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Aug 22, 2013 - Perform Regular Software Updates

All software programs have bugs and security issues, and this is why it's important to make sure they are updated frequently. Most software publishers announce regular updates on their websites, and also publish any security issues and concerns. These security issues then become public, and anyone can expolit them on the older non-updated software. So it is imperative that you update and stay current, otherwise you become vulnerable to hackers.

Software publishers also announce the "lifecycle" of their programs. For example, Microsoft recently announced the lifecycle of their desktop operating systems - Windows XP's end of extended support is April 8, 2014. This means after this date, any new security issues will not be fixed. So, this is a good time to start thinking about what operating system you want to use, and possibly upgrade to newer Windows OS, or go with the free and open source Linux OS. There are many versions of Linux, for example, here's one I use: Linux Mint. They are currently up to version 15, but their "long-term support" version 13, will be supported until April 2017.

To find out which OS version your computer is using, right-click on the "My Computer" icon, and select "Properties".

Aug 15, 2013 - URL fragment identifier

Some web pages with long documents can be made more friendly with the use of "anchors" and "fragment identifiers" to link to specific points in the document. For example: www.example.org/foo.html#bar (and placing id="bar" in the document).

And you can use this to go to an exact page in a PDF - for example page 15: www.example.org/foo.pdf#page=15

This can be used on YouTube too, for example, to go to an exact location in the video, just add this time qualifier at the end of the URL to go to the 3minute and 45second spot (note to use the & symbol instead of #): &t=3m45s
(YouTube has recently enabled this as a feature under their "Share" link.)

Aug 8, 2013 - HTML Colours

Computer screen colours are composed by combining three primary colours: Red - Green - Blue (commonly refered as RGB). Their values range from 0 (no colour, or black) to 255 (full brightness), but like most things dealing with computers, these numbers are converted to their hexadecimal equivalents 0 to FF. A few sample colours:
00 00 00 = black
7F 7F 7F = gray
FF FF FF = white
FF 00 00 = red

To make the process of colour selection easier, there are many utilites on the internet like this for example www.colorpicker.com. More information about colours from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and if you need help with hexadecimal numbers, check out this WikiPedia article.

Aug 1, 2013 - Favourite icon

A favicon (Favourite icon) is a small, 16x16 pixel picture that can be used on your website to add a personal touch. It is used by browsers to display on tabs and bookmarks. The command to display it is this line placed in the header:
link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="favicon.ico"

There are many websites on the net that help you create the favicon, here's one for example www.favicon.cc.

Jul 25, 2013 - Keyboard shortcuts

Most modern operating systems have a graphical interface which allow one to use a mouse to move around the screen. Sometimes, the fastest way to get things done is by using keyboard shortcuts. Most programs include a description of these shortcuts in their help modules, and menu items usually underline a key-letter. For example Ctrl-P is usually the shortcut to print and Ctrl-S to save a document. Here are some shortcuts I use on a daily basis:

Ctrl-C = copy
Ctrl-V = paste
Ctrl-(left or right arrow) = move cursor one word (left or right)
Ctrl-Enter = hard return (or new page)
Shift-Enter = soft return
Ctrl-Z = undo
Ctrl-(plus) = increase font size
Ctrl-(minus) = decrease font size

To find more useful hints, just search for the terms "keyboard shortcut" and the name of the program you want learn about.

Jul 18, 2013 - Open Source software for free

A good source to find, create, and publish Open Source software for free is SourceForge.net. There are several thousand projects in many categories, maintained by volunteers, and available for free download. Each month they feature a project ("Project of the Month"). For example, this month's POTM is "winPenPack" -- it is a project that aims at collecting the most frequently used and most popular open source applications made portable, so that they can be executed without installation from any USB Flash Drive or hard disk.

sourceforge.net