Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i TechLife

THIS ISSUE OUR Superguide is packed with an abundance of tips to improve your photography – all from pro photographers that are experts in their specialised areas. Sure, this is expert advice, from some of the best in their respective fields, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t accessible. On the contrary, if you take any kind of photography, these tips will boost what you do. You may not often work with models in a studio, but the same tricks that make those images pop can be used in any photos you take of your family and friends. You may not be entering your holiday shots from that last trip to the beach into the next National Geographic photography competition, but there’s a lot you can learn from expert landscape photographers.…

600 NUMBER OF TRACKS CREATED BY ENDEL – THE FIRST APP TO BE REWARDED A MAJOR LABEL MUSIC DEAL. THE TRACKS ARE SHORT ‘SOUNDSCAPES’, IDEAL FOR USE AS BACKGROUND MUSIC IN APPS AND VIDEOS, AND ARE CREATED USING AN ALGORITHM. 1 million NUMBER OF ASUS PCS VULNERABLE TO THE ‘SHADOWHAMMER’ MALWARE ATTACK THAT LANDED IN MARCH. THE MALWARE, WHICH POSED AS A SECURITY UPDATE, WAS DISCOVERED BY ANTI-VIRUS VENDOR KASPERSKY, WHICH SAID 57,000 OF ITS CUSTOMERS WERE AFFECTED; WHILE SYMANTEC SAID 13,000 OF ITS USERS WERE. ASUS HAS SINCE ISSUED A PATCH TO FIX THE ISSUE. 24  NUMBER OF HOURS THAT CLIPPY RETURNED BEFORE BEING KILLED OFF AGAIN. THE FORMER MS OFFICE ASSISTANT REAPPEARED IN MARCH AS A FREE-TO-DOWNLOAD ANIMATED STICKER PACK FOR MICROSOFT TEAMS ON GITHUB, BUT ONE DAY…

XIAOMI IS STILL fairly new to the mobile market outside of China, but it’s posing some serious competition to establish brands with the Xiaomi Mi 9, its newest flagship device. The Mi 9 looks like a fantastic jack-of-all-trades device; it has a powerful processor, impressive camera setup, and supports up to 20W fast charging – and on top of that it’s a whole load cheaper than phones with a similar spec. It’s not without drawbacks – Xiaomi has clearly had to cut some corners to get a fantastic chipset and camera array into the handset at such a low price, and its attempt at designing its own UI for the Mi 9 likely won’t please everyone. Since release competitors to the Xiaomi Mi 9 have come out, most notably the…

TELL US WHAT HASHTAGSEARCHES.COM DOES. For businesses with a website or mobile application that are using Instagram as a marketing platform, it is important to be able to share content between these mediums. I have written an API that allows developers to query Instagram’s Graph API for media with specific hashtags. To give developers a more visual environment for testing interactions with this custom API, hashtagsearches.com was created. WHY DID YOU CREATE IT? One of my clients, a florist, asked if it was possible to power image galleries with specific media from Instagram. Looking at the documentation for Instagram’s Graph API, they have given the ability – via the Hashtag Search API. However, this throttles users to 30 unique hashtags in seven-day period. I decided to write a custom API…

Red Dead Redemption 2 is quite a popular game (heavy sarcasm), but a big chunk of players, namely those playing it on PC, didn’t get to play the game as it released purely on PS4 or Xbox One last October. But now, thanks to some eagle-eyed Redditors, there’s the distinct possibility the game might be released on PC soon, as mention of working on Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC has been found on a physics programmer’s LinkedIn. Oops. Specifically, under a list of their work as a programmer at Rockstar, this person lists “Red Dead Redemption 2 – PS4/XBox1 [sic] /PC”. Looks like that could be a hint that we’re going to get Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC sometime soon, meaning that everyone who didn’t get a chance…

www.bethesda.net | PC, PS4, Xbox | $99.95 IF A SINGLE weapon contains the essence of a first-person shooter, it’s undoubtedly the shotgun. Early in Rage 2, protagonist Walker – a wasteland ranger who can be either male or female, depending on your preference – finds a futuristic combat shotgun hidden away in an Ark: a kind of advanced fallout shelter designed to protect humanity and its precious technology from a cataclysmic asteroid impact. Rage 2 has a lot of problems, including a forgettable open world, a weak story, and terrible vehicle handling, but man, that shotgun. The instant you fire it, you know, everything else aside, it’s a quality FPS. And to need firepower like this to stop The Authority, an army of mechanical mutants marauding across the sun-scorched wastelands…

