Kroniekschrijver Untangles the Tower of Babel

 

The Tower of Babel. Everyone knows the story. It is the metaphorical explanation of why there are so many languages in the world. The tale also states that if man were of one language, nothing he tried to do would be impossible. Maybe the construction around the area would go faster and smoother if it were not for the cacophony of different languages being used. Can you read and interpret the following line? El Internet es un lugar asombroso. No? How about this one? Internet ist ein erstaunlicher Platz. No? Neither can I. Unfortunately, there may be morsels of wisdom buried in those words and we would never know. Maybe the old family Bible, with the mysterious writing in it and handed down for generations contains the directions to your family’s fortune. A kings ransom smuggled out of some country and hidden in another part of the world just before an invasion of your ancestral home. Or perhaps the letters written to your grandfather from the girl in Italy during World War Two would be interesting and poignant if they could be deciphered.

In my own case, I received a letter from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in response to an inquiry sent to her. Probably some Under Assistant Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Correspondence simply made a mistake but the Queen’s letter of reply was in Dutch. Despite my heritage, I don’t speak or read Dutch. There it was, a royal letter from the leader of one of the world’s most important nations, and I don’t know what it says. I was panic-stricken. There was always the possibility that the Queen was going to appoint me burgemeester (Mayor) of my ancestral hometown of Outdorp. (Ok, maybe not a big chance, but could I take that risk?) What to do? Fortunately, I do have some friends that spend time here in Charlotte County that are Dutch so I thought I will just have them translate the letter for me. Unfortunately, none of them were in town when the envelope with the official stamps and embossing on the front of it arrived.

So there it was, a letter from the Queen of the Netherlands in my hands, probably with an urgent plea to begin some important quest. It was imperative that I know what it said before I slipped on my wooden shoes and went forth for her Majesty, tilting at windmills.

Fortunately, the Tower of Babel has been reduced to a parking lot. It is now possible to understand and communicate with people all around the world. If the need arises to translate a document, there is a very powerful tool at our disposal. Simply fire up your computer, connect to the Internet and go to www.microsofttranslator.com, http://translate.google.com/ or simply type translator in any search engine for many sites that will preform this task . At these sites there are tools to translate specific words from one language to another. For example, the word columnist, translated to Dutch, is kroniekschrijver. But even more interesting is that you can enter an entire block of text and it will translate the document for you. If it is a short passage that interests you, simply type it in. Another Dutch phrase I like is “hij is zeer interessant”. Put that phrase in front of kroniekschrijver and it describes this column. For a longer document, use a scanner to capture the document into your computer then simply copy and paste the text into the translator and behold the mysteries laid bare.

Additionally, the sites have the ability to translate websites. For example: pretend you are planning a trip to Portugal and the website for the Portuguese travelers information bureau is in Portuguese. Simply type in the website’s URL, (http://address) and select the language to convert to and in moments the fog will lift from your eyes and all will be revealed. And best of all, the cost of this service is nada, zip, zero. As an extra bonus, once a word or phrase has been translated to the language of choice, the service will then search the Web using the translated word. Are you doing research on World War Two German places of interest? Search for them in the German language and your results can be translated back to English at the same time.

So for now, Vriendelike Groete. (What did he say, Martha?) Look it up, just like I did.

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1467985899 ISBN-13: 9781467985895

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734

Tip Toe through the ToolTips with me!

The beginning of July and one of my New Year resolutions is still unbroken. At the beginning of the year I resolved to expand my office. While it may be a bit easier to get permitting and financing now to build a new office, it is still easier to take advantage of the existing space available. So I decided to expand my office to all of Charlotte County. Imagine a multiple hundred square mile office. All I need is an Internet connection to the World Wide Web, some good victuals and something to quench my thirst. So this week I decided to plop down in a corner of my new office that offered good food, and a beverage to match. Beef o Bradys in Punta Gorda, FL fit the requirements. They not only provide the provisions, but the wireless connection to the Internet as well.

Choosing a lunch item from the menu was the toughest part of the day. Lot’s of choices but think how difficult it would have been with out the menus. Walk into a restaurant and play twenty questions with the server. Do you have sandwiches? Do you have chicken sandwiches? What beverages do you serve? It might take all day to figure out what the restaurant served before we could even order. Think of the menu as a food tip.

