Adobe PDF files are a pain, but necessary evil on the web. The latest Adobe Reader takes forever to load, especially compared to older versions. Help is on the way at: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11041
I’m a simple minded guy. I use Microsoft Word for all of my word-processing. I can get along with about four styles; Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Normal. I also like to print single envelopes to my LaserJet printer.
I’ve used macros for these things for years…transferring and updating them to each subsequent version of Word. The following code works in Office 2003:
Sub Heading_1()
'
' Heading_1 Macro
' Macro recorded 6/3/2004 by Lawrence Keyes
' Assigned to Alt_1
Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1")
End Sub
Sub Heading_2()
'
' Heading_2 Macro
' Macro recorded 6/3/2004 by Lawrence Keyes
' Assigned to Alt_2
Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 2")
End Sub
Sub Heading_3()
'
' Heading_3 Macro
' Macro recorded 6/3/2004 by Lawrence Keyes
' Assign to Alt_3
Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 3")
End Sub
Sub Heading_Normal()
'
' Macro2 Macro
' Macro recorded 6/3/2004 by Lawrence Keyes
'
Selection.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles("Normal")
End Sub
Sub Envelope_Address()
'
' Envelope_Address
' Macro recorded 6/18/2004 by Lawrence Keyes
' Modified 6/18/2004, to hold the selected text
' This macro is assigned to a toolbar button. Select the adress that you want to print
' on the envelope, then click the "Print Envelope" button.
'Assign the currently selected text to the local variable lkAddress
lkAddress = Selection.Text
ActiveDocument.Envelope.PrintOut ExtractAddress:=False, OmitReturnAddress _
:=True, PrintBarCode:=True, PrintFIMA:=False, Height:=InchesToPoints(4.13 _
), Width:=InchesToPoints(9.5), Address:=lkAddress, AutoText:= _
"ToolsCreateLabels3", ReturnAddress:="", ReturnAutoText:= _
"ToolsCreateLabels4", AddressFromLeft:=wdAutoPosition, AddressFromTop:= _
wdAutoPosition, ReturnAddressFromLeft:=wdAutoPosition, _
ReturnAddressFromTop:=wdAutoPosition, DefaultOrientation:= _
wdCenterLandscape, DefaultFaceUp:=True, PrintEPostage:=False
End Sub
The above macros are assigned to the keystrokes within the “Customize Keyboard” section of ViewToolBars. Again, it is really simple: ALT-1 is used for Heading 1, ALT-2 for Heading 2, etc. ALT-N is for “normal”. The envelope printing macro is assigned to a button on the toolbar.
In keeping with a philosophy of standardizing on as few brands as possible, I’ve used and recommended Hewlett Packard printers for 15 years or so. I’ve recommended the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars of HP printers, mostly laser printers in the $750-$2000 range that are sometimes known as small workgroup printers. Because people ask, I’ve also recommended HP for ink-jet color printers, usually as an adjunct to a laser printer in an office, or as a stand-alone printer for a single computer at home. However, I have recently had the following problems:
Note that each failure results in the loss of tens if not hundreds of working hours. The affected users are frustrated with all of the futzing around. Not to mention the buying of all the extra ink jet cartridges.
So, today, I’m in Staples, looking for a replacement for one of the color printers. I see there are no less than 12 different models of HP ink jet printers, costing from about $89.95 to $495.00. And I decided I had enough with the throw-away printers, and the ridiculous costs per page, and the dozens of different cartridges, the rotten software, the multiple hours of installation, testing, downloading drivers and all the ink-jet crap. I bought a low-end Brother monochrome laser printer. We’ll see how this works out.
BLAT is a command-line eMailer. I use it within a script or command file to send a notification eMail.
With BLAT you can do things like:
C:> BLAT myfile.txt -to someone@someaddress.com
The above command sends the contents of the file “myfile.txt” to the eMail address someone@someaddress.com.
BLAT stores some parameters in the Windows registry, or in a text file. BLAT needs to know a legal eMail POP account which is used as the “from” address, and a legal SMTP mail account to use to actually send the message.
