An interesting finding. My tests suggest that a basic keyword search of YouTube (using the YouTube search-box) references only the words in the video title. Not tags, or any additional text added by the uploader.

How to add a breakout box, or a table-of-contents side box, to a WordPress.com blog post, with just HTML and no CSS.

Example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

“View source” for code.

How to select the wanted files for a Librivox public-domain audiobook, when downloading via an Archive.org torrent. I’m using the popular free qBitTorrent software.

It’s a bit tricky to get just a certain set of files downloading and not the others. This is how it can be done:

1. Download the .torrent file.

2. Start the entire torrent. In the Content panel, immediately deselect all the torrent’s files.

3. Now filter the file set for “128kb.mp3” or whatever other standard naming you have in the set for the highest-quality audio files.

4. Shift-select all these filtered files, so that they’re highlighted. Don’t attempt to tick them all (there may be hundreds). Instead right-click them as a selected block and set them to priority “Normal”. qBitTorrent will now consider the files “ticked” and active.

5. Start the torrent. You should see that only the desired files are downloading.

The very worthy Torrent Webseed Creator project at GitHub. Use your free Google Colab space to turn any file freely available on the open Web, up to 100Gb, from the plain URL into a handy .torrent file. Which is then uploaded to Cloudflare for you. You then download from there as a .torrent using a standard torrrenting software. Tested and working for me. The 32Gb test file was uploaded to Cloudflare Canada, from which I torrented it at my leisure.

Useful for those who have to download a huge non-resuming multi-Gb file with the browser, and are repeatedly failing to do so. Note the source files must be freely available without cookies or similar fuss.

Microsoft has used its advanced AI text-to-speech voices to produce free audiobooks of all 4,840 Project Gutenberg books.

There’s now a handy single-page Browse list, but it’s A-Z by title rather than by author. So I made a quick Excel .XLS ordered A-Z by author, with the clickable hyperlink retained on each title. The links are to .MP3 files, and of course to get them your Excel needs to be allowed online.

.XLS for Excel (as PDF): (sadly lost on the blog move)

Tutorial:

There are times when Excel fails to automatically paste into two columns. So here’s how to sort a list such as this ‘by every nth line’, using the handy Kutools plug-in for Excel. No ‘wrestling with formulas’ is needed here…

1. Highlight and Crtl + C copy the list from the source. The data must be clean, meaning strictly line 1 then the matching line 2, consistently all the way down.

2. Paste the list to the first Excel column.

3. Top tabs bar | Kutools tab | Range | Transform Range.

4. The “Data to be transformed” box is automatically filled in for you. You just need to type in the “Fixed Value”. Here we want “2”. Then check the output demo looks correct. Press OK.

5. You’re taken to the next box. Don’t type anything. Instead you just click on the first cell of your target column. I chose “C”. The “output range” box will then be auto-filled with a bit of Excel’s magic gibberish. Press OK.

6. Processing will then start. Let it run, for a big list. It can happily process over 9,000 lines.

7. All done. The list has been separated into two columns. By extracting every line, then the following line, and so on down the column list.

How to hide all Amazon search results containing the word Bluetooth.

Why use this:

i) Let’s say you are searching for wireless headphones. You want headphones with a proper radio-frequency wireless base-station that uses a rock-solid 100-yard range, and not those that use the infernal and unreliable Bluetooth system. You thus want to remove the vast number of Bluetooth headphones from your search results. But Amazon’s filtering system won’t allow you to do that.

ii) Or perhaps you simply want to remove all results with a title containing your own chosen keyword. Again, this assumes that Amazon lacks the required sidebar filtering, and that you have hundreds of results to manually trawl through. In which case, just change the keyword used below.

Required:

Use this simple code with the popular free Web browser add-on “uBlock Origin”, by adding it to uBlock’s filter list. Simply paste the code to the list and save.

! Hide all search results on Amazon which contain bluetooth in the title
amazon.co.uk##[data-component-type=”s-search-result”]:has-text(/bluetooth/i)

Of course you should also change amazon.co.uk to whatever your usual national Amazon store is, if you’re not in the UK.

You should not find it also interfering with your Wishlist pages, but if you do then whitelist in uBlock’s ‘Trusted Sites’ thus…

www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/*

Thanks to RraaLL for suggesting an improvement to my initial way of doing it. Post updated.

Google Search is now adding “People also searched for” pop-down panels, placed under individual search results. These often appear on using the back button to go back to a page of former results.

I don’t want any kind of ‘pops’ in my search-results. Block them all in your uBlock Origin filter list, by adding this filter…

The above is also a working demo of how to use an xpath command to block any keyword inside a DIV’s ID. In this case the filter blocks all HTML DIVs with an internal ID containing the letters “eob”. This blocking is not constrained to just these letters, meaning that the command will also block “eob77” or “eob_34”, without the need for a wildcard * symbol. This is required for Google Search, as all the “eob” instances have a number after them.

Another example would be to block all ‘Save’ pop-overs on Bing Images…

Another handy tip for wrangling with online life.

Situation: An online service requires verification of your new phone number. It’s a home phone, not a mobile, but they still send you an SMS message. This is delivered, great. But… your phone service has turned it into a spoken voicemail. The user only hears the vital verification number being read aloud thus…

Two hundred and ninety-five thousand two-hundred and forty-two

Problem: This is puzzling to many users, especially older people. Even if they can write it all down in time, what are they meant to input into the confirmation-box on the website? 20095000242? 295000242? 295,000,242?

Solution: None of the above. What the above read-aloud number actually translates to, in numbers is this…

295242

So write it down ‘as spoken’ first, then translate it back to (most likely) a six-digit number.

The above should also work if the same method is used by your service for ongoing two-factor verification. That’s if the same phone is also used for two-factor.

How to block the mouseover pop-ups on individual Archive.org search results, in the annoying new flickering / flashing search interface…

1. Go to the top bar of your Web browser | click on the uBlock Origin extension icon | Click on its cogwheel icon.

2. In the uBlock Origin Dashboard | go to “My Filters”.

3. In the My Filters list, add the new line…

archive.org##tile-hover-pane

… and save. Reload the results page. The item ‘preview’ popup panels will have all been blocked. You can still right-click on any result tile, and launch a new tab showing the main page for that result.

The above is for a user who uses the Grid view.

The above fix at least removes one of the main annoyances of the regressive new UI.