Tag: MicroSoft

An open letter to Ms. Word [10/18/2010]

[So this post isn’t taken as pure misogyny, “Ms. Word” and “Ms. Outlook” aren’t real people, this was my referring to a personification of “Microsoft Word” and “Microsoft Outlook”, playing on the similarity between the initials for Microsoft as “MS” and the greeting/title.  Chances are I was having a frustrating day, being frustrated with having to use Microsoft Word at work.  I have been using LibreOffice and OpenOffice before that for years and do everything I can to actively avoid using MS products.  Many of the blog posts I’m dusting off have no tags, no categories, even when they’re basically fully formed posts.  This one has the tag “ms word is bad for you”.  :) ]

Dear Ms. Word,

I’ve done everything in my power to sever our relationship.  I gave up on you years ago.  I know this sounds harsh, but I just need to get it off my chest.  You are a bloated hog.  When you’re around nothing else works.  You are more a hindrance than help. 1

I don’t want to see you at work and especially not at home.  I’ve moved on and I wish you could see that.

Believe me, I only put up with your good friend Ms. Outlook because my work requires it of me.  But why Ms. Outlook thinks I need to have you around every few minutes is totally beyond me.

There’s no need to reply, just go.

Most sincerely,

MakerBlock

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. Misnamer [11/28/2010]
  2. The Lost Blog Posts
  3. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  5. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  6. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  7. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  8. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  9. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  10. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  11. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  13. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  14. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  15. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  16. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  17. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  18. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  19. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]
  20. Where is the Othercutter? [Draft 06/08/2015]
  21. Mendel Parts – Printed, Cast, CNC’d, Lasercut or Injection Molded? [Draft 04/12/2010]
  22. MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]
  23. MakerBot on CBS! [07/07/2010]
  24. New Print: Soft-Pawed Albino Stoat of South Wales Cookie Cutter [07/07/2010]
  25. House calls [07/11/2010]
  26. Digital assistant? [08/05/2010]
  27. MakerBot + Junk = Stuff! [08/06/2010]
  28. Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]
  29. Upgrades and obsolescence [08/25/2010]
  30. Dear Anonymous [08/25/2010]
  31. The ultimate in customer service [08/26/2010]
  32. Open Source Makes You Smarter [08/27/2010]
  33. Getting my Plastruder MK5 running [09/06/2010]
  34. Weird new kind of spam [09/19/2010]
  35. An open letter to Ms. Word [10/18/2010]
  36. Printing with PLA again! [10/18/2010]
  37. Halloween costume too [10/27/2010]
  38. Dream jobs [10/29/2010]
  39. The nuances of time travel [10/31/2010]
  40. Printed Pink Panther Person [11/22/2010]
  41. Skein them all and let ‘Bot sort them all out [11/24/2010]
  42. The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]
  43. Princess Bride with Lightsabers [12/13/2010]
  44. Dilbert comic [12/13/2010]
  45. Ultimachine PLA review [12/15/2010]
  46. Mendel to the power of 101 [12/21/2010]
  47. Potential improvements for Leonardo Voltron [12/27/20210]
  48. You can keep your filthy money [12/28/2010]
  49. I watched Primer the other night [12/30/2010]
  1. Oh, and tell your yappy dog to quiet down.  I’m tired of hearing of him too. [↩]

Multiplayer MineCraft on the PlayStation

Minecraft friends!
Minecraft friends!

I’ve been trying to get MineCraft on our PlayStation to work with multiplayer for ages without any success.  I could see friends, but my kids couldn’t see or add friends and couldn’t join any remote multiplayer games.  They kept getting messages like:

“You need permission.  You cannot add friends because of how your Microsoft account is set up.  This can be changed in your privacy and online safety settings on aka.ms/accountsettings.“

It was, in a word, frustrating.  However, after a lot of searching and setting fiddling, I finally got it to work.  Basically, a parent needs to create accounts email addresses for kids, then PlayStation accounts for those kids, then Microsoft accounts for them as well.  Then the parent sets up a “family account” and adds the children.  In any case, even after setting up all these various accounts…  once the parent is logged in they need to adjust their “Xbox” settings from within their Microsoft profile!

The process that eventually worked for me was this:

  1. Go to: https://account.microsoft.com/account/privacy
  2. Scroll down to other privacy settings, next to the Xbox icon look for:
    1. “Adjust your Xbox privacy settings on either your console or by signing in to Xbox.com” there should be a hyper text link that will take you to online safety and privacy
  3. Under Xbox one/Windows 10 online safety, check the setting
    1. “You can play with people outside of Xbox Live” make sure it is set to “Allow”

Even after doing all this, it still didn’t work. I still had to fiddle with additional Xbox settings to “Allow mutliplayer” and then log in/out/restart.  I had to log the kids out of the Playstation and Microsoft accounts on the laptop, log the kids out of their Microsoft accounts in Minecraft, restart Minecraft, and log their Minecraft account back into the Microsoft account.  I’m not sure which of these were strictly required – I just know that it took one or more of these steps to get this to work.

I hope this helps someone else.

Test