Easy Amazon Alexa and Sony SRS-XB22 Setup.

Let me just start by saying that I know many of you are not that tech savvy, and that’s ok. You might make beautiful cakes, or never get lost while driving, we’ve all got our own set of skills.

And some of this stuff can be pretty frustrating for me too.

Around November I bought myself some Sony SRS-XB22 bluetooth speakers, and have been enjoying listening to Spotify, in STEREO.

Yes, if you buy two of these speakers, they link together via bluetooth and provide music in Stereo.

However the initial setup is a bit of a pain, and sometimes they forget how they were setup, forcing you to start again.

So I sigh and launch the Sony app again and mess around with it for a minute, and it’s all good.

Current tech is amazing, but it’s not perfect and will have the odd glitch from time to time.

Now to get to Spotify they had to be connected to something, and I was using my Android tablet for it. It worked very well and I was happy.

But a few days ago I came home from shopping with an Alexa dot, and began to hear talk about connecting bluetooth speakers to that.

If that could happen then it would make playing my music so much easier, but no matter how I tried, it failed to connect.

Further reading revealed that the speakers *remembered* my tablet, and this meant the Alexa was effectively locked out.

Firstly, if your speakers are straight out the box, you’re fine, they should pair to Alexa easily, but if you’ve been using them with something else, here’s how to untangle the knot.

Choose one speaker to function as the main speaker, mine is the right speaker.

On the RIGHT speaker, hold down the power button until the blue light begins to pulse frantically, this usually happens after the speaker tells you about how much power it has left.

If it’s blinking like mad, as opposed to a gentler beat which it settles into later, you’re good.

Turn on the LEFT speaker with a quick press, no need to hold.

Open the flap on the back of the RIGHT speaker and press the Add Speaker button.

Then open the flap of the LEFT speaker and press Add Speaker.

I think at this point the Speakers announce that they are in double mode.

Go back to the RIGHT speaker and hold the Add Speaker button for a few seconds, the speakers should now announce that they are now operating as Left and Right.

Now open your Alexa app.

On the bottom right you should see an icon called DEVICES, hit that.

On the next page you will see an icon with three dots called ALL DEVICES, choose that.

On the ALL DEVICES page, click the + sign on the top right.

You should see ADD STEREO PAIR / SUBWOOFER

Choose that, choose your SRS-XB32 Speakers on the list.

One last thing to do before music comes out of your speakers is to choose which speaker, or speakers your music comes out of.

Click the All Devices icon again in the lower right, and click on your Echo Dot.

All your settings where you choose your speakers are located there.

I hope that works for you, cheers.

Denial of Service

About a week ago, I woke up and did my usual routine which includes breakfast and checking social media, which is something we do a lot of these days, often with the former being skipped.

I read messages that people had left me on Twitter as I slept, mostly responses to things I had posted the night before.

Then I went on to reading Facebook, except I couldn’t.

Instead of seeing my usual timeline, I had been greeted with a banner which suggested that I have apparently posted “underage nudity”, and had been blocked for 72 hours.

Now while I have been known for posting some outrageous items, underage nudity is not within my range of interests, so after reading the banner I had wondered what might have set things off.

Nudity itself doesn’t bother me at all, as far as I can tell, we all have bodies. Guns bother me a lot more than nudity ever will. and also the fact that gay people can’t marry in Australia, The TPP, War, Religious nutcases and people who shoot animals because they lack a decent sized cock.

I’m a (left-leaning) activist at heart, and I suppose that posting a story on something I detest causes certain heartless Facebook users quite a lot of angst.

And somewhere along the line, someone has worked out that they can “game” Facebook.

If you cheese someone off, there’s nothing stopping them from reporting your photo as underage nudity, even if it is just a photo of a three day old kitten.

The system seems to be automated, and once you’re reported, you’re done for three days.

And worse, how many further reports and suspensions will have your page removed permanently?

Nobody seems to check to see if you had actually posted anything offensive, the system simply trusts that you had.

But surely you can get in touch with Facebook and report this?

Well no, you can’t. If You’ve ever tried to contact Facebook, you’ll find that it’s an almost impossible task, can any other company do as well as Facebook without active customer service?

There is also no indication of which post was the culprit, not that any were offensive and certainly none would fall under the description of “underage nudity”.

Last week the suspension was lifted, but early Friday morning, it happened a second time.

All it amounts to is a denial of service attack by, most likely, someone who doesn’t support my views, and rather than dispute me directly, would rather act in a cowardly fashion.

The only hint I have of anyone feeling grumpy with my posts, is one comment about my banner image being offensive. It’s a poster of a cartoon wolf holding a microphone… He has pants on.

When I went to the person’s page, there was nothing there, no title, banner or anything.

Wolfie Rankin.

* Not that it stopped me, multiple accounts are definitely the way to go.

 

 

Fluffy asks a favour

I would like to ask my radio friends if they would care to do my a favour and play one of the following songs at some point.

Call it “helping a friend”

Thank you.

.

.

Wolfie!

Facebook (No Access)

I wonder how many others don’t like the new photo strip on their page? I feel it gets in the way and would like the option to turn it right off, unfortunately there’s no option for this.

So, I decided to ask about this in the help forum… only to find that I couldn’t post to it.

Despite facebook having a forum, I couldn’t post to it… so what’s the point of having a forum?

When people encounter this type of situation, there’s a feeling of slight paranoia, what have I done?

I wonder if others are locked out, or a certain few have decided another certain few (myself included) were not good enough to post? I could post, have done so before, just asking technical questions, never anything nasty.

One of the things I felt was useful was a little box of text which told the reader something about me has vanished, a design change has seen to that.

It seems to me the user should have the option to add or leave things off their own page if they want to, why are Facebook so into removing stuff we want, while adding stuff that we don’t?

Wolfie!