Tech Tips

Computers have a limited amount of physical RAM, which can only be increased by adding more memory chips to the motherboard. Luckily for us, engineers figured out a long time ago that we can use some space on our hard disks as if it were RAM.

If you’re using a Windows operating system, the space on the hard disk set aside to act like memory is called Virtual Memory. The use of the term Virtual Memory makes sense because the extra RAM isn’t actually there (hence, the virtual part). All other operating systems refer to the disk space as the swap file. The use of the term swap file also makes sense because data is swapped from one place to another: Data that isn’t currently being used is moved from the physcial RAM to the hard disk, and data on the hard disk that the processor needs is moved into RAM. For once in computing, both terms apply.

Just as the names for the swap file differ depending on what OS you use, so does the implementation. By default, Windows systems put a single file named pagefile.sys on the Windows installation root drive. The big disadvantage of this is that the pagefile.sys file can get very fragmented and since it’s on the same drive as the rest of Windows, it is very difficult to effectively defrag. On a Unix/Linux system, the swap file is a whole separate partition that is dedicated to the swap file. The swap file partition gets fragmented much less because it isn’t competing with disk space with the rest of the Operating System. Because of this separation, the Unix/Linux method is much more efficient.

Moving the Swap File on a Windows System

Fortunately, on a Windows system, you can make sure the pagefile.sys file lives on its own partiton just like a Unix system, even though Microsoft went through great lengths to hide the option to do so. In order for this to work, you must create a partition when you install Windows (or use a partitioning resizing program like Disk Commander). Once you have a separate partition, do the following:

• Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties…
• Click on the Advanced tab
• Click the Settings button under the  Performance section of the dialog box
•  Click on the Advanced tab on the resulting box
• Click the Change button under the Virtual Memory section.
• Click on the existing drive that has your pagefile on it. You’ll know which drive this is because it will have a paging file size listed next to it. Chances are, it will be C:
• Choose the No Paging File radio button then click the Set button.
• Now, click on the drive (partition) you wish to move your pagefile to.
• Choose the System managed size radio button, then click the Set button
• Click OK until you are prompted to reboot
• Upon rebooting, your pagefile will be moved to the new drive (partition)

Note: If you put the pagefile.sys on a separate hard disk, you will notice a huge performance boost in applications like Photoshop that use a lot of Virtual Memory.

Microsoft Word is notorious for inserting a massive amount of non-standard, useless HTML markup in pages when you "Save as a Webpage…" Not only does this extra markup violate all validation and kill page load times, but it also makes editing pages by hand nearly impossible.

Thankfully, Microsoft added a little know feature into Word XP or later that allows you to omit much of the bloated code when you save as a webpage. Simply click File | Save As…, then click the Save As Type drop-down box and choose Web Page, Filtered.

While this doesn’t create perfect code, it does cut down of filesize considerably, according to my simple test. I opened a two page Word document with text, font formatting, tabs, bulleted lists, and numbered lists. The filtered document was only 5KB, while the normal Save as a Web Page document was 12KB. Looking at the generated HTML in notepad, it’s easy to see why. The header of the non-filtered page had 40 lines of useless XML content. Also, the bulleted lists were extremely bloated in the non-filtered page. It’s probably safe to say those size difference ratios wouldn’t hold true for longer documents since much of the bloat in the test documents was a result of the HEAD content, however, the general markup was much more terse in the filtered version.

From now on, when I want to quickly publish a Word document, I will definately choose Save As…Web Page, Filtered.

A couple months ago, I got a Google Beta screen when I was searching for something. I like the new layout. Does anyone know how we can customize our Google pages to always look like this?

I’ve been using Mozilla Firefox since version 0.8. I love it. It’s perhaps the best thing to happen to the Internet since Netscape 3.  One of the things I love about Firefox is that it is extensible. You can download hundreds of custom modifications to make Firefox tick just as you want.  Below is a list of the extensions I automatically install on every computer I plan on using for any length of time:

• Web Developer Toolbar — An indespensible list to allow you to inspect any and every aspect of a webpage and its contents.  It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen for debugging CSS and DHTML code.
• Tab X — Adds a close button to the corner of each open tab. Some people don’t like this, but I think it makes cleaning up a bunch of open web pages very easy.
• Colorful Tabs — Makes sorting through tabs very easy, thanks to the soothing colors it assigns each tab.
• Live HTTP Headers — Shows you exactly what’s being sent to the server. A web designers delight! I used it to debug a Smoothwall box just the other day!

