The Occasional Tech

How to open ODT files when you don't have Open Office

2009-10-15T10:07:00.004+11:00

Before we get started, none of the following options will retain the ODT document formatting perfectly, so if this is important to you, get OpenOffice: http://download.openoffice.org/

If you just need to quickly open an ODT/ODF document and you don't want OpenOffice, read on!

Option 1: Gmail (Google Docs)
1. Send yourself an email with the ODT file
2. Click on "Open as a Google document" next the attachment.

Option 2: Google Docs directly
1. Open Google Docs at http://docs.google.com/
2. Click Upload
3. Follow the instructions

Option 3: To open in Word 2003
This is the preferred option as your formatting will be retained more than in Google Docs.
Don't bother using the Sun ODF plugin - I could not get it to work.
Instead try the following:
1. Get this Office Add-In: http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter/files/ODF%20Add-in%20for%20Office/
2. Close Office programmes as well as Outlook
2. Install Add-In
2a. Optionally associate ODT files with MS Office.
3. Open the document in the usual way from Explorer or Word
4. The Add-In will convert the document in around 30 seconds

Option 4: To open in Word 2007
I noticed formatting was better retained using Word 2007.
- No steps! Seems to just work :)

iPod Touch and Case Magnets Do Not Mix!

2009-04-23T11:42:00.002+10:00

I recently got an iPod Touch 16GB 2G/G2. It is a fantastic device. You can do so much from the palm of your hand. Unfortunately, the first time I took it out on the road it shut itself off 30 seconds into playing music. I could reset it (DFU mode I think it's called?) but it kept happening. I tried restoring, removing all apps, switching off WIFI, and everything else I could think of, but nothing fixed the seemingly random shut-off behaviour.

Finally I went to the Apple Store Genius Bar and explained it to them. They couldn't reproduce the issue but they kindly provided me with a brand new iPod. [Clue: they tested it OUT of the case.] Kudos to Apple. So I got home, charged it for 3 hours as recommended, put it BACK in the case and started to listen to music. It shut off right on cue! OK, I thought, it's just a coincidence. I reset it and started playing music again. This time it worked all the way to work on the bus and then shut down when I put it in my pocket to walk up to work. I had had a suspicion that something to do with shutting the (magnetic) case lid was to blame but had never properly tested it. So I removed the iPod Touch from the case and put it in my pocket just like that. The music kept playing all the way on the rest of my walk to work. Now we're getting somewhere!

Very frustrating! I googled for the problem (why didn't I think of this before? Who knows!) and found somone on MacRumors who had the exact same problem! And furthermore, they had a case with a magnet for keeping the lid shut. I got one of these Cygnett cases when I bought the device and had it in there the whole time. This morning I have been testing the device with the case FAR, far away and no problems at all. I will keep testing when I walk home tonight, but I feel that it is solved. It's a shame as the case is quite nice, although now that I think about it, the fit is not great and typing on the keyboard at the edge of the screen is irritating.

Next step: buy a nice NON-MAGNETIC ipod touch case and screen protector from Amazon. Or maybe i'll get one of these leather folio ipod cases with a clip instead of a magnet.

Moral of the Story: do not buy an iPod Touch case containing a magnet!

How to install Google Chrome version 2.0

2009-03-19T17:44:00.003+11:00

1. Download Google Chrome if you don't have it - http://www.google.com/chrome/ and install it.

2. Download the Google Chrome Channel Changer - http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel from the Chromium Dev site.

3. Run the Channel Changed and select Dev.

4. Open Chrome, click on the little spanner icon and choose About Google Chrome. You will see a button in the bottom left saying Update. Click it.

5. Restart Chrome - now you have the latest Dev version - 2.0!

6. To check that it's working - hit F11 - you will have a frameless browser window!

How to get a list of directory sizes in Linux

2009-02-14T10:10:00.003+11:00

In Windows, when I need a list of directories, showing their size, I use Total Commander. In the shell on Linux how do we do this?

