Learning to type

Through out the years... I preach the importance of literacy and digital literacy skill.

I have even taught people how to type... computer lesson 101...

My digital pursuit of the day... learning to type. 8-O lol

Hello China!

I kept on getting visits from China.

Too lazy to go through the proxy thing today...

Visitor(s) from China, can you please post a comment to the blog so that I know whether it is google stats getting the region wrong or there really are places in China where you can access blogspot.com?  Unless, blogspot.com is unblocked now...

Showing child note for tree codes in Nvivo 8 SP4

What do you do the child nodes of your tree nodes look like the first image below... showing you only the first letter or two of the child nodes?

How are you gonna know which code is what? 8-O lol

Wouldn't it be nice if you could show the entire name for the code?

The solution is simple.. click "View" and check "View Child Node Headers."

Then, you will be able to drag the bar at the end of the name column to change the column width.

VX2

Found this old posting of mine from Feb. 14, 2005 about VX2...

My finally solution for this issue... I wiped all things out and rebuilt the machine from scratch.

Blogger stats not working: There was an error while fetching stats. Please reload page.

Caught the error message saying Blogger stats on strike...

Sometime later... the stats came back on its own...

Though... only for Technologies in Ratology was affected but not for Ratology reloaded through out the whole time...

Same account, same browser (Chrome) on the same computer for two blogs...

The only conclusion I have... there ain't no nothing on your end. It's blogger's doing.

Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB970892) failed on Windows 7 and Nvivo

For the longest time, I would be staring at this thing alerting me a new windows update is available.  In addition, when shooting the computer down every night, I would see the machine trying to install some update again and again... night after night...

Somehow, the Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB970892) keeps on failing on me...

I tried all things out... to no avail...

Until yesterday, with some combination of key words, I arriving at either one of these posts...  Miracle: SQL 2005 server security update on Winows... or SQL server 2005 security updates failed and Nvivo...

8-O How did a google search bring me back to Technologies in Ratology? 8-O lol

Then, it occurred to me... no wonder... among the limited number of traffic on this site, SQL server 2005 security updates failed and Nvivo ranked number 5.  This gotta be the way people feel when they landed on my page.

However, I don't have the software with me thus don't want to uninstall Nvivo unless necessary..

After a whole lot of circling around chasing my own tail...

I contacted this friend of mine who gave me the suggestion in the first place...

"Is there a workaround if I don't want to have Nvivo uninstalled."

His reply was... this is the safest way to do it rather than playing with SQL.

So I took the expert opinion and uninstalled Nvivo 8 SP4.

I downloaded the trial Nvivo SP4 software from the website and uninstalled Nvivo SP4.  (Please make sure you take down the license key for your existing copy before uninstallation.  You can get the license number by clicking on Help-> About once you are in the Nvivo program.)

To ensure I really have Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB970892) installed, I went to  Microsoft website to download the standalone installation file and have it manually installed again.

After restarted the computer.  The windows update message no longer shown and that red flag telling you an update will be installed when shutting down also gone.

I, then, reinstalled Nvivo SP4 and did some simple query stuffs with the program.  Seems to be running fine.

When double checking to see whether the update is really installed, I also found KB970892 elegantly sitting among the rest of the updates.

All seems to be fine on the East side...

Two virtues I practiced today... listen to my own suggestion and that of the expert as well... lol

Now I can go look for a husband.  8-O lol

How to change the default maximum number of coding stripes in Nvivo 8?

Been playing with Nvivo...

This really stupid question came up... some documents are as long as an old lady's foot wrap (老太婆的裹足布)... and many postings might contain more than 7 codes...

How do you change the default maximum number of coding stripes in Nvivo 8 from 7 to a different number rather than having to change it each time you open a new internal document?

Spent the entire day or two trying to figure it out... and googled the entire world to no avail...

Since googling didn't take me too far, I decided to go back to the program again and take a better look at them menus...

Duh...

Go under tool and select option.

Once the Application Options window opens, click on the Display Tab... Look for the section about Coding Stripes and this is where you can change the Maximum number of stripes.

One more step away from repeated stress syndrome... 8-O lol

大目新娘... (big eye bride... a Taiwanese expression making fun of people who can't find things in easy-to-find locations)

Prepare to analyze a huge blogger blog with Nvivo 8- Again

I spoke of my attempt to import my ratology blogs into nvivo to take a look at the words I have typed out so far in Prepare to analyze a huge blogger blog with Nvivo 8.

At that point, I have already converted all documents from Pdf to word... with a task left to be tackled... cleaning up the word file... in batch...