IT’S BEEN LESS than six months since Huawei first launched its Matebook X Pro in Australia, but the company already has another laptop to add to the lineup; the Matebook 13. The new Matebook 13 drops the X and Pro nomenclature of Huawei’s flagship ultrabook, in exchange for a considerable price cut. The Matebook 13 will land at $1,799 for the i5 version and $2,199 for the i7 variant, which is $100 and $400 cheaper than the respective Matebook X Pro models. For this you will have to be willing to take a hit on the screen resolution which drops from 3000 x 2000 pixels to 2160 x 1440 pixels. We didn’t get the chance to sit them side by side, but theoretically this shouldn’t make a massive difference on…

SONY RECENTLY WOWED us with its latest OLED TV – the A9F – but it was as ridiculously good as it was ridiculously expensive. Now here’s the latest iteration of its best LCD TV replete with full-array, rear lighting and a full complement of features and performance enhancements inherited from its OLED big brother. It comes at a much-more affordable price but lands in a crowded market. So, is it worth buying? It’s not as thin as other LCDs but the inevitable thickness derived from rear-lighting comes with substantially less bulk than we’ve seen with similar competitors. The bezel is thin, the feet are substantial and it looks classy as big, glass screens go. The new remote is generally welcome. It looks refined compared to its button-crammed predecessor and the…

THE PROS JULIA WIMMERLIN Julia is a portrait photographer and offers advice for working with clients. juliawimmerlin.com MARK BAUER Mark Bauer gives advice based on vast experience in the field. markbauer photography.com TINA EISEN Tina Eisen discusses advice for portrait creativity in her tips. tinaeisen.com SCOTT JOHNSON Wedding shooter Scott explores essential tips for the big day. theedge photography .co.uk CHARLIE WAITE Charlie is used to giving advice on his workshops with Light & Land. lightandland.co.uk HOLLY WREN Holly provides her tips for shooting better portraits on location. hollywren.com PETER EASTWAY Peter offers his practical tips for getting better results in the great outdoors. petereastway.com ADRIAN MUELLER Product and commercial photographer Adrian reveals his studio tips. fabrik-studios.com PORTRAITS 1 Discuss the lighting Lighting can make or break the portrait. Discuss the…

YOU DON’T NEED to invest in a separate media player to start pulling the 4K goodness down your internet pipe. But there are a few reasons why you may want to invest in a separate media player. If it’s not an Android TV, then you’ll only have access to the apps that are already installed – or, if it comes with some sort of app store, you’ll only be able to install a limited number of additional apps. Further, those apps typically aren’t as slick as the ones on external media players, and they aren’t updated anywhere near as frequently. If you’re looking for the best possible “lean back” experience, you’re more likely to find it in an external media player than on the TV itself. The user interfaces on…

SERVER LIST Click here to choose which server you’d like to connect to. This menu also lets you access extra features. MEDIA LIBRARIES Here’s where you access the various media you’ve added to Plex, as well as online content such as podcasts. ACTIVITY MONITOR Lets you see how many devices are connected to your server. Click through to see what is being played back. LIBRARY This is where you browse your media files. There are numerous automatic sections, but many are customisable. USER ACCOUNT You can configure options relating to your account, including setting up different users and guest access, here. LIBRARY UPDATE With Plex Media Server running on your PC, click here to check for any new media files you’ve added recently. WHO DOESN’T LOVE a good movie, or…