If you don’t already have Firefox, get it now! You’ll be surfing faster and safer!

What do I mean when I say formatting cells in Excel? To format a cell means to change how what’s in the cell looks. Formatting a cell does not change what’s in the cell, only how it looks.  This is a very important thing to remember.

The Big Three

You already know (I hope) how to use the Big Three of formatting: bold, italics, and underline. In case you forgot, you can manipulate those using these three buttons:

 

Color Me Crazy!

You can change the colors of your text and background in Excel very easily. To change the text color, you can highlight the cell you want to change the color of and click on the     button.  Clicking on the  will give you a list of colors to choose from. The bar under the “A” will always show the currently selected color.  To change the background color of a cell, click on the  button. Again, clicking on the   will give you a list of colors.

A Different Kind of Formatting

In Excel, we work with all kinds of data. Data are simply pieces of information.  Some different kinds of data are regular numbers (i.e. 1, 2 13, 233, and so on), dates, currency (i.e. how much was your electric bill), ZIP codes, a list of names, and so on.  Excel can format your data in dozens of ways.  For example, if you type March 1, 2005 into Excel and press enter, Excel changes it to 1-Mar-05.  This is just one way Excel can format a date.

>> Important Information: To format a cell to hold a certain type of data, right-click on the cell and select Format Cells… tthen click on the Number tab. <<

Different Format Categories and a Description of Each

General:  This is used if you’re not really sure what kind of data is going into a cell. This is the default value. (A default value is the one that is selected when you start a new spreadsheet.)

 Number: This setting is used if you know you’re going to have numbers in your cells. You can change the following settings in the Number category

• Decimal Places: This changes how many numbers there are after a decimal place. For instance, if you set Decimal Places to 2, the number 2.5456 would be displayed as 2.55.  Excel rounds to the nearest decimal place you set
• Use 1000 separator (,): Use this setting if you want your numbers to have a , between each thousands place. For example, 1433 gets displayed as 1,433 if this box is checked.
• Negative Numbers: This changes how Excel handles negative numbers. You can change them to show a negative sign, turn red, turn red in parentheses, etc.

 Currency: Use this setting if you’re going to be dealing with money but you don’t need the decimal places to line up. Currency works just like the Numbers category except you can choose the symbol that goes in front of the number. (The default symbol is the $ sign, which is the American symbol for money.)

 Accounting:  Use the accounting format if you want the decimal places to line up in the columns. Otherwise, it’s just like currency.

 Date: Use this category if your cell will hold a date. There are a bunch of Date types to choose from. For example, you can make March 1, 2005 look like:

• 3/1
• 1-Mar
• Mar-1

Remember, formatting a date to look a certain way does not change the actual date.

Time: Use this category if you’re going to store a time (i.e. 5pm).  Like Date, there are a ton of ways to represent a time. 

Percentage:  Use this setting if you’re going to have percentages in your cell. It adds a percent sign and you can set the number of decimal places.

>> Important Information: You must enter your percentages in decimal form even if you format a cell as a percentage. For example, if you have formatted your cell as a Percentage and want your cell to show 50%, you must enter .5 in the cell.  If you try to enter 50, Excel will show 5000%  <<

Fraction:  Use this setting if you want decimal numbers to be shown in a fractional format. If you format a cell as a fraction and enter .5 in the cell, it will appear as 1/2.  This is very useful for converting fractions to decimals and vice versa. 

 >> Important Information: The best setting for the Fraction category is Up to Three Digits. This will give you the most accurate fractional representation of your decimal numbers. <<

Scientific:  This is used to display numbers in scientific notation. We won’t be using it in our class, but I would like you to know that it’s there. If you really want to know what scientific notation is, visit: http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/scinot.html or you can ask me.

Text: Use this setting if you want Excel to interpret anything you put in the cell as text. If you set the format to text, if you put 1 in a cell and 2 in a cell, you won’t be able to do any math on those numbers: Excel will treat them the same way as the letter “A” or the word “Hello!”

Special:  This is a really neat category. It has settings for all the following kinds of information:

• ZIP Code
• ZIP Code + 4 Extra Digits (used in bigger cities)
• Phone Numbers
• Social Security Numbers

Custom: The custom category is very powerful but beyond the scope of this class. See me after class if you would like to know more about how to use it!

I found a very interesting article on why people hate the MS Office paperclip character known as Clippy. The article was an honors thesis by a Stanford graduate named Luke Swartz.