No, I'm not lost - just loading up Windows 8 to make it semi-useful

Question Everything: Who picks the picture that gets used on a new operating system for its desktop background? And what makes that idiot think we all love childish portrayals of a fish? And what do fish have to do with a wannabe operating system that Microsoft hopes will save its ass from beautiful downtown Oblivion?

I had a positively shitty day! Can you tell? I started downloading the ISO of this long-anticipated public beta of Windows 8 at around 7:00 AM this morning, and here it is 8:00 PM and I'm finally able to say I've downloaded and added to it enough other programs that it is now semi usable enough at least to go on line and write this blog entry. This is a hell of a change from the Developer's Preview, and not as user-friendly as it needs to be if it's going to catch the fancy and the wallets of the PC crowd who have until now been firmly enamored with their keyboards and mice. 

When I ran off the DVD from the ISO image, I made an extra and took it down the street to Dwight, who owns his own computer business. He had opted to download it directly from the web, and wasn't impressed by it taking 2 hours plus. I told him I couldn't improve on that, because the ISO image took about that same time, and then I had to burn it onto a DVD for another few minutes. But the good news there is that I've got the DVD handy in case of unforeseen disaster, and now so has Dwight at his shop. Speaking of 'unforeseen disasters' I had made two partitions on this drive so Windows 8 could go onto the empty one and not wipe out my Windows 7 ($120.00 worth!) and guess what? Windows 8 installed in record time, about 23 minutes, but the bad news is, it wiped out my Windows 7 on here because it (a) didn't ask me where I wanted to put it on this two-partition drive (like the Developer Preview did) and (b) it seemingly couldn't tell there even was an empty partition available. So I had to wipe all that off and use Easeus Partition Master to Merge the two partitions, and then re-install the Windows 8 onto the now-one-piece drive. And that whole thing is why I've had such a shitty day, Folks.  Which I hasten to add was probably my own fault, for giving that empty partition a premature name, instead of leaving all that blank. Windows 8 did actually ask me the second time around where I'd like to put it, now that the drive is only one partition again and there's no choice anyway........ See what kind of day this has been?

And Dwight, who is famous in these parts for his knowledge of and ability with computers and their care and feeding and has been selling them and fixing them for years said this afternoon while we were comparing notes in the back room at his computer business "This isn't nearly user-friendly enough and I'm not nearly as impressed by it as I had hoped I would be. It looks like it needs a lot more work. There's too many obstructions in the way for desktop users to get to where they want to go." And I added, "Too many hoops to jump through!" and he replied, "Exactly!" And there you have it, Folks. First Impressions - and to our beloved Mr. Microsoft may I say "You don't get a second chance to make a First Impression!"

I may yet get to love this newest brat on the block, but it sure as hell won't be easy! Not nearly as easy as it was with Windows 7 - which, thankfully, is still very much alive and well on my other desktop - no thanks to this Consumer Preview. Color me disappointed. I'm trying very hard not to make comparisons here with (Ugh!) VISTA, that goddamned mess some idiot called an Operating System - remember that one? How could we forget??? These things are supposed to make our lives EASIER, not more difficult. And if Microsoft thinks the keyboard or mouse is obsolete, they'd be wise not to bet their asses on that one. Even all-in-ones with multi-touch enabled still need keyboards and mice to make them completely useful. Throwing obstacles in the way of those isn't smart. Put that on your mobile phones and tweet it using your thumbs instead of your  common sense. 

Prepared for Dual Booting....

These are the two essential programs you'll need for converting your single partitioned hard-drive into two separate partitions, and editing your Boot Configuration Data (BCD) file to show the names of them, and which is your preferred default operating system for first boot. The Easeus Partition Master is very easy to use, and does all the heavy lifting for you, and EasyBCD lets you edit the boot configuration data without having to actually go into the BIOS Data during booting by pressing a key on your keyboard during the booting-up process, and that's very convenient. Easeus is available here.  And you can get EasyBCD here. On the EasyBCD site, scroll down to the bottom, below where it says "More EasyBCD Links" and look for the words "Download free for limited non-commercial use" and click on those words - they are a link.

Another download....

If you go to the Microsoft Downloads Center and get this one it will make sure that your DirectX is right up-to-date in Windows 7 and also in Windows 8 Preview. And don't forget to check your Flash Player and Java as well. The best in none too good usually, so we need all the help we can get. Would I lie to you? 

