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Gareth J M Saunders

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About me

I’m Gareth J M Saunders, 50 years old, 6′ 4″, father of 3 boys (including twins).

Enneagram type FOUR and introvert, I am a non-stipendiary priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, I sing with the NYCGB alumni choir, play guitar, write, draw and laugh.

I regularly review metal, hardcore, punk and rock reviews at 195 metal CDs.

Scrum master at Safeguard Global; latterly at Sky and Vision/Cegedim. Former web architect and agile project manager at the University of St Andrews and previously warden at Agnes Blackadder Hall.

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Tag: account

Windows 10 timeline fixed

Windows 10 timeline lets you see what applications and documents you've been using recently, Well, some of them.
Windows 10 timeline lets you see what applications and documents you’ve been using recently, Well, some of them.

One of the features of the latest Windows 10 April 2018 update that I’ve been most looking forward to is Timeline.

Unfortunately, Timeline hasn’t worked for me since the upgrade. But today I fixed it.

What is Timeline?

Timeline lets you see a list of all the documents and applications (that support Timeline) going back about a month. The idea is that this feature should make it easier to find documents you’ve been working on.

The problem I had was that after the upgrade (which only took about 30 minutes) it didn’t work. All I saw was a list of the virtual desktops I had (which is usually two), the currently open applications, and then a message saying that I needed to use my PC more before timeline would start showing me results.

How I fixed it

This is the combination of things that I did to fix it.

Note that my user account is a Microsoft account, not a local PC account.

Settings > Activity history

The first thing was to make sure Windows was collecting my activities.

  1. Open Settings
  2. Go to Activity history
  3. Make sure Let Windows collect my activities from this PC is checked.
  4. Make sure Let Windows synchronise my activities from this PC to the cloud is checked.
  5. Make sure the Microsoft accounts you want synchronised are set to On.

Registry settings

I next checked that the following Windows Registry settings were present in the following registry location:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

  • EnableActivityFeed
  • PublishUserActivities
  • UploadUserActivities

Make sure these are all DWORD 32-bit Value entries set to 1.

To start RegEdit press Win + R and type regedit and click OK.

Restart the PC

Some people have recommended that at this point you should restart your PC to let these settings take effect. Note, not just restart but switch off, wait a few seconds and then switch it back on.

That didn’t work for me.

Create a local user account

It wasn’t until I did the following that Windows suddenly started the Timeline feature. I’m not sure why but this, in combination with the steps above, got it started.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Go to Accounts.
  3. Select Family & other people from the options on the left.
  4. Under Other people click Add someone else to this PC.
  5. In the pop-up window select I don’t have this person’s sign-in information.
  6. Click on the link Add a user without a Microsoft account.
  7. Enter a new username and password. Then select three security questions and answers. Finally click Next.
  8. Once your account has been set up. Switch off the PC.
  9. Switch the PC back on and now log in with your new local username.
  10. Wait for Windows to set up your account for first use, then check the Timeline (Win + Tab). It should be working. Browse a few pages in Microsoft Edge just to make sure.
  11. Log off and now log on with your standard Microsoft account.
  12. Once the account has loaded, Timeline should now be working.

I offer this in the hope that it may help someone in a similar situation to mine. Good luck!

Posted on Monday 25 June 2018Categories ComputerTags account, fix, problem, Regedit, registry, timeline, troubleshooting, Windows, Windows 10Leave a comment on Windows 10 timeline fixed

Copy – could this draw me away from Dropbox?

Copy - announcing fair storage and 15GB for all
Copy – announcing fair storage and 15GB for all

I’ve blogged before about choosing a cloud storage provider: Dropbox vs SkyDrive vs Google Drive. There’s a new option on the market now: Copy, and I’ve been giving them a spin this week.

One of the immediate attractions is that their basic, free account offers 15GB of storage space, compared with 2GB on Dropbox, for example. As a limited time offer they will also give you and me an extra 5GB if you sign-up from this referral URL: https://copy.com?r=SJuusn

So far I’m impressed. The software does everything I want it to:

  • Windows and Android applications
  • Easy Web access
  • Selective sync
  • Ability to share files and folders
  • Bandwidth throttling

Of course, I need to look into the privacy issues but this may be a contender for moving me away from a Dropbox subscription.