NEW AND IMPROVED features are largely the focus for iOS 12. That doesn’t just mean making sure your device runs better and is packed with fun features, but also that security and privacy is much tighter. A standout benefit of the latest system update is that it’s easier to ensure you’re using super–strong passwords that are unique to each site, reducing the likelihood that one place suffering a breach will compromise several of your online accounts. It’s also easier than ever to pass two–factor authentication (2FA) checks, as you can fill in a verification code from a text message with just one tap. Perhaps you’ve avoided setting up 2FA to avoid having to deal with typing codes. With iOS 12 installed, spend a few minutes setting it up for your…

DESPITE ALL THE efforts of legitimate software vendors, of governments and law enforcement, and an increasingly educated populace, somehow the internet is only getting more dangerous. The traditional threats, like malware and ransomware, are still around, but new ones like formjacking and cryptojacking have emerged. In 2018, for example, Symantec reported that it blocked four times as many cryptojacking attacks as the previous year. Cryptojacking, for those unfamiliar, is where the criminal uses a piece of web page code to take over your system and use it for cryptocurrency mining. For a few years now, there has been something of a boutique business for “secure” browsers. These are specialised browsers with the security settings cranked up to 11, designed to ensure that the internet experience is as safe as possible.…

LOCATION LIGHTING ALWAYS presents certain difficulties due to the uncontrollable nature of ambient light and lack of access to mains power sources. Equipment must also be easy to transport and safe to hold or set up on a tripod or light stand. Off-camera flash is the most common choice, but there are some appealing continuous options now available to photographers. Accessories such the Rotolight range provide steady, reliable lighting with minimum weight and low heat output. This makes them perfect for dynamic lighting styles out in the field. Advantages of continuous sources are predictable intensity and ease of placement and composition. Since the light is always visible, it is easier to shape than flash. However, associated challenges are lower light output, battery life and a deficit of diffusion options. Since…

REMOVE STUBBORN BLOATWARE CLEAR ALL UNWANTED FILES WITH ASHAMPOO UNINSTALLER 7. FULL VERSION WORTH $40 Ashampoo UnInstaller 7 makes it easy to install, test and uninstall applications. Unwanted software, browser extensions and toolbars are gone from your hard disk in just a few clicks. Never before has installation monitoring for leftover-free uninstallations been so extensive and easy to use. Even legacy applications installed prior to UnInstaller can be completely removed thanks to in-depth cleaning. Finally, the innovative super-fast snapshot feature helps you track all system modifications with ease and clarity. Download link: www.ashampoo.com/techlifemagazine NEVER LOSE A FILE AGAIN DO A THOROUGH LOCAL AND CLOUD SEARCH WITH ABELSSOFT EVERDOC. FULL VERSION WORTH $65 Order is necessary. Everdoc manages important documents, images and PDF files, finding important content thanks to a full-text…

Tech giants are joining hands in the fight to counter violent content online. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter issued a joint statement today announcing The Christchurch Call – named for the recent terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand – as a group dedicated to the goal of “[eliminating] terrorist and violent extremist content online.” THE COMPANIES INVOLVED OUTLINED A NINE-STEP PLAN TO SUPPORT THEIR MISSION. THE PLAN INVOLVES EVERYTHING FROM EDUCATION AND TRANSPARENCY REPORTS TO WORKING COLLABORATIVELY TO DEVELOP OPEN SOURCE AND AI TOOLS TO DETECT AND REMOVE EXTREMIST CONTENT. “The terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March were a horrifying tragedy,” the companies said in a joint statement. “And so it is right that we come together, resolute in our commitment to ensure we are doing all…

WHILE TVS HAVE enjoyed native 4K resolution for some time, Ultra-High Definition has been slow to come to projectors, at least natively. Thankfully, however, that’s starting to change. Just recently, we’ve finally started getting a few projectors that support native 4K resolutions - like, for example, the all-new BenQ W2700. It has a beautiful new design, for starters, but it’s also optimised for BenQ’s HDR-PRO, which supports HDR10 and HLG, plus it zooms up to 1.3 times, and supports a screen size of up to 120 inches with a brightness of up to 2,000 lumens. But even with all these features, at $2,499 this is a relatively expensive projector, at least for those of us just getting started with home cinema. Is it worth the cash? We put the BenQ…