Sometimes our computers can seem equally overwhelming when trying to figure out what button on the screen does what. Time and experience can make selection of the correct button fast and easy. When I am working on a PC a client will comment that I click buttons and open and close windows faster than they can figure out what each one was. That is experience. But for the novice there is a very simple tool built into the Windows operating system to help us navigate around. That same tool is an industry standard and is used by nearly every software company when they write new software such as a word processor or even a game. This tool is called a ToolTip.

The ToolTip is a common GUI (graphical user interface) element. It activates when hovering the mouse pointer over a button on a tool bar or over a link or picture on a web page. When activated, a small box appears displaying supplementary information regarding the item being hovered over. Let’s try it out. Hold the mouse pointer over the time in the system tray. See the box that pops up with the day, date and year? That is a tooltip. Open Internet Explorer move the mouse over one of the icons in the toolbar. After a moment or so, a little box appears telling us what that button does. For example: I move the cursor over the icon of the envelope and a box pops up that tells me that if I click on this button I will read mail. Now move the mouse over the START button and let it hover there for a moment. See the box that pops up and tells you “Click here to begin?” That is a ToolTip. Now open your favorite word processor program and move the mouse pointer over one of the many icons on the toolbars. After a moment a box pops up and tells you what it does. Check Spelling, Copy or Paste are just a few of the ToolTips that I can find in MS Word.

Another valuable tool that many people don’t utilize is the ability to open multiple windows and programs at the same time. Right now I have MS Word open as I write this column; I have Internet Explorer open as I research different topics. I have Windows Live Mail open so I can read and send mail and I also have Notepad open for a place to hold partial thoughts and sentences that I don’t like but am not ready to delete. But how can I see the windows that are open behind the one I am working in?

Look at the three boxes in the upper right-hand corner of the window's title bar. Click on the first square, marked with a line on the bottom, to minimize the window. The window then disappears from your screen, but its icon is visible on your taskbar. Now hold the mouse pointer over the icon on the taskbar and a ToolTip appears telling us what program the button represents. To open the window again, click on the taskbar icon. Remember that minimizing the window doesn’t close the program. The program is still running, using system resources and available for immediate use if we need it.

With apologies to Tiny Tim, let’s Tip Toe through the ToolTips.

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1467985899 ISBN-13: 9781467985895

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734

What a Character!

Special characters. We all know people that we call “characters” and we use the term because it signifies something special, out of the ordinary, or outside the expected. We apply the same term to things. We say it has character. Some good examples might be the new Sunloft and Thomas Ryan buildings in downtown Punta Gorda. We can’t specifically define “character” but we know it when we see it.

There are many characters we use when communicating via the written word as well. Things like copyright symbols, registered symbols, and even cents signs. Many of us know that inserting these symbols into a document is possible, but quite time consuming when hunting and pecking for the symbol from the computer’s character map. Did you know that you can make typing a document that uses special characters much easier?

There are probably one or two special characters that you regularly use. (for example, ® and ©). It can be a real chore to open the Character Map to insert one of these symbols every time you need one. So don't! Open the Character Map by clicking Start, clicking All Programs, and then clicking Accessories. Click System Tools, and then click Character Map. Click the © symbol. Notice that the bottom-right corner of the Character Map shows the keyboard shortcut used to insert the special character. On my PC and probably on yours, pressing and holding the ALT key plus typing 0169 and then releasing the ALT key gives you ©. Write it down for later use. When you want to insert that character, here's the trick: Position the cursor where you want to insert the special character, then with NUM LOCK key on, hold down the ALT key and use the number pad keys to type the character value. (ALT + 0177 give us ± for example) These short cuts can be real time savers.

Speaking of time savers, there is another area where we can pick up some time. Many folks use the default Windows setting that requires a double click on an icon with the left mouse button to start a program. This can also pose a problem for folks with arthritis or other problems that reduce the flexibility of their fingers. But with a few adjustments we can do in one click what used to take two. If you want to change your two clicks to one, click Start, click My Computer. If still using XP look under the Tools menu, click Folder Options. Now click the General tab in the dialog box, click Single-click to open an item (point to select), and then click OK. This makes everything in Windows exactly one click faster. The same thing is accomplished in Vista and Windows 7 by clicking on Organize then Folder and Search Options.

