virtualMV WordPress blog on the move

Here I go again.. I am moving the WordPress Blog to my virtualMV domain so from now on I am using http://www.virtualmv.com/blog. This is to allow me to learn the idiosyncrasies of WordPress.

 

PowerPoint Hyperlink error (comma in title)

I couldn’t believe this until I read that it is a known issue. If you use hyperlinking in PowerPoint (linking from one slide to another) and you have a comma in the heading of the destination slide, the hyperlink won’t work.

There’s some documentation at (so they know about it!)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818853

 

 

 

QR Code Generator

Web technology trundles along. (Android 2.x phones have built in QR code readers). To generate your own.

http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

 

Bloated Word files .. why is my file so big????

One issue / problem  I have with students creating electronic storyboards where the scan/photograph/cut and paste images is that the Word documents can become very large. Often there are a couple of offending images that are magically very large. So how can we find them to see where the problem is.

Simple solution (use compress pictures)

1. Click on one of the images,
2. Click on the Picture Tools menu (Top right of Word), then
3. Select [Compress Pictures] in the Adjust group on the ribbon bar
4. Choose Apply to All pictures in the document, and [Ok]

Finding the problem images

If you have Word 2007 or 2010 they will save a Word document as a docx file (rather than doc). This is actually just a zip file with a docx extension.  So, to find out your problem images:

1. if your file is a doc file save as a docx, or make a copy of the file if it is a docx.
2. rename the new docx to zip
3. double click the zip file (or open the archive in your un-zipper program)
4. Look in the folder word/media, and you should see the images and their file sizes.
5. Double click on the images to see which ones they are,
6. Remove the images in the original document and resize.

 

Another book one. Free (e- and real) ones.

Best Places to Get Free Books (e- and real)– The Ultimate Guide.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/AGVjy5/www.friedbeef.com/best-places-to-get-free-books-the-ultimate-guide/

 

Microsoft Tech Ed Online 2010

http://www.msteched.com/2010/NewZealand

Videos from the Microsoft Tech Ed – link from Paul Lo

 

And now for something completely different – buying books online

Recommended by one of my colleagues: The Online UK bookstore bookdepository at

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/

seems to have a great range of books at reasonable prices (no I don’t have shares) and no postage fees!

 

Proxy Switching On/Off

One of the more annoying things when you carry a laptop between home and work is that you constantly have to turn the Browser Proxy on (for work) and off (for home).

If you don’t know what a proxy is, Wikipedia starts out “In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers.”  Proxy Server (2010) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server

In IE this involves…Tools > Internet Options> Connections>LAN Settings> then check the “Proxy Server: Use a proxy server …”. Then [Ok], [Ok], and then you can refresh your page. (Of course you can always do this by right clicking the Browser icon on the desktop and selecting Properties>Connections, etc…

Chrome uses the same Proxy dialog so requires Tools>Options>Under the Bonnet>Change Proxy Settings>Connections>LAN Settings> then check the “Proxy Server: Use a proxy server …”, then [Ok], [Ok]“

Firefox Tools>Options>Network Settings >Choose proxy type>, then [Ok], [Ok]

Its a shame browsers don’t have a one click Proxy on/off…. BUT wait… others have realised this and fortunately there are one click proxy extensions.

Some one click proxy switchers  for Windows.

IE –  Proxy Pal http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Servers/Proxy-Servers/ProxyPal.shtml – very simple and seems to work brilliantly

Chrome - Switch HTTP Proxy  (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fajkpbphiejhldakjboejnabfchhccnn). There is another one to manage multiple proxys Proxy Switchy! ( https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/caehdcpeofiiigpdhbabniblemipncjj ) which I trouble with but others recommend it).

Firefox - QuickProxy ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1557/ ) watchout for this one that you get the correct one, I used the extension serch and came up with another one that didn’t work

So thats about it.. enjoy.

 

Best/worst web sites page in wiki

Just added a best/worst web site page to my wiki. Feel free to add/comment (you will need to login first)

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Multimedia:Design:Examples

 

A database-ERD (+more) diagram tool (like visio)

Another recommendation from JJ.

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Examples