Friday, August 30, 2013

Computing

That’s a fascinating trick in Word Perfect, Tamar, undiscovered by us in all these years – but I’m pretty sure Jenny has answered the question of what my husband did to make his text disappear – if you hit Ctrl A (or a) in Word, you Select All. If you next hit an alphanumeric key, it all goes.

With all my grumbling about the Good Old Days, it’s nice to have a solid, specific example of how they were better. Word Perfect would have said “Delete block? Y/N” before proceeding.

I’ve set Auto Save on my husband’s computer to five minutes – but I think I’ll change it back to ten, because I don’t know where the saved file is to be found and I am still having a lot of trouble with the file structure in Windows 8. If there’s a crash or a power failure, Auto Save should produce its latest effort in a dialogue box when you start again, as Word does. But what about an inadvertent deletion? In that case, you need to move fast, before the blank document is itself Auto Saved.

Knitlass, I was glad to hear of your computer sufferings – and deeply sympathetic, as well. My husband believes that he is uniquely afflicted by my ignorance and stupidity, and that if we had a Man In to teach us what to do, all would go swimmingly. We did in fact have a useful session with James and Alistair over the summer – Tools > Zoom is a particularly good one, to increase the on-screen visibility without altering the font size. But I don't think there's an all-purpose easy answer.

Life

Archie seemed in somewhat low spirits. Our niece (his first cousin once removed) and I got him successfully installed in his new room yesterday afternoon. His new house master is what we used to call in the 1950’s, dishy.

I am keen to get Archie on the electoral register so that he can cast my vote (in effect) in the referendum next year. The housemaster didn’t know about such things and I’m not even sure he knew what I meant by, The Referendum (he has just arrived from a school in middle England). But I spent some time on the Scottish Electoral Register website just now, and it doesn’t say anything about schoolboys being disqualified because they really live in Athens. I will press ahead with this.

Knitting

My sister’s husband – they’re now safely back in CT, alas – sent me this link to an article by Alison Lurie on the New Yorker blog, called “The Sweater Curse”. It is extracted from a forthcoming book called “Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting”. We’ll have to look out for that one.

Not much got done on the knitting front here yesterday, but that skein has been successfully wound, despite the temptation to cut the yarn and throw away the remainder, once I had wound enough to finish Relax2.


I found this on Zite this morning and am totally in love. There’s a kit.

11 comments:

  1. Dear Jean
    I love that sweater, though I don't wear boxy any more, I have gone back to a more fitted silhouette. Coincidentally, Carol Sunday was featured on the Twist blog recently. 3 of her Twist patterns were shown and two of them are almost enough to tempt me back to sweater knitting. My body temperature does not encourage much sweater wearing, even in Scotland!

    Sorry about your computer woes, I have a computer professional at home :) so tend to leave it all to him.

    Hope it works out,
    Dawn

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  2. "Dishy"!
    Ah those were the days :)

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  3. If it is the Ctrl+A problem, then after that happens, you can hit Ctrl+Z repeatedly until the text reappears. That should work even if auto-save saves the blank draft.

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  4. I should have mentioned, of course, that Ctrl+Z will only work as long as the document has remained open since the disappearance. Once you close it and reopen it, that option is lost.

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  5. I hear nothing but complaints about windows 8, Jean, even from MEN. I am quite pleased that at my job, where the IT staff is pretty limited, that there is no move to Windows 8, not even on new machines.

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  6. Anonymous2:44 PM

    I work in IT and I assure you that there are just as many dudes who know nothing about computers.

    Monica

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  7. Anonymous3:32 PM

    I really like the Milano sweater in your link, Jean. However, I was shocked at the amount of ease. The model shown was my size (36), and it has 20 inches of ease, according to the details. That would be a tent that would fall off of my narrow, rounded shoulders!

    Mary G. in Texas

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  8. If you hit Cntr-Z, it undoes the last keystroke (or sometime several, if hit repeatedly). Perhaps this might rescue the disappearing documents?

    I like the Milano sweater, but love the Sonoma shawl!

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  9. Anonymous7:12 PM

    I'm definitely a fan of Carol Sunday's designs and of her yarns as well. I'm surprised that I haven't yet made any of her creations - my overlong queue must be to blame.
    -- stashdragon

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  10. I went to an interesting one woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe last week called "The Sweater Curse" which did feature a lot of knitting. There were historical knitting stories interspersed with the actor's tales of her own sweater curses. At the end of the show she gave each audience member a crocheted heart (it was a small venue). Belated Happy Birthday to you!

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  11. One of my knitting friends bought that kit and is making an absolutely beautiful sweater! Yarn is particularly lovely.

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