Like many, I took advantage of the free upgrade from the awful Windows 8.x to Windows 10, but the time of that free upgrade has passed.

If like me, you sometimes have to “powerwash” (to use a Chromebook phrase) a machine, but it was originally Windows 7 or 8 you might feel stuck without an upgrade.

Do you go down the route of an unofficial upgrade, which can be dodgy, or… do you want to use an official Microsoft update?

The only think you have to do is cross your fingers (unless you actually do use them, of course) and go to this link:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=je6NUbpObpQ&ranSiteID=je6NUbpObpQ-9s1EYTGNy.vIW38_D3RH_Q&tduid=(dcd562eb0ae647a9c39eea2677fb3ebb)(256380)(2459594)(je6NUbpObpQ-9s1EYTGNy.vIW38_D3RH_Q)()

where you will affirm (with no proof that you do, or do not) use “assistance technologies” (ie on-screen narration, magnification (which I actually do these days given my sight issues) or sticky keys etc etc).

I personally have a clear conscience on this. It’s up to you, but Microsoft and their policy towards people with needs are awesome.

I love an animated GIF… whether it’s a currently hot meme, or a classic quote or just an illustration which is better animated, then the moving, repeated image is king.

The wonderful Fr Eddie Green uses them extensively in his Worshpr toolkit.

Creating them from scratch (as opposed to just simply downloading them) used to be complex, but now I have worked out how to put two simple steps together to make this magic happen.

How to create Animated GIFs from something on a Web Page

1 Install Nimbus Screenshot into your Chrome Browser 

2 This enables you to grab all of a web page, or just a tiny part or… record the screen as a video

3 The Menu gives you all these wonderful options:

4. When you have recorded what you want in Nimbus, you can save it. The video format is the rather useless .webm format which even Adobe Media Convertor cannot read, so this is where the next site comes in…

5. Visit https://www.online-convert.com/ and more specifically https://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-gif

6 For an embedded GIF (I still despite knowing different still call them Gg-if with the hard G rather than the soft J-if, sorry it’s too embedded) in a tweet, I reduce the size to 320×240 for square (4:3) images or 320×180 for widescreen images

7 In a few moments, the GIF will be downloaded. Note you can do all kinds of conversions as well, so you can convert anything into anything. This is good if you want the .webm in .mp4 format so you can put it in another video.

These are some quick examples:

Enjoy!

I love to use the get_iplayer app to record and keep my favourite Programmes, after all, my licence fee has paid for them.

Unfortunately, it’s interface is text only and that can be a little intimidating for some, so a couple of years ago, I wrote a GUI front end for it in the AutoIT scripting language, and now it was time to update that in a new language – Java.

If you don’t have Java installed, it should offer you the option to do so. Some people don’t like having Java on their PCs, muttering about security, but it is a very secure, sandboxed system.

Instructions

1. Download get_iplayer from here and install it.
2. Download and install my GUI front end from here. Dropbox will say that .exe files can’t be previewed, but that is fine and to be expected, so then select to either “download” or “save to your (own) dropbpox”, if you have one.
3. When you run the app, simply go to your iPlayer window in your browser and copy the address at the top. This is one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b086tqm4/doctor-who-the-return-of-doctor-mysterio
4. Go back to my App and paste it into the text box.
5. If it is a Radio program, select Radio, otherwise the default is a TV programme
6. Hit Download and a textbox will open up and do the downloading for you. Get_iPlayer has a folder on the Desktop called “iPlayer Recordings” and you will find all your TV programmes and Radio Shows there

I didn’t create get_iplayer, there are cleverer people who have done that, I certainly didn’t make Java, but I make this front end available to the world free-of-charge under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC License. All I ask you for is your prayers for my ministry here in Plymouth, call it PRAYERWARE if you like! I accept no responsibility for it, I made it for my own use and share it with you because I’m nice like that…

Prezi, thankfully, still supports animations, but not as we now know and love them. With one simple step, however, you can insert animated gifs and take other short movies and insert them into your Prezi presentation to liven them up.

