Full Brave on a Chromebook

Posted on June 20, 2021 by admin

I am a Brave browser advocate and have been frustrated by the version of Brave available for the Chromebook. This version blocks ads, but does not allow the accumulation of BAT and the compensation of content and service providers. I suppose allowing such opportunities runs contrary to Google’s business model as Google ads and ad business would not benefit. However, Chromebooks also can run Linux and there is an Android version of Brave for Linux. I wanted to give it a try.

I no longer make much use of Linux and had only a very basic understanding when I used to run Apache servers on Macs. I was able to find instructions for activating Linux on a Chromebook and install the android version of Brave. Often, I have some difficulty with such installations. Often, I can get the basics to work, but then have difficulty with an important peripheral not working (e.g., accessing the Internet). These instructions from Linux Made Simple worked perfectly. It did help when I remembered to Control-Shift to get copy and paste to work. The Linux install commands can get long and I had some problem with knowing when what appeared as a space was a space until I could copy and paste the commands.

Once Brave was installed, I was able to add the extension I rely on (LastPass and Evernote) without regard for the OS used to run Brave/

The Linux android apps are launched here,

The Brave rewards settings not available on Chrome are available in Android.

I have found that this version of Brave to be a bit laggy and I must be careful when entering text as I can type faster than text is displayed generating more errors than usual. I have a Google Pixelbook (one generation before the present version) and I would be interested in the experience of others running the Android version of Brave.

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Pixelfed – federated, social photo sharing

Posted on June 15, 2021 by admin

I have multiple reasons for diversifying my social media use. I purposefully search for services that are similar to Facebook and Instagram and spend some of my online attention with these alternatives.

My alternative to Instagram is Pixelfed. Instagram users will be very comfortable with Pixelfed once they understand the concept of a federated service and either convince acquaintances to move to the new site or find new individuals to spend time with.

The following video offers and overview of Pixelfed and the concept of a federated service.

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Critical race theory

Posted on June 14, 2021 by admin

Attaching labels can be unfortunate. This was my reaction to politicians labeling Democrats as socialists. The same is now how I see the use of the label “critical race theory“. My concern is that labels of complex positions are too often superficial and encourage reactions that are poorly informed.

I believe I have a reasonable understanding of socialism and do not see a government sometimes acting to take on roles for the general good that are unlikely to be taken on by business or industry as socialism. I admit to having a much poorer understanding of critical race theory and wonder if the term means very different things to different people. It could be a slanted view of history, but the history we teach has been slanted as long as the academic subject of history has been taught. This is the thing about history. The history of a nation is a complex mix of many histories and it is far too easy to focus on the history of a specific group or a fantasy that elicits pride rather than expect those who want to understand history to start with the understanding of the complexity of multiple histories. It is potentially dangerous when nonhistorians, especially politicians, want to define what version of history should be prioritized.

I wouldn’t want to be a history teacher having to worry about which facts parents might object to my teaching their kids. Facts are facts.

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Awesome Screenrecorder / Screenshot

Posted on June 13, 2021 by admin

A few posts ago, I lamented the loss of Skitch as a tool I could use to capture areas of the screen and more importantly annotate or markup the captures. I use a lot of screen captures in may posts and a tool that makes the process of collection and annotation easy is essential.

After some exploration, I have come up with an alternative – Awesome Screenshot. This tool is a Chrome extension with a free and paid options. The free option provides all I need to select and markup images.

Awesome is an extension so after installation, it will show up in the icon bar of your browser.

Awesome was created both for screen recording and screen capture so it has more capabilities than I need. The default is Record, so the first step in capturing stills from the screen is to select Capture.

The capture tool offers several options. In most situations, I want to select a portion of the screen rather than all that is displayed.

When a selection has been made, the tools menu appears allowing annotations, markups, and saving the finished product.

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Offering creative commons photos

Posted on June 9, 2021 by admin

I am doing a little research because I am interested in exploring creative commons resources. I am particularly interested in photos. I know that Google offers a great service to search for photos offered under creative commons licenses. I am interested in the opposite end of the creative commons relationship. How do I offer creative commons images? I know I can do this with Flickr, but I think I pay $60 a year for my Flickr account and this cost may put this service out of range for classroom use. Google+ used to have a way of doing this, but Google+ is gone. I don’t know of a way to do this with Google photos.

Am I missing something? Any comment would be appreciated.

This Creative Commons site offers suggestions for offering resources with CC licenses, but lists only Flickr and Europeana for photos.

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Skitch is gone

Posted on June 9, 2021 by admin

I updated my Mac today and found that my favorite tool for screen captures and more importantly for annotating these captures no longer works. This is what my screen capture tool should have grabbed. Instead, I see the second image (the desktop).

The extension I loved was called Skitch and it was developed to feed screen captures to Evernote, but it worked great alone. Evernote claimed it would continue to offer Skitch for the Mac, but it was evidently not ready for the OS update. Time to search for something new.

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