You can run BLAT interactively, or run it as part of a command file.
Prepare your backup media. Assuming you are using tapes:
1. Buy six tapes, with a capacity to backup all of your working files on a single tape.
For example we’re using 4mm data cartridges with a native capacity of 4 gigabytes. Some tape drives can also compress the data to double the capacity. In our case, the same tape might hold 8 gigabytes. But the 4 is more than enough for our purposes.
2. Buy a cleaning cartridge to fit your drive. These are good for about 50 cleanings. They include a little sticker with 50 boxes; you can check off a box after each cleaning. If your tape drive has been balky, clean it six times or so, and see if that doesn’t clear up the problems.
3. The tapes will be used in rotation Monday through Friday. There are two Friday tapes, Friday #1 and Friday #2.
3. Label all of the tapes and their cases with the appropriate day.
4. Before leaving the office for the day, insert today’s tape in the tape drive, and start the backup program if needed. If it is a Friday, alternate the Friday #1 tape with the Friday #2 tape, and put the unused Friday tape in your fireproof vault or safety-deposit box.
The upshot is you have a full daily backup of your data. You store a weekly backup off-site, so that if the building burns down, you have data current to last week.
Practice restoring from tape once a month. I use personal word-processing files for this purpose. This keeps me in practice, but more importantly, gives me confidence that the tape drive and media are working.
This site has a discussion of eBase, an open source fundraising application which runs under FileMaker Pro. There is a feature comparison of eBase, compared with Donor Perfect, Exceed, Convio, eTapestry and Raiser’s Edge.
Another comparison article is located at TechSoup. This review is compares fundraising applications available in 2002, so it is somewhat dated.
“…the more I learn about change, the more I am coming to believe that politics and law are much less effective levers for change than innovation, social activism or community-based enterprise formation. Political activism is an uphill battle against the status quo and against entrenched wealth and power. Social activism and community-based enterprises, by contrast, work peer-to-peer, citizen-to-citizen and consumer-to-consumer and, thanks to the power of modern communications, can spread virally very quickly, undermining the political and economic establishment by working beneath their radar, until, starved of its grass-roots citizen and consumer support, this establishment simply crumbles, no longer needed.”
David Pollard, “How to Save the World”
By the way, the list of links cited in the previous post was created by Onfolio….a nifty addon for Internet Explorer. For organizing web-based research it is almost indispensible. It passes the five minute test for new software.
I’ve created an archive of the links used for researching a paper, A Low Density VoIP/PSTN Gateway. The paper describes setting up a “personal PBX” using Asterisk, an open source software program which runs under Linux. With domestic long-distance rates coming down, internet calls themselves may not be as interesting from an economic standpoint. But, using the Asterisk program and an old PC anyone can create an inbound or outbound call center, IVR (interactive Voice Response) system, or branch and headquarters phone system.
Predicting Climate Change
I’ve been running the SETI-at-Home project for a couple years on several computers and accumulated over 325 hours of computer time for it. I think the climate problem is more local, and was interested to see this climate change project. From their home page:
The aim of climateprediction.net is to investigate the approximations that have to be made in state-of-the-art climate models. By running the model thousands of times (a ‘large ensemble’) we hope to find out how the model responds to slight tweaks to these approximations – slight enough to not make the approximations any less realistic. This will allow us to improve our understanding of how sensitive our models are to small changes and also to things like changes in carbon dioxide and the sulphur cycle. This will allow us to explore how climate may change in the next century under a wide range of different scenarios. In the past estimates of climate change have had to be made using one or, at best, a very small ensemble (tens rather than thousands!) of model runs. By using your computers, we will be able to improve our understanding of, and confidence in, climate change predictions more than would ever be possible using the supercomputers currently available to scientists.
This is an example of a distributed computing project, where users download a small piece of a larger calculation, process the results and then send them back to the host computer. There are several other similar projects, such as genome-seqencing, and cancer research.
tfnp 