Posted on Tuesday 6 August 2013Thursday 14 December 2017Categories ComputerTags account, Android, app, cloud, Copy, Dropbox, free, Google Drive, SkyDrive, storage, Windows1 Comment on Copy – could this draw me away from Dropbox?

It looks like we’ve both forgotten something…

This email amused me today, from Jolidrive:

Hello Name Name, It looks like you've forgotten your password...
Hello Name Name, It looks like you’ve forgotten your password…

It does indeed look like I’ve forgotten my password, Jolidrive. But it looks very much like you’ve also forgotten my name.

Posted on Thursday 18 April 2013Thursday 14 December 2017Categories ComputerTags account, email, forgotten, Jolicloud, Jolidrive, name, passwordLeave a comment on It looks like we’ve both forgotten something…

What I wish I’d been taught about money management

20111227-potofcash One of the things that I really wish I’d been taught in high school is money management. How wonderfully practical that would have been, and I’m sure would have helped me immeasurably over the previous 20+ years since I left school.

I loved maths—I took it to Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (CSYS) level, which has now been replaced by the Advanced Higher—but again, my criticism of how maths is taught in high school is that it’s not practical enough. I still have various formulae and theories in my head, I just don’t know how they can be used in the real world. But that’s another argument, for another day.

The problem with just one account

Like many people, I was advised to open a bank account when I started university in 1989. I’m still using that same account today. It’s now a Royalties Gold account, and acts as our main, current account.

It’s the account that our main transactions pass through:

Income

  • Salary
  • Child tax credits
  • Child benefit

Expenses

  • Direct debits (mostly house bills, mortgage, etc.)
  • Savings payments
  • Credit card payments
  • Car fuel
  • Groceries
  • Miscellaneous personal spending

It looks a little bit like this:

Diagram of my main bank transactions: income gets paid into main account, various payments go out.

On the plus side it’s pretty simple: there is only one account to be concerned with. On the negative side: all our miscellaneous personal spending also comes out of that one pot of money. And that’s where it gets complicated, and we are not accountable enough to one another for who spends money on what.

If I fancy a new CD I’ll dip into that account. If Jane needs a new top or new jeans she’ll dip into that account. Or lunch. Or coffee with friends. Or a magazine. Or postage. Or this and that and before you know it we’ve overspent and there are still two or three direct debits that need to come out before the end of the month.

Multiple accounts

Years ago Jane suggested that we needed multiple accounts to manage our money. I resisted and it didn’t happen. I couldn’t see the point. Would that not just make things more complicated, I argued?

No, it turns out. Multiple accounts actually make things a whole lot easier, so I’ve learned. And automating payments into those accounts makes things much easier still.

So, our income now gets paid into the same current account. This is our big pot of money out of which our direct debits still get paid, plus the credit cards (which now includes groceries) and fuel.

We’ve setup various standing orders which pushes money out monthly to various savings accounts, including those for Reuben, Joshua and Isaac; we’re trying to save as much of their child benefit as we can so it genuinely can be used on them. We’ve also setup a separate account to save for Christmas, and another to save for a holiday we’d like to take in a few years’ time to visit family in California.

One of the most important changes we’ve made is that we now pay ourselves a monthly allowance (which is now automated as a standing order), into our own personal accounts for clothes, CDs, software, magazines, birthday presents, etc. At the moment it’s £50 per month (and an extra £50 on our birthday). Because, we realised that we were actually much more protective about the money in our personal accounts than in the main account.

The new setup looks a bit like this:

Money from main account gets paid for bills and to savings, we now have two personal accounts.

I wish I’d been taught about this sort of thing earlier.

When I spoke with a Royal Bank mortgage adviser recently he said, “Oh, yeah! That’s exactly the kind of setup that we recommend.”

Where?! Where do you recommend this? I’ve looked through the RBS website and I can find plenty of information about the different type of accounts they offer: basic, silver, gold, black, student, graduate, etc. They have accounts for savings, accounts for deposits, ISAs, instant access, etc. But no advice, that I can see about how best to manage these in combination with one another.

Do you have any good tips?

It will be interesting to see how we get on over the next 12 months. I’ll report back with my feedback. In the meantime, do you have any good tips?

Posted on Tuesday 27 December 2011Thursday 14 December 2017Categories ProductivityTags account, accounts, bank, management, money, RBS3 Comments on What I wish I’d been taught about money management
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