| 18 April, 2011 (published) 18 April, 2011 (last modified) | Ad  |
| 27 November, 2010 (published) 1 December, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
Safe upgrading to WordPress 3.0x in a few steps
This website was using WordPress 2.7. I decided to upgrade to 3.01. It went very smoothly, and was done in half an hour. I do not trust the automatic upgrading supplied by WordPress as I really want to know what is going on. For instance because it could go terribly wrong.
The Internet fora are full of disappointed website administrators complaining about their ruined sites because of a failed automatic upgrade. You cannot in all honesty expect the existence of a bullet-proof automatic upgrade from the WordPress people. Webhosters deal with firewalls and other security settings in wildly varying ways.
| 27 November, 2010 (published) 27 November, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
More precise dates and times in digital calendars
Language can be precise but also imprecise. When this level of accuracy is intended by the speaker or writer there is no problem. However if the inaccuracy or confusion is not intended there is room for improvement. When it is Saturday and someone tells you he wants to meet you “next Friday” you might be confused. Is this 6 days from now or 13 days. If he meant coming Friday why didn’t he use the much clearer ”coming Friday” in stead of “next Friday”.
The content of a calendar is supposed to be precise. Maybe in Greece you can come hours too late for an appointment, in many other countries this behavior is not accepted.
| 19 November, 2010 (published) 19 November, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
Outlook messes up its delayed send option
Replying quickly to received emails easily leads to long threads. For a number of reasons delaying the reply has many advantages. It will reduce your work load. But delaying the reply implies some bookkeeping on your side. And in addition it means a mental burden. You know you still have to do something. For this purpose the option of “Delayed Send” is ideal. You prepare you reply and tell your email program to send in two days, or two weeks, or a month or whenever. The email program checks the email addresses and if it can’t find any problem it will store the email message until its time has come to be sent. This sounds pretty good and it is pretty good.
| 19 April, 2010 (published) 19 April, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
No audio device installed
I am running Windows Vista Business on an HP EliteBook 2530p with all operating system updates applied automatically. My laptop has a SoundMax audio device integrated on the motherboard. I am using this sound output device often. Especially when traveling, and listening in a hotel to an Internet radio station. Or for using Skype.
Audio stopped working
Suddenly the sound device stopped working. The sound applet in the Control Panel reported that “No audio device installed”. The Device Manager reported that the driver for this audio device was working properly. Asking the Device Manager to update the driver gave as answer that the driver was up to date. The obvious conclusion is that of a hardware defect. But the laptop is brand new.
| 19 April, 2010 (published) 27 November, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
Bug, design flaw or feature request
The distinction between a bug and a design flaw is vague. If a program causes an access violation this is certainly a fully qualified bug. What, however, if a program doesnot do what the programmer had intended, but without causing a crash? I think this is also a bug. Suppose a program does exactly what the programmer had in mind, but the behavior is not what a user expects. A developer could program that a simple ascii editor starts the first line with “We hope you like our editor”. This is not a bug, but a design flaw. If the program does exactly what the programmer does and it does what the user expects it should do, but the user wants it to do something else, we have the situation of a feature request.
| 19 April, 2010 (published) 19 April, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
PowerPoint forgets status of normal view
When preparing slides in PowerPoint one normally works in Normal View. The left side has a page-control with two tabsheets: Outline and Slides. I prefer the Outline tab, with all the titles visible as text. It allows for faster navigation and for faster editing. But when closing a PowerPoint presentation and reopening the same presentation the program has forgotten that I prefer the Outline tab, because it always restarts with the Slides tabsheet visible.
| 19 April, 2010 (published) 19 April, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
New text block has wrong properties
In PowerPoint objects can have default properties, like a text block can have a default font and a default font size. When editing such an object one has the option to save the actual properties to become the default properties for all new such objects.
If you copy part of the text of a text block and one pastes this object in a new text block this works fine. However if one pastes the copied object immediately on the slide, PowerPoint costructs a text block for you and inserts the text in it. Unfortunately not with the default or inherited properties.
| 19 March, 2010 (published) 19 April, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
Wrong SMTP server used by Outlook
A number of people uses more than one SMTP server. An SMTP server is the computer program, managed by your internet provider (employer, school, ISP, …), that takes care of sending your email. Such an SMTP server can be a bare programs marginally implementing the standard RFC protocols, or it can be part of a larger server program, like the Microsoft Exchange Server.
More than one SMTP Server
There are good reasons for a user wanting to have more than one SMTP server available. Network servers go down occasionally. The time and the frequency they faulter varies, but faulter they do. When your SMTP server is unavailable you cannot send your mission-critical email. As a safety net having a few extra SMTP servers at your disposal comes in quite handy.
Protection of SMTP servers
Another reason for having more freedom in picking out different SMTP server is the way they are protected. An SMTP server must be protected against “relaying” all email-send requests. If this protection would be absent the SMTP sever would immediately be used for relaying spam. There are basically three SMTP protections:
| 19 January, 2010 (published) 19 April, 2010 (last modified) | Ad |
Nightmare: Windows has closed Spooler
Fix the Spooler with FixIt
It took me many hours to solve the following problem. At startup Windows started to issue warnings about the spooler system and finally it announced “Windows has closed Spooler SubSystem App”. My system is XP with automatic updates. Given the hundreds of complaints on the Internet I am not the only one having that problem.
No sweat: you go to a Microsoft website and you download a FixIt and run it. Well the fix did a lot, except fixing my problems. Suddenly the Spooler service spoolsv.exe disappeared from the list of services. And starting it myself was of no avail. Again downloaded a Microsoft FixIt and run it. This time the Spooler was back, but all my printers were gone.