I woke up the second morning and decided to take my own advice...

Restarted the process of document preparation... and now all documents have been imported into Nvivo.

What I did:

First, collected all documents from my blog onto my hard drive.

You could either download the entire blog or save the files by month....  Some of you might want to simply copy and post the texts into Nvivo... then... there is no need to read more... I guess...

Please be reminded, though, that blogger might not show you all postings on the same page and you might need to click on Show older posts link like what is shown below a few times if you have many postings per months.

In addition, the number of postings shown is dependent on the template that you have selected.  I actually exported the entire blog in XML format using blogger's export function and imported the blog as a new blog so that I could select one of the simplest template to minimize the amount of cleaning up I have to do....

The most minimalist template is "Simple II."

If you are comfortable with coding, you could also edit the template directly by going to the "Design Tab" or "Template Tab" and click "Edit Html."

Following are some of the tags you could consider taking off:

<$BlogTitle$>
<$BlogDescription$>
<$I18NPostedByAuthorNickname$>
<$BlogFeedsHorizontal$>

The stylesheet and, of course, da blogger icon, might be something to consider as well.

Second, batch edited HTML files.

Regardless how you managed to save all the HTML files on your hard drive, by default, some extra stuffs will also be saved.  To make it easier for myself, I used software programs such as dreamweaver to batch edit out these type of info.

This is the reason why, the fewer gadgets you added to the blog, the more convenient it would be for yourself during the cleaning up process.  You might need to have some basic knowledge about how to read the tags in order to find out what to take out.

Following is a screenshot showing you the interface to focus on when intending to batch edit source codes for a folder or an entire website.

The dropdown associated with search allow you to specify whether it is source code, text, etc to search.

The dropdown next to Find in allows you to select the folder or the site

In this scenario, I specify to search a specific code in the source code for the entire site.

Third, batch conversion of HTML files to Word document.

I have used the Convert Doc program to convert HTML files to word files.  Other than the fact that the program doesn't support Chinese.  It works relatively well even with trial version.

Fourth, importing files as internals.

It is very easy to import multiple files as internals in one time.  Essentially, when the import source window is open, select all file that you want to import and the program will even add the names automatically for you.

If you are going to play around with the template for your blogger blog, I highly recommend you to create a new blog using a copy of your blog exported through blogger.

Batch conversion from HTML to word

A good program that does a good job in converting HTML to word is Convert Doc.

After quite a few trials, I finally find the workable setting.

• Make sure you specify the input file format as HTML.
• The conversion method that worked for me was "Use MS Word." 
• If you are converting files in an entire folder, make sure you doublecheck to see whether the extension of input file matches with that of your files.  For instance, if your file is html file, make sure the extension for input file is specified as html.
• In addition, after you have the input and output info specified, make sure you click on the Add button to the job list.  

Otherwise, you could click on the convert button till the cows come home but nothing would happen.

The program, again, does have its constraints.... It doesn't support Chinese or maybe other kinds of foreign languages.  Hopefully, one day, we will see supports for other languages.

Lenovo thinkpad sl410 ethernet connection problem

This has been something I have to to deal with... might have been since I started using this new babe... Lenovo thinkpad sl410.

Once every so often, my eithernet connection would disappear out of no where... mostly when the machine was first started and, sometimes, when I went away and came back.

Sometimes it would appear as if there is no problem with the Internet connection at all and other times it would show you that there is limited connectivities.

At the beginning, I had a hypothesis... maybe it might have something to do with the Internet connection at home since this is where this machine has been used... could be I am connecting directly to the modem, perhaps?

Regardless, I have found my way to adapt... I would disable the ethernet connection and reconnect.  Sometimes it doesn't solve the problem, so you try again and again and again until it finally works.

Last Thursday, I decided to see whether I could find a better and, perhaps, permanent solution for this connection problem.

Couldn't quite find much info after googling around, to be honest, though I did manage to find the mentioning about "Fixed an issue where the ethernet disappeared after reboot or resume from Standby" at the BIOS update utility page for ThinkPad L410, L510, SL410, SL510.

Ended up, I decided to update the BIOS for this machine... despite of my unwillingness to play with BIOS update, especially when the update was released less than a month and a half ago.

After the BIOS update was first applied, the problem remained that morning... still same old same old... I thought... perhaps, not fixed... Whatever...

Then, every morning since then... Friday, Saturday, Sunday and today... amazing grace... the machine connected smoothly to the Internet through ethernet without my intervention!