You're listening to the Internet Pathfinder.
I'm your host, Steve Phillips. In this podcast,
the goal is to inform, educate, and reminisce
as we find a path through the world of technology,
the Internet, and podcasting. Well, the 28 -day
podcast movement challenge, the PodSquad, is
officially over. I just want to say congratulations
to everyone who participated in the PodSquad
challenge. And I look forward to interacting
with everyone in the group. So out of all of
them, there was about 24 that stood tall at the
end. And thankfully, mine was one of them. Which,
thank you very much to everyone who listened
and everyone who gave criticism and thoughts
on the entire project. It was amazing to get
a... lot of interaction in the form of critiques
on artwork, critiques on different podcasting
styles, whether it be segments or long form podcasts,
interview podcasts, short podcasts, long podcasts,
just all of the questions collectively were answered
by majority of people just on basic tastes or
just things that they've noticed in the industry.
I would definitely say that it was a very helpful
and informative group to be a part of. And I'm
thankful for everyone that was in it. And congratulations
to the five winners who get tickets and whatnot
to Podcast Movement this year. I unfortunately
will not be going. More so out of cost purposes.
The convention itself isn't the big cost for
me. It's flying or getting transportation down
there and then the hotel stay itself, which is
a bit much for me. I hope that eventually these
jump around the different states and maybe Michigan
could be next or down the pipe some way. I'm
very, very excited to see what comes out of the
podcast movement, even though I will not be able
to make it this year. This episode, I had planned
on doing more tech -based, particularly because
last episode we covered an extensive amount in
podcasting, so this week I thought it would be
interesting to cover things. pertaining to computers,
Windows 10, and some variety of settings that
may or may not make any difference to certain
people or may be very helpful to certain people.
But before I get into that, I'm going to cover
the tech history lesson. And starting us off
there, we have Yahoo, which officially launched
March 5th, 1995. Which I thought was kind of
an interesting bit of information there just
for the fact that Yahoo's been around since pretty
much I started using the internet. And it was
probably the first search engine I'd ever heard
of as well. So it's kind of interesting to see
how long it's been around, but it's also lost
its relevancy over the last 10, 15 years with
the... invention of Google and the lack of reliance
on internet search directories themselves especially
when you had to manually submit your websites
to those directories to get them included in
the search engines whereas Google pulled from
metadata to create all that March 1st 2008 America
Online discontinues the Netscape web browser.
I remember slightly using that, but I was a heavy
Internet Explorer guy at the time. That has since
changed with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
But yeah, Netscape was the first commercial web
browser largely responsible for helping popularize
the Internet in the mid -90s. It originally was
obviously destroyed by Microsoft's Internet Explorer
as they kind of locked it out of Windows in the
90s with all the antitrust information. However,
as Microsoft included it for free with every
copy of Windows of Internet Explorer, the computer
code for Netscape lives on in Mozilla Firefox
browser, which continues to gain popularity.
I'm still a user of Google Chrome and Firefox
for other things, and I haven't touched Internet
Explorer in probably three or four years, and
I'm not a fan of Internet Explorer's successor,
which is Microsoft Edge, which isn't as bad as
Internet Explorer, but I don't like it. It doesn't
seem like it's as fast, and I don't like a lot
of the features to it. It's definitely something
that it's kind of fun to think about the browser
war. I remember a lot of different browsers back
in the day between Neoplanet and where you could
skin the browser and make it look like a show
or something else. It's just kind of interesting
when you go back and look at it. The funny thing
is, is in February 26, 1991, the first web browser
was introduced. The first web browser and WYSIWYG,
what you see is what you get, HTML editor. And
Tim Berners -Lee was largely responsible for
that at the time. And that concludes our history
lesson. So moving into Windows 10 settings and
troubleshooting. Let me preface this with saying
I've had Windows 10 since it came out. I've had
it since whatever year it was. I think it was
2016, maybe 2015. I'm not quite sure when it
came out. Anyhow, when Windows 10 first was introduced,
it was a nightmare. It was a mess. It randomly
changed all the settings. It introduces a new
standard font of Segui UI, which is kind of a...
mix between the Calibri that's standard on Windows
as well. However, if you install Windows 10 on
a computer that does not only have the standard
fonts on a computer, the unfortunate part is
Windows randomly selects one of those fonts to
be your standard font when you're web browsing
or opening a PDF file. And unfortunately, there's
no way around this unless you remove said font.
And it doesn't exactly tell you where it's using
this font from or what font it's pulling. So
what has happened is I've had this problem on
multiple machines. I recently upgraded my wife's
computer because my Windows 10 machine is all
the bugs have been worked out. But I had since
forgotten what. it was like to have to do this.
And I upgraded my Windows 8 .1 machine that my
wife uses on her laptop and brought it to Windows
10. And it randomly selected one of my graphic
design fonts that I was using and decided that
this had to be the standard font. So it made
it extremely difficult to read websites or PDFs
or really anything that was on the web. And I
tried changing the default fonts in the browser.
I tried changing a variety of fonts. But unfortunately,
what I had to do was go through my graphics editing
software, and I typed in some of the text, and
then I had to go through and kind of cycle through.
