English Pirates in Facebook

Fun: Change your Language in Facebook to English Pirate

Okay, this post has nothing to do with my usual tech stuff, but I find it worth-sharing. I am a big Facebook fan, and last night, a freind sent a few 'secret' or I call it 'fun facts' of facebook. I found this one amusing.

To change your language:

1. Scroll all the way down, and click English (US). Of course, if you are using any other language, then click that language.
2. Choose English Pirate.

Have FUN!! I took time to right-guess some of them though. ;p

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Microsoft Excel Keyboard Accelerator

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #3 -- Using the Keyboard Accelerator

This accelerator aims to allow you to access every command in the Excel using the keyboard. This function may not work for everybody, however, for people who don't usually use mouse, just like me, this knowledge would prove useful.

To do this, you would need to press and release the ALT key. You will notice then, there would be a ToolTips above each command, with an associated accelerator key.

Try this simple trick, could be more helpful than you might think.

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Adding and Removing Icon Quick Access

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #4 -- Adding/Removing an Icon to/from Quick Access

Quick Access Toolbar is another great feature of Microsfot Excel that will save you a few clicks to get the button you want. This works exactly the same like the Quick Launch next to your Windows Start button. And therfore, yes, you can customise it the way you like.

To add your favourite icons to the quick access toolbar:

1. Go to the icons you want to add.
2. Hover over the icon, and right click on it.
3. Choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

To remove it, do the step 1-2, and for step 3, choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.

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Freezing Tables Panes in Excel

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #5 -- Freezing Panes in Excel Table

When creating a table with massive data is what you smoetimes (I have to do tables for my lab report), then keeping the headers/panes of the table visible is something you would want to see when you are scrolling down the data. Using Excel, this can be done simply.

Consider the table I have made in the video below, what you need to do, is to follow these steps.

1. Make sure you place the cursor on the first cell that you would NOT freeze.
2. From the VIEW ribbon, select Freeze Panes dropdown.
3. Then choose Freeze Panes.

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Creating In-Cell Bar Charts

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #6 -- Creating In-Cell Bar Charts with Data Bars

A Data Bar in Microsoft Excel is defined as a semitransparent swath of colour which start from the lief side of the cell. If the number in the cell is small, then the range of the coloured bar would be small and vice versa. The use of this in-cell bar chart is one alternative in presenting a table filled with numeric data. Watch my video below to get a better idea of what I have been saying.

Creating data bars is not that difficult, only requiring a few clicks.

1. Drag the mouse to select a range of numeric data. Take note that this data should be numbers of the same scale, ie. if you have a row of total, then don not include this row.
2. Go to Home Ribbon, then from the Style group, select the Conditional Formatting icon.
3. Choose Data Bars frin the drop down.

If you do not like the default set by the Excel, you can customise by following these steps:

1. From the same Conditional Formatting, shoose Manage Rules (the last option).
2. From the Show Formatting Rules drop-down, choose This Worksheet.
3. Click the Data Bar rule you want to customise.
4. Click the Edit button, and you can start customising it as you wish.

Hope that helps.

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Short Films about Google Chrome

Since Google Chrome was introduced by Google just a few months ago, I had fallen in love with the browser for its simple interface and seemingly-better-than-others operations. It is fast. The tabs are simply awesome and finding a word (with Crtl F) is really a quick thing to do. Simply great.

Last month Google invited some creative parties to engineer 11 short movies about the Google Chrome. I spent some time to wath all the 11 movies, and some are pretty good. And I thought I justo share it here. The videos below are "A colloection of short films about a browser" and one of my favourite "You and Your Browser". Enjoy.

Original: 11 Short Films about Browser

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Google Image Colour Selector

It was just yesterday that I realised that Google Image has added a new feature called Google Images Selector, a tool that will let you narrow down your search by colour. I tried using this, and the results were pretty cool. Below are the pictures I took when I was experimenting with the tool.

Notice that all the three pictures have the same key word I typed in the search box, 'chelsea'. However, when I changed the colour drop-down just below the search box, the search results will change according to the colour. Awesome!

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Wallpaper Search using Google Search

Google has recently added a new feature in Image Search that include an options to specify the size of picture you are searching for. It is not just that. You can now look for a photo whose size can fit you desktop size, i.e. you can now search for a picture for your wallpaper!!

These are the simple steps:

1. Go to Google.com and click image on the top left tab.
2. Click on the Advanced Image Search which is located just next to the search box.
3. Select that Photo Content from the list of content types.
4. Select Use my desktop Size to find images that will suit your desktop.

Original: Wallpaper Search

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Finding Published Date of a Webpage

When one is looking for an article online, one would need to find out the details about the webpage. One of the common details is the date when the webpage is first uploaded on to a publus web server so that we can find and read it.

Using some tweak on thr address url on google search result, it is possible to find the published date of a webpage quite easily.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Go to Google.com, and type the website url.
2. Go to the browser address bar, and add "&as_qdr=y15" at the end of the address.
3. You will notice the publication date.

Original: Find Date When a Web Page was First Published on the Internet.

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How to minimise ribbon in Excel

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #2 -- Minimising Ribbon

My laptop has a very small screen that sometimes i had to hide my toolbar just to get a better view on my screen. Some of you may also have PC tablet that more or less would give you the same trouble. In the Microsfot Excel 2007 the RIBBON takes quite a big space honestly, and the good thing is that you can minimise it!! Watch the video to help you understand what I mean.

To recap, the 2 ways on how to minimise ribbon are as follow:

1. Press Crtl+F1.
2. Right Click the Ribbon and choose Minimize the Ribbon.

When the ribbon is minimised, you can click on a tab name and Excel will temporarily open that particular ribbon. After a command have been selected, the ribbon will be automatically return to minimised state.