Finally, just as Hurricane Charlie removed the background of Punta Gorda and allow buildings with “character” to grace the new downtown, we can give our computers some flashy new tweaks. Let’s add a little character to our personal computers. How boring is it to have that little arrow cursor pointing here and pointing there? Nothing wrong with the defaults from Windows, but then again there isn’t anything wrong with carrots either. But who cares about carrots?

If you want to change your pointer scheme, click Start, and then click Control Panel. If using XP and the Category View (vs. Classic View) click on Printers and Other Hardware, and then click on Mouse. Click the Pointers tab and browse the available themes. Select the one that suits you best, and then click OK. Vista and Windows 7 choose Personalization. I think the conductor scheme is right for me. Little drums, metronomes and keyboards just seem to fit my mood right now.

While you’re in the pointer changing window don’t overlook the chance to change the set up of your mouse. For example: if you are a lefty, under the heading of Buttons the primary and secondary buttons on the mouse can be switched. Under the Pointer Options tab the speed with which the curser moves across the screen can be slowed down or speeded up, depending on your comfort level. There is also a check box to give the pointer a trail as it moves. This makes it much easier to find the pointer when it blends into the background of one of our projects.

Those Charlotte County folks, what a bunch of characters!

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1467985899 ISBN-13: 9781467985895

Just the Facts Ma’am

This week I heard two stories that made me stop and shake my head. My brother moved to Port Charlotte from Michigan this week and one of the first orders of business was to set up his internet connection. He has a wireless router and network installed and wanted the router to be hidden in a closet near the kitchen. His office PC and his laptop could then be placed anywhere in the house without running any wires. He called the local cable company and an installer was promptly sent out.

The installer hooked up the cable TV and connected the router to a cable connection in the garage. My brother asked him to install it in the closet and was told that the only place the router would work was in the garage. Now my brother knows everything about home construction but nothing about the mysteries of the internet, so he accepted this statement as an absolute.

Later on, he was relating to me how his wireless router was in the garage and he was concerned that he might not get enough signals to connect his computers to the router. I asked him to tell me exactly what the installer said because the cable based internet comes into the home over the TV cables. Consequently any connection in the house that is tied into the cable system can connect to a router and the internet will be available. He insisted that the installer told him that only the garage connection had incoming internet so only there would his router work. Now it is possible that with a very long cable run, there might be a degradation of signal on the cable line, but this was a new house and none of the cable runs were exceptionally long. I asked him to humor me and hook the router up where he originally wanted it. He did and you guessed it, the internet worked just fine.

And finally, a client called me this week and asked me to take a look at her two week old Dell computer that had stopped working. She informed me that she had called Dell Support and in the course of the conversation, she mentioned that the computer had stopped working shortly after a thunderstorm. The Dell technician then informed Kat that lightning damage to a PC was not covered under warrantee and please have a nice day. Unfortunately before he hung up he gave her a case number which insured that the storm information was on record for this particular PC.

I took the PC back to my office and began a series of diagnostic test on the PC and a very thorough examination of the components in the PC. I could find no burn marks, discolorations, expanded or leaking capacitors nor anything that would indicate lightning damage. Also, all of the separate components worked when tested in a working PC except for the motherboard. I then contacted Dell support and began a dialogue with them about this particular PC. They had me repeat many of the tests I had already done and concurred with my diagnosis of a bad motherboard. Then the Dell tech mentioned that they had this PC listed as damaged by lightning and consequently wasn’t covered under warranty.

I informed the tech at Dell that I was also a computer tech with many years of experience and that my examination of the system did not indicate damage from lightning. I also informed him that my initial examination of the room the PC had been in at Kat’s house showed that the PC was connected to a surge protector and that all the other peripheral equipment on the same connection was undamaged. I stated that in my professional opinion, the PC had a defective motherboard and should be covered under warranty. The Dell tech agreed, reinstated the warranty, and replaced the motherboard.

The point of this story is that if you contact any manufacturer about a product that isn’t working; please do not try to offer the support tech help in solving your problem if you don’t have the knowledge or skills to make an informed determination of the problem. That is their job and they are very good at it. But it is also their responsibility to protect the company that is paying them. Tell the truth, tell the facts, but never speculate about what caused a problem.

Computers, you have to love’em!

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1467985899 ISBN-13: 9781467985895

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734