Will’s Words

Not content with  blogging from Word, I am now testing out Microsoft’s other “post-to-your-blog” (even WordPress!) solution, Windows Live Writer.

So I am working along in Word 2007 and I click new, and this option to create a blog entry appears. What the heck, I think. So I register my wordpress.com blog and type a bit and here goes! We’ll see if this actually posts.

I’ll even try adding a little mull-tah-mee-ja

UPDATE: Well, whadyknow, it actually works without a hitch!

In an earlier post I described how to embed video from a Picasa Web Album. I’ve added a video that shows the steps:

As a follow-up to my previous post about getting the address for a PicasaWeb video, here is an example of a PicasaWeb video embedded in a WordPress.com blog:

Note that I did have to cut the phrase “&autoplay=yes” off the end of the original address so that it wouldn’t automatically start playing.

 In WordPress it is easy to create the code for the video; you do it in this format:

[ googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%... ]

(Just leave out the space between the brackets and the rest of the text).

Microsoft LiveMeeting, for this meta-error: “An error has occured(sp) while creating an error report.”

My wife brought home a great thrift store find today: a bread maker called the Hitachi Automatic Home Bakery HB-B101. She bought it half price for $3.50! It looks like it is in great shape. The only problem is that its manual is missing. I’ve been spoiled by the availability of product manuals online and thought, “big deal! I’ll just find it online.” Well, in this case the manual is pretty good at being a fugitive: No matter how I search for it, all I get is links to other people looking for it, or links to eBay listings where it is selling for upwards of $15. The Hitachi site was not helpful — the only section on bread makers is in Japanese.

Fortunately, our basic recipe is printed on a sticker the side of the machine:

From Hitachi HB-B101

I posted it here because I got the sense from my web hunt that this isn’t printed on every version of this machine.

Another thing we had to figure out is that you have to snap the bread bowl down into place securely before it will let you start the mixing/kneading/baking process. A lot of people (us included) were getting an Error message (blinking E) until we figured this out.

In case someone else who bought one of these didn’t get the recipe, here you go:

MAKING LOAD BREAD (must be a translation thing)

Water: 3/4 cup
Bread Flour: 2 cups
Salt: 1 teaspoon
Sugar: 2 tablespoons
Butter: 1 tablespoon
Dry milk: 1 tablespoon
Dry yeast: 1-1 1/2 teaspoons

1. Pour 3/4 cup of water into the bread pan.
2. Add all dry ingredients except the DRY yeast.
3. Place the DRY yeast on top of the DRY flour. Do not mix.
4. Press the START button

“Your oven-fresh bread will be ready in 4 hours and 10 minutes. It is more convenient if you use the built-in delay timer.”

Thanks to someone who posted at this website, here is the recipe for a large loaf (though I’ve never seen a 9/16 measuring cup before):

Water 9/16 cup (4.6 oz)

Fresh milk 9/16 cup

bread flour 3 cups

salt 1 1/2 teaspoons

sugar 3 tablespoons

butter 1 1/2 tablespoons

dry yeast 1 teaspoon (”bread” setting)

2 teaspoons (”bread rapid” setting)

If anyone who has found the post has an electronic copy of the manual, I’d sure appreciate it. During my search I did find an article about how to use automatic bread makers in general: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/breadmachinemanual.htm

On Putting Conservative Principles to Work in Healthcare

and

Ask Mitt Anything: Conservative Principles in Healthcare

Let’s say you are writing and you want to quote some text from a webpage in your message or document. So you select the text and copy it, but then when you paste it after your text you find that it is in a different font, font size and color.  Worse than that, when you try to keep typing after the quoted text, you see that your font style has been hijacked by the new text you pasted. Here is an example — notice how the font changes because the text came formatted from somewhere else:

Do you remember Otter Pops? They consist of, and I quote, ” a plastic tube filled with flavored sugary liquid; after being frozen the top is cut off. The frozen juice is eaten out of the top of the tube, like a popsicle without a stick.” [ACK! What happened to my font! Why doesn't my computer realize I don't want to change the font here?].

Does that situation look familiar?

 If so, here is a great (free!) little Windows utility I have used for several years to come to your rescue: PureText. Running PureText puts an icon down in your system tray (lower right screen corner) and it adds a keyboard shortcut that works everywhere. Once it is running you press [WindowsKey] + [v] to tell the computer to “paste the text, but please ignore any font formatting that the text had before.” It works like a charm — the text you paste adopts whatever style you were already using, eliminating the chore of trying to reformat the text after it is pasted in.

Every time I am put on a new version of Windows, PureText is one of the first items I install. To me it is indispensable!

Now for you Mac users (I’m one at home), I have heard (but not tried it yet) that PlainClip does the same thing for the Mac OS, but you will probably also want to first  install a Mac hotkey tool like Spark to make it easier to use (otherwise you will have to double-click the PlainClip app everytime you want to use it).

I was trying to think of what I could write about that might be helpful to someone out there, and I realized that there is a software application that I love. I love it because it saves me from trouble frequently, the trouble being not being able to remember a password, ID #, username, account number, or other extremely left-brained piece of info when someone (or some website) asks me for it.

The tool is called SplashID (I’m not sure where the Splash comes from, other than it is developed by a company called Splashdata that has a bunch of other useful apps). I run it on my Windows laptop and my Palm Z22 — there is a version for each, and even a Mac version.

SplashID is like having a little personal database of tidbits of information you can lock up with a single password. Every time I set up a new account somewhere, like at a bank, or blog site, or public library, I enter the same data into SplashID. Then, when I can’t remember this information later (which happens almost every time I try to log in somewhere), all I have to do is open the application, enter my SplashID password, and wa-la, using a powerfully simple find feature I find the info I need, click the handy copy to clipboard button, and paste it where it needs to go.

The beauty of this application is that it syncs perfectly with my Palm. So if I don’t have my laptop, I can whip out my $89 Palm Z22 and instantly find the information I need. This application alone is worth buying a cheap Palm. It saves me all the time. For example, I’m at the store and can’t remember the PIN to my debit card (Bank of America pins are 6 digits!). I just whip out my Palm, write in my SplashID password and quickly find my PIN number.

Maybe a better example is a time when you have to access information you haven’t used forever. For example, your PC crashes and you reinstall your expensive Photoshop application only to realize you don’t remember your 94 digit registration code. No problem! Whip out SplashID, and there it is from when you entered it 2 years ago.

Or maybe you haven’t posted anything on your blog for over 3 months (like me) and you can’t remember how to log in to WordPress. Just fire up your SplashID application from your PC and within a few seconds you are in business again!

Palm version:

Windows Version:

Mac Version:

Find it at http://splashdata.com