Neat Net Tricks Issue #56
June 15, 1999
Sender: owner-neatnettricks@neatnettricks.com

IN THIS ISSUE:

01.  Consumer Price Inflator/Deflator
02.  Readers write.
03.  A quicker minimize
04.  Power failures not a problem
05.  The lazy way
06.  More on DOS scan
07.  Consumer alerts
08.  Secure?  Think again
09.  Macros, sort of
10.  Drag to a minimized application
11.  Quick properties
12.  Document cleaning
13.  A storage box for your things
14.  Neat Net Nifty

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01.  CONSUMER PRICE INFLATOR/DEFLATOR.  What would you pay for 
a loaf of bread in the "good old days?" Visit one of the CPI 
inflators/deflators at 
http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc , http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/economy/calc/ciphome.html , or 
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ and enter the year and prices 
you'd like to compare for  stark evidence that the days of the 
nickel cup of coffee are but a faint memory.

02.  READERS WRITE.  A disgruntled reader unsubscribed from Neat
Net Tricks, complaining that this publication has become "part 
of the 'whoring' of the Net."  He reflected on "how much 
selling content" he "had to wade through to find something 
useful."  I hate to lose any subscriber, but appreciate his 
candor.  I suggested to him that it is unrealistic to expect a 
free publication while the "publisher" picks up the entire tab 
for costs of the server, equipment, supplies, domain 
registration, and related costs.  I believe that most readers 
feel skimming through a few ad lines a small price to pay for 
what they get. The issue he referred to contained 156 lines of 
content and 14 lines of paid advertising, or about 8% of the 
entire publication paying the way for everyone to continue to 
receive Neat Net Tricks, always free and always will be, thanks 
to its sponsors.

The tip in Issue #53 for widening the DOS screen was a great 
one if you're intent on putting a lot of mileage on your 
keyboard.  You may recall the item suggested Alt+Spacebar and 
from the menu Properties|Screen tab|Usage|Full Screen|OK.  Many 
of you wrote in to point out that Alt+Enter does the same thing.
Of course it does, and a lot faster.  That item calls for a big 
"duh!" from me!

03.  A QUICKER MINIMIZE.  A few issues ago the Windows logo key 
+ M was offered as a fast way to minimize as an alternative to 
drilling through all those upper right corner boxes.  There's 
another way to change your active site size without even moving 
your hand from the mouse.  Just double click anywhere on the 
title bar at the top of the screen. Another double click 
toggles the screen back to its original size.

04.  POWER FAILURES NOT A PROBLEM.  As you read this, my part 
of the world will be in the throes of summer, and with summer 
comes inevitable thunderstorms and power failures.  You can 
increase your comfort level with an uninterruptable power 
supply (UPS) which will alert you and provide continued run 
time to allow shutdown of any applications you're working on 
when the blackout occurs.  I use the APC Back-UPS Pro 280 which 
provides an audible alert if the AC power is interrupted and 
also indicates wiring faults, overload, and weak battery.  It 
provides surge protection and a written guarantee protecting 
your computer and peripherals in the event lightning seeks you 
out and fries your system. And, most importantly, the UPS 
provides enough continued service time to shut down everything 
and exit normally when the power goes oooops. Details of the 
APC line are at http://www.apcc.com .

Most disappointing was the fact that I was unable to install 
the accompanying software, PowerChute, which is intended to 
provide a "graceful shutdown" of applications in the event of 
power failure.  I found that I would have to add a card to 
convert my serial mouse to PS2 or reconfigure by modem to free 
up a COM port.  APC's tech support folks were very helpful and 
pointed out that the software is a great asset to those 
environments requiring continuous 24-hour-a-day power, such as 
a Web server.  Since I do shut down during sleep periods, 
albeit it briefly, I chose to forego the added effort necessary 
to install PowerChute.

05.  THE LAZY WAY.  There must be at least hundreds of ways to 
do macros but I'll admit to having more than my fair share of 
fun with EZ Macros at http://www.americansys.com .  Before you 
ask, a "macro" is a bit of prerecorded stuff so that a 
particular key or combination of keys prints out a particular 
passage or does some repetitive something that would otherwise 
take a lot more effort.  This software, available as shareware 
or buy for $29.95, goes quite a bit beyond just printing out 
canned phrases.  The "record" feature allows you to capture all 
your keyboard or mouse movements and play them back with 
pauses, delays, sounds, a wide array of customized commands, 
prescheduled events, and even a secure feature to keep your 
hotkey comibinations from prying eyes. There's something eerie 
about watching your computer seemingly take over after you've 
recorded a long macro.  With a keystroke or two you sit back 
and wonder if this is something from The Twilight Zone.  In the 
interests of honest reporting, I did uncover a few glitches on 
the two machines I tried the software on, one with Win95 and 
the other Win98. The options for "Insert Pause," "Pause," 
"Insert," and "Break" simply did not halt execution of the 
macro to allow entry of an additional phrase.  A second problem 
was the loss of a beginning word of a macro at times on a 
second or subsequent execution.  Finally, the software on my 
Win95 machine annoyingly started up Num Lock at times when the 
macro executed.  The support folks were very cooperative and 
tried a number of times without success to resolve the problem.

