I have been putting in 18 hour days for the past week and "for some reason my vision is blurry". Sometimes these things can't be helped, but it reminds me of a wonderful feature in the Address Book for just such occasions, or for that matter, for anyone who needs help reading numbers.
With a click of a button you can enlarge the phone numbers in address book so that they fill up your screen. It is very cool. I actually use it all the time because my vision is not the best on a normal day, never mind stress filled 18 hour days.
The first step is to click on the title of the phone number (home, mobile, work, etc.)
You are given a menu with several options. The options will depend on your particular computer, but everyone using OS X will have the first option which is Large Type. Move the mouse to that option and release.
When you release the mouse button the phone number will appear across the width of your screen. When you are finished using it, just click anywhere on the desktop and it will go away.
Enjoy.
Nancy
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( 2.7 / 43 )I haven't posted to my blog for several days because I have had big time problems with my Mac. It all started when I installed the latest update of Leopard - 10.5.5.
The first problem happened when I tried to compose messages in my Mail program. I couldn't type anything. Every time I tried to enter text I got an error message that said the spell checker wasn't working. I tried quitting Mail and then restarting Mail and that didn't work. I tried restarting my computer and that seemed to help, but the problem popped up a couple of other random times.
Then a day later the real problem started. I couldn't open any of my applications. Every time I tried I got the same error message: Error 10810. There didn't seem to be any pattern to the problem. It affected both third party applications and Apple applications. Sometimes the problem would start as soon as I restarted the computer. Sometimes everything would be fine until the computer warmed up then the problem would start.
I'm going to skip the things that didn't work and go right to what seems to have solved it because other people have reported the same problem. According to some advice I got, there might be an incompatibility with a third party software because the problem is only happening to some people.
The first thing I did was turn off the applications that I had set to automatically open when my computer is turned on because any one of them would be the most likely culprit.
You probably have some set to open automatically even if you don't know it because some applications set that as part of their installation. To turn any of them off select Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts. Then choose your administrator account and select Login Items. To remove something from the list click on it to highlight it and click on the minus sign at the bottom of the window. Don't forget to lock the Accounts Window when you are finished for security.
The second thing I did was shut down my computer completely and do a Safe Boot. Here is how.
Hold down the power button
As soon as you hear the startup tone, hold down the Shift key (not before).
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple and the spinning gear.
A Safe Boot takes longer than a regular start up. It also disables some of your regular tools. For instance, the volume control tool was not present on my Menu Bar under the Safe Boot. But what it does is forces a directory check of the startup volume. Depending on which version of OS X you are running it does somewhat different things, but the bottom line is it works around software or directory damage on the startup volume.
My bottom line is that whatever the problem was seems to have been solved. No more problems with Mail and no more problems opening my applications. I was able to restart my computer in normal mode and everything is still working just fine. As soon as I get time, I will start adding back in the few applications I had in my start up menu to see if any of them bring back the problem.
Maybe. Maybe I'll just leave well enough alone.
Nancy
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( 3.2 / 53 )Apple has a page on it's web site that list all the latest updates of it's own software such as Safari or Leopard, but there are other things on the page as well.
All the latest widgets are listed there. The latest updates of third party software that Apple recommends are there. Apps for your iPhone or iTouch can be found.
For someone new to the Mac or to computing who wants to try new things, but who wants to make sure they are wise in their choices, it is a good place to start.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/
Nancy
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( 3.1 / 32 )This is really simple, unless you don't know about it.
If you send someone the address of a web page (the URL) in an email message you want them to be able to click on it so they can go right to it.
Most of us get in the habit of doing a copy and paste so we don't make any mistakes. After all, web addresses can be really long. The problem with those long addresses is that once they go in an email they may break over a line. When that happens you have a problem, because the web browser on your friend's computer won't be able to read it properly any more. The web browser isn't smart enough to go down to the next line in the email message looking for the rest of the web address.
The solution is to put the URL within the greater than < and lesser than > symbols. The web browser will know that anything contained within those two symbols < > is to be considered a single item. I always put email addresses within the symbols as well when I am sending them to someone in an email. Saves lots of hassle.
Nancy
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( 3.1 / 50 )The presidential race is in full swing as we all know and it reminds me of a basic issue related to sending email messages.I am a registered voter and today I got an email from the new precinct chair for my area.
Unfortunately she forgot, or more likely did not know, a basic protocol that she should have followed when sending out a group email. She entered the email address of each recipient in the "To" field of her message. That means that every recipient of her message instantly had access to the email address of every other recipient of the message.
Within an hour of receiving her perfectly appropriate message, we also received a long unpleasant rant from someone who does not like the chosen nominee of our party who decided he had an obligation to tell us, in great detail why that was so.
Now the precinct chair has a bunch of people, including me, angry at her, all wondering what other weird email we are going to receive and where our email addresses are being sent.
All of this could have been avoided had the chair followed a basic protocol of sending group email messages. You should always send the message to yourself and blind copy everyone else. That protects your recipient list and also lets you know your message went out.
When using Mail to send your email you would simple put all the email addresses into the field labeled Bcc: If you can't find that field (it is not uncommon for it to be hidden), click on the box that the cursor is pointing to in this example. When the window opens, Click on Bcc: and it will open for you.
Nancy
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