John Lamansky

rot13.com: A helpful little website if you ever need to cryptify something.

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There’s a handy list of Firefox Tips and Tricks at the Mozilla website that gives you instructions on how to perform common Firefox tweaks. For example, you can set a toolbar background image, force links that open new windows to open in new tabs, and disable certain JavaScript window features. Neat.

You may have noticed that for about two weeks or so now, across this blog the word “tag” has been used in place of the word “category.” You might also have noticed the list of the 20 most popular tags (on the sidebar on the homepage) in replacement of the giant category list. And last but not least, another new addition to the site is the cool-looking tag cloud.

The reason I made this change was because, in short, I had a lot of categories. Dozens and dozens of them. The list on the sidebar was huge.

The problem was, I wanted to have more. Even if I talked about, say, DMOZ, just once, I wanted to have a category for it so that my post would show up in Technorati searches for that topic.

With the default WordPress system, that just wasn’t feasible.

I had known for quite some time that I wanted to make the change to the more flexible tagging system. So once day I decided to do some plugin searching, and I found the perfect plugin: Category Tagging. From the plugin website:

WordPress has a categorization system that lets users categorize posts. However, using categories is no longer state of the art: In the word wide web, tagging is established — and categorizing is obsolete. Tagging is quite different to categorizing since it is based on keywords.

[...]

[The] Category Tagging Plugin provides the following features:

1. Tag cloud
   It displays all tags (categories) as tag cloud.
2. Related posts
   When visitors find your website via search engines or other websites, they are often there for a reason and want to find out about a particular topic of interest. Presenting a list of related posts to a given post makes life easier for your visitors by showing them other posts you have written on the subject. This increases the chance that a visitor will stick around browsing your blog, and is perfect for existing visitors to find out your past thoughts on a particular subject.

Very cool.

I would highly recommend the Category Tagging plugin, although be forewarned that it’s not easy to set up.

While I was at it, I also fixed that annoying WordPress “bug” that causes categories to be arranged by ID when the categories for a post are listed. All I had to do was install the Simple Category Sort extension (link not working as of this writing; hopefully it’ll soon be fixed), click Enable, and tada! sorted categories… er, I mean tags.

It’s easy: just type =rand() into a Microsoft Word document and press Enter. It’ll be replaced with a five-sentance paragraph:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

You can also type in =rand(3) to get three five-sentance paragraphs.

I figured out that the highest you can go is =rand(200), which produces 14 pages of random goodness. (Assuming you have 12-point Times New Roman font.) Typing =rand(201) and then pressing Enter doesn’t do anything.

So, what’s the practical use of this?

Well, say you want to test some text formatting or text wrapping. Instead of pounding on the keyboard for three minutes producing gobbeldy-gook text to test on, just use Word’s random text insertion.

Here are some of my favorite screenshot tips that I have discovered for Microsoft Windows. Enjoy!

1. Take a screenshot

It couldn’t be easier: just press the Print Screen key on your keyboard (sometimes abbreviated to Prnt Scrn) and the contents of the screen are copied to the clipboard. You can then paste the screenshot into Paint, Microsoft Word, or another program.

If you just want to copy the contents of the currently selected window, hold down the Alt key while you press the Print Screen key.

2. Grayscale anything (Windows XP only)

Here’s a sneaky trick: You can easily turn any part of the screen into a grayscale version. First, make sure the part you want to capture is not in the center of the screen. The click the Start button and click Log Off.

As you probably know, after the Log Off dialog appears the screen will slowly fade from color to grayscale. But if you use the screenshot tip mentioned above, you are able to use that XP “eye candy” to take a screenshot of the now-grayscale screen.

3. Overcome screen-capture prevention

If you use tip #1, you may come across programs that prevent you from taking screenshots. If you’re sure that it’s legal to take the screenshot you want to take, you might be able to overcome this by first holding down the Ctrl key and tapping Esc twice. Then press Print Screen. Note that it will not work to tap the Windows key twice.

I’ve been using Microsoft Word for about 6 or 7 years, and this has always stumped me: how do I insert a simple checkmark into Microsoft Word?

Up until now I had been using the square root symbol (√), which sort of looked like a checkmark. But recently I decided that I wanted something better, so I did some searching and found these instructions on a Microsoft Office Assistance page:

1. On the Insert menu, click Symbol.

   Note: In Outlook, use the Insert menu in the message window.

2. In the Symbol dialog box, on the Symbols tab, in the Font box, click Wingdings.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the list, where you will find several common check mark symbols. Double-click the symbol that you want.

Nice!

Microsoft recently published a helpful step-by-step guide to cleaning your computer.

From the article:

“Your computer could fry if you don’t keep it clean,” says Jonathon Millman, chief technology officer for Hooplah Interactive.

Dust clogs the vents behind your computer, which causes your CPU to heat up—and heat is the biggest cause of component failure in computers. Regular cleaning could save you costly maintenance fees down the road.

This is definitely something I want to add to my to-do list for this summer!

Microsoft has a 4 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer’s Performance article that I found some time ago. The steps are, in summary:

• Free Up Disk Space
• Defragment
• Run the Windows Disk Checker
• Get an Anti-Spyware Program

Pretty basic steps, but it looks like a very good step-by-step guide for someone who’s new to computers.

Developers using Visual Studio 2005, especially those switching from Visual Studio .NET, will probably know that Visual Studio 2005 hides code produced in Design mode automatically. Although on Microsoft’s site this feature is called “Just My Code,” there is no reference to that phrase anywhere in the UI that I could tell.

I couldn’t find a solution on the Internet that worked, and I finally figured it out on my own. I thought I’d publish it here in case anyone else had the same problem. It’s really simple: just click View, then click Show All Files. In the Solution Explorer pane, a plus sign will appear next to Windows forms. Just click on the plus sign, then double-click on <formname>.Designer.vb (replacing <formname> with the form name, of course).

(FYI: Note that I found conflicting instructions on the Internet that said the option to disable Just My Code was in the Options dialog box. Perhaps that was only applicable to beta versions of Visual Studio 2005, or perhaps my solution only works with the Express Editions.)