Rocket Science

So, I run Office 2008 on my Mac. Recently Microsoft released the 12.2.3 update, and I had lots of problems upgrading my installation.

Turns out, I had to put the Microsoft Office 2008 folder directly in the Mac OS’ named “Applications” folder and not a sub-folder. Why?

Why do I have to put the folder in a specific location–and why now? I’ve been able to successfully upgrade through 12.2.2 with the “Microsoft Office” folder in a sub-folder within the “Applications” folder.

I really hate programs that require a specific folder/path location. It’s my computer and I’d rather have short listings of files in folders, than crazy long listings.

Consider the case of the 12.2.3 updater, it searches on other drives for a copy that’s upgradeable and given how slow it is, it must be searching in more than just the “Drive:Applications” folder. Ok I suppose it could be really inefficient, but that just makes things worse I think.

Thanks Again, Microsoft

Well, so did I! A quick search of Google led me directly to Browser Shots.

Source: Brandon/BrowserShots.org

BrowswerShots.org

You can submit the web page that you’d like to check and have it rendered in a number of different browser. A whole lot of different browsers (just no Mac-based browsers). The site is scripted to launch a virtual machine, open the webpage in the browser you’ve selected, create a screen shot and move on to the next browser.

Pro Tip: There’s a 30 minute timer on your requests. So if you’ve selected a lot of browsers and/or their servers are busy, your job may time out. So check back in 29 minutes after you’ve started your job. You’ll be able to extend the job if it’s not complete, but you have to click something on the website to do that. (Or you could purchase a month of “priority processing”, but if you’re like me, you’re just doing a one time test of a site.)

This was really bugging me…here’s how to “set” list view for Mac Disk Images.

1. Open the “root level” view of the disk image – for me, it always opens in icon view. Then, select “Show View Options” from the View menu.

2. Check the “Always Open in Icon View” box. While leaving this dialog open, select “as List” from the View menu.

3. Uncheck the “Always Open in Icon View” box. It will instantly turn into “Always Open In List View”. Recheck this box immediately, then close dialog. This will make the setting stick.

DKH47. (2009, September 21). Re: “Always Open In…” View Options for Root Level of a Disk Image File. Retrieved on November 21, 2009 from Apple Support Web site: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10588157

I read this article on O’Reilly’s Radar about whole house energy monitoring.

The Energy Detective (TED) is a current measuring device that you connect in your electrical service panel and can be used to monitor energy usage in real time.

When I owned my house, I started a high-level tracking of my energy usage (comparing overall kWh usage for each month) to start to understand how my use of air conditioning in the summer, or say my computers and A/V equipment impacted my overall use of energy. With TED, I really could have fine tuned that.

Source: O’Reilly

Used Under Terms of Use

TED Dashboard and Energy Usage

Here’s a cool tool for your website.

I’m using Google Viewer to embed a readable version of my Master’s thesis in my website. Google Viewer will let you embed a readable version of a Microsoft Word document, PowerPoint slideshow or TIFF file in a web page.

There is a plugin for WordPress but it doesn’t seem to place nice with the iNove theme that I use.