I like the Mac’s elegance. I like the elegance of Apple’s programs. But I use the “bloatware” of Microsoft Office – by choice.

You often hear that 90% of Word’s features go unused. Well I’m here to tell you about one of those obscure features that drives me to use Word, despite owning a Mac and Pages: Paste Link.

I’ve got a library of trip plans. Every trip plan has some common boilerplate text, some text that is unique to the trip, and a schedule (in a table). Boilerplate, unique content, and a spreadsheet.

From time to time, I come up with a change that I want to apply to the boilerplate text – in all the documents. I do not want to edit 200 documents and make the same change in each document.

I need the ability to store the boilerplate in a single location and to embed it in each trip plan at the appropriate point. (C programmers would recognize this as “#include”.)

I can’t do includes in Pages. I can do includes with Markdown, if I use Marked for rendering. (There are other Markdown tools that handle includes.)

But Markdown (and HTML) can’t handle spreadsheets. My schedule is a real spreadsheet. I have a column of durations and a column of times. I enter the start time, and all of the rest of the times are calculated, by adding the prior row’s duration and time.

With Word, I can embed the schedule as an Excel spreadsheet, and I can use Paste/Special/Paste Link to paste a reference to text from another document. I have one document with all of my boilerplate in it. Then, as I create my plan documents, I can copy bits of boilerplate from the boilerplate document, and I paste-link them into the plan document.

The only document tool I can find that supports this is Word. Not Pages; not Google Docs; not Markdown. (OK. I admit that OpenOffice and LibreOffice can maybe do this. They are kinda clunky on the Mac. LibreOffice 4.2.4.2 gave me spinning beach ball and crashed twice in about 10 minutes of light use. OpenOffice 4.1.0 crashed once, and it failed to properly render the paste-linked text.)

• Rename the PPTX to give it a .ZIP extension. For example, rename TEST.PPTX to TEST.PPTX.ZIP.
• Open the ZIP file.
• Open the ppt folder within the ZIP.
• Copy (drag-and-drop) presentation.xml from the ppt folder to your desktop.
• Edit it with a text editor:
• Find this string:

<p:sldSz cx="9144000" cy="6858000" type="screen4x3"/>

• Change it to:

<p:sldSz cx="12191996" cy="6858000" type="screen4x3"/>

• Save presentation.xml.
• Copy it back into the ppt folder, replacing the existing file.
• Close the ZIP file and rename it back to TEST.PPTX.
• Open TEST.PPTX in PowerPoint.
• You'll have to move images left/right to get them where you want them.

From http://tumblr.cgeier.at/post/43296834116/convert-a-4-3-ppt-slide-deck-into-a-16-9-aspect-ratio and http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00566_Make_screenshow_fill_a_wide_screen_display.htm

Google started reporting “This webpage is not available” (and “ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED”) if I clicked the More button, when I went to pcworld.com.

It turns out this was caused by the HTTPS Everywhere extension. HTTPS Everywhere was redirecting links from http://www.pcworld.com to https://www.pcworld.com, and PC World does not work with https!

To fix this, look in your address bar, at its right side. There is a blue circle with arrows coming out of it. Click it. Turn off HTTPS for PC World. Bask in the glory of success.

If you use a public Wi-Fi hot spot, and it is configured to use WPA or WPA2, it is probably safe to use the hot spot. If you don’t know whether the hot spot uses WPA/WPA2:

• If you don’t have to enter a password, it is NOT using WPA/WPA2. Be careful.
• If you have to enter a password to use the Wi-Fi, it might be using WPA/WPA2 or it might be using WEP. Check the following:
  • Click on the Wi-Fi signal bars in your Tray. You’ll see a “Wireless Network Connection” list near the bottom of the pop-up window.
  • Hover over the name of the hot spot, in the list of connections. You’ll see a cream-background pop-up (on top of the existing pop-up).
  • Look for the “Security Type” row. If it says WPA2-xxxx or WPA-xxxx, you’re probably OK. (If this really is the hot spot you think you are using. Somebody could have a hot spot with the same name in the building next door, and they could have set it up to be nasty.)
  • WEP is cheap and tawdry and generally does not protect you from a determined hacker

So if you don’t have WPA/WPA2 what’s the problem? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep

How can you defend against that sort of thing?

• Install and use a VPN.
• Use Chrome, and (before you go to the hot spot) go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore and download and install the HTTPS Everywhere extension.
• Visit only HTTPS sites. Watch the address bar while you’re at the hot spot. If you ever see the address bar NOT containing a padlock icon on its left side then:
  • If the site you are on knows who you are (i.e. it has a cookie for you), you just risked your account on that site. Leave the site, go to a SAFE network connection, and change your password.
• Go into Control Panel / Windows Firewall. Ensure that the shield icon for Public Internet is green, indicating that you are using the recommended settings.
• Go to Control Panel / Network and Sharing Center,
  • Click on “Change Advanced Sharing Settincgs” and scroll down to the Public section
  • Turn off:
    • Network discovery
    • File and print sharing
    • Public Folder Sharing
    • Media Streaming

Do I need to do all of these or just one of these?

