I recently purchased a new Samsung external monitor for my desktop. Much to my surprise and chagrin, the remote that came with the monitor also turns on and off the Samsung TV in my office.

I looked online for solutions but didn’t really find any. So, I came up with my own.

In my case, my desk is directly below the wall-mounted Samsung television so this solution works. If you decide to try this and your two Samsung devices aren’t within arm’s reach, this may not work (but I have another solution).

All I needed for this was a towel.

On my monitor and TV, there is a Samsung label at the bottom center of the device. The infrared receiver that captures the signal from the remote is located here.

My simple solution was to take a small hand towel, which I held against that label (lightly) while I turn on or off the other device. The infrared signal from the remote can’t “see” through the towel, so the covered device didn’t react.

Simple and effective.

If you decide to try this but your devices aren’t within arm’s reach of each other, try draping a larger towel over the device you don’t want to turn on or off, being careful to have the towel cover the label while ensuring it’s as close to the device as possible. Just be sure to remove the towel when you’re done as I suspect leaving it covered could cause heat build-up in the device, which has the potential to damage the unit. Again, I haven’t had to try this but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

Please remember that while this is what I do, you’re responsible for what you do with this information. It worked for me and might work for you if you try it, but you have to assume responsibility for what you do (or don’t do).

As I said in my previous post, I have a lot of work to do on this poor, old, neglected site. One thing I didn’t anticipate was having to install something to help prevent spam comments on my posts.

If you try to post a comment, you’ll be asked to verify that you’re not a robot. I apologize for this, but this poor, forgotten blog that doesn’t have a valid SSL site at the moment got 7 spam comments in less than 24 hours.

I’m glad that at least Russia still loves me!

So I installed the noCaptcha plugin, got keys for Google’s reCaptcha system (version 2), and now you’ll have to verify that you’re not a robot before you can post a comment.

I’ll work on that SSL certificate. In the interim, in spite of Google’s insistence that the site isn’t “safe”, it is. “Safe” is kind of arbitrary and open to interpretation but I don’t ask for your personal information, I’m not selling anything (yet), and short of you putting your full name, Social Security number, your mother’s maiden name, and a dump of your password manager into a comment, it’s safe*.

But those spam comments? Do links stuffed into a WordPress comment still do anything beyond wasting the poster’s time (I get it, it’s all automated) and annoying the site owner (I choose to not get annoyed, I just look for solutions).

* If you should post this information here, I’ll delete the comment without saving it anywhere; I won’t approve it. I’ll probably also send you an email to tell you that what you did isn’t a good idea.

It’s January 2022 and that means that it’s time to start a blog. I’ve already seen posts from people who have committed to writing every day in 2022.

I’m not one of those people.

Sure, I’ll say I have the best of intentions, but those intentions will probably last about 17 minutes.

Regardless, I’ve decided to write. But what should I write about?

Answering that question is the reason many never start a blog, in my opinion.

So, here’s what you can do about it.

Just write.

You can always go back later and change your posts, just as many people have done in the past.

Take Steve Pavlina, for instance (he writes a very popular personal development blog. I don’t always agree with what he writes but he does make me think, and that’s good enough for me).

Here’s a link to his first blog post: https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/10/first-post/

Except that’s not how it originally appeared. He must have changed it. Oh, the horrors!

If you go to the Wayback Machine (at https://archive.org) and look for his site, you’ll see that it was first crawled and archived on October 12, 2004. At that time, the post talked about how some of his friends were trying to talk him into writing and publishing a book about a very non-personal development topic, namely software publishing.

Talk about a pivot!

But if Steve’s allowed to do it, so are you. I hereby give you permission to make 999 trillion changes to your website (but the truth is that you don’t need anybody’s permission to do that, much less mine).

(If you’re interested, you can check out Steve’s original post as it appeared in 2004 at https://web.archive.org/web/20041108184713/http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/index.php?p=1)

So go ahead. Write about what’s on your mind. The process of simply writing will help bring clarity to your life and your blog will probably take a direction that’ll surprise even you. And when you and your website do change direction, just go back and change stuff.

As for me, here are my current goals for this site:

• Bring in some extra income.
• Help people.
• Give me an excuse to write.

Have these goals changed since I started this blog (for what seems to be the 27th time) in January 2022?

Go check out the Wayback Machine to find out. 🙂

Had I realized that it’s OK to change up your blog/website, this would still be the first time I started this blog.

But for now, as soon as I hit “publish” on this post, there’s a ton of work to be done and a ton of things I “need” to write about. Thanks for checking this site out and I hope you’ll stick around.