redigital blog

Resolve Microsoft Office opening slowly on Mac OS X

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:12:44 +0000

I was using Microsoft Office 2008 (which was never that fast) and decided to try out Office 2011 for Mac to see if it offered any speed improvements. Even after the initial opening where it takes a while to build its font cache (I should have picked up on this foreshadow), both Word and Excel were extremely slow to open documents. By slow I mean 1-3 minutes sometimes. I kept scratching my head and looking for fixes online and then finally resolved the problem by using Font Book to validate my fonts and subsequently removing all the conflicts it found.

Over the years I had collected fonts and used the Apple Migration Assistant to transfer my “mac world” between four different computers.

I followed Apple’s guide to validate fonts and after successfully removing all of the conflicts it found, Word and Excel sprang back to life. Photoshop CS4 and Acrobat X were much faster as well and I experienced the “beach ball” much less.

To prevent bad fonts from being installed in the future you can now have Font Book automatically validate fonts before installing, from Apple:

To have Font Book automatically validate fonts before they’re installed:

Select the “Validate fonts before installing” checkbox.

Choose Font Book > Preferences.

Fix the “No front page content has been created yet.” in Drupal 7 problem

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:29:01 +0000

You can hide the “No front page content has been created yet.” in Drupal 7 by adding the following to your local.css:

#first-time {
display: none;
}

Improve the speed of Backblaze.

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:05:47 +0000

Adding your “Downloads” folder and additional file types can improve the speed of Backblaze. Open System Preferences and select the Backblaze preference pane, then click Settings. Screenshots below:

Eben Moglen Is Reshaping Internet With a Freedom Box – NYTimes.com

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:10:01 +0000

Internet access should be added to the human bill of rights. I can think of nothing more freeing than an open Internet. To anyone in search of answers for themselves with a disdain for authoritarian figures pushing their fact-less truths, the Internet is the greatest source of empowerment.

“…a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers.”

Eben Moglen Is Reshaping Internet With a Freedom Box – NYTimes.com.

Migrating from an @cox.net email account to Gmail

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 19:31:02 +0000

Google has instructions that are pretty easy to follow here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21289

a couple notes specific to Cox in Santa Barbara:

Cox’s POP server is pop.west.cox.net
Do not check ‘leave mail on server’
Apply label of checked messages (it will label them with your cox email address – useful info to some)

Once that is done you must stop your email client from checking the cox servers. You can typically do this by:

on iPhone, deleting the cox account
on a computer, deactivate the email account or delete it (preferably deactivate)

If you don’t stop your email client from checking the cox email account then the email will never appear in your Gmail box

Now if you want to retain your @cox.net email account for outgoing mail on an iPhone you must add the account manually (if you select “Gmail” as the account type it will enforce your Gmail address – not such a bad thing). for manual settings you punch in your cox.net email address and configure the account manually, here are the settings:

IMAP account type

email = @cox.net email account
imap server = imap.gmail.com – use SSL yes – port 993
smtp server = smtp.gmail.com – use SSL yes – port 445
login = your GMAIL account id
pass = your GMAIL account password

Avoid data recovery fees by making certain you backup your computer

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:29:36 +0000

I spent the better part of my weekend performing data recovery on a failed 24″ iMac hard drive (Seagate 7200.11). In the end only about a weeks worth of data was lost, thanks to Time Machine. Hard drive failures are one of the most common problems to occur over the life of a computer. Most data loss is entirely preventable.

Here are my current best practices to avoid having to suffer any data loss:

Use Dropbox for all current and working documents
Use Backblaze to backup your entire computer (Mac or PC – about $60/year)
Use an external hard drive with Time Machine for Mac, or for Windows 7 the built-in backup or XXClone.

It is also important to make certain your backup software is running. For Time Machine you can open System Preferences and then click on the Time Machine icon, the date of the last backup will be displayed. For Windows, open Windows Backup and it will display the date of last backup.

A Western Digital Elements 1.5TB 3.5″ External Hard Drive is less than $100. Most of the online backup services are about $60/year (recurring cost).

A typical data recovery service starts around $1000 and only goes up, in addition they are time consuming and you will not have immediate access to your data.

outlook 2003 cannot create a data file under windows 7

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:26:10 +0000

originally from http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/35445790/cant-get-outlook-2003-to.aspx :

“solution found
Tommcdow47 replied to Tommcdow47 on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 4:33 PM

Solution to my problem:
Recently I purchased a custom built laptop with windows 7 installed. I
requested no other programs in the build. When my PC arrived it had a trial
version of office installed so I uninstalled it and installed my office 2003
with outlook and could not get outlook to work. The problem was caused by
files left behind when the office(trial version) was removed. The uninstall
does not remove all the office 2007 files. Certain files left behind are not
backward compatiable with office 2003. After spending a lot of time trying to
find a solution I was annoyed and contacted Lenovo to find out why they put
office 2007 trial version in my PC even though I requested no additional
software from them. They told me that my version of windows 7 has Office 2007
trial version bundled by microsoft with windows 7?????????. I anticipate as win 7
becomes more popular more people will have the same problem.

1. Remove the profile by going to control panel\mail\show profiles and
delete the profile.

2. Locate the file mapisvc.inf in C:\Program Files\Common
Files\System\Msmapi\1033.

3. Rename it to mapisvc.old or whatever you want.

4. Remove MSMAPI32.DLL in the same folder.

5. go to win 7 install/uninstall programs and highlight the outlook program
and click on the repair button.
6. go into the control panel applet for mail and you should now be able to
add a outlook data file

7.Restart Outlook and go back through the setup to create the profile again
and that should fix.”

Extending signal strength of a Linksys WRT54G router

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:25:05 +0000

To extend the signal strength of a Linksys WRT54G router (all versions excluding v8 – they no longer let you replace the antenna) you can use this adapter & antenna combination:

Ideally you would also install DD-WRT and boost the power setting up from 75mW or whatever the default it. 110mW tends to be a safe number.

If you are starting from scratch, or have extra funds, I would recommend using the Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N. You can use the same 9dBI antenna without the adapter.

buy soap locally

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:09:16 +0000

here in santa barbara, ca you can buy soap made locally: http://www.sweetleafessentials.com/

Their website is powered by Drupal too…

Less consumption, more production

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:15:40 +0000

Goodbye Google Reader.