July 2016 in the Life of Ben (Blog)

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  2. February
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  5. May
  6. June
  7. July
  8. August
  9. September
  10. October
  11. November
  12. December

Prudential RideLondon FreeCycle (30th July 2016)

Wanted to try riding at fast commuter pace but it was immediately clear this was not going to happen! Central London became a tarmac towpath for the middle of the day. Inspiring to think about, rather pacifying to participate in.

Missed out on the static bicycle racing as they were keeping it set up for kids at one location. As for the other location, I couldn’t it find until the final minutes – everything closed at just 4pm.

Got confused and did the exploration route towards the East of the course and then couldn’t find any parking on Southbank. Eventually found a few metal bars but they were closing to new arrivals at 3:30pm. Had to lock up to a railing and then walk around a lot to eventually find it. By which time, it was too late. And it was still set up for kids.

Should have taken my opportunity at Spin London earlier in the year!

(More to follow.)

(Photos to follow.)

Windows 10 (29th July 2016)

Only real problem so far is the Windows 7 Built-In Admin Account cannot run Windows 10 Apps. Happily, changing a single registry key FilterAdministratorToken fixes this regression to Vista security model thinking. (It actually first appeared in Windows 8.)

Before this I couldn’t even see the account. Had to use an elevated command line prompt from the standard user account: 

net user Administrator /active:yes

Thankfully the rest is OK. Although, I am changing a lot of defaults. In particular, I avoided the Express Settings as it makes your PC share a lot of data with Microsoft.

Desktop app for Calendar does hold a candle to my beloved Windows Live Mail; sadly the change of server protocols cut this ace program out.

OneNote as a desktop app is looking way better than using the live.com web version. This and my calendar are the apps I rely on the most, since getting a Windows Phone some years ago.

Registry Key Fix

This is nostalgic… App can't open with built-in administrator account. Original message from the topic:

I can’t use any of the apps if I am signed in as the administrator. I want to use my admin identity because its too much trouble to have multiple accounts that install the same software twice. What can I do?

The situation and solution I found:

Upgraded from Windows 7 Home Premium, using the Built-In Admin account. When I upgraded to Windows 10, had to use elevated command line in my standard user account to make the admin account show up. And that worked, but could not run apps including most settings.

Only the Pro or Enterprise edition gets you the Group Policy or Local Security Policy tools. (As far as I can tell.)

But there is a single registry entry which has fixed it for me! Located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\ you just set FilterAdministratorToken to 1.

Found the fix in this YouTube video. Same author as one linked earlier: Enable/Disable Admin Approval Mode for Windows 10 by Registry key

Moving WAMP out of Program Files Folder

(More to follow.)

Cycled to Southend-On-Sea (18th July 2016)

Liverpool Street to home involved 1.15 miles.

(More to follow.)

(Photos to follow.)

Nasty Tennis Fall (2nd July 2016)

Mud had built up on the tennis court behind Fiona’s again. We played gently with a friend. I slipped while turning to chase a ball and went sprawling across the ground. Had to throw a hand out and deeply grazed the palm. Various other scrapes and a bump on my hip.

Called the person named on the noticeboard. Their number had changed. So I noted that down and called it. They were in the process of moving and didn’t want to talk. Managed to exchange a few sentences and they agreed “to get someone to put something up”.

We haven’t been back to see if that was been done yet. It’s dangerous. Myself and some other volunteers spent a couple of hours clearing it before the wonderful tennis tournament held the other week. Looks like that really was necessary and it should be made a regular task, for safety.

Arty Weekend in Brockley (2nd July 2016)

Open house and studio weekend near Fiona’s place. We walked a lot in the area NE of Hilly Fields. We saw lots of different types of art.

Rounded off with a lovely dinner at The Gantry. We were seated in the bar area as it was fully booked; they served the same food. It was delicious! Moderately expensive but worth it, I’d say.