06.  MORE ON DOS SCAN.  David Macy read Issue #53 and agreed 
that he prefers to run DOS scan even though his anti-virus 
software doesn't interfere with Window's Scandisk.  If you 
recall, to do this you shut down and restart in MS DOS mode and 
at the prompt c:\windows> you enter "scandisk" (without the 
quotes.)  David likes to add switches following the "scandisk" 
command and offers these:  /all will scan all the hard drives, 
whether separate or partitioned; /autofix will fix an error 
without prompting you to determine if you want it fixed; 
/nosave will delete whatever scandisk can't fix (and David 
notes you can't do anything else with that, anyway;) and 
/surface will run a surface scan. if there are errors on the 
drive, pressing "S" skips the Undo Disk and pressing Enter 
moves to the next drive or partition.  See, there's still hope 
for those who don't do Windows!

07.  CONSUMER ALERTS.  According to the folks at 
http://www.safetyalerts.com , there were 560 product recalls 
issued in the U.S. in 1998 for safety reasons and early in 1999 
there were already 186 safety-related food and product recalls.
The free Safety Alerts SAFEMAIL Letter alerts consumers when 
there's been a recall, and older announcements are moved to 
their archive for research.  This is a nice way to stay on top 
of issues that might affect the health and safety of you and 
your family.

08.  SECURE?  THINK AGAIN! I had to laugh when I saw in a 
respected computer journal that you could hide your surfing 
habits from your boss by simply clicking on Ctrl+H to call up 
your history file in Netscape Communicator, then selecting all 
with a Ctrl+A and deleting everything. Before you fall for that 
one, go ahead and delete that history, then enter about:global 
in the Location Box where the URL normally goes. Now, if you 
want to create a paper trail by printing all this, make sure 
you have lots of paper in the printer.  It would have required 
69 pages on mine.  OK, so you think you can clear this with the 
Clear History and Clean Cache buttons that Netscape offers?  
OK, try it, but don't you still feel uneasy about it?  Well, I 
won't leave you in a cliffhanger here.  You can clear the 
history by first closing your browser, then going to the 
browser path and deleting the file NETSCAPE.HST.  Delete it 
totally, don't worry, it will grow by itself again.  Prove that 
with the about:global command once more and you'll see the 
darned thing's beginning to grow already.

09.  MACROS, SORT OF.  We've talked macros before, those bits 
of prerecorded data to assign one or more keystrokes to a 
function and thus avoid having to retype repetitious stuff.  
For text macros, you don't even need software.  From your word 
processor or text editor just type any standard phrase.  Then 
select (highlight) it and drag it off to your desktop to create 
a shortcut, and rename it as you wish with a right click.  
Anytime you want to use that phrase again while you're in a 
word processor or text editor, just click on the shortcut and 
drag it back to the place where you want your text inserted, 
and there it is.  Even slicker, a simple click on that shortcut 
will open the associated word processor text editor with the 
phrase already entered.

10.  DRAG TO MINIMIZED APPLICATION.  While we're on the subject 
of text manipulation, try this:  If your word processor or text 
editor is minimized and you're in a different application but 
want to, for example, paste a portion of text, select it and 
drag it to the minimized button on the taskbar, but don't let 
up.  Hold it briefly and that application will open.  Then, 
still holding the mouse button, drag the selected text back to 
that application to drop it there.

11.  QUICK PROPERTIES.  Double click on an object while 
depressing the Alt key and the Properties information will be 
displayed, no muss, no fuss.

12.  DOCUMENT CLEANING.  As you probably know, the most recent 
document titles you have accessed are displayed in the 
documents folder.  To clean those out normally requires a 
number of clicks: Start|Settings|Taskbar & Start Menu|Start 
Menu Program tab and click on Clear in the Documents Menu 
Section.  You might like this approach instead:  Create a batch 
file with a text editor such as WordPad or NotePad by entering 
the line (without the quotes and observe spacing, please) "echo 
y| del \windows\recent\*.*" Now, save this into any folder as a 
text only file with whatever file name you wish to assign and 
.BAT file extension.  I called mine, for example, DOCCLR.BAT.  
Then, create a shortcut off to your desktop.  Right click on 
that short cut, choose Properties and click on the Program 
tab.  In the Run window, choose Minimized and check the Close 
on Exit box and OK.  Now, anytime you want to clear out the 
document folder, your hard work is rewarded with a simple click 
on that icon.

13.  A STORAGE BOX FOR YOUR THINGS.  Usually, you will have to 
limit the size of files attached to Email.  Your recipient or 
his/her server would not like for you to mail the unabridged 
version of War and Peace.  But there's a way around that at 
http://access.click2send.com/ where you can sign up for a free 
storage vault that will hold 120 mb.  You can build any number 
of mail boxes and deposit files as large as 50 mb each for 
pickup by others with your assigned password.  This service 
will even alert you when the files have been retrieved from 
your vault.

14.  NEAT NET NIFTY.  Ryan Laodao provides a haven for graphic 
designers at http://www.eyeball-design.com/index3.htm .  His 
teaching ability compares with his artistic ability. With a 
main thrust in 3D imagery, Ryan's graphics have a depth to them 
likely attained only by those who have mastered the more 
intricate capabilities of Adobe Photoshop. He provides at this 
site a number of tutorials and techniques that make such 
mastery within reach.

Neat Net Tricks often pauses to recognize a web site and 
recommend your visit.  Set aside some time to explore the site 
and enjoy it.  Sites that are predominately non-commercial in 
focus are identified as "nifty" when their all-around content, 
originality, interest, variety, and graphical presentation have 
earned this award.  If you would like to nominate a Nifty site, 
send the URL to mailto:jteems@neatnettricks.com with a brief 
note telling why you think the site deserves the award.

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Copyright 1999 by Jack Teems.  All rights reserved.