Although Prezi does not support animated gifs (yet, hint, hint) you can easily convert these to Flash swf format files which will loop indefinitely in a Prezi.

Here is how you do it.

1. Find your animated gif through Google Images
2. Enter a search term and then select “Search Tools” and under “Type” select “Animated”
3. This will limit the search to images that are moving. Download that image (Right-Click / Save As…)
4. Visit the excellent Convertio online converter, drag and drop the downloaded file onto the page and select as output “Video/SWF”
5. Add as many files as you like and then convert them. There is a daily limit, but I can’t imagine you would exceed this for this purpose.
6. Now in Prezi, you can drag and drop the new SWF file, or Insert it as a File. You can also insert it as a Background image, which is particularly good as an opener.
7. I would use it sparingly, especially as some animated gifts move very fast, but a gentle animation like the one above, or a subtle illustration can be effective.
8. Beyond that, you can convert a (very) short and small movie from your video editing package into an swf. You can do this directly in some packages (Sony Vegas) or export it from iMovies / Windows Movie Maker and convert it via Convertio. This could be, I imagine, a moving graph, or a quick clip.

Have fun.

It’s a great phone, and I have no regrets about choosing it over the Samsung or the Sony at the time (I played with all three side-by-side), but that was some time ago and now 16Gb of internal storage is frankly a little light.

Of course you can add an SD Card for additional storage and this is great for movies and music files, but ultimately you start running out of app space. One of the coolest features of Android M (aka 6.0 or Marshmellow) is the ability to merge your SD Card into the internal memory. The downside is the loss of a bit of performance and you lose the ability to treat the SD card as a removable drive (it gets formatted into an internal format thus making it unreadable outside the phone without reformatting) but I never do that anyway because it means taking the back off the phone.

However, LG have disabled this feature.

BUT you can re-enable it.

1. Upgrading LG G3 to Marshmellow (Android 6.0 M)

On the Official LG Website, search for your G3 and you will find:

Select “Software” and you get…

Alternatively, the quick link is: http://www.lg.com/uk/support/mobile-phones?superCategoryId=CT00008355&categoryId=CT00008356&search=D855

Install the drivers and then the Mobile Support Tool.

Connect your phone and select “Start Upgrade” and the system will officially and automatically upgrade you to Android 6.0. For some, that’s good enough because you have the latest official version and haven’t had to wait for an OTA (over the air) upgrade.

2. Enabling SD Card Internal Storage

Now this bit can get a little technical and scary, but bear with me. You need to make an edit to the system configuration and to do this you temporarily need to root your phone. This means basically to take control over it. It’s going to be temporary but you will need to install some programs to help you do this.

2.1 KingRoot

On your phone, go to https://kingroot.net   (note the https is important, going to http will not get you there)

Download the Android Version onto your phone. Don’t bother with the Windows version, it is in an odd character set and makes no sense. You will need to sideload this .apk file. In SETTINGS / SECURITY  enable the  UNKNOWN SOURCES option. Then select the KingRoot app from your downloads folder and install it.

Run the App and follow the instructions here https://kingroot.net/tutorials to root your device. It will not be rooted the next time you reboot, so all will be well.

2.2 Build Prop Editor

From the Play Store go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrummy.apps.build.prop.editor

Running this app enables you to search for the following entry:

ro.lge.adoptable_storage 

This is set to false by default on the LG marshmallow ROM. You can set this to true, save the file and then reboot the phone.

Now, when you go into storage settings. You can press on External SD card, this will bring up the file explorer for the card. Pressing the additional options at the top right and selecting settings will reveal the all powerful option to format the SD card as storage. Woo!

WARNING: This will remove everything on the SD card, remember to backup any files.

WARNING 2: Removing the SD card from now on without reformatting the data to the internal storage properly will result in the loss of stuff. You need to be committed to keeping this SD card in situ and doing a complete factory reset when you want to move on.

There! Sorted.