Shadowgun Legends MOBILE LOOTIN’ AND SHOOTIN’ WITH ‘TUDE. Free with IAP www.madfingergames.com/shadowgun/legends/ DURING THE COURSE of researching new (and updated, re-launched) mobile games to find the best and brightest for you, my picky readers, I probably play about 15 games a month. My home screens are littered with so many games my phone regularly reminds me I can’t save those videos of my children at the beach. In most cases, I mass delete most of them in preparation for the next set, occasionally saving some of the prime candidates for the year-end celebrations. As you may have guessed, Shadowgun Legends is one of the first “looter shooters” for mobile, which for the uninitiated means that you basically shoot lots of things to collect better weapons, armour and items. It’s a…

THE NEW HP SPECTRE X360 UPDATES THE INTERNALS TO MORE MODERN COMPONENTS, WHILE ALSO MAKING SOME RADICAL CHANGES TO THE DESIGN. AS MOST OF the best HP laptops, the Spectre lineup is designed to be thin, light and packed with the most powerful hardware, and the HP Spectre x360 2019 continues this tradition. In years past, the HP Spectre x360 has always been one of the best 2-in-1 laptops, featuring powerful hardware behind a svelte design. The ‘360’ in the name refers to the hinges that let you rotate the display, making this device essentially two devices in one. The new HP Spectre x360 updates the internals to more modern components, while also making some radical changes to the design. While it is slightly bigger than last year’s model, the…

WHERE EVERY NEW full-frame mirrorless camera entering the market costs at least a few thousand dollars, Canon has bucked the trend with its new EOS RP, which has everything a budding photographer needs at a price that’s far friendlier. And while its specs don’t quite impress on paper, you only need to begin shooting with it to appreciate its performance. The Canon EOS RP doesn’t have a lot of “killer app” features, since it was designed to be an entry level version of the EOS R. However, it does possess a few useful new tricks up its sleeve, like Focus Bracketing, which is a useful macro feature found on other systems but one that Canon has never attempted before. The RP, like the EOS R, doesn’t have in-body image stabilisation.…

WHETHER YOU’RE A professional videographer, budding journalist, keen to get into podcasting, or just someone looking to solve a simple recording dilemma, the latest from Rode is a gamechanger. Consisting of a miniscule transmitter and receiver unit, this system is able to send audio via 2.4GHz wireless transmission at a range of 70 metres. Each unit weighs only 31 grams and is less than 5 x 5 x 2 cm in size, making it ideal for its intended purpose. The transmitter can clip onto your belt or clothing and have any standard lapel mic run into it via the 3.5mm jack, or alternatively, you can use the unit itself thanks to its integrated condenser microphone. Due to its diminutive size, it can comfortably sit behind a tie, in a jacket…

IT’S ALL TOO easy to get sold into the 4K dream. The latest 4K TVs on display at electronics shops play content that’s deliberately filmed to maximise the detail and colour, and yet when you go home and try to replicate it, you realise that free-to-air TV – which maxes out at 720p on the HD channels – offers nowhere near the same experience. Alas, all is not lost. To make the most of your new television, you just need to get your hands on 4K content, and there’s plenty of that if you know where to look. Whether it’s streaming 4K movies over the Internet, loading up 4K Blu-ray discs, or playing 4K videos you’ve created or acquired, there’s a tonne of options that’ll justify the new investment in…

Advertisers like to track your online movements in order to offer ads they think will appeal to your tastes. You may not want this. Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention muddies your tracks by making it harder for ads and other on–site widgets to make these predictions. Safari in iOS 12 also stops comment widgets and Share buttons, which are used on many sites these days, from running code that could also be used to track you without your knowledge. Go to Settings > Safari and ensure Prevent Cross–Site Tracking is turned on.…

