Quote of the Day

"Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." ~ NASA in 1965

Finding recent documents

Because I easily forget where I have stored a document or file, I frequently use the My Recent Documents feature of Windows. You find this under the start menu, at the top of the RH column (although if you are using the Classic mode of XP, it is just called Documents, and found on the LH side). The last 15 documents you have worked on or opened - which includes photos, Excel spreadsheets, pdf files, etc - are listed, saving you the need to go hunting all round the computer. Personally, I find the maximum 15 rather limiting, specially when I am working with photographs. Reading the online help forums, there does appear to be a way to expand this in XP, but it involves altering the computer's Registry, and when I tried it I lost all items completely, so obviously I didn't implement the plan properly. There is a Vista sidebar gadget available which can increase the number of items My Recent Documents will list. Not having Vista, I can't try it, but you will find it here if you want to give it a go. Apparently the new Windows 7 operating system will give you even more control over this helpful feature.

Typing special characters

From time to time, I want to type special characters into my documents. It might be the pound symbol for British currency, or the Euro symbol. Most word processors have the ability to insert special characters - for instance, in Word 2007 if you go to the Insert tab, you will find the Symbol option on the far right. Select the font and then the character you want, and click Insert. That's a rather long-winded way of doing things, but okay if you have only an occasional need. If there are regular characters you use, you might find it helpful to write down the Unicode numbers and use those instead.
To find the number, click on the character and you will see a shortcut key listed at the bottom of the dialogue box. For instance, the code for the French e-acute is Alt+0233. To type this, first check the Number Lock on the numeric pad of your keyboard is on. Then press and hold down the Alt key while keying in 0233. When you release the Alt key, the character will display.
Some characters have a number followed by Alt+X. In this case, you type the number and then press the Alt and X keys simultaneously. Voila! Up pops the correct character. In Word, you can also assign special key combinations to do the same job - just be careful you don't choose a key combination that would block out a normal function in your programs (so avoid any combination using the Ctrl key, for instance).
The Unicode symbols cover a very wide variety of languages, including Arabic and other non-Roman scripts. I happen to be trying to learn Chinese. While it is possible to download a Chinese character set, I mostly use the Pinyin system of Roman letters invented by the Chinese to represent the sounds of the language. Chinese has four tones, which are noted by marks above the vowels. While I could use the method I have outlined above to write these, I have also discovered a great little program which does the job automatically. It is called PinyinInput, and a manual is also available here.

Digital painting

Most free paint programs have very limited options when it comes to creative work, such as painting and manipulation of images. An exception, which I have just come across, is TwistedBrush Digital Painting and Photo Editing. While the main version is a paid-for program, with thousands of brush styles and effects, a free version has 55 filters, 19 paper textures, 14 artsets (with up to 60 brushes per set), and 17 mediums. You can turn a photograph into a hand-made image, or start from scratch. The gallery at the website shows some amazing examples of what you can do with this program. Definitely worth a dabble.

Can you trust free anti-virus software?

The short (although qualified) answer is 'yes' in this very helpful PC World article. The mag puts a range of popular applications through their paces, and notes their good points and their limitations.
Another PC World article looks at yet another security threat, botnets. Thousands of computers in New Zealand have been taken over by these nasties; is yours one of them? Here is a way to tell, and what to do about it.

Disaster recovery

I once spilled a cup of well-sweetened coffee over a control panel at the radio station I worked (back in the days when 3ZB was 3ZB). It's fair to say I was not the technicians' flavour of the month for quite some time. But what do you do if something similar happens to your cellphone or computer? PC World provides a series of nine articles on how to help your gear recover from emergency scenarios.

Quote for the day

"The perfect computer has been developed. You just feed in your problems and they never come out again." ~ Al Goodman