Yak Shaving -- [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.
#750 Word Hack -- Normally when you select text in Word, you do so horizontally, from right to left or left to right. But you can also make a vertical selection by holding down the ALT key as you drag the mouse pointer to select the text. For example, if you want to select the first word on each line, hold down the ALT key and drag the mouse pointer up or down to highlight each word. (HT: Windows Fanatics)
#751 Word/Blog Hack -- I have a habit of writing my posts in Word and pasting them into my blog, causing numerous formatting problems. One of the most annoying is the way the curly quotation marks don't show up properly. Fortunately, these "smart" quotes can be turned off: click Tools > AutoCorrect Options, hit both the AutoFormat and AutoFormat As You Type tabs, and clear the checkbox marked "straight quotes with smart quotes." (HT: Lifehacker)
#752 Firefox Extension -- The Textarea Backup Greasemonkey script automatically saves text you've entered into a web page's textarea so that you don't need to worry about losing your blog post or form data. Textarea Backup saves the text at every 10 keystrokes or every 10 seconds.
#753 HowTo -- Make paper look "antique"
#754 Download of the Week -- Turn your browser into a research tool with Gnosis, a new plug-in that highlights key information on sites you visit. Using "semantic processing," Gnosis scans a Web page for people, companies, products, locations and other recognizable info, then highlights key words and phrases with a color-coded double-underscore. Mouse over any of these highlighted items and a pop-up appears with various search/info options. Gnosis will automatically scan certain news sites, but you can manually scan using the Gnosis sidebar (which also lets you browse items by category). (HT: Lifehacker)
See also: The Yak Shaving Razor Archives
Have a useful recommendation for making life more pleasant? Send them to me at jpcarter[at]evangelicaloutpost.com.
if you want to select the first word on each line, hold down the ALT key and drag the mouse pointer up or down to highlight each word
It doesn't select by the word; it selects everything in a rectangular box defined by the point you start at and the opposite corner you end at (like drawing a "select" box in MS Paint or Photoshop). That means the edges of the box cut off any words that flow across those edges - it will select all the letters inside the box, regardless of their position in words; if you delete that text, the remaining text to one or both sides of the box flows together into the gap, according to the justification/margin settings you are using.
It's a little tricky to use - there aren't very many cases where you want to do that. But it's useful for cutting or copying tabbed columns from the middle of a tabbed layout; you can select a vertical swath without including the stuff on the right or left ends of the lines. Also useful for cutting off numbering or bullet points on the left end of lines, where someone has typed the numbers in manually instead of using the automatic numbering feature.
The Textarea Backup Greasemonkey script automatically saves text you've entered into a web page's textarea so that you don't need to worry about losing your blog post or form data
Sounds like a specialized form of "keylogger" - a program that silently records all keystrokes of any kind, often used by hackers to pick off passwords, or corporations to snoop on their employees. I used to use one for precisely the reason you mention - to recover text after frequent computer or Website crashes. If you're worried about all such losses, not just in Web-based forms, there are shareware keyloggers available.
I have some reservations about the Textarea Backup script, too. I started using it last week. While it does work, it has a bizarre tendency to lockup Firefox for minutes at a time. I'll be typing, then the next thing I know, nothing's showing up on screen. Firefox becomes completely non-responsive. One time, I could not do anything for six minutes!
Seriously makes me wonder what's going on in the background. :-(
I've since disabled it and everything's gone back to normal--I hope.
no amoxil
no amoxil
percent amoxil