Every have a huge spreadsheet with some hidden rows and columns, only to find that when you copy and paste the data, all the hidden data comes along for the ride?
Guess that would be helpful sometimes, but other times, you just want the visible data to be copied leaving the hidden rows and columns behind.
I searched the web and found solutions that involved filtering, re-hiding the data you didn’t want to see, and even using macros to get the job done.
If you use Skype chat all day every day like I do, you may enjoy these few fun tips and tricks:
1. The “hidden” Skype emoticons
Skype has a great set of built in emoticons, but there are dozens of more… “fun” ones that you can’t access from the menu. If you mouse over all of the icons in the menu, you’ll see what the code for them is, i.e. (giggle) (h) (y) etc… If you type those codes in (parenthesis and all) you’ll get the respective emoticons. Click on the chart to the right for an example.
But… there are some other emoticons Skype doesn’t tell you about. Try the following for a little fun: (drunk) (mooning) (smoke) (finger) (poolparty) and (rock)
These “hidden” emoticons can add a bit more fun to your IMs when used appropriately.
After reviewing a bunch of options for “offline” GPS use on my Android phone, I settled on NavDroyd, a paid, albeit powerful looking application that didn’t need to be online for anything.
Using just the built-in GPS and offline Open Street Map data that you download and update from their servers for free from within the app, you can do all the normal GPS functions like look for points of interest, get driving directions, have it read out turn by turn directions while showing you on the map, etc…
There wasn’t a good way to test how it would work in Italy, so I downloaded all the maps and data for Italy (under 100MB in their compressed form), played around, simulated drives, and got comfortable with the interface.
After August’s 2 week trip to Africa and not having net access with my Incredible (running Android), I wanted to find a solution that let me pull maps and have them cached offline. With my upcoming trip to Italy, now seems like a good time to test a solution.
There are a ton of paid options, but I’m looking for a free offline map option. The best one so far seems to be MyDroid which is currently downloading maps onto my phone.
At first glance, the maps seem great, but there’s no search or routing options available. Seems good for finding yourself on a map and navigating the old school way, but not much more.
MyDroyd is their companion product that does some routing, but is limited to certain published cities. Boo.
NavDroyd, another companion product that is currently €4.99, that seems to offer turn-by-turn, offline, driving and walking directions. This might be the win.
Oddly, the apps don’t share the same map data, so you have to store multiple copies of maps for apps from the same company – and the map files are BIG! (Italy is 68MB alone)
After I return from Italy, I’ll post on how it all worked out. In the mean time, any suggestions for alternate apps?
Ever created a group chat and then had to remove someone from the conversation?
Sure, you can just start a new chat and leave them out of the invite, but now you have two chat histories, two chat groups with the same topic, and more.
Specifically, to boot someone from a group chat, type:
/kickban skypeusername
This will remove the specified skyper user from the group chat and prevent them from getting back in. Please note that you need to type their username, not their display name. You can find their username by hovering over their display name in the contact list or viewing their profile.
Everyone in the chat – including the person you just booted – will see a message that you have ejected and banned said user, so it’s not a secret, but it does the job.
Everyone once in a while things go awry for me on OS X.
Symptoms often include hot corners suddenly no longer working, and spaces not switching when I switch applications.
Turns out the restarting your dock can fix this in a jiffy.
I’m a command line kind of guy, so open up terminal and type this in to restart the dock:
killall -KILL Dock
It looks pretty scary (“Kill! KILL!”), but all it’s doing is telling OS X to kill the Dock process for you, which it will auto-restart. Your dock will disappear for a moment and then come back in working order.
This evening I was experimenting with adding custom variables to my Google Analytics tracking code, but when I checked Google’s custom variable documentation, it didn’t match the analytics code that I had.
Google Analytics changes their code for you to copy and paste quite often, seemingly every time I setup a new site to track.
The latest version of the analytics code that I was given used a new format, notably:
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'youridhere']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' :
'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
The docs say to put the _setCustomVar code in before pageTracker._trackPageview() … but I no longer have that older style setup.
After a bit of digging around, I came up with a solution from documentation on the _gaq Global Object. The _setCustomVar code can be added as follows:
It seems like streaming music from iTunes, or any desktop app of sorts, to my android phone over my local WiFi network shouldn’t be anything new different or difficult, but I can’t seem to find a great way to do it.
If you know of a good option, please comment below. When I figure it out, I’ll update this post, too. 🙂
