Spend a while Googling awhile

The phrase is, "it took him a while to." Google Docs suggests I should change it to, "it took him awhile to." That seems wrong, so I Google the phrase "it took him awhile to." Google Search suggests I should change it to "it took him a while to." Google Docs and Google Search need to get together sometime for a chat.

Magnitude of Error

Yesterday I was reading a Scientific American article that said there were 1089 neutrinos in the universe. I was pretty sure that figure was low, so had a look at their HTML code. Sure enough, they had used <super> instead of <sup> as the tag to indicate a superscript. I sent them an e-mail suggesting the correction. They sent a message back thanking me and telling me they had made the correction. The article now tells us there are 10⁸⁹ neutrinos in the universe. I feel that the magnitude of this correction more than makes up for my lousy chemistry lab results when the lab teaching assistant told me I had produced the largest error in the history of the lab.

FanBox is a scam

You will receive message. It will say that someone you know (their actual name) has posted a question for you, or a photo for you to see. You click the link and are asked to enter the password for your e-mail account. If you do, FanBox will send messages to all your friends telling them that their friend (your name) has posted a question for them, or a photo for them to see. And on it goes. The real fun is that FanBox steals your portfolio photo from other websites and posts it on their website. Thus, I have never created a FanBox account, but I have one anyway, with my photo on it, so my friends will be fooled into thinking I am on FanBox and will fall for the scam themselves. So remember, NEVER type a password for anything into FanBox.

Justify Text in GIMP 2.8

Windows --> Docable Dialogs --> Tool Options

Is this information in the manual? Who knows? GIMP is a wonderful program, and also insane. The manual is beautiful and useless.

Microsoft Office Save Undo Fix

Problem: Microsoft put the Save and Undo buttons one pixel apart on the Quick Access toolbar. Thus, you go to save your work and accidentally Undo the last thing you did, in which case you have to hit the Redo button before you save. Or you go to Undo a terrible mistake and accidentally Save, in which case you curse forever the idiots who designed the Quick Access toolbar and take to drink. Well, actually you can still do an Undo after you have done a save, so all is not lost. But still, if there were ever two tiny buttons that should have space between them it is Save and Undo.

And you can put that space there. Just right-click one of those buttons and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar. In the resulting dialog add a few separators between Save and Undo. I find five produces an aesthetically pleasing spacer. You have to do this for each of your Office programs, but unlike so many useful Microsoft workarounds, this one carries over from one document to the next. Do it once for Word 2010 and you never need to do it again. Would that all Microsoft design flaws were so easy to repair.

Comma Turmoil

In Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a comma walks into the sentence three words before its cue.

"In all, the internal turmoil particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges."

I did a Google search for the phrase "internal turmoil particles," and learned that in the Special Illustrated Edition of Mr. Bryson's book, the sentence has been corrected.

"In all the internal turmoil, particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges."

I prefer the uncorrected version. Internal turmoil particles must be the molecules that cause anxiety, confusion and indecisiveness. If internal turmoil particles are indeed picking up electrical charges, we might be able to deflect them with magnetic fields. Perhaps those folks who have strapped magnets to their wrists and their pipes to ward off arthritis and lime scale will actually receive the benefit of inner peace.

Default Settings on Excel 2010 under Windows 7

How to set row height and column width, or font, or whatever, to what you always want, and get it automatically every time.

Create an ideal Excel spreadsheet, blank but with all the settings you like.
Control Panel --> Folder Options --> View --> Show hidden files, folders, and drives --> Apply
Save your ideal blank spreadsheet, selecting Excel Template (*.xltx) from the Save As Type: pop-up menu. Save it into C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART.
Control Panel --> Folder Options --> View --> Don't show hidden files, folders, and drives --> Apply
(Unless you like having the hidden folder visible.)
All new Excel spreadsheets should have your desired features automatically.