Articles posted in March, 2005

Word 2004: The consequences of lousy performance

Thursday, March 31st, 2005 • 2:40 am

Look at this authentic screen shot taken a minute ago in Word 2004: How is it possible? The table cells are quite clearly not 7.81 cm wide. (I am viewing the document at 150%.) So why is it what the “Column” dialog box says? It’s quite simple. My two columns were originally 7.81 cm wide. […]

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Word 2004: Text formatting in merged cells

Thursday, March 31st, 2005 • 2:30 am

When you have a row of cells in a table in Word and you select the row of cells and use the “Merge Cells” command to merge them into a single table cell, Word has to make a decision about what the formatting of the text of the resulting cell will be. Each cell might […]

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Word 2004: Table text formatting unpredictability

Thursday, March 31st, 2005 • 12:38 am

This kind of stuff drives me insane. Take this simple table in Word: As indicated in the picture, the first row of the table is selected. If I copy it, then place the cursor after the last row of the table and paste, I get this: Fine. It’s what I expected. Now take this table […]

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Mac OS X’s Mail: Why it needs to support mailbox aliases

Tuesday, March 29th, 2005 • 6:23 am

I have already discussed here the need for major improvements to Mac OS X’s Mail application, especially when it comes to very simple, repetitive tasks like archiving mail. Today I’d like to explain why I think mailbox folder aliases would be an important improvement. I know there are people out there who do not archive […]

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LATEXT: ‘Melting Pot’ (MP3, 03:22)

Saturday, March 26th, 2005 • 4:25 am

Something fun for the week-end… “Melting Pot” (MP3 file – 160 kbps – size: 3.9 MB – duration: 03:22) More LATEXT music here.

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Apple iPod Camera Connector: Just right

Friday, March 25th, 2005 • 6:17 am

The device that was promised by Apple for March is now available. And based on the description, it’s exactly what was needed. Contrary to the devices sold by Belkin, the iPod Camera Connector supports both direct connection to a digital camera or connection to a media reader. It comes with a standard USB port and […]

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Word 2004: ‘Heading Rows Repeat’ command disabled

Friday, March 25th, 2005 • 1:40 am

If anyone knows why the “Heading Rows Repeat” command in the picture below is disabled, I would like to know: You are allowed to have more than one table row repeat at the top of each page. Hence the plural “Rows” in the command. But obviously it only works when it feels like it. Grr.

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Word 2004: Hopeless spell checker doesn’t know the meaning of ‘Ignore All’

Friday, March 25th, 2005 • 1:37 am

You know your software is buggy beyond repair when it cannot even get the simplest things right. For most of my spell checking needs, I use Spell Catcher X. However, as a precautionary measure, I also sometimes use Word’s built-in spell checker to go through my documents one more time before declaring them fit for […]

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Double return chars in Apple Developer Connection e-mails

Friday, March 25th, 2005 • 1:25 am

A few weeks ago, Apple revamped their Apple Developer Connection web site and affiliated services. I have nothing against a good revamp. But then they also decided to revamp their e-mail services, including the ADC News e-mail that gets sent out regularly. Somewhat predictably (unfortunately), someone at Apple decided that HTML e-mail was a good […]

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.Mac authentication overkill

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 • 6:02 am

Go to www.mac.com. Click on “Login” link. Log in. Safari loads the .Mac home page for logged in users. The little lock icon in the top-right corner of the window indicates that you are connected to a secure site. Now click on “Account” link on left-hand side of home page. What does .Mac do? It […]

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LATEXT: ‘Osmosis’ (MP3, 04:53)

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 • 2:50 am

Here’s a new track created in my home studio… :-). “Osmosis” (MP3 file – 160 kbps – size: 5.5 MB – duration: 04:53) Let me know what you think! (I can take it.)

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iDisk over dial-up: Forget the Finder, use Goliath

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 • 2:37 am

I cannot believe it took me so long to find this out… I have been a .Mac subscriber for a long time. Unfortunately, I have also been stuck with a dial-up Internet connection during all that time. And I am afraid I have to say that trying to user Mac OS X’s built-in iDisk features […]

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Terri Schiavo: The intellectual dishonesty of the Christian right

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 • 1:01 am

I am not particularly interested in American politics these days, but occasionally there are things that really make me mad. For the past week of so, we’ve been subjected to daily coverage of the Terri Schiavo case. And now that the tube has been removed and that Terri Schiavo is slowly dying, what do we […]

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Word 2004: TOC Level and Outline Level

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005 • 6:30 am

This is something that I have just realized, so I figure I’d share it, in case other people are as confused as I am by Word’s always puzzling interface. I had a Word document with an automatic table of contents today, and the table of contents generated by Word included some level-2 headings that I […]

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Word 2004 Tip: Selecting a sentence

Monday, March 21st, 2005 • 6:39 am

And now for a bit of Microsoft-sponsored fun… For years I have been lamenting the lack of “smart” selection tools that would let the user select actual sentences of text rather than just words, lines or entire paragraphs. Today I decided to take a few minutes and try to find if there wasn’t, by any […]

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