Another easier way, though, is physically going
to the control panel fonts folder and scrolling
until you see the letters that look like something
else, which I took a screenshot so I could do
a side -by -side. And I figured out what the
font was. And there's only, I've seen different
options. There's one where you can create a registry
file, which will auto -change all of the fonts
on the computer to said font. However, it works
for everything on the system, still doesn't make
an impact on the browser. So it was a massive
waste of time for me to try this, to try and
create this file. that would rewrite in the registry
the font. Way too complicated, way too difficult
for the normal person. It's not even needed,
especially when if you find the main font that's
causing the problem, you remove it and then you
reinstall it. It does not take over the system
anymore. But in order to get it to turn off because
it stays on when you're in the system, you have
to close the browser. So anyways, I found this
font. I removed it. I fixed it, the problem went
away. I'm not quite sure what causes this in
Windows 10 other than the fact that it's layering
over top of an already built system. But I find
it extremely frustrating the amount of changes
that Windows performs when they install the Windows
10 install. And that's just one of the changes.
One of the other things I don't really care for
as much is the... the modification to the start
bar, the random apps, the Windows 10 system update,
which I find extremely frustrating because if
you have newer builds of Windows 10, for instance,
they prevent you from turning off Windows 10,
Windows update. You cannot select when it installs.
You can set a window of when it will not touch
your system. However, it will still install whenever
it feels like it. and it will reboot your machine,
even if you're in the middle of something. I
mean, it'll give you a little bit of a warning
now, but it still counts down. So what I was
doing, because my system, I've worked out the
kinks. There's no bugs. I actually completely
disabled my Windows 10 system update because
I got tired of it trying to Shanghai my system.
And what I mean by that is it was randomly uninstalling
software that was older that I had grown accustomed
to and I was using. And it also decided what
it didn't support and it removed that software
as well. So I went through this whole basis of
registry editing and software disabling and task
scheduler to shut off the Windows update. And
I finally got my main desktop to the point where
it doesn't do this. Well, when I installed Windows
10 on my wife's laptop, the 8 .1 Windows, It
prevented me from disabling the update to begin
with. I eventually figured it out. It's at the
same status of my desktop now. But it was extremely
frustrating to try and figure out. And the only
reason I upgraded that laptop was because Windows
8 .1 was super buggy. It would crash on boot
up every time. And now I don't have that problem.
The switching between user accounts, it would
sometimes take as much as two to three minutes.
And the boot up time would take about five. After
installing Windows 10, all of those problems
have ceased. So, I mean, it's kind of a mixed
bag of give and take, of like and dislike. I
overall enjoy Windows 10 as a whole. It's a great
version of Windows compared to the previous ones.
It only compares to Windows 7 at this point.
That being said, I would strongly advise backing
up software that you use and other documents
or using a cloud -based service such as Google
Drive, which I use. I pay the $20 a year, get
the 100 gigabytes of space, and I back up all
of my podcasting stuff. all of my art, all of
my featured banners for my WordPress site for
said podcasts. And I use it just to back up all
my documents. So it's in the cloud. I can access
it from my phone. I can access it wherever I'm
at. And it's a very useful service. And I mostly
did this because I've had flash drives and I've
had Windows fail on me and I've lost things in
the past. not a great scenario to be in and and
i think that having a cloud backup is is something
that everyone should have it's not that expensive
if you know where to go like i i didn't want
dropbox i think it costs too much and honestly
i trust google more and my phone is a google
phone it's so it's all kind of intertwined it's
it's much easier for me that way um but What
I'm trying to say overall is Windows 10 is very
much an education system. I've had a friend where,
with the latest updates, his graphics drivers
reconfigured. Because it was an older system,
they created a default Windows 10 graphics driver,
which replaced the onboard video card. and prevented
his resolution from being as large as it used
to be. So it's another one of those you kind
of have to know what you're getting into as a
whole with any version of Windows. Now, I don't
know what it's like to have a Mac. I've used
them through college. I know that they're very
stable for the most part. There's not a lot of
them messing with the system. It's pretty sound.
But I also think Windows 10 is at that base as
well. It's just I don't like when they install
the updates and then half my stuff goes away.
Or I use like the Sticky Notes app that was built
into Windows 7. And you can use it through early
versions of Windows 10 and then it's gone after
that. And I use it for, for instance, my work
or for podcasting notes that I want up on the
screen, but I don't want to have to have like
50 documents open. So it's... Again, there's
give and take between the two systems and designs.
Switching gears, we'll be going to the podcast
highlight of the week, where every week I play
an ad for someone else's show. If you'd like
to have yours played on the show, you can email
me feedback at internetpathfinder .com. Pixels
in the Animation is the Geekcast Radio Network's
video game cartoon review show. We are covering
every episode of nine different video game cartoons.
Join TV's Mr. Neal and myself, TFG and Mike,
as we trek through multiple Mario tunes, Zelda,
Captain N, Mega Man, Sonic, And we are also driving
through Donkey Kong Country. Pixels in the Animation
is 100 episodes of video game cartoon goodness,
so tune in to help us find the Pixels in the
Animation, which you can find every Wednesday
on iTunes and www .geekcastradio .com. If you'd
like to find more from the Internet Pathfinder,
you can find the podcast on InternetPathfinder
.com, which at the moment links to... The subcategory
on AlteredGeek .com. I plan to add more as the
podcast grows. But you can also find this podcast,
like I said, on Altered Geek or GeekCast Radio
Network. And it will be featured on Google Play,
iTunes, Stitcher, and more as the weeks go on.
You can get a hold of me on Twitter at SCP21
or enter Pathfinder for Twitter for this show.
The podcast will be out every Wednesday. That
involves finding a path through the world of
technology, the internet, and podcasting where
I'll be your guide into the coolest news, tech,
nostalgia, and answering your questions. So as
usual, thank you for joining me and we'll see
you on the other side of the net.