Fun with backgrounds

Defragmenting Windows 8 Dev Preview

This is fast - one minute flat to defragment a partition that was 4% fragmented containing 25 GB of data. It works very nicely, and I like being able to initiate a defrag without having it built into a pre-programmed maintenance schedule that smacks of too much 'idiot-proofing' and not enough freedom of choice.

I hope they remedy that with the coming public Consumer Preview. And as long as I'm doing a 'whine' here, my other and even higher up the list complaint would be that in this pre-beta incarnation, when I have a window open inside a program like my photo-editing one from Arcsoft, PhotoStudio 5.5, and I want to close that one edited window so I can open the next editing job, when i click the little red box with the white X in it on the window I want to be rid of, the whole thing goes 'Whoof!' and everything vanishes down to the bare-assed Desktop, and I'm left cussing at some unknown genius while I re-open the whole program from its beginning again. Very annoying! Not too many of us are going to enjoy that. With or without the cussing. So I fervently hope somebody else is having that same thrilling experience, and I hope it's someone who can fix it for us. I'll know later on this week whether it's a general glitch, or if I'm the lucky one who enjoys it all by myself. This Test Pilot stuff is Hell, Folks.... you need nerves of steel, and an ass to match. 

Only a couple of days to go until the Consumer Preview of Windows 8......

Lots of snow up there...

 

Like the dog said when it got its tail caught in the screen door, "It won't be long now!" - Just  a couple of days until the big event, or what Microsoft fervently hopes is going to be a 'big event' - the public unveiling of Windows 8.

 

Having played with this Developer's Preview for about a week now, I'm not going to be a total stranger to this operating system's 'new look'. But I can't say that it really grabs me in quite the same way that Windows 7's first test version did. That's just possibly because Windows 7 fulfilled a burning desire to get to an operating system not plagued by a myriad of exceedingly frustrating problems seemingly carefully calculated to prevent one from doing anything productive with Windows Vista. How a company with the numbers and the reputation and the talents of Microsoft could have screwed up so magnificently has to be one of the great mysteries of the 21st century. Thank God (and their programmers!) it was all fixed up and then some with the advent of Windows 7, and Microsoft's new-found appreciation for its paying customer base. We, of the great and faceless unwashed masses, often barely literate with computers, but quite opinionated about what we like and don't like and will or won't buy.

 

Just for the hell of it, (and to fix a glitch with all the desktop windows closing when I only wanted to close the top one of the bunch) I re-installed this Win-8 Developer's Preview again yesterday. The good news is, it did that whole operation in just over 23 minutes from start to finish. Practically a new record. The bad news is, it only saved some of my 'personal files'. It parked all that in its usual location of 'Windows.old' which meant that most of my installed programs got neutered, their exe files becoming just useless ex-exes, requiring me to spend a lot of time re-visiting websites of third-party programs, downloading those freshly again, and re-installing all those to re-activate their executables. While this may be the price one pays for experimental software, it's still a rather unnecessary waste of time which could be mercifully avoided by a little more programming from the folks in the back rooms of Redmond, Washington. Not, mind you, that I'm "looking a gift horse in the mouth" (I'm trying not to!) but this is one of the lesser joys of playing with pre-release software. In its defense I must say it does a hell of a nice job of installing itself quickly, even if it doesn't include the stuff I fluffed it up with beforehand. 

 

Why I like Avast Anti-virus:

Avast grabs your attention with this red warning box and an audible alarm when your surfing lands you on a website containing malware or something acting like malware, and stops your activity before that malware can download onto your computer. This feature alone makes it a very desirable program to have.

Handy Helper

If something's not quite as it should be, for example, if a cute little icon titled 'Recent Places' suddenly pops up on your Desktop and right-clicking on it for the list that you hope includes 'Delete' but doesn't is no help to you, then before you push the Panic Button, give this nice little freebie a try. To go to its website, please click here.

Start by clicking on 'Action' in the title bar, and choosing 'Analyze' which gets it doing a look-see and evaluation of what's misplaced in that part of your drive. When you click on 'Defrag' it will not only do a fast defragmentation of your drive, but will also show you a count of the fragmented files it contained, and the number of total fragments those were in - all while it's quickly putting those together. And even if you didn't need to know all of that information, it's still nice to see how conscientious the program's designers were. It's reassuring. And the bottom line is, your misbehaving bits and bytes get put in their proper places.

