AListForEverything

Sometimes you need to type characters that are not on an English-based keyboard.  For example, if you need to type the word "Español" with a tilde accent over the "n" - or other Spanish words, like "¡Sí!" or "¿Como estas?"  You can use special key sequences to add those characters.   The sequence you use depends on the operating system and application you are using.  Below is a reference for adding Spanish characters.  I also included links to good references that explain how to add other characters and symbols, like ô, æ, «, £, ÷, ½, ©, and many more.

Method #1: Windows computer, Microsoft Word

Reference: http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codeword.html

Letters that use the “Tilde” accent, like ñ:

• press and hold the following keys << CTRL >>  +  << SHIFT >>  +  << ~ >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << n >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << N >> keys for uppercase

Letters that use the “Acute” accent, like á:

• press and hold the following keys << CTRL >>  +  << ‘ >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << a >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << A >> keys for uppercase

Letters that use the “Umlaut” accent, like ü:

• press and hold the following keys << CTRL >>  +  << SHIFT >>  +  << : >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << u >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << U >> keys for uppercase

Method #2: Windows computer, any program

Reference: http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html#accent

Follow these steps:

• press and hold the << ALT >> key
• while holding down the << ALT >> key, use the numeric keypad to type a special code
• let go of the << ALT >> key

Here are the codes:

Letters that use the “Tilde” accent, like ñ:

Ñ  0209

ñ  0241

Letters that use the “Acute” accent, like á:

Á  0193

á  0225

É  0201

é  0233

Í  0205

í  0237

Ó  0211

ó  0243

Ú  0218

ú  0250

Ý  0221

ý  0253

Letters that use the “Umlaut” accent, like ü:

Ü  0220

ü  0252

Method #3: Macintosh computer, any program

Reference: http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codemac.html#accent

Letters that use the “Tilde” accent, like ñ:

• press and hold the following keys << OPTION >>  +  << N >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << n >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << N >> keys for uppercase

Letters that use the “Acute” accent, like á:

• press and hold the following keys << OPTION >>  +  << E >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << a >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << A >> keys for uppercase

Letters that use the “Umlaut” accent, like ü:

• press and hold the following keys << OPTION >>  +  << U >>
• let go of those keys
• press the << u >> key for lowercase, or press the << SHIFT >>  +  << U >> keys for uppercase

Conclusion

Yay, now you have the tools to make non-English letters and special characters.  It's a bother to have to look up and enter the secret key-press sequences... but it's a lot better than not being able to use them at all!  For web developers, check out HTML Codes for Spanish.

What is carpodding?  It is a term I made up to describe listening to podcasts while driving.  It's a versatile word.  You can get creative with it.  In essence, carpodders are people who carpod. 

Unfortunately, I can't claim to be the first person to invent this word.  It is defined at techweb and a couple other places.   It's not defined on wikipedia, dictionary.com, or even urban dictionary... yet.

Most people write about carpodding because they do it while they commute to work.  There are even podcasts called Monday Morning Commute or My Daily Commute. 

Some of you might be wondering, just how do you carpod?  You need three things:

1. a portable music player (probably an iPod)
2. podcasts in your player (probably by downloading MP3 audio files and importing those files into your player)
3. the ability to listen to your podcasts while driving

And others of you are wondering, how do I carpod safely? After all, it's against the law to be driving around with headphones on both ears.  I guess the simplest way would be just use one headphone.  You could buy a speaker for your MP3 player.  I chose to buy a fairly cheap car radio with a headphone plug and connect it to my iPod.  There are much fancier solutions, like car radios that directly plug into and control an iPod.

What would you listen to while you carpod?  Pretty much anything!  Check out these blogs and articles about finding podcasts.  Some even write about free audio book resources. 

Sometime soon, I'll share my list of favorite podcasts.  That's a problem with podcasts... they are slow to review because you can't skim them.  As Scoble said, they're great for places where you can't read... like the car. 

Happy carpodding!

p.s. It would be really cool if the podcasts were already automatically in your car stereo - and you could bypass the player, downloading and plugging into the stereo!

The other day, I sent someone a Word document for them to read and provide edits and comments.  Can you believe that they made the edits without using Track Changes or highlighting them at all.  They didn't even do the typical trick of yellow background or red font.  Their changes just blended into the text. 

I didn't have time to read them both side by side, manually scanning for the changes.  Even worse, if I did that, I might have missed a significant change.  I needed a tool that would compare these two files and show me where the differences were. 

Craig from codejacked described the available solutions for Word 2003 and earlier.  CharlesJBarry, a commenter on Gina Trapani of lifehacker's post on this topic, explained that Word 2007 included a compare feature. 

After looking around, I found these options for comparing the differences between Word documents:

• Microsoft Word 2007's Compare feature (free if you own Word 2007)
• Using a tool made for comparing the differences between text documents (free to $30)
• Commercial Option #1: WorkShare Professional ($349)
• Commercial Option #2: SoftInterface DiffDoc ($199 to $399)

More...

The Internet can make life easier!  For months now, I haven't put any effort into paying bills.  I don't really like bills.  Now I don't have to bother with them.  My setup includes paperless billing and auto-bill pay (drafts).