Say you need a list of all the home directories and the total size of each.
Do the following:

cd /home
du -sck * | sort +0nr

du is the utility for showing file sizes
-s means summarise - so don't show the subdirectories - just show the total size of each directory
-c means give a grand total
-k means show the numbers as counts of kilobytes, so for example, a 186MB directory, will show up as 186000
* means show everything

We then pipe to the sort utility, which sorts the directory list by size.
Remove r to list in ascending order.

If you want to see the sizes in MB, the command is:

du -sc --block-size=M * | sort +0nr

Finally, if you don't want to see some directories, you can exclude them by name or pattern:

Exclude directory called 'dir1': du -sck --exclude=dir1 * | sort +0nr

Exclude directories with names that start with 'abc': du -sck --exclude=abc* * | sort +0nr

My escape key doesn't work in Vista!

2009-01-29T19:54:00.002+11:00

Do you have Photoshop CSx open?
Yes?
Close it!

When Gmail insists on switching to the low bandwidth version

2009-01-19T16:15:00.002+11:00

Today, for some reason, gmail all of a sudden insisted on using the low bandwidth version of the app because it said my browser (Firefox 3) was not supported. This was happening on Google Apps Mail and regular Gmail.

I found that changing the language setting to English US did not help.

What did help is using this URL:

Regular Gmail

https://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser#inbox

Google Apps

https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/?nocheckbrowser#inbox

How to delete files in Windows Vista

2009-01-08T21:56:00.002+11:00

Sometimes it can seem impossible to delete a file/directory in Vista.
This is because of the way security is implemented.

The easiest way to get around this is to first make your account the owner of the file/directory in question. It will help if you have an Administrator account.

You can do this in the Windows file/folder properties but this is quite confusing, so try it in the command line.

Click on the start menu, and type cmd in the Search Box, then hit Enter.

In the command prompt type:

takeown /f [path to file/directory]

The /f switch means that we're taking ownership the specified file in the path.

Now you should see a message like:

SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "[path]" now owned by user "[computer name]\[user name]".

The next step is to give yourself permission to delete the file. This is achieved with:

cacls [path] /G [your user name]:F

/G means we are granting permissions to a user.
And the F means Full Control

Now you should be allowed to delete it. So just do so with:

del [path]

That's it!

Using wget to accomplish great downloading feats!

2008-12-20T00:30:00.003+11:00

Instead of using DownThemAll and then ftping, sometimes you need to leech directly to your web host.

The perfect tool for this is wget.

Here's how to use wget to download all the zip files linked to from a given web page:

wget -A.zip -e robots=off -E -H -p -Dexample.com --random-wait -r -l inf http://www.example.com/great-files.php

The command above looks for all the links to .zip files found on the page http://www.example.com/great-files.php.

You can ignore most of the options apart from -A (file type).
-D is used to tell wget not to download files from external links, so it will only download .zip files with a path on example.com

Useful tools for today's modern webmaster!

Fixing Issues With The Wordpress Super Cache Plugin

2008-12-15T15:51:00.002+11:00

In theory WP Super Cache is an awesome plugin, and used to work great. Since about version 0.84 I started to have problems on all of my sites. Basically it got 'stuck' and stopped caching and deleting expired cache files. This caused a bunch of cached files to remain cached indefinitely! Not great when showing live auction results.

Today I found a solution which seems to work from Quick Online Tips. It involves manually deleting the cache contents and the plugin, and then deactivating and reactivating it. Only takes a minute per blog, and seems to have fixed my issues so far!

The Best Online Hex Color Chart I've Found

2008-12-11T16:17:00.001+11:00

Since I don't have a printed reference, and I'm not much of a Photoshop user, I am always looking up hex colours online.

I used to always use visibone but the other day I found this page: Hex Hub HTML Color Codes: Hexadecimal codes for named colors used in HTML page features from december.com. It has every colour you need while CSS hacking!

Enjoy....