IF YOU’VE NEVER owned or used a network attached storage device, there are two things you should know about them: a) they’re awesome; and b) the commercial ones are basically just PCs running a specialised version of Linux. Their main advantage is their industrial design: the ease of installing and removing hard drives. But you pay quite a bit for that industrial design, and many commercial NASs have their flaws. The most common flaw is a very weak processor, especially in the less expensive models. Very cheap NASs, those in the $200-$400 range, very often use extremely low-powered ARM chips. Which is fine for file sharing and media streaming from your NAS, but if you want to do something a little more demanding, like live transcoding, broadcasting, or IP camera…

ROTATE IF NECESSARY Use the Transform options to rotate your panosphere until it’s in an optimum position that looks good. ADD CLOUDS Create a new layer and go to Filter> Render> Clouds. Set this to Screen and mask in your clouds over the mountains. ON THE FILESILO Download your free resources at techlife.net/magstuff THEY’RE SOMETIMES REFERRED to as ‘panoramic planets’ or ‘creative worlds’, but whatever you call them – we’re going with ‘panosphere’ – they’re a great use of the Distort filters. Panospheres are a cool way to display a panoramic image in a much smaller space. We’re going to get as creative as we possibly can in this image by compositing together a brand-new environment from terrain, lakes and landmarks, but it’s totally possible to create a panosphere from…

The TechLife team finds the best budget, value and performance products, and the latest releases in the top technology categories. If you believe there are other products that deserve the title in any of the tech categories, let us know and give us your reasons why in 50 words or less. Equally, if there’s a hot new product that’s worthy of attention, we want to know. Send your email to techlife@futurenet.com. PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY…

TECHLIFE IS AUSTRALIA’S most practical mainstream technology magazine, having been in print since 2012, when we launched as a redesigned and modernised version of Australian PC User. The latter was first printed in 1990, and we take that 25-year heritage seriously and strive to be both ethical and transparent in our coverage of technology and any other topics we broach. Like our sister magazine, APC, we have two main goals here at TechLife: to track down the best of modern tech and to help our readers get the most from it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms. We know most people aren’t wed to a single brand’s products and use a variety of devices in their lives. And like you, TechLife’s journalists want to know what’s good…

WHILE IN TAIPEI for the start of Intel’s Project Athena Open Lab program, Intel’s general manager of mobile innovation and vice president of its Client Computing Group, Joshua D. Newman, said of foldable displays that Intel is “trying to understand the capability and the limitation of the technology.” Newman also told Nikkei Asian Review that the technology was at least two years away from appearing in foldable laptops for consumers. However, Lenovo has recently shown off a prototype of its ThinkPad X1 foldable laptop which promises exactly that – a PC device that doubles as a tablet via a foldable display. More precisely, it’s a device with a foldable, OLED, 2K display measuring 13.3-inches when completely unfolded and 9.6-inches per side when folded to work like a laptop. The lower…

AT A TIME when most camera manufacturers are concentrating on full-frame mirrorless cameras, Olympus has proven that innovation can be achieved with more than just adding more megapixels. The OM-D E-M1X may look strange to some photography fans, but if form factor isn’t an issue, then this is by far the best micro four thirds (MFT) camera money can buy. In fact, if you can ignore the sensor size, this is arguably the best mirrorless camera money can buy. Despite the smaller sensor size, the E-M1X produces bigger image files than any full-frame camera or medium format camera. The trick here is the improved High Res Shot mode that captures 80MP images. And if you thought that this MFT system couldn’t keep up with its new full-frame mirrorless competitors, think…

Skrillex’s music is a better mosquito repellent than bug spray, new study claims DANCE MUSIC IS QUITE A TURN OFF, APPARENTLY . Sonny John Moore, better known as Skrillex, is a musician who serenades his audiences with electronic dance music like dubstep and electro house. And while his fans appreciate his music (he has, after all, won several Grammy Awards), mosquitoes apparently don’t. In a bid to see if there were environmentally friendlier ways (than insecticides) to control mosquitoes, researchers blasted a cage of female mosquitoes that hadn’t fed in 12 hours with Skrillex’s Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites on repeat, a song that’s excessively loud with escalating pitch. When compared to the control group, which were kept in silence, the noise-addled mozzies mated with the virgin male in their…