Paperless billing means that I do not get bills in the mail.  If I want to see details of a bill, I have to log on to my account over the Internet.  It's better for the environment because less paper is being used and also less gasoline in transporting that paper.  I assume that this is cheaper for companies, so that they do not have to print or mail you a paper bill.  It is also probably cheaper for the company because you will be less likely to review your bill for mistakes... which means that they spend less money fixing those mistakes... and also means that if they accidentally overcharge you, you are less likely to catch it. 

Auto-bill pay drafts are one type of bill pay option.  The easiest option is to authorize the company that bills you (like the electric company) to automatically draft (take) money every month from your checking or credit card account.  I set up my utilities to pay the bill in full each month.  Many of them allow you to put a limit on how much will be auto-paid per draft.  You can set up credit cards to pay the minimum, entire balance, or any amount in between.  What's nice about setting up bill pay with drafts is that (1) the bills are paid in full so you don't need to figure out how much to pay and (2) the accounts are marked as paid on the same day.  A drawback to this approach is that you end up with more usernames & passwords to remember. 

Auto-bill pay from your bank is the other type of bill pay.  This option is also easy to set up, but doesn't have the same advantages.  In this option, you tell your bank to send a payment to another company or person. If the bank can send the payment electronically, they will do that.  If not, then they send a check in the mail.  You can set up bank bill pay to happen every month...  or you can log on to your bank's website and pay the bills on your own schedule, whenever you want.  The drawbacks compared to drafts are: (1) you need to figure out how much to pay for each bill and (2) you have to assume that the bills will be paid around 5 business days after your bank sends the bill pay.  However, there are some companies that do not make drafts... for those companies, your only choice is bill pay from the bank. 

Of course, a drawback to all of this is that you need to have enough money in your account to cover the bills.  Otherwise, you get charged for overdrafts, insufficient funds, etc... which quickly makes this a bad option!  You should also be careful to avoid running up your credit card balances.

Justin Pritchard's article on About.com explains How to set up online bill pay. 

Almost all of us are familiar with copy & paste.  You can get to the copy & paste functionality in several ways. The most standard methods are:

• Keyboard (CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+V to paste, CTRL+X to cut)
• Mouse - clicking the right button will make a popup menu appear (called a context menu); inside that menu are the Copy, Paste, and Cut commands

OK, for most of us, that is basic.  Here's the part you might not have known.  These tricks only work in certain applications.  My examples come from Microsoft Word and Excel.  For .NET developers: they also work in Visual Studio. For more tips, read this article. 

Selecting Vertically (ALT+drag)

Select text vertically to copy, cut, or delete.  Sometimes, we end up with a situation where we need to get rid of some text at the start of each line.  You could delete each character one at a time with the DELETE key.  However, a faster way is to highlight a block of text and delete it all at once.  To select a block of characters from multiple lines:

1. Hold down the ALT key
2. While holding down the ALT key, use the mouse to move the cursor to one corner of the block
3. Keep holding down the ALT key, then press down the left mouse button
4. While keeping the ALT key and the left mouse button pressed, use the mouse to draw the selection block
5. Let go of the ALT key and the mouse button
6. Now you can do something to just the selected text: copy, cut, delete, format, etc.

For example, let's say I copied a bulleted list from the web, and when I changed it to Word formatted bullets, it kept the original "* ", making each item look like it had double bullets. By selecting vertically, this is very easy to correct.  Here is a screenshot of fixing that exact situation:

Quick Copy & Paste (CTRL+drag)

You can also quickly copy selected text to another location.  instead of doing a Copy command, then moving the cursor and then doing another paste command, simply hold down the CTRL button while dragging the highlighted text to the new location (while holding down the left mouse button). 

For example, if I wanted to change the previous list to include the word "dog" or "dogs" after each entry.  I just typed the word "dogs" once and then Quick Copy & Pasted it to the other lines. Here is a screenshot of my doing that.

Advanced Copy Menu (right button drag)

But what if you don't want to copy the text?  Maybe you want more choices.  In that case, simply change the mouse button while dragging the highlighted text.  Instead of the left mouse button, hold the RIGHT mouse button while dragging the text.  Here is a screenshot of the menu that pops up when you let go of the mouse button.

This trick is great to use with files and folders.  In this screenshot, I used the right mouse button to drag the file "notes.txt" to the folder "copy of my notes."  After I let go of the mouse button, I got this menu that lets me choose what to do. 

Excel Quick Fill (drag from handle)

My last time saver tip for today is a trick for quickly filling cells in Excel.  When a cell is selected, Excel gives you a handle at the bottom right of the cell.  The handle looks like square. You can click and drag () from that handle to automatically fill other cells.  You know when the mouse cursor is over the handle because it looks like a plus sign (+).  These screenshots show me doing this. 

Visual Studio: Copy & Paste Entire Lines (copy & paste without selection)

For .NET developers, here's a bonus trick.  If your cursor is in a line, and you do not have any characters selected, you can copy & paste the entire line!  Simply press CRTL+C then CTRL+V.  Very fast for repetitive code like this: