“I wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?'” Jerry Seinfeld

So you have a database with many columns full info and now all you have to do to finish it is alphabetize. Thankfully your friend told you about these useful little buttons on the standard toolbar that look like an A to Z going up or down. You choose one of those buttons and suddenly TERROR! One column is organized and the others are not. Your database is ruined. Those two buttons have destroyed more peoples work then I can think of. Instead use the sort feature. First click in the data menu at the top and then click sort. Here is where real organizing of data can take place. Now if you have a heading row you will usually see one of the names here. However if not you will see column A. Either way choose the column you want to organize. You can choose if you want to organize by ascending or descending. The nice thing here is that you can select up to three separate areas to organize. As an example I organize a sheet will all my classes but I first sort it by date then by time. Using this way will sort all the data together. I should tell you that you may see a warning if you had selected one column or row ahead of time. You want to choose to expand the selection so it will affect the entire database. So when you have some alphabetizing to get done give this a try and stop listening to that friend.

“Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.” Frederick Saunders

A question I get a lot is how does one make a banner out of a bunch of cells across the screen. There is one button that makes this so easy that it is just a two step process. First highlight or select the cells or boxes that you want to make into a single cell then go to the formatting toolbar and choose Merge and Center. It is usually near the alignment buttons. It looks like a confused lower case a. Once you click this it will collapse all the selected cells into one. This can be done vertically and diagonally as well. Also if you had text in one of the boxes it will now be centered. Be careful if you have text in multiple boxes that you wish to merge. It will tell you cannot do it. Just choose a blank set of cells or cut and paste all there data out of there. If you to rearrange your space give this one a try.

“We relax at the ranch, which if not heaven itself, probably has the same zip code.” Ronald Reagan

Yesterday I received a letter addressed with a zip code that looked like this ‘02906. So what is the big deal you ask? Well the tiny little apostrophe tells me two things. Most likely this person used mail merge to print all the addresses on labels. The second thing is that they do not know about a nice formatting feature built into Excel. The problem with spreadsheet programs is that they do not understand the difference between a basic number and a zip code. So when you type in a zip it drops the zero. Confused? Let’s say you are payed $0100.00. We normally drop a zero on the left hand of a number that is not preceded by a number meaning we change $0100.00. to $100.00. Many people see this and add the apostrophe to stop it from changing. This solves the problem to a degree but every zip now has an extra symbol in it. The easy way to fix this is to highlight the data or a whole column of zip codes and then click on the format menu and choose cells. From the list of categories you should choose special. Once you do you will see zip code and zip code plus four. I usually choose just zip code and then hit OK. This will add in all the missing zeros. You can do this before or after you put them in. So if you are planning on keeping track of addresses in Excel give this one a try.

“I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.” Stephen Wright

OK I am in Microsoft Word and I just bolded, underlined, italicized a sentence. Also I decided to change the color of the text and add some other formatting changes. Now that is all done I realize I missed a word from the sentence that I did not highlight earlier. Well I could redo all the formatting step by step for that one word or I could use a very simple tool called the format painter. When in Word or Excel I look on the standard toolbar for a small paint brush. Now if you do not see it refer to this earlier post to make the toolbar appear. What I have to do for this situation is highlight the text I changed already. It does not have to be the full sentence just a word will do. Then I click on the Format Painter button which will change my cursor to a little paintbrush. Finally I highlight or click on the words I want to change. I can hold down and drag as well. This will copy the format from one place to another. Anytime I set something up and want to apply it elsewhere I use format painter. Save yourself some time and give this one a try.

“Anyone who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography” Robert Byrne

In a political science course in college we were challenged to label a map of every country on the globe. While this was difficult the professor told us of home many students that could not identify all the states on a US map. To know the location of a helps in the understanding of a place and the problems it may face. California and Louisiana are good examples of this but how does one memorize this? The site MAPMSG is one good way. I was amazed how quickly I took to this. Now I have always despised the game Tetris but this is really more about geographical knowledge than being a good gamer. I have never really related each shape to each state before but you get a real idea of placement and how it fits into the great state puzzle. There are three different modes to challenge you plus many different countries and continents to figure out as well. Test yourself and give this one a try.

“Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.” Thomas Fuller

Another Thanksgiving is under our belt (both figuratively and literally) and it is time to figure out what to do with all the leftovers. Last year I provided a site that had a list of recipes and help. This year it seems appropriate to keep up the tradition. I personally recommend a leftover party for everyone. I also ask people to bring the carcass if they are going to get rid of it so I can make a turkey stock out of it. As far as the actual meat and the rest of the dinner CdKitchen seems to have our backs with a long list of recipes. Everything is segmented into categories for all your grand turkey experiences. As far as party ideas head to Better Homes and Gardens for all sorts of ideas. So when you have finally digested the first meal and getting ready for the next give this one a try.

“Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.” Bo Derek

So you are well fed and prepared for the battle tomorrow. Now I personally plan to sleep off the food coma that I plan to be in but I have know many people that will be in line looking for a deal. To prepare I give you a site I talked about last year and a new one. BlackFriday.info and bfads.net are two sites that are devoted to giving you the best info for the best buys. Both have coupons and tons of extras you will need to wade through to be efficient in your hunting of electronics or other. I wish all going out into the fray of capitalism good luck and to all I say good night.

“Man, like Deity, creates in his own image” Elbert Hubbard

After the post about creating your own avatars I received emails telling me how much they liked the site (*cough* no comments though *cough*) and so I thought I would mention one with even more functionality. Gizmoz is an avatar site that really allows a lot of design possibilities plus a whole lot more. You can choose from a list of people or creatures that you can dress up. This stuff is the regular on almost any of this type. Some of the extras that make this worth it are the animations and the ability to add your text to its speech or, even better, your voice. If you have a microphone attached to your computer you can speak and it will be added to the avatar. This makes is perfect for adding to a website or blog. Oh did I forget to mention that you can also add your face to it as well? If you have a picture of yourself you can upload it to the site. They will animate the whole business for you. It does take several minutes to render and figure out your face from the photo. This part can be kind of creepy when it is recreating a digital you. My recommendation is use a picture of just you and not many other distractions. If you want a bit more style to your online representation give this one a try.

“As long as I have rice to eat, and pure water to drink, I can find joy within.” Confucius

Ok you have some free time and you want to be charitable. Well free rice is blending a love of words and rice. Yes rice! For every correct answer the advertisers of this site pay for ten grains of rice. Now I know this is not much alone but played by many it would add up. However if you hate vocabulary and the elegance of the English language avoid this site. They set you up with a quick definition and 4 word choices. Get it right and rice is donated. Get it wrong and you just have to try again. So if you enjoy words, quizzes and rice give this one a try.

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” M. Scott Peck

As we head into the great and wonderful Holiday week that is Thanksgiving I would like to highlight some sites that have no real redeeming educational value or help to you (may not be true) because why should it all be good for you. I mean sometimes you have to go for the sweets rather that the veggies.

When working I have always needed something else going on to truly concentrate. I usually use music but if I want something a bit different I turn to Listentoamovie. Many of us know certain movies by heart and it really doesn’t matter if you see what’s going on because you know it so well. That is what this Listentoamovie believes. This site has a huge list of movies and TV shows to choose from. All you do is choose a film or show and then click the launch audioplayer button. A small window will pop up looking like an old fashioned tuner. It has all the standard features like pause, play, and volume control. I have to say the most inventive feature is stealth. By clicking stealth it masks the player with a window that resembles Excel. The vast majority of people reading this are single taskers but for the minority of true multitaskers Listentoamovie is perfect for you. Give it a try.

“Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches” Logan Pearsall Smith

Do you use Google for most of your searches and are you sick of that plain white boringness of it? Maybe it is time for you to customize it a bit. This next recommendation is purely cosmetic but so is painting your walls in your house. It makes us more comfortable so why not? Groovle is a site that allows you to make a splash screen with a Google search on it. You can use a well known pick of a celebrity that they have for you to use or you can upload your own favorite picture. To get an idea of what this is all about try the browse section to see other people’s search pages. I like a lot of outer space imagery so I am currently using this one. Now when you do a search it reverts back to normal looking Google search but you might as well like something you have to use anyway. The funny thing is that this uses the old Google search look bar that has the more button. This button is gone now from the regular but it is fantastic because it shows you all the tools Google has to offer in a list form. So if you want to style up give this one a try.

“Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers” Thomas Carlyle

So you are a news hound and nothing excites you more than reading the paper well then the New York Times has something for you. Recently they opened up their archives that have only been accessible if you had subscribed. They have two sections 1981 to the present which is available in text from only and 1851 to 1980 in PDF from. Clarification is needed here. Some articles are still being charged to view. All the articles previous to 1923 are free in PDF format. 1923 on till 81 might be charged. It is a hit or miss feature. However if you are looking for some recent research (80’s till now) or you want to go way back (23 and previous) all seems free. PDF format is a standard format that any system can open. To read it you will need a Adobe Acrobat which is free. To access all of the archives just go to NYTIMES.com and use the search bar at the top of the page. You can adjust the period by clicking on the pull down menu. So if you need to do some research from one of the largest papers in the US it is time to give it a try.

“Genius is the ability to see things invisible, to manipulate things intangible, to paint things that have no features” Joseph Joubert

Many times people come in to the labs here at Providence Public Library and they will ask for help on a resume they had created before. One of the first buttons I press is the Show/Hide button. This usually freaks people out the first time they are seeing it. Essentially it shows all the markers that are normally invisible on a page. The reason this is so helpful is because it lets us in on how and why text is where it is. An example is a page that has a whole bunch of indented information. A person will try to add more info but it keeps moving in an odd way maybe keeping all the spaces. By pressing Show/Hide it shows us an arrow and that means the tab key was pressed here. A little dot represents a space and strange symbol that looks like a top heavy T is a paragraph marker or that the enter key was pressed. Knowing this info allows us to pinpoint the problem and usually erase it. The Show/hide button is on the standard toolbar at the top. However if it is not showing up it could be that the button is hidden. Look at the toolbar and you will probably see in the middle a double arrow. If you are not sure just point to one button after another for its name. The one you are looking for is called toolbar options. Once found click it and then choose show buttons on two rows. This will separate the toolbars so you can see most of the tools. The Show/Hide button should be right next to the percentage of Zoom meaning it will say something like 100%. Finally click the button and see all the markers. To get rid of them click the button again. Give it a try.

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.” Albert Camus

I have had a lot of posts using Blogger but I have never once written about Blogger the application. If you are looking to create a blog that is easy to manage you can’t beat Blogger. Many times I have a new idea and I want a website to go with it I will turn to Blogger to do a blog. The reason to do a blog in the first place is that it allows you to make a type of website easily. If you can email you can blog as well. Now there are many types of blogs from the person documenting their lives so their family can see what is going on to people writing how they feel on all sorts of subjects. There are blogs on political, cooking, funny, subjects plus any other thing you can think of. To create a blog go to Blogger and signup. Then just follow the instructions. They really are easy. When I teach the Blogger class students have a blog in just under 15 minutes. Think of it as your own personal soapbox. For those looking for a printout before they start you can use the sheet I use in class. If you have something to say either come to the next blogging class or head to Blogger and give it a try.

“Common sense is not so common.” Voltaire

Are you becoming confused by all this new web technology like social bookmarking or wikis? The let Commoncraft explain it you. I find sometimes it helps to read about a subject but if I do not get I need to seek alternatives. Many people are visual learners and they need other forms of learning like videos. CommonCraft uses a whiteboard and some paper cut outs to explain fairly abstract ideas. Wikis is probably one of the best examples. Extraordinarily useful but hard to explain why. It also helps that they are not dry and boring. They use real world terms and simple examples to get the point across. Give some of the videos a try and see if they explain the concepts better.

“The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance” Percy Bysshe Shelley

Do you enjoy Macbeth? OK good, do you understand it? Well a nice tool is on Spark Notes to help. It puts a selection of Shakespeare next to a translation so you get to see both and get a better feel for the original. This is just one of the services on their site. Now the goal of the site is to have you buy their printable materials, books, and downloadable iPod texts but a lot of the same info is online and free but with ads. They have info on anything from writing to history. The history section is really nice allowing you to quickly focus on an era and then go deeper to specific incidents. I have to say I come to this as a novice because the only educational aids I remember were Cliff Notes but I am taking to this one fairly easily. Give it a try and read a play.

“Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and his environment that are both works of art and moments in history.”