Sun and Shadows on the hills....

Today's strong winds cleared away the low clouds, giving us a look at this.


These panoramas were made with Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor, or 'I.C.E.' for short, from this website and please note that this program requires Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Runtime, available from this website. It's best to get the Visual C++ and install it first, then install 'I.C.E.' .


All of this runs fine in Windows 8, and even though this Developer Preview is a very early version, it seems to be very solid, and obviously the folks in Redmond have put a lot of thought and hard work into it, and it shows. I'm anxiously awaiting the Consumer Preview (public beta) due out this coming week. I'm not sure how they will improve on this, but I'm sure they will think of something. But I hope it isn't too drastically modified. There's only one program I've tried in it so far which caused a problem, and that was a security program (rated #13) called ThreatFire, a 'zero-day behavioral detector of malware'. Windows 8 didn't like that one at all. It promptly coughed it out saying "Windows has encountered a  problem it couldn't recover from, and needs to restart." I gave it a quick test, and rebooted it, and it has been fine since. I threw out the ThreatFire, which has not had a major update any time recently. Other than that, Windows 8 has been virtually 'bulletproof', and I'm suitably impressed.  I've been using it for several days now, and that one glitch with the obsolete program has been its only one. Otherwise, it's been running just as reliably as Windows 7, which is perfect.

 

Another helpful hint - creating icons for programs

I wrote this one inside the above image, so please click on it to enlarge it.
 

Speaking of keeping Windows 8 clean and tidy.....

This is another handy freebie that literally works with one click, just like it says. The reason it's so handy, especially if you've just installed a new operating system is because as programs are being downloaded and then installed, they make use of your Temporary files, and they also create a lot of one-time-only entries in the Registry, which, after finishing the installation, usually leave empty keys or keys pointing nowhere in the Registry. These things can waste space  and slow down your performance while Windows hunts through the junk for the good stuff. This little program with one click can solve all those problems for you, and in this case, just now with Windows 8, it cleaned up about 167 MB of junk files, and removed over a hundred invalid Registry Keys and Windows is not only still working, but working easier now. Here's where to get it.

Keep your new Desktop neat and tidy.....

Make a folder called Shortcuts, and when something is installed and adds another shortcut icon to your desktop, you can drag it into this folder. And if you have a shortcut to it on your desktop, it's even easier - just drag the new shortcut onto the one for this folder, and it puts it in there for you. That atom icon on mine is the icon for this folder.

My favorite cookie finder and remover in Windows 8

This is another one I consider essential, because it's the best cookie-finder I've ever found, and it works quickly, and in all versions of Windows. You should get it if you haven't already. Please click here for the website.

Anti-virus on Windows 8

Avast 7 doing a Quick Scan on Windows 8. Perhaps I should explain something here: as Windows 8 comes out of the box, it has its own complete built-in security programming provided by Microsoft, and this system automatically protects it and performs regular updates and scans during preset maintenance times. The scans are once daily, and you can choose the timing for them to occur, if you read the details found in System and Security (note the desktop icon on the left here).

However, I tend to be the paranoid type when it comes to protection, and I like to see it actually working. In addition, I wanted to try out this improved version of Avast with its added features like the AutoSandbox, so I've installed it. After it was first installed, I had it do a complete scan of the system, and as the results were shown, I realized that it had scanned too much data for just this one Win-8 partition on the hard-drive. It had actually scanned the complete drive's two partitions - the Windows 8 and the Windows 7. So it is working very well, and as before, that little gal announces the completion of the scan if you have your sound turned on. It's nice touches like that which make this so user-friendly.

My new Windows 8 Theme

I like it - How about you?

Avast 7 on Windows 8

I was wrong! And happily so.... Avast 7 does install on Windows 8, and now I have the AutoSandbox and the real-time streaming updates, and the browser warning for infected websites, and everything! Now, I'm happy! Like I said this morning, this is a great program, and you ought to try it. I could write a commercial for Avast if they asked me.
 

Our current weather on Windows 8

Avast 7's Autosandbox really works!

This version has an Autosandbox which automatically terminates suspicious programs, including some of your trusted older ones, unless you exclude them.

This is the Autosandbox window, from which you access its Exclusions list......