• Check for WPA2. If the access point uses WPA2, you don’t have to worry about VPN or HTTPS Everywhere.
• If you have a VPN and it is set up 100% correctly, you probably don’t need the rest.
• HTTPS Everywhere is good, so long as you visit solely HTTPS-enabled sites.
• The Control Panel stuff is good for general protection, but it won’t protect you from Firesheep.

My advice is to do all of these. Maybe you rushed your check for WPA and made a mistake. If your VPN leaks, but you visit only HTTPS, you’re still safe. You have to have both a bad VPN setup and an HTTP session before your data is at risk.

Don’t forget that in addition to your browser talking to remote sites, if you have other applications that sync data or fetch data, if they use HTTP instead of HTTPS, they could expose your data too. Best to shut them down while using an insecure hot spot.

There is still a small risk. Suppose you’re using the hot spot in a Starbucks, and the hot spot is named STARBK1. Suppose that the teenager in the Baskin-Robbins next door also set up a hot spot named STARBK1, and he hacked his hot spot to have high power and to mess with your data. Your PC might connect to the Baskin-Robbins hot spot instead of the Starbucks hot spot.

There is a way to protect against this, but it is impractical. You’d have to ask the barista what his MAC address was, his external IP address, and the address of his gateway router. Then you could run geeky utilities on your PC to confirm that you were going through his hotspot. (You have to go beyond his MAC address because the kid at Baskin-Robbins could spoof that.)

If the ice cream kid is really doing this, if you wander around Starbucks with your laptop, at some point you’ll probably see two STARBK1 hot spots, and then you can freak out.

Find out the name of the Starbucks hot spot. It might be named “STARBKS” and the Baskin-Robbins kid might name his “Free Starbucks Wi-Fi”. Ask the barista or check the sign.

Every once in a while, you’ll get a Windows error dialog with the title “TODO: " and the text "TODO: has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program." You'll be given the options of "Close the program" and "Debug the program".

When a developer starts a project using common development tools, he starts from a program stub provided by the dev tool. Microsoft provides a stub which includes a default exception handler. The default exception handler displays this dialog – mostly.

The default exception handler fills in the name/description of the program before it displays the error. But… the stub also includes a default program name/description. That default name/description is “TODO: ".

So this error is produced when the developer of an application couldn’t be bothered to update the default name/description provided by the stub.

OK. So how do I tell which program is throwing an error (and crashing)?

Open Task Manager. Look in the “Description” column. You’ll see the program name/description for every running program. The one with the description, “TODO: " -- that's your problem application. Look in the "Image Name" column and the "Command Line" column for clues as to what the program is.

I have toolbars on my Windows Taskbar. It is easy to change the icon size on the Taskbar via right-click on the Taskbar, select Properties, and set/clear “Use small icons.”

But I can never remember how to change the size of icons in a Toolbar which I have added to the Taskbar. To do that:

• Turn off “Lock the Taskbar” via right-click on the Taskbar.
• Right-click on the Name of your Toolbar and choose View.
• Choose “Large Icons” or “Small Icons” on that sub-menu.

This video, “A Conference Call in Real Life,” is a must-see if you spend all day in conference calls.

At work, they replaced my HP ProBook 6450b with an HP ProBook 6470b. This upgraded my video chip. (It wasn’t something I wanted. They just do this every 3 years as a “lease roll”.)

This broke my DisplayLink adapter. Mouse was almost invisible, often left mouse droppings, and window update was abysmally slow. I knew this wasn’t USB 2.0 slowness, because the same adapter worked on the old laptop.

I don’t know why, but changing from the Windows Classic theme to the Windows 7 theme made it work. I’m guessing they don’t do much testing with the classic theme, and there’s a bug. I don’t really care for the Aero look, but it is better than a broken mouse pointer.

Note that it does not work with Windows 7 Basic.

DisplayLink hints that this might be the case: http://www.displaylink.com/support/ticket.php?id=260

Here’s how the adjustments on an Ikea Komplement hinge (used on the Pax wardrobe) work.

There are 3 adjusting screws:

• The Left/Right screw. Tilt door from side to side. Turn clockwise to move the door away from the hinge’s wall (when the door is closed).
• The In/Out screw. Move door to/from back of cabinet. Turn clockwise to move the door away from the back of the cabinet.
• The Up/Down screw. There’s a screw pair attaching the hinge to the wall. There’s a 3rd screw that doesn’t go into holes in the wall. It is an eccentric screw. As you turn it, you’ll notice the paired screws moving inside their holes.
  • When the holes get bigger on top of the screw pair, the door moves up.
  • When the holes get bigger on the bottom of the screw pair, the door moves down.