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Best Video Formats for Youtube Uploads

I have been uploading videos to youtube for more than a year now, starting with a video of myself (yes, myself) singing a cover to my favourite songs, until recently I started to upload videos for my blogs. And it was sad that I missed out the information about how I can maximse the quality of the videos by following the right formats for the videos.

This information is indeed in the youtube website, however, I believe no a lot of people would know it - I took a year to realise this!! :(. Well here are the pointers to remember:

1. Video format is best to be H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 preferred.
2. The recommended aspect ratio of the video would be 4:3 or 16:9.
3. Resolution: 640x360 or 480x360 (recommended).
4. If it has audio format, try to haeve MP3 or ACC preferred.
5. It is important to have 30 frames per second.
6. The video should not beyond 10 min (2-3 min would be best).
7. Maximum file size allowed is 1 GB.

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Customise Recent Documents Excel

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tips #1 -- Customise the Recent Documents List

Recent Documents List is what will appear when you click the Office Button on the top left of the workbook in the Microsoft Excel 2007. The list will display all the documents that have just been opened. You can choose to display up to 50 recent documents.

Customising the Recent Document List may come useful when you are sharing computer with others. You might even want to clear the recently used file list altogether. The video below will show you exactly how to do it.

So, in the nutshell, these are the simple steps you need to do to customise the size of your Recent Documents List:

1. Click the Office Icon.
2. Select Excel Options at the bottom.
3. Choose Advanced tab on the left.
4. Scroll down till you see Display.
5. Then you use the Show This Number of the Recent Documents spin button to increase the number to up to 50.

In addition, to the right of each list in the Recent Documents, there is a grey thumbtack. If you click the thumbtack, you will pin that file to the list. The files will appear in the Recent Documetns List until you unpin them. To upon, simply just click on the thumbtack again.

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Google Talk in iGoogle

Having a chat feature in a website that you may usually visit would be a great stuff to have, wouldn't be? Just like Facebook where you can use the chat panel to chat with you online friends, GoogleBlog has announced that iGoogle, Google page with a multiple website customised in a single page, has been completed with a Chat feature.

This chat feature is similar to the one on Gmail where Gmail users will be able to send instant messages to their colleagues, friends and family. Now we can do it straight from the iGoogle page.

A cool feature of this is that you'll even be able to chat with friends who don't yet have a Gmail address — any email address will do. All you have to do is invite them as a chat buddy, and if they accept your invitation and sign up for iGoogle with their personal email account, their name becomes just a click away right on your page. 

Here is the original post from GoogleBLog: Chatting away on iGoogle..

Toyang Qren. More articles on Qren's other blog.

RocketDock Animates your Desktop

I used to wonder what those animated icons that can auto-hide on my friend's screen. I thought it must come together with the laptop. I was yesterday then I realised I (and you!) can have it!!

RocketDock is what you need. RocketDock.com gives you a useful description:

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

The following video is an awesome video (not done by me), that will help you understand how to work with it. 

It makes you interface really cool!!

by Toyang Qren

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Cool Screen Saver Dropclock

Last week, a friend of mine told me about this cool screen saver. As the website says: Dropclock is an aesthetically intriguing motion clock screen saver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy helvetica dropping into water in super slow-motion.

If you are an avid fan of 3d-art, this could be that will amaze you.

Go and give it a try. 

Here is the link to download.

by ToyangQren

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BatteryBar: Monitor your Battery

BatteryBar is a free software (also available Pro version) that will consantly control and monitor the battery status in your laptop as you use it. 

What of the faetures it offers includes the display that will let you know the remianing time, the history data, the baterry wear, capacity and full lifetime.

Once you have download it, the next things you'd need to do:

1. Right click on taskbar
2. Choose Toolbars
3. Choose BatteryBar

Happy trying

by. Toyang Qren

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Customize your Gmail Colours

Gmail has made one awesome improvement such that now Gmail users are able to customizise their own gmail page with their own favourite colours. The Google Blogscoped explained that you can make Gmil as ugly or pretty as you want.

The steps are simple:

1. From yout Gmail page, go to Settings
2. Choose Theme
3. At the last choice of theme, click Choose your own colours
4. Pick the colours of your choice.

Enjoy.

by. ToyangQren

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Coverting Webpage to pdf

PrimoPDF is a website where you can convert a webpage to pdf. What a useful tool! What you need to do is jst to past the link of the webpage, and the pdf file will be sent to your email quite instantly (I tried it a few times, and it took less than 3 minutes for the file to reach my Gmail inbox!).

These are the steps and details:

1. Go to PrimoPDF.
2. Enter you email address.
3. Choose if you want to convert a file or an url.
4. Done!

PrimoPDF is also capable of converting more than 300 file types to pdf files. Powerful indeed!!

Hope this article helps you.

by.Toyang Qren

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PDF Conversion Using KoolWIRE

Convert to PDF by sending Email to pdf@koolwire.com

When I started reading this tips in my email, I was like "really?? can it be that simple??". Then I try myself to see if this trick is effective for person like me who used pdf file a lot.

The result?? It was pretty impressive I assure you.

The following were the sequence of what I did:

1. I attached a Word file, named Lab Schedule, and send it to pdf@koolwire.com (if you notice the time I sent it, it shows 7.41 pm). In the first image, I highlighted that the file that I sent was indeed a Word document.
2. Within ONE minute, I received the reply. You can see the second image below.

The disadvantage is of course you can only do this when you are connected to the internet.

Go and try this trick!!