Not too long ago I finished scanning all my photos I have had stored in the eves. I have had these photos sitting in storage forever and I never look at them. However now they are scanned and backed up I do not have to worry about the paper goods being ruined. Besides the safety of my pictures scanning is good in other ways. I started making slideshows set to music so the family could look at these long forgotten memories or I started emailing them to friends. The other big advantage is organization. All my photos are tagged with keywords and have space for comments so I can find anything easily. Doing all this is thought to be complicated but all you need is a scanner. You can pick up a decent one for less than $150. The scanners I like best have the feature that allows you to put multiple photos at once and then it divides them into different files, saves a lot of time. Once you have a scanner slap the photos down and hit scan. They usually are fairly automatic. Then use software like Picassa (free) or Adobe Photo Elements ($30) to clean them up. Or send them to an online storage place like Flickr. This way many more people can see your stuff and you can email it easily to people. At some of the Providence libraries we have Scanners for the public to use. Give this a try and reclaim your photos.

“I worked with a wild leopard, who bit me. But I kept on working with him, because I have a wild side." Bai Ling

Recently a new operating system came out for Macintosh computers and it is entitled Leopard. I have heard great things about the new features like spaces and time machine and how long it takes to install However I will say what I said when Vista came out. WAIT! Give it several months to a year to let someone with multiple computers work out the bugs. No matter who puts out a new OS there are always glitches that need to be addressed right away. I know the desire is there for a whole new OS because it has new features and abilities but it is not worth losing your data because someone forgot to correct a small bug. This is one I have to say give it a try…um….eventually.

“Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.” Barbara Jordan

When Microsoft screws up I am one of the first to start throwing things however when they get it right I hope I am among the first to congratulate them. Recently MSN went green. They have made a big push in the right direction for the environment. Their new site is filled with info about how to green up, along with political info of all kinds. They have quizzes and calculators to determine your impact on the planet. Also the pairing up with sites like Grist and Conservation International really help their credibility. Pledges are available so that you can take a stand on all sorts of small things like lowering thermostats and such. You may not agree with the cause of global warming or even if it is happening but when I get into a car I still put on my seatbelt even though I do not believe there is major chance I will get into an accident. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Give it a try.

“An envelope is not just an envelope, it's a letter. We still will go to the mailbox … hoping today it won't be just junk mail.” Daniel Stein

In my Internet 3 Class we sign up for a student’s first email. The one I prefer to use with student is Gmail because it is very easy to use and it does not have any flashing ads to distract them. The last time I taught this one student asked why it was necessary to hit the report spam button instead of just deleting it. I answered that Gmail is a community and if you mark it such then other members will not get the same junk either. The student seemed satisfied but I wished there was an example of this. Thankfully Google came to my rescue when they released their video about spam just recently. Check the video out and see if I gave an OK answer.

“The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.” Sigmund Freud

So you have a gripe but do you have specific people or things that are annoying you? If so Snubster is right for you. At its core it is a stab at Facebook and Mypace’s Friends. For many people the goal of acquiring many hundreds of anonymous friends is really getting to them. Snubster on the other hand is all about the dislike. Finally a social site I can get behind. The site allows you to create lists of things that are annoying you and if they really get to you, you can label them "dead to me." It is a farcical site but sometimes just airing the injustice makes you feel better. This type of parody site has been around since friendster was popular and its counterpart fiendster came out. It may be pointless but it can be entertaining to read and revel in the someone else’s grievances. So if you need to join in a bit of whining then give this one a try.

Note: I should say this site is not always G rated when it comes to language so be forewarned.

“Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.”Gioacchino Rossini

On the same subject as yesterday's post , I read many blogs to stay on top of computer info or other related items but Aurgasm has to be a real favorite. Now don't be put off by its' name. The text is good and straightforward and the music selection is incredible. This is a music blog that highlights an artist and gives away two songs that are representative of the genre. I have been introduced to more great music here than any other site. From French Pop to Israeli Reggae I am now aware of musical genres and categories I did not know were possible. So far a personal favorite of mine is Il Fait Si Beau from Vincent Delerm. I have listened to this one a little too much. I just wish I had a clue what it was about though. The great thing about reading a blog like this, besides the content, is the link list of their favorite blogs. This leads you on a merry little trail of discovery. I will try to highlight some more blogs when I get a chance. If you are hungry for music, give this one a try.