10 Highly Useful Wordpress Tips

2008-12-11T14:52:00.003+11:00

I was searching for the Wordpress category RSS URL, and I found this post from Jean-Baptiste Jung called 10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress

It contains a great list of useful bits of code you can add/change in Wordpress to accomplish some useful tweaks on this great Blogging/CMS tool (yes I know it isn't strictly a CMS, but with some clever tagging, categorising and template hacking it really can be).

In related news, Wordpress 2.7 out today! Installed it on my company blog and am very impressed. The important changes are in the admin really - nothing is hard to find and navigating around is much quicker. There are some new features around comments and bulk editing posts which I'm yet to try it. Install it now.

Experiences with Mozy

2008-10-22T16:44:00.003+11:00

Like many bloggers, I've been following Mozy for a while. I've had a free account for a year or so now and it has been quietly backing up 1GB of important docs the whole time.

The Windows app can be a bit slow and clunky but it gets the job done. The most annoying thing was that you had to back up using backup sets, which were groups of file extensions.

The other day I noticed that the app had updated itself and that you could now back up by location. So I signed up for a year ($55) and added every folder I would not want to lose. 200GB later and Mozy was ready to start the slow process in getting everything up into the magic backup cloud.

It was a pretty painless process, and being able to back up by location actually prompted me to delete a bunch of old crap from my computers.

I would love to try JungleDisk (the Amazon S3 powered solution) but I just don't have the time. At least Mozy is an integrated solution. As long as the restores work.... When I get a chance, I'll test a restore and post about the experience.

BTW, I did try Carbonite at a recommendation from a friend, but the backup client would never connect to their server due to some kind of proxy error. I tried to troubleshoot but their support was lame, and I gave up after 30 mins or so.

The Mozy newsletter is pretty funny too....

Google Chrome does not trust Google

2008-09-12T17:26:00.007+10:00

So, using Chrome, I typed in the wrong address for AdManager and this is what I got:

I love the bit about "fake (and potentially harmful) version of google.com"!

Chrome updates

2008-09-10T10:59:00.003+10:00

Can't say it better than Profy...

I do enjoy Chrome, but I am happy that Firefox 3.1 will bring the speed increases for Javascript based apps, as I am not ready to fully commit to the plugin-less world of Chrome. Firefox has been good to me for many years :) and this article says that the JS engine may execute Javascript 28% faster than Chrome! Bring it on!

Also, having not researched IE8 at all, the above article was very enlightening. I encourage you to read it.

Chrome exploits

2008-09-05T12:36:00.002+10:00

Google Chrome Browser 0.2.149.27 Automatic File Download Exploit sourced from milw0rm

Summary:

A naughty website can include the code shown in the exploit, in order to automatically download any file they like to your computer.
The file will be downloaded to the default location (in Windows: My Documents\Downloads\)
This is not necessarily a risk if you do not run the file, but it is troubling nonetheless

In a related note, I wonder why Chrome does not include a master password to encrypt saved passwords. Anyone using your computer can just open Chrome options and see all your saved passwords. Yes it's beta, but this seems pretty important to include early on.

Definitely enjoying using Chrome on [safe] websites!

First impressions of Google Chrome

2008-09-03T07:25:00.008+10:00

OK.. so Google Chrome! Who was expecting that?! Personally, I am not sure why Google has brought out this browser. Perhaps it's about providing a great tool to access all their web properties. With the exception of radio and print ads (which still require the web for setup), their entire business is browser-bound - so why not own the viewing experience too.

Installation of Google Chrome on Win XP was easy with no hitches. It imported bookmarks and browsing history from Firefox, so when I fired it up I didn't really notice a difference.

The first thing I noticed was that the page loads are blazingly fast! I did a few tests on FF3 and Chrome by clearing the cache, and Chrome is noticably faster. Even opening a new tab is quick - on my PC sometimes Firefox hangs when opening a new tab - never figured out why.