And this is the Exclusions list, where you add items you do not want Avast to stop you from running. And I learned all this because it shut down my favorite old PhotoStudio 5.5 image editing program. As soon as I opened it, it vanished again, and this was why - I hadn't added it to the exclusions list. 

Adding a new Font to Windows 8.....

The rules given for Windows 7 don't apply in Windows 8, at least not yet, but the old drag and drop still works fine. And why did I need a new font so soon in here anyway, you ask? Because..... I love to tinker, and I wanted the Le Mans font for an icon I was working on, in preparation for the arrival of Skydrive coming soon to a Windows 8 near you..... and it looks like this:-

This is, of course, subject to revision, but that's why I wanted the new font.

My favorite security program has a new version today

For a 'freebie' this is one terrific program, and it even talks to you if you have your sound on. A sweet little gal tells you each time a new database update arrives. 

I once thought that AVG made the best, but they evolved it into something that was constantly exchanging packets back and forth across the web, and running the hell out of your processor and bandwidth, so I dumped that and got this one, and it's a real beauty. Don't leave home without it! It even has a website warning feature to warn you away from an infected site, and I think that's a wonderful idea whose time has definitely come.  And this new version promises to be even better. Too bad I can't get it to install in Win-8. It beats the hell out of whatever's number two! You should try it. 

Dual-booting - the start-up screens

This is the dual-boot screen in the Windows 8 system. Click one to start it.

This is the standard Windows dual-boot screen in the Windows 7 system, which also shows you a count-down timer starting at 25 seconds for you to choose before it automatically starts the highlighted system. I like that.

 

Windows 8 plays 3,000 year old game from Ancient Egypt

This requires Adobe's Shockwave Player, and it's just possibly the oldest game in captivity these days - and it's a lot of fun too! You will find it on the site of the British Museum, under Ancient Egypt, on its Egyptian Life page. Look on the left side of the page for the word 'Challenge' and click on that. The challenge in this case is this game. It's for two players, each with five markers, and the object is to get all yours off the board first. There's rules with it, and you click on the words 'Throw Sticks' to determine how many spaces you can move a marker. If you have the sound on, those sticks make a really loud clatter, so be prepared for that, and have fun, Kiddies! Click here to go to the game page.

Please Note: When the game first loads, there will not be any markers on the board, and to load those, you need to first click on the word 'Senet' above the center of the board. Then, with the markers in place,  you use Throw Sticks to find out how many spaces to move a marker, and whose turn it is. 
 

To change the default operating system in a dual-boot setup....

First of all, go here for EasyBCD.

When you get there, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and look for this item in a little bullet list: "Download free for limited non-commercial use" and click it to start your download. Install the program in the usual way, then click its icon to open it, and in the left column, click on "Edit Boot Menu"........

Highlight the operating system you prefer as the Default, and add a check mark in its little box. That will automatically remove the one from the former default, and once you've made your selection, they tell you 'everything happens automatically and you don't have to press Save Settings'. But in this case you DO need to press Save Settings at the bottom of the window.

Here's how it looks now that you're done. Do a shutdown and re-start to check it. As Windows 8 comes 'out of the box' it shows you its own dual-boot screen during start-up, with Windows Developer Preview in the top box and your other (Windows 7) operating system below in another box, and you click one to start that system. After using EasyBCD, the Win-8 boot selector screen is simply reversed, with Windows 7 now in the top box and Developer Preview under it. Not much difference, really. But if you go into Windows 7, it will now present you with its own version of the dual-boot selector, and you can make your choices there as well, and that wasn't available before. So this wasn't entirely an exercise in futility, because now both operating systems are displaying the dual booting menu, instead of having it only appearing on Windows 8's system.


I saw a complaint in a forum about that, and this is the cure. Put EasyBCD onto both O/S's and configure it in both and you will solve the problem of the missing  dual boot menu in the one operating system. Trust me - would I lie to you?

And today's 'Question Everything' is........

Why doesn't Windows Media Player have a windowshade mode like Winamp does?

 

Windows 8: KPLU's streaming is sounding good!

More Windows 8 illustrated.....

Here's an example from that list in the previous post, to find 'Search' from your Start Screen, simply start typing anything at all. I typed a line of directions instead of asking to search something, just to show how it works.....