This Person Does Not Exist ...OR AT LEAST THEY DIDN’T UNTIL YOU LOADED THE PAGE . thispersondoesnotexist.com Visit the website. See a face. Wonder who it is. Read the URL. Look back at the picture and notice some glitches. Yep, these are some AIgenerated faces for you, but gosh they’re good. This site spits out a new image for you whenever you refresh the page (or click on the corresponding link) and does so using a machine-learning concept known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). The original concept dates back to a paper released by Ian J. Goodfellow et al. in 2014, but more recently, work done by Tero Karras and Nvidia (2018) has refined the process in order to account for ‘styles’, which better accounts for specific features such as…

Despite EA recently reporting that Firestorm, Battlefield 5’s battle royale mode, has been a huge success for the publisher this year, it seems that a certain part of the world has been left out from enjoying the last-man-standing death matches. The region of Oceania, which includes Australia, New Zealand, and a number of smaller island nations, is home to over 40 million people, but anyone who wants to play Firestorm within the region has been running into serious trouble. According to a Reddit post from an Australian player by the name of Ciaran Doherty, it is “essentially impossible to play [Battlefield 5] at any time of day in any mode”, and Firestorm itself is “effectively discontinued” in the region. The problems, it seems, stem from an untenably low ping range,…

EVEN IF YOU have an Xbox One S or Xbox One X in your living room, you may not know can use the Xbox parental controls to tailor the content available, oversee any purchases being made, and set a cap on how long can be spent playing games or on social media apps for your children. In this guide we’ll run you through where to find those parental controls, what they can do, and how to set up screen time management across your Windows and Microsoft devices while you’re at it. There’s plenty of options for tracking screen usage on mobile phones (Google Dashboard for Android, and Screen Time for iPhone) but there are also multiple tools at your disposal when it comes to game consoles and Windows PC. Recent…

COLOUR PERFORMANCE WAS IMPRESSIVE WITH PUNCHY REDS JUMPING OUT OF THE MARTIAN LANDSCAPE. MEANWHILE, PANNING SHOTS WERE SILKY SMOOTH THANKS TO 200HZ MOTION SMOOTHING. HISENSE SERIES 7 ULED TVs are a bit special because, not so long ago, they blitzed high-end competitors at both price and performance. However, the market moved on and the proliferation of HDR and OLED technologies saw the magnificent 7 struggle. Can 2019’s R7 variant recapture old glories? It’s available in four sizes: 75-inch (3,499), 65-inch (reviewed – $2,499), 55-inch ($1,799) and 50-inch ($1,499). This being Hisense, take these prices with a fistful of salt as they typically plummet immediately after launch. The TV is thin and so is the bezel. Four feet provide a solid base. It’s not as pretty as rivals but it doesn’t…

THE PROPLUS 36 HAS 11 HEIGHT ADJUSTMENT LEVELS. WHILE THAT MIGHT SOUND LIKE A LOT, SOME USERS – DEPENDING ON YOUR HEIGHT – MAY NOT BE ABLE TO LOCK THE DESK AT THE EXACT POSITION THEY’D LIKE. WE DON’T OFTEN review office furniture in TechLife, but standing desks have become a much-talked-about item in the modem workplace, with the pitch being that standing is better for your health than sitting – something that’s largely backed up by science. For example, studies have shown that sit-stand furniture improves blood circulation, thus lowering cholesterol, blood sugar levels and blood pressure. Headquartered in Texas, VariDesk has been making sit-stand furniture and accessories since 2013, and has since become one of the world’s leading manufacturers. We were sent a VariDesk ProPlus 36 standing desk…