The URL bar is also the universal search. The behaviour is similar to FF3 in that it searches history and bookmarks. Like in Firefox, if you type a keyword but don't scroll down to the history list, it will search on your default engine. The only difference is that Chrome explicitly gives you an option (top of the list) to search for the keyword. This is actually a better user experience, because sometimes on FF3 you think you've selected the first item in the list but it actually tries to search, e.g. typing 'e' for ebay takes you to E! Entertainment - yuk!

One strange thing is that scrolling with the mouse is much more sensitive (faster) than in FF3 or any other Windows app. No setting to tweak this (yet.)

That's all for now, will post again with discussion of the other Google Chrome Features.

Get Chrome for yourself.

Update

Installed it at work - for some reason it refused to import from FF3 but worked from IE. It could have been because I have FF3 installed in a non-standard location here (lack of Admin rights.)

Chrome also uses the built-in Windows proxy settings (Internet Options - like IE uses) so I had to adjust this to get it to work - for some reason it wouldn't work with the domain-set proxy server. It would load the page title and then stop. Changing to another proxy server fixed this, and I'm now typing this update on Google Chrome!

Have had more time to look at the features....

New tab page

This appears pretty cool at first look, but will have to see if it's useful. It shows a grid of screen captures of the last few sites you've visited. Don't know if it will be useful, because

Also presented is a browser history search - useful for quick recall of something viewed earlier in the day.

And recently closed tabs - I think this is probably the best thing on this page.

Task Manager (!!)

This has to be the coolest feature:

Memory and CPU stats per tab. Assuming the threading works properly, this should be very handy for killing naughty resource hogging websites.

Clicking on Stats for nerds, opens a new tab with more detailed stats on each tab: Virtual Memory used, etc. Also shows the total resource footprint of Chrome vs other open browsers, e.g. IE. Google sticking it to MS.

There are a whole bunch of other features to discuss, but more to come later.

Sad Face Update #2

Redirects seem a bit screwy, e.g. cannot log in to AdSense
Webmaster Tools does not work at all!
Some Google Gadgets don't display right

How to rename tags in Google Reader

2008-08-11T11:30:00.004+10:00

[This is an updated version of a Googlified post for August 2008. Full credit goes to him as the original author.]

The Problem: you would like to rename one of your many Google Reader tags/folders, but Google Reader does not directly allow this.

The Solution!

Open Google Reader
Open the Settings page of Google Reader, then go to the Subscriptions tab.
Enter the name of the existing tag you wish to change in the input field called “Filter by name, tag, or URL” (top right)
Click Select: All -X- subscriptions (top left)
On one of the subscriptions, use the menu called “Change folders...” to create the new tag (renamed version of existing). This is done by clicking on New Folder...
In the “More actions…” menu at the top of the page, choose the new tag under “Add tag…”. This will add the new tag to all selected subscriptions.

In the “More actions…” menu, look under “Remove tag…” and select the old tag to remove it from all selected subscriptions.
Done!

This is not too hard to do and it's not something you will do that often, so maybe Google chose to leave out the rename feature (even though it exists in Gmail labels) to keep things simple.

Thanks again to Haochi.

How to concatenate text cells in a Google Docs Spreadsheet

2008-07-25T11:39:00.003+10:00

Let's say you have a bunch of text cells that you want to concatenate into one cell.

For example, you may have labels for different categories stored in column B.
You want to merge a certain set of labels together, and separate them by a blank line.

Simple, use this formula:

=CONCATENATE(B3,char(10),char(13),B5,char(10),char(13),B7,char(10),char(13),B9)

The char(10),char(13) is the ASCII character codes for carriage return, so this is what creates the blank line.

If you want to reference cells on another sheet (e.g. Sheet1) you can do it like so:

=CONCATENATE(Sheet1!B3,char(10),char(13),Sheet1!B5,char(10),char(13),Sheet1!B7,char(10),char(13),Sheet1!B9)

Sorted!

If you're like me and into the Wii...

2008-07-04T16:54:00.001+10:00

found this sweet Wii store.. Yeah there are lots on the web but this one makes it easy to find stuff and things are generally cheap! Check it out peoplez.