Now, if you press ESC, it will show you the alphabetical full listing of all your Apps, and to keep those on screen but clear off that Search Panel on the right, simply go down to the bottom of the screen, and click inside that navigation bar. It is in two colors, light and dark, for left and right, and also has arrows in the left and right corners to aid in scrolling across your list. Another press on ESC takes you back to your Desktop again, if that's where you want to go.

Useful tips & tricks for Windows 8

If you're looking for some handy tips and tricks for navigating your way around in Windows 8 using a mouse and keyboard, this helpful gentleman has 22 of them.
 

Found: The Task Manager in Windows 8

Ending the day on a happier note, I've finally located the Task Manager and got its rather bland and unexciting icon replaced by a creation of my own featuring Dana Delany in her role of dominatrix from the movie 'Exit To Eden' - and she's just perfect to represent the Task Manager here.


You too can make your own icons, but unless you can find an older version on the web, you'll have to cough up mucho dinero now for the excellent IcoFX.  But in its defence, I have to say it does an excellent job of turning images into icons and letting you edit them in the process. It began life as a fantastic freebie, but then they got hungry, and the rest is history, Folks. But my old freebie copy of it still works like a charm in Windows 8 I'm pleased to report.

Another look at the hills - still winter up there.

Learning more about Windows 8

I wanted to use this for the background image on my Logon Screen, but that didn't fly for me, because I couldn't get the Windows 7 Logon Screen Background Changer to work in Windows 8. Not surprising, but still a disappointment.

However, the news isn't all bad - I've installed the Auslogics Disk Defrag from this website and it will defragment both partitions on the drive from its location on either partition. 

Speaking of doing things across both partitions, I was reading the other day in one of those forums where folks cry tears the size of footballs about problems that are usually just not well enough researched, and this kid was saying that we can't move a file from one partition to another without first of all loading it onto a CD or DVD and then using that to install it into the other partition. So it gives me great pleasure today to say that's a total crock, Folks - you most certainly can access and transfer files between the two partitions using Windows 8's normal features. Just look in the left column on Windows Explorer, under the listing for Computer, and you'll see both of your partitions listed there. You can click to go into either one and locate files, and to move a file from one to the other, just use the right-click drop-down menu's Send To and choose the other partition as your destination. That puts the file in the list of that partition's contents, and from there, you can once again re-locate it to whatever folder you want to keep it in. And Thank You, Windows 8, for this handy feature! Like I said in a previous post, there's a whole lot more to this than just a pretty face!  
 

Found! The Snipping Tool in Windows 8

Using the information in the previous post, I located the very handy Snipping Tool and pinned it to the Desktop's Taskbar, where it's very handy..... If I'm going to grab illustrations in here, I really need that.

That Windows 8 Start Screen - more to it than first glance....

In case you thought there's just some pretty tiles on that Metro Start Screen, may I please direct you to its lower edge, where your desktop Taskbar normally resides? You'll notice a narrow bar there with arrows in its left and right corners. These allow you to scroll across it, and if you scroll to the right there's a whole alphabetical index of goodies listed for your viewing and exploring enjoyment. So please do check it out - there's more to it than a pretty face! 
 

Windows 8 has a lot of nice features....

And they begin on the Start Screen....

You're going to enjoy exploring Windows 8.

 

Another pic from my Aircraft theme in Windows 8

Speaking of the Piano.....

Here's what it looks like. You can use the controls to start and stop its built-in music, or to shift the keyboard's position left or right, or to compress or expand the keys. It's quite the program, and you ought to try it.

The Start Screen and how to find the Desktop

Better late than never, let me explain - look for your Desktop tile, and click it to go to your Desktop, which looks much like Windows 7, but isn't. This is the next generation Folks, and today is the tomorrow you waited for yesterday.

And in case you find something not working as you expected in Windows 8, the very first thing to do is go to the manufacturer's website for the latest driver for it. The Windows 7 drivers work fine in Windows 8, and that's really good, because almost nobody has a driver yet that's made exclusively for Windows 8. Luckily, Windows 8 is tolerant of older drivers, but only if you've installed them along with the stuff you put into it to give it whatever you want to work with in it. 

By the way - see that tile near the center in the second level from the top marked 'Piano'? Well, if you click on that, it turns into a full piano keyboard on which you can play real tunes, so turn on your sound before you go there. And if you can't carry a tune in a suitcase, don't worry, it's also a player-piano with several built-in pieces to demonstrate how it works. And it really works! 

