This is an area of Photography I really struggle with. So I'm interested to learn if anyone has any good tips for capturing photos of trees.

It's winter here in the UK and most of the trees are now leafless.

Grateful for any thoughts.

I'd like some streaming help please.

I've got a linux mint laptop, a windows pc, an nvidia shield and films that I'd like to watch from anywhere. Can you suggest a best way to do this, or any 'best' method that I can adopt?

I'll add that I'm not great at Linux, and all these devices will be on sleep mode when I'm away from home (apart from my nvidia) - which I believe is always on.

If possible I'd like to keep costs down, but I'm open to learning some new stuff.

Thanks for any help.

Edit: tarted up text.

We've got a small log burner with a light grey stone surround.

Every time I open the door to poke the logs, bits of soot fall out and mark the stone when I brush them up.

I'm getting a little worried as the house is rented, so I want to leave it in good condition.

I've tried washing liquid and cream cleaner but they just don't shift the stains.

Does anyone have any good tips that might help. I'm in UK, so products I can get my hands on here would help.

Many thanks.

This may not be the correct place for this, if so please point me elsewhere.

My other half doesn't have broadband, so I'm looking to write dvds so we can watch then on a dvd player.

To this end I've gotten a copy of ashampoo and downloaded some films (.mkv files) and I'm now looking to copy them onto dvds. Now I know I can't just copy the files on, and the software's asking for mpeg files only.

Has anyone come across - or know how to actually convert and write properly? A guide perhaps?

I know it's old technology, but it's gotta be better than just watching the crap on free tv. TIA.

Edit: many thanks to all for the great - and varied answers. Certainly lots of info to 'chew' on.

Just started using the above setup and gotta say this is the bees bollox - I'm so impressed by just how fluid it all works - free from an insane price too - it just works flawlessly!

I've got to add in here - Unchained (F-droid) which connects to an RD account and allows to search stuff and either 'aside' for later or download immediately - the app (imho) is wicked and definately worth checking out and supporting.

The great stuff aside, I have one general question: feel free to add more...

Saving stuff: I know that torrentio will save links into my RD account for me to pick up later, but can I get it to auto download into a folder of my choice - to any folder on my network? I can get it to save onto my phone (via Unchained) but then I've got to transfer it into my library.

I'm looking for a easy/lazy way I guess.

Any thoughts?

I've just found Syncthing and I'm blown away by this app. So, I'm interested if any of my other apps can be replaced by foss equivalents that can be synced.

My first suggestion is Obsidian - which, at first I had problems syncing with paid solutions, but syncs flawlessly with Syncthing.

Does anyone have any more suggestions? Ideally looking to sync between android devices, but any info is much appreciated.

Update : many thanks for all the suggestions - some good ones. Hopefully we can keep adding the ones we find that can be synced from local folders.

Is it possible to get sync to clear the cache? As someone who has ocd I'd like the option to leave everything behind me clean when I leave.

Edit: added words.

I've had this Vax upright for about 5 years. Recently it's started to cut off when I'm using it. I feel the base - and it's hot. Any ideas for anything that I can do to fix it?

I'm not technically minded but I will have a go - if it will save me having to buy a new vacuum.

Edit: many thanks for all the replies and advice.

Does anyone know of a foss android app that will notify me if I load certain apps that I also need to use with vpn on?

I don't need my vpn always on, but I do for some apps. Ideally I'd like to be able to toggle the apps I want it to monitor.

If it could switch the vpn on as well that would be top.

I'm seeing this happen more of late: the message 'View more (1)' appears in-between a thread (the number varies by the way), when I click to expand the comments a message 'loading' appears followed by 'no comments added'. Why does it think there are more comments and why can it not retrieve and show them?

I'm using Sync for Lemmy.

I downloaded fedilab from fdroid and it looks on the surface as though it can access instances of the fediverse as well as lots of other stuff - like I can see lemmy.world and lemmy.ml but not lemmy.ee but I'm not sure how to see individual communities - unless there's a post I can see to follow.

So my basic understanding of all this - coming from reddit, is that these instances all federate together - as one, so to speak.

I'm just getting a little confused here. So can anyone explain just how this piece of software works please?

Thanks.

What's the best functioning music streaming app for the tv - I'm currently using vi, but are there any others? I'd prefer ones that don't need a mouse to function properly.