Are you an Internet Explorer 6 user?

2008-06-24T08:32:00.006+10:00

If you answered a resounding, 'Yes!', then read on because I have some info that's really going to help you. For years now, if you wanted integrated search, tabbed browsing, streamlined RSS handling, and the ability to customize your browser, you really had to use Firefox. More recently, IE7 was an option, but a lot of people (45% of the readers of this blog) still use IE. So all of you 45% were left out in the cold when it came to a turbo-charged browsing experience.

Well no more! Windows Live Toolbar fully supports Internet Explorer version 6 and gives you everything that IE 7 has and more. Main features include:

Search: Search box in tool bar. Suggested searches as you type. Choose to search only for images, news etc.
Feeds: auto-detects feeds in page. One click subscribe.
Tabbed browsing: My tabs - open all your favorite sites with one click.
Customization: add custom buttons to show you things like News, Airfares, Weather, Movie Reviews right on your toolbar.
Security and Privacy: integrated OneCare Advisor tells you when sites are risky.

[If you're ready to grab it now then: Click here to download Windows Live Toolbar for free.]

As a web developer, I use Firefox for my base browser, and IE all the time to test sites. Windows Live Toolbar has really made my web development tasks easier, with the excellent features it adds. I get the same integrated search, easy RSS subscription, tabbed browsing, and customisation ability that I get in Firefox - and it's just a one-click install to get it.

Another group of people who will benefit from Live Toolbar are your family members who are always asking you for help. The great thing about the Toolbar is that it makes a lot of the tasks people want to do these days easy. For example, take subscribing to RSS. I know people who work in Online Media who don't even know how to do this. They are Firefox users and they can't even work it out - and they'd love to know! In this case, it is really just easier for them to stick to IE 6 + Live Toolbar. They'll get all the features they want, delivered in an easy way they can understand.

So I downloaded the Toolbar for IE6 yesterday while doing some site testing for a client. Once installed, I was skeptical about how it would compare to Firefox. After using it for a while, I was quite impressed. Yes, you could say, 'Well Firefox has had this for aaaaaaaaages!'. But that really isn't the point - the point is - IE6 now has the features - so use them!

Click here to download Windows Live Toolbar for free.

Use the link above to download Windows Live Toolbar from Microsoft. There is no signup required. It also comes in many languages other than English. The full list of languages is here. Enjoy your brand new IE6 browsing experience.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions - any.. at all!

p.s. see below for the main features.

	Start a search from anywhere The search box on Windows Live Toolbar makes it convenient to find anything you're looking for online. To get you the answer faster, the toolbar shows you the most popular queries as you type. You can also choose the kind of answers you want, such as news or images.		Personalize your web experience Custom buttons let you customize your Windows Live Toolbar to get the information you care about most, like movie reviews or airfare updates. Download custom buttons from Windows Live Gallery. (Don't see the custom button you want? It's easy to create your own.)
	Stay informed about topics you care about Interested in specific content? Windows Live Toolbar lets you detect and add feeds to your Live.com home page with a single click.		Help protect yourself against phishing scams and viruses Windows Live OneCare Advisor is included with your toolbar to help keep you safer. We've also improved our blocking technology to better protect your personal information from unauthorized access.
	Make web surfing simple with tabbed browsing Easily manage a bunch of web pages in a single browser window. Quickly open new tabs and switch between web pages. You can open your favorite sites with one click by using My Tabs.

How to conditional format a cell based on the contents of another cell

2008-06-09T20:19:00.002+10:00

Microsoft Excel tip

This tip shows you how to apply conditional formatting to a cell depening on the value of another cell.

For example say you have a worksheet to store Tasks.
It has a Status column, with values TBD, Active, etc... and a description column which stores text.

Let's say you want to make the description cells yellow if the Status cell is 'TBD'

To accomplish this, click on the cell you wish to format, then click Format->Conditional Formatting.

In the Formula field, you would put:

=FIND("TBD",$F32)

... where F32 is is the Status cell next to the Description cell. (The $ tells Excel to leave F as the column reference if you paste this formula into other rows.)

And then specify the formatting, e.g. Yellow shading.

That's it. You can also use the format painter or Paste Special to paste this formula into other cells.

A nice backlink checker I just found

2008-06-03T14:57:00.003+10:00

When building your presence online through SEO techniques, you need to have a reliable method of checking how many backlinks you have. Yahoo Site Explorer does an OK job of this. As an aside, why does Google do this so differently??

Anyway the SEO Pro link checker is the best one I've seen so far. You put in your URL and it prints out a neat table of:

backlink URL
backlink homepage pagerank
backlink page pagerank
backlink site incoming links
nofollow: yes/no
anchor text
anchor type (not sure what this is - but I think it tells you when someone just pasted your URL in and didn't apply any anchor text - a la splogs)

This gives you a pretty nice picture of your exposure to backlinks. Anchor text, in particular, is awesome because it is important to vary your anchor text for a realistic backlink profile.

The final killer feature is the export to CSV. It is a good idea to track your backlinks every month or so, so with this, you can paste the CSV into Excel and run some reports, graphs, etc. This enables you to apply some methodology to your SEO efforts.

Nice one SEO Pro - golf clap!

Make GTDInbox work with Firefox 3 RC1

2008-05-27T10:42:00.007+10:00

This is how to get GTDInbox to work after you upgrade Firefox 3 beta 5 to RC1 on Windows XP.

1. Open Explorer, and go to:

"c:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USER_NAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\SOME_RANDOM_STRING.default\extensions\{bcd47b5a-43be-433f-9051-7ce2cdf94ac0}\"

The {bcd47b5a-43be-433f-9051-7ce2cdf94ac0} uniquely identifies the GTDInbox extension.

2. Backup your chrome.manifest file - copy it to chrome.manifest.bak

3. Open the chrome.manifest file in Notepad.

4. The very first line in the file should look like this:

content gtdinbox chrome/content/

5. Change it to:

content gtdinbox chrome/content/ contentaccessible=yes

and save the file.

6. You must now edit the install.rdf file in the same directory. First back it up, and then open it in Notepad.

7. You will see a section about 12 lines down that starts with < ! -- Firefox (spaces added to avoid HTML massacre by blogger.

8. On the line with element maxVersion, change the value (between the angle bracket tags) from 3.0b5 to 3.0 and save the file.

9. Sign out of Gmail if you are in there, exit Firefox, and open it again. You shouldn't need to clear your cache.

10. Open Tools->Addons and make sure GTDInbox is enabled.

11. Sign in to Gmail/Google Apps mail. If it worked, you will see the Compose Personal link, and your labels organised in the GTDInbox way.

Enjoy! ... and head over to http://productivefirefox.com/ and show your support for this clever AddOn.

[from info found here: http://forum.productivefirefox.com/index.php?topic=412.0]

Protect Your Site With Firewall Script

2008-04-29T14:56:00.003+10:00

If you've ever been hacked, you will know how important a firewall is. You have options here, you can use a full scale firewall service, an htaccess file for Apache, or now a third option - Firewall Script.

Firewall Script is fully portable and can be installed on any web server supporting PHP - shared, virtual, dedicated, etc. It's easy to install and, most importantly, does not affect the performance of your site.

Get the benefit of full web security for your site now and get Firewall Script.

How to subscribe to any podcast in iTunes

2008-04-24T10:20:00.003+10:00

This is probably 100% obvious to most people but I never realised you could subscribe to any RSS podcast feed you like in iTunes; I thought it had to bounce off the Apple server or something.

Anyway whatever - it is totally easy.

You just find the RSS feed of the podcast you want to subscribe to (in Firefox, right-click on the link/RSS icon and choose Copy Link Location).
Open iTunes, click on the Advanced menu, then Subscribe to Podcast (this is in iTunes 7.6.2)

Paste in the URL and click OK.

It looks like it's possible to put in multiple URLs but I haven't tested this.

Obvious but useful...