Monthly Archives: December 2007

Acrobat Side-by-side Comparison Got Sidestepped

Posted on December 21, 2007 | Leave a comment

One of the most useful features in Adobe Acrobat 5.0 that I used first as a student and then later even more at work was its ability to compare two documents side-by-side and mark all the differences. It is the only program I know to date that enables one to do this. I used it frequently to compare all sorts of files, usually either MS-Word documents or MS-Excel sheets. While this does involve the extra step of creating PDFs, it works beautifully in most cases. Continue reading →

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Posted in Review, Technology

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Compressing Double Layer DVDs

Posted on December 21, 2007 | Leave a comment

The wedding movie mentioned in the previous post is actually over three hours long and does not fit onto a single layer DVD. While I did buy a package of double layer (DL) DVDs I was rather shocked about their price. At nearly $2.2 they are more than 5 times as expensive as single layer DVDs. In this article, I found a useful hint of how to use Toast to compress double layer DVDs. Here’s how to do it: Continue reading →

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Posted in Mac OS X Platform, Tips & Tricks, Videography, Workflow

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Widescreen Menus in iDVD

Posted on December 21, 2007 | Leave a comment

I just finished a nice widescreen movie from my sister’s wedding and I figured, if the movie is widescreen I might as well make the menu widescreen as well. I only have a standard 4:3 TV, but am used to watch widescreen movies with a letter-box, i.e., black bars on top and bottom. Naturally I expected the menu to also be letter-boxed, alas, that’s not the case. Continue reading →

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Posted in Mac OS X Platform, Videography

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“TV Safe Area” Nuisance in iDVD

Posted on December 21, 2007 | Leave a comment

When creating a DVD menu in iDVD, there is an option from the Tools menu called “Show TV Safe Area”. What this means is that pretty much anything outside that box won’t show up on your TV. It also won’t show up on you computer when testing the DVD from a disk image. Continue reading →

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Posted in Mac OS X Platform, Videography

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Ink Scam w/ Level Indicators

Posted on December 20, 2007 | Leave a comment

This ars technica article is a bit older but probably none the less applicable. The gist of it is that inkjet printers claim that a cartridge is empty much too early. If you replace right then, you may be paying twice as much as necessary depending on your printer model. And that does not given count the ink lost to nozzle cleaning and the like. Continue reading →

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Posted in Technology

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Even Easier Driving Directions: Just Right Click the Map

Posted on December 20, 2007 | Leave a comment

When computing driving direction all you need is right clicks, keyboard not required. Simply right click on the map and select “Directions to here” or “Directions from here”, then point to your destination/origin and repeat. That’s it.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Transportation

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Disable Reading Layout in MS-Word

Posted on December 18, 2007 | Leave a comment

When opening Word documents from Outlook, they are by default displayed in the reading layout which is supposed to make the document easier to read. I do not like this very much, however, and fortunately, there is an easy way to turn it off; the trick is just to know where to find the option. Continue reading →

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Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks

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Disable Review Toolbar Annoyance in MS-Word

Posted on December 18, 2007 | Leave a comment

Ever since my version of MS Office was upgraded from 2000 to 2003 was I very frustrated that very frequently, but not always, the reviewing toolbar popped up when opening a Word document. No matter how many times I closed it, it opened again, eating away at my screen real estate. Today I finally decided to try to remedy the situation. This great article explains how to do it. Thank you!

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Posted in MS-Windows Platform, Tips & Tricks

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Left Turns Cost Time and Gas

Posted on December 13, 2007 | Leave a comment

This short NYT article points out a nice piece of optimization at work to save money and at the same be more environmentally friendly. Well done!

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Posted in Transportation

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