    Formerly you could do a "search within", which was one feature that made Google actually work decently, but in their infinite wisdom decided that instead you should type long detailed complex search terms that could run to several lines.      I would love to see a "search assistant" application or website that would make it easy to use Google and get a rational search result, filtering out the garbage, and allowing you to narrow things down by eliminating various words, or domains.    I find that it's often easier to get a useful search result if you go to images rather than text results.... depending on what I'm searching for.   They collect information about you to enable them to target advertising, but then don't even do that effectively.   I don't object to getting adds that are for things I'm interested in, particularly when the alternative is to get a load of garbage.

       Pardon my rant........... but I find Google extremely frustrating... It's gotten worse over the years. 

                                                      H.W.

Anonymous wrote:

i can download all the magazines, but what i'm missing are portrait versions of issues 61 and 66.
i prefer to display them as double sided spreads like a physical book, and on a normal screen landscape versions are hard to read that way. (not a big problem, but if it 's just about linking an existing file, i might appreciate it…)

ueli

In the course of this thread, I mentioned the idea of compiling a book consisting of the collected articles, etc from the magazines.    This could take the form of a printable Ebook, or a printed book, or a collection of annual yearbooks, though those wouldn't be very large..... "decade book"?     It would be very useful to have them in printed format with an index.   I have a collection of monthly magazines in print from another organization, but due to the large number of magazines it is very difficult to find anything when something piques my interest.  

      Most of us have become so reliant on technology that it is a bit worrisome, and I'm worse than many people, preferring to get Ebooks and read them on my Ipad ... as far as entertainment type reading.   Nothing beats an actual paper book where reference books are concerned....... at least for me.   I don't find myself bouncing around in Ebooks like I do in paper books.   My own "study style" is very non-linear, and always has been.  I'll read something, that makes me curious about something mentioned in the text, drop a bookmark where I was and pursue whatever I was curious about, filling in the gaps in this manner by branching out.   It got me through college text books without the utter boring drudgery of linear reading.  Actually I don't believe I have EVER read a text book straight through.   The internet very much matches my style  in this respect.   I often take intellectual "side trips" using a search engine.   I have to say I find Google extremely frustrating usually giving me exactly what I'm NOT looking for because it happens sound slightly like something the idiotic popular culture is pursuing.  What I wouldn't give to have a search engine that would give me what I am looking for instead of a bunch of garbage, forcing me to wade through pages and pages of "junk results" before finding what I want.  I use Duck Duck Go mostly these days because they don't track you and pile commercial stuff on your search results, or look for some possible pornographic result that might be "similar".    

                                                         H.W. 

Anonymous wrote:

                Just a quick note...... I'm a bit of a luddite.  Phones (to me) are for calling people and talking to them, not internet access devices.   I don't even own a so called "smart phone", and my cheap flip phone gets used only when traveling.  I have owned computers since before DOS even existed (CPM days), and the first time I used one was in 1967 believe it or not.  It took up 3 floors at the university about 150 miles from where I was.  Who'da'thunk we'd have tiny telephones that were more capable than the supercomputers of those days   ;-)   I was using an Ipad in addition to a Linux Suse, and a Windows 10 computer in my efforts.

                                                                        H.W.

In general, FF on debian or ubuntu seem to work just fine. It does seem I need to turn off my plugin to block ads and tracking or at least manually add a lot of sites in to allow data from.

I don't know if I would be called "luddite", but still use Pine (alpine these days) for email and IRC (now on libre as freenode has imploded) for chat. I have replaced perl with python though and moved from c to c++.

Happy holidays all.

Anonymous wrote:

Hi, HW.

Further to your reply about the "index" not appearing underneath the JRA Magazine title as I posted in an earlier reply, I was curious be about why it worked for my phone and not yours.

So when I clicked on the "JRA Magazine", initially I got the index title showing to the right of JRA Mag.

But after a few seconds of waiting, a new page opens and this puts the "index" beneath the JRA Magazine title.

Clicking on this " index", then brings up a ( more user friendly) index magazines up to Magazine no. 75, in an easy to read format, with the main headings within each magazine and a clickable link to open up the PDF associated with each magazine.

(This index is the one that used to be there when opening up the index on the PC)

Clicking on the links opens up a PDF version of the magazine to either read online or download when it has fully opened up in the phone.

I see you got it to work anyway, so no worries.

NFFN.

Merry Christmas Kevin:

     As you have probably already noted, I figured out how to access the PDFs.   My mistake was clicking the title which made it look like it was downloading, but didn't.    Using the 3 dots on the right and selecting download from there it works fine for me.  That either makes the process counter intuitive, or reflects negatively on me  ;-)

                                                         H.W.

There’s a committee meeting early in January - we can discuss this and see if there’s an easy fix.  If not we will look into a temporary arrangement.  Either way, we will make sure there is a way to access this essential resource.  But not today for obvious reasons!!!  Merry Christmas to all.