LOGITECH’S DOMINATED THE media keyboard for the last five years, thanks largely to its cheap-but-well-deigned K400 Plus, and more recently, the slightly sturdier and smart-TV compatible K600. Corsair’s decided there’s room for a more premium offering in this market and has produced the K83 in response. It’s a robust board that ticks all the basics (decently-sized trackpad, rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, Bluetooth or dedicated 2.4GHz wireless connection via USB dongle) and adds to that a tough aluminium baseplate alongside a unique, 360º analog thumbstick, which is perfect for navigating ’10 foot’ style TV interfaces – in standard Windows or Mac use, it duplicates the arrow keys. Despite Corsair having coloured the K83’s WASD keys differently to the rest, this isn’t really intended as a gaming keyboard – it’s aimed at lounge…

TRUE TO URBANEARS’ characteristic minimalist aesthetic, the Pampas wireless headphones sport a chic, understated design, with mesh-style fabric covered ear cups and headband. We tested them out in a cool matte black color scheme, but they also come in beige and dark green. While the earcups feel soft and generously padded, we found that they felt quite tightly clamped around our head after long listening sessions – and with an impressive 30 hour battery life, you could find yourself using the Pampas wireless headphones for long periods of time. On the left housing, there’s a 3.5mm jack – but Urbanears don’t provide you with an AUX cable in the box. This input is actually designed to let you share music with a friend by plugging in their headphones to yours;…

[OFFICE] Add misspellings to Word’s exclusion dictionary I’ve noticed that Word’s Australian English dictionary doesn’t flag words ending in ‘ze’ as incorrect – I prefer ‘se’, as in ‘realise’. How do I rectify this? KAREN DERVISH Rob Mead-Green replies: Both ‘ze’ and ‘se’ spellings are considered correct in international English, but if you’re sticklers for the ‘se’ spelling like us, you’ll need a special exclusion dictionary to ensure they’re always flagged. Press Win-R to open the Run dialog, then type %appdata%\Microsoft\UProof and click OK to locate the folder containing the exclusion dictionaries. The one you need for the AU English dictionary is ExcludeDictionaryEN0C09.lex. Right-click ExcludeDictionaryEN0C09.lex and choose ‘Open with’. Click ‘More apps’ and scroll down until you locate your regular text editor – typically Notepad. Select it, untick ‘Always open…

TUCKED AWAY IN macOS is a gem called Folder Actions. These AppleScripts are just a Ctrl–click away from letting you automate all kinds of tasks. Certain actions are pre–cooked and ready to go, but you can create your own in Automator and replicate some of the Hazel app’s features. You can create Folder Actions to organize files in any folder, similar to how macOS Mojave’s Stacks feature does for the desktop. Folder Actions don’t just work on folders stored on your Mac, either – they work for folders on connected servers too. So, if you work with colleagues remotely, you can use a shared folder to swap files and be alerted when they add something. Here, we’ll show you how to set up Apple–specified Folder Actions, as well as how…

There are plenty of ways to mask in Elements, and when it comes to cutting out buildings to put into your panosphere, there are some methods that are better than others. The Magic Wand option is one that’s surprisingly good in this case. By selecting all of the blue in the image with Contiguous unchecked, you can erase large parts of the sky quickly by simply clicking and masking. Use the Refine Edge Tool once you’ve got your selection to edit it slightly. There are lots of other ways to make selections and mask objects in and out of your project. One way is to use the Brush Tool to draw straight onto your mask as in most cases, this will give you the best control over what is visible…

The Razer Toaster PROJECT BREADWINNER IS FINALLY GOING TO BRAND YOUR BREAD. $TBC | www.facebook.com/RazerToasterPlease/ What started as a social media bet between Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan and the company’s fans has turned into a five year long campaign that finally came to fruition in April. Basically, if the ‘Give us the Razer Toaster’ Facebook page managed to attract a million likes then Tan promised the company would make a Razer branded toaster. The wager gained some momentum in 2016 after Razer released a pretend-toaster launch video as an April Fools’ Day prank, however the page still only has a little over 45,000 likes to date. At some point, there were subsequent clauses added, rasing the stakes if fans got a Razer Toaster tattoo which would equate to 100,000 likes…