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What is public cloud?

Dave Farquhar Software April 12, 2018April 11, 2018 0 Comment

Cloud computing is all the rage right now, and it’s created a mess of jargon that can make your head spin. Don’t worry though. No one was born knowing this stuff. So, what is public cloud, and what makes it different from other clouds? Assuming there are other clouds?

Public cloud is a booming business. In Q4 of 2017, Amazon’s cloud business accounted for 60 percent of the company’s total operating income. Amazon made its name selling books, but today it makes its money renting computer time. A lot of people don’t know that. Or at least it seems that way.

What is machine language?

Dave Farquhar Software April 3, 2018April 2, 2018 0 Comment

From time to time you may find a reference to something mysterious and computer-related called machine language. Most people just assume you know what it means, if you care. But what is machine language in computer terminology, and why is it important?

Who still uses Wordperfect?

Dave Farquhar Software July 7, 2017August 1, 2017budget, desktop support, excel, keyboard shortcuts, menus, microsoft, Microsoft Office, microsoft word, office 2007, ribbon, troubleshooting 4 Comments

I had an odd question come up the other day: Who still uses Wordperfect? It’s a fair question. Wordperfect, as you may know, is still very much in production. Corel releases new versions every year or two. It’s the #2 word processor in the market, still. Someone is still using it, then.

Why is Publisher hyphenating my words?

Dave Farquhar Office, Software April 12, 2017April 9, 20171990s, early 1990s, journalism, Justification, microsoft, Publishing, ribbon 0 Comment

Why is Publisher hyphenating my words? That’s probably one of the most common questions I hear about Microsoft Publisher. There’s a good reason for it, but I understand if you want to disable it. So I’ll answer both questions.

Find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice

Dave Farquhar Software January 4, 2017November 26, 2016capitalization, lowercase letters 0 Comment

Sometimes you need a way to find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice. This can make it easier to figure out if the word needed to be capitalized, in the case of a poorly written or edited document. Then you can make a decision whether the capitalization was appropriate.

Another time you would need to find capitalized words in Openoffice or Libreoffice would be when you’re creating an index. I’m sure there are others.

It’s easier than it sounds.
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Speed up Firefox

Dave Farquhar Software October 3, 2016July 27, 20171980s, chrome, disk, firefox, GB, linux, optimizing, optimizing windows, proxy, RAM, ramdisk, router, ssd, Windows 10 0 Comment

I’ve seen a lot of gimmicky hacks to speed up Firefox, and you probably have too. But chances are Firefox ran just fine when you started, then it slowed down over time. Here’s my collection of tips to restore Firefox’s performance if Firefox is slow.

Fix Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors

Dave Farquhar Software September 8, 2016September 7, 2016chrome, error message, memory usage, reliability, Windows 10 0 Comment

I had a big problem with Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors. It took me a while to fix it, but I’ll share my secret with you.

Chrome says your file may have been moved or deleted

Dave Farquhar Software August 19, 2016July 27, 2017chrome, error message, web browser, web browsers, Windows Explorer 0 Comment

When opening locally stored PDFs in Chrome, sometimes Chrome says the file may have been moved or deleted. More specifically, the error message says “Your file was not found. It may have been moved or deleted. ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.” But nobody moved or deleted the file, because I just clicked on it. In fact, I could still see it sitting right there in Windows Explorer.

Oddly enough, I had other files in the very same folder that opened fine. No errors. Here’s how I found the problem, fixed it, and avoided it in the future.

Find words in all caps in Word

Dave Farquhar Office, Software August 10, 2016April 25, 2017excel, microsoft, microsoft word, ribbon, word 2010 0 Comment

Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to find words in all caps in Word. Microsoft Word, that is. This helps you find all the acronyms so you can make sure you spelled them out or explained them properly.

Double-checking acronyms is especially important when writing government proposals, which require you to spell out acronyms on first usage. If you’ve never written a proposal, be glad, smile, and nod. Many acronyms make good index material, so this trick helps when you’re writing an index. Also, acronyms are frequently jargon, so making sure you explain them adequately is just part of good writing. Or, if you’re a fan of high quality typography, you might want to find them all so you can set them in small caps for improved aesthetics and readability.

Here’s how you do it.

Get rid of trailing zeroes in Excel charts

Dave Farquhar Office, Software January 20, 2016August 14, 2016excel, excel spreadsheet, Format Cells

I was making a chart in an Excel spreadsheet the other week and it insisted on adding trailing zeroes in the charts after the decimal point, even though all of my stats were whole numbers. Here’s the solution I finally found to get rid of trailing zeroes in Excel charts.

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