klyjen.blog

I am a keyboard-shortcut junkie; I very rarely use the mouse or touchpad for commands that can be replicated using keystrokes. I do a lot of typing, and it slows me down to have to take my hands away from the keyboard to locate a mousepointer and perform an action. Whenever I can avoid it, I do. This applies to all of the basic and general keyboard shortcuts for manipulating text, including copying, pasting, bolding, applying italics, whatever, but also to cursor and selection manipulation using the Ctrl and Shift keys combined with the arrow keys.

This is all very well and good and rather boring, but I have discovered something odd and I cannot figure it out. I tend to compose blog posts in notepad, to avoid the autoformatting I have configured in Word for longer client documents. I use the same keystrokes in notepad, but have noticed that sometimes when I go to select text using Ctrl+Shift+[Right Arrow] or [Left Arrow], the entire body of text in the notepad window becomes right-aligned. To date, I had been unable to recreate this behavior intentionally. More interestingly, after this happens, pressing the right arrow moves the cursor to the LEFT, and pressing the left arrow moves the cursor to the RIGHT. No keypad combination seems to change things back to normal, and I end up copying the entire body of text and pasting it into a new notepad window to return the world to its senses.

Today--just twenty minutes ago, in fact--I have discovered what causes the problem. To see it for yourself:

Go to Start|Run, type notepad, and press Enter.
Type a few words.
Press Ctrl down and then press Shift. (Interestingly, the behavior does not appear if you press Shift and then Ctrl.)

Ta da! Experiment with moving the cursor by clicking the left and right arrow keys. Weird, isn't it? Frustrating is a better word, to be honest. It is as if my notepad window has been transported into an alternate dimension where everything is just backwards.

The point of this post is really to publish a plea. If anything out there can explain why this happens and, more importantly, how I can pull the notepad window back into my dimension rather than moving the text, I would be very appreciative.

Posted by Jen at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A client photocopied the beauty of simplicity (no link available yet) for me last week (an article from Fast Company's November issue.) My favorite quote--which will not be a surprise to anyone who knows me or who has seen Edward Tufte's fantastic and mildly subversive The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint print on my office wall--relates to Royal Philips Electronics, a company that has reportedly taken simplicity to heart over the last decade with a Sense & Sensibility campaign that applies to their products and the company itself.

Even things as prosaic as business meetings have been nudged in the direction of simplicity: The company now forbids more than 10 slides in any PowerPoint presentation. Just enough, they decided, was more.

The article begins with a profile of Marissa Mayer, dubbed the "high priestess of simplicity" at Google, who is responsible for the uncluttered look of Google's homepage. (Thanks Marissa!) The article also lists TiVo, Apple's iPod, Skype, and Blackberry by RIM as examples of simplicity.

Posted by Jen at 11:08 AM | Permalink

ExtremeTech reports a security vulnerability in the Linksys Wireless G Broadband Router (WRT54G). (Link from eWeek.)

As a side note, I'm not sure it qualifies as a security hole in the device; the claim is that access to the router can be accomplished using an "easily guessed" password. The problem (based on my admittedly quick read) appears to be related to weak passwords or careless users who do not change the defaults. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Calling this a security hole, then, is misleading and implies that the vendor is responsible for the vulnerability, rather than the user who neglects to read the instructions and protect herself.

Posted by Jen at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had to turn in my Blackberry--one of the original 957 models--when I left my job in Washington DC. I was fine, for the first few weeks; similar the aggregator-less time period, I was busy with moving and getting settled in and adjusted. Now, though, I miss it. I miss having access to e-mail (or more importantly, my contact list) from wherever I happen to be at any given moment. Yes, while at home I could simply turn on my laptop and connect, but that takes significantly more time than, say, pulling my crackberry out of my purse and pulling up a phone number.

I need a new phone, as well; my old Verizon-brand flip phone has been struggling to stay together over the last few months after the joint cracked. (Side note? This was already a replacement phone; the first one broke in the same place.) Rather than deal with getting another replacement, I am planning on buying a unified device. I had been planning to buy a Blackberry, this time with the phone service, but I no longer have access to a BES server, so I'm not tied to that line of products.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Treos? Palm? (does Palm even have a phone-enabled model?) Goodlink? My requirements are simple--I want PIM information to synch from Outlook, access to e-mail (corporate and personal), and good battery life/service coverage. I'm heading out today to compare features and models.

And no, I am not missing access to my Blackberry for these reasons, although I found the article amusing.

Posted by Jen at 12:51 PM | Permalink