Adjusting padding in cells in Microsoft Word tables to add white space

A default table inserted into a Microsoft Word document doesn't have very much white space around the individual cells.

There is very little white space above and below the text in each cell.

To change this, highlight the whole table, right click on it and select table properties.
In this dialog box select Options in the bottom right hand corner.

In the new dialog box that is displayed you can now adjust the cell padding.

By changing the top and bottom margins to 0.15 cm the table is now more aesthetically pleasing.

CD and DVD Label Design Software for Ubuntu Linux

I've recently needed to print out some circular CD labels. I purchased the blank labels from Tesco and they come branded as PressIt. After a bit of Googling I found this article titled Three applications for making disk labels. I settled for glabels which I installed in Ubuntu by opening a terminal and executing the following:

sudo aptitude install glabels

Jslint rhino and custom global options

Jslint is a tool developed by Douglas Crockford which analyses javascript and reports problems with syntax and ensures code quality. Here are my instructions that will enable you to use jslint from the command line with rhino. The problem that I ran into was that I didn't want to have to add the /*jslint eqeqeq:true */ to each of the 400+ files in our pr0ject. By using the following technique it means default options can be supplied to jslint on a global basis.

Download these files

• http://www.jslint.com/fulljslint.js
• http://www.jslint.com/rhino/rhino.js
  

Concatenate them together and save as a new file fulljslintrhino.js

Download Rhino

Extract js.jar

Put fulljslintrhino.js and js.jar in the same directory.

Providing that your java installation has been added to the path it should now be possible to execute the following

java -jar js.jar fulljslintrhino.js YourFileToBeTested.js

To customise the options you need to edit the fulljslintrhino.js file and find the section that you pasted in from rhino.js. Edit the section that looks like this: -

   if (!JSLINT(input, {bitwise: true, eqeqeq: true, immed: true,
           newcap: true, nomen: true, onevar: true, plusplus: true,
           regexp: true, rhino: true, undef: true, white: true})) {

Free Image Resizer

"I have used the handy Windows XP power tool, Image Resizer ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp ), for a long time on my laptop. It's much more convenient and faster than opening PaintShopPro or one of the other giant photo programs I have for other, more intense image processing.

I recently bought a new desktop and downloaded Image Resizer, but when I'd right-click on a photo, the resize option didn't show up. I found this fix online:

If Image Resizer doesn't work, go to the command prompt and type in:
REGSVR32 SHIMGVW.DLL

After doing the above, Image Resizer now works like a charm!"

SEO Backlink Analyser Tool

Whilst reading the Opportunity Wales Blog the other day I discovered a very useful tool at seobook.com This Back Link analyser is free (as in beer) and shows what other links point to a website together with the anchor text. It's really useful and well worth downloading. You will need to get a Google API Key to get the full use out of the program, again these are free so it's just a case of signing up for one.

Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad 390X Garbled Sound

I have recently installed Ubuntu on my IBM Thinkpad 390 and it all worked perfectly with the exception of sound. I tried loads of different things to no avail. Different drivers, different audio players. It wasn't silent just garbled, when playing music it was garbled in time to the beat.

After doing a bit more googling I discovered that I needed to disable the PCI power management in the BIOS. Fortunately this was all it took to solve the problem and now sound plays perfectly.

I am really impressed by Ubuntu so far. The only thing that would prevent me from completely moving over to it is that I need access to Internet explorer in my role as a web developer. As much as I would only like to develop sites for Firefox unfortunately for the moment the masses still use firefox.

Adding Delicious Daily Links to Blogger

After reading a very interesting article on how to increase traffic to your blog by Steve Rubel I really wanted to get point 2 working.

Adding Del.ici.ous Daily Links to Blogger

There's a good article on how to do it for typepad here in the comments there are instructions on how to do it for blogger.

Step 1 - Go to your delicious account.

Step 2 - Click on the link on the upper right that says Settings

Step 3 - In the right column, under Experimental (and I stress experimental), click on the link that says "daily blog posting"

Step 4 - You get a set of fields that look like this:

job_name
Daily Delicious Post (or whatever you want)

out_name
Your Blogger username.

out_pass
Your Blogger password.

out_url
Your blogspot url

out_time
Hour in GMT that you want to have this post.

out_blog_id
Your Blogger blog ID. See how to find yours here

out_cat_id
This doesn’t work in Blogger. Put any number here.

Click “Submit Query”. You should be setup to post daily to your blog.

Essential house keeping in Ubuntu

When I was looking for instructions on how to install gnucash in Ubuntu 5.10 I found Essential house keeping in Ubuntu. A really useful start to getting all the useful programs installed.

The Moorings: Riverside Holiday Cottage on the Norfolk Broads

I am going to meet up with mates this weekend in Norfolk. Fortunately I am going to get to stay in the norfolk broads is a really nice cottage.

Computer Geek / Nerd Quiz

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