Make your own Theme for Windows 8

It's easy! Here's what you do: Find a set of pictures you like, and then resize them to fit your desktop's resolution, in my case 1680 by 1050 pixels. Number them all consecutively. Put them into a folder you name as DesktopBackground (that's all one big word) and then put that inside another folder which you have named for your new Theme, in this case Aircraft-01. Then, you're ready to put all that into Windows, so navigate to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes and then just drag your new theme folder into that folder and drop it there. Now, open your new theme's folder, open the DesktopBackground folder inside it, select all of the images, and then right-click on them to get the drop-down showing "Set as desktop background" and click on that. Your new theme will be activated on that click.

Now close those windows, go back onto the desktop, right-click to get the little drop-down, and at the bottom of the list, click on Personalize. Then just as in Windows 7, you can save your theme (it's on the top left corner of the window) and also set your timing for the image changes. So have some fun, Folks!

 

Doing a search in Windows 8

I downloaded a fresh driver from Wacom this morning to get the Graphire 4 tablet working with Windows 8, but I didn't know where it put it after it was installed. So here's how I found out. Just type a couple of key words into the little Search box, and voila! - up comes the answers! Nothing could be easier! I like it. This is definitely an improvement. 
 

System window showing dual drives

This shows the System window, with the hard drive split into two partitions, and one containing Windows 8, the other Windows 7. Windows 8 received 4 updates this morning, and is looking good.

So far, my only annoyance is that Windows 8 doesn't want to accept my favorite third-party security program, Avast 6.0.  So why do I like Avast, you ask? That's because it automatically updates several times a day, and if your audio is on, you will hear a pleasant female voice announcing the update. In addition, and this I really like, it warns you away from infected websites if you land on one, and that all happens before any bad stuff gets in, so you don't need to clean house after. It also has a 'sandbox' where you can check suspicious items before turning them loose in the main system. In short, it has several good features not found in the usual 'standard equipment' security programs, and I'd very much like to be able to use it with Windows 8. So, "Dear Mr. Microsoft: Please Note!" 

More Fine Tuning of Windows 8 .......

I've discovered that the Windows Ultimate Tweaker for Windows 7 doesn't help me to get rid of the arrows on the shortcut icons in Windows 8, like it did in 7. The cure in this case seems to be to use the Vista Shortcut Manager, which did the trick quite nicely. I like nice clean un-arrowed shortcuts. If in doubt about what it is, there's always right-clicking on it, and choosing Properties, which identifies it. I think this bird's going to fly, Folks.... And we haven't even got to the testing by the faceless unwashed masses yet.... I'd like to try this one on a touch-screen, but I'm probably too cheap to spring for those big bucks. And I have enough trouble typing on a keyboard that lies down quietly, without trying to wrestle with one that stands up at a 60 or 70 degree angle and fights back. But you never know....  
 

Windows 8 Developer Preview - Desktop

Yes, it runs the same programs we have in Windows 7, and yes, you can still build your own Desktop Themes for it, like we did for Windows 7, and I take back what I said about those Apps cluttering up the Start window..... One click and you're here on a normal desktop which you can customize for yourself, like I just have.

And yes, the Dual Boot setup worked like a charm, once I figured out where I'd gone wrong the 1st time I tried it. I had tried to get Win-8 to include my personal files from Win-7, and of course that meant it had to install onto the wrong drive, instead of the empty one I'd prepared for it. So after I repaired Win-7 with an old disk image I had laying around, and then got back its recent updates that were trashed, I finally got smart, and did a Custom or "clean install" of Win-8 and once it started that, it very politely asked me where I'd like to put it. So I said, "Right this way to the back half of the disk drive, please..." and after it finished loading, this Dual Boot window came up. I heaved a huge sigh of pure relief, and then got on with the job of dressing it up with some programs. I'm still at that, incidentally, and the good news is, it's running an old version of my favorite PhotoStudio 5.5 that I've cherished since back in the days of XP!  It says it has compatibility problems with it, but it also offers a choice to "run it anyway" and I am, with great success. Now, I'm getting curious to see what the public release preview will be like.  On this one, I can't find the "Feedback" icon, so I can't heckle anyone about their work..... maybe the next version will have one. I can hardly wait.... 

Obscured by clouds....

Or is it? .....

After auto-enhancing...