Month: April 2020

Update to My Smart Home!

By Michael Gregory On In Tech Tips

I’ve previously written about my experience building a cohesive smart home, and since it’s been a year and a half, I wanted to update, especially since now I’m spending so much (read: all) of my time at home!

What’s the Same?

So I’m still using Home Assistant to connect to all of my smart devices. It controls everything and allows me to do some really neat things with schedules. Home Assistant has grown a lot and is a more mature product, and now is fairly on par with something like HomeKit or another smart-home system.

Hey, I’m Dictating!

By Kristin Imperio On In Tech Tips

BEGIN DICTATION

Hi, everyone! It’s your bird dash girl, Chris with some weird information for you. I was thinking that I wanted to start dictating some of the emails and narratives that I needed to write comma and I realized that Microsoft Office has a dictation software already built into its application. I thought, start quote this is going to be great! end quote . But it’s not turning out How I want Ellipsis yet . press return tap return this is stupid.

END DICTATION

Snip N Sketch

By Will Jay On In Application Spotlight, Uncategorized

I wrote about using Greenshot nearly five years ago, and I still stand by it as an excellent program, but I know some people would rather not clutter their toolbar with additional icons. If that’s the case for you and you’re using Windows 10 (you should be at this point), then the Snip & Sketch tool is the way to go. It is installed automatically alongside Windows 10 and comes with a number of improvements over the classic Snipping Tool:

The Perils of Working from Home

By Laura Jean On In Fun Stuff

First, there are cats. Currently, one is at about eye-level with me. Sitting on my “desk,” obfuscating the screen of my laptop. If I move my arm towards her to mouse around, she will lay across that arm, thereby allowing me to see my display. It appears the problem is solved, but only until I need the keyboard once again.

Remote-ageddon

By Alex Robert On In Tech Tips

Odds are if you have not worked remotely in the past, recent events have forced you to do so. There are many ways to access the resources you normally use at the office from home, and many ways these tools can fail. Fear not, there are some basic troubleshooting steps you can take on your own before you enlist your go-to Bird for assistance. Some of these steps depend on what type of remote access you are set up with, so let’s talk about those.