Tractable Notepad

Notepad, a simple text editor, has been released with all versions of MS Windows since 1985. I've been giving it a bit of airing recently. It’s one of those little apps that seem to have countless uses, simple as well as complex.

Easy and simple html:

Late last century, in my sojourn with html, I learnt that web builders often used Notepad directly to build web pages. This intrigued me. I’d realised that a file-extension had a function, and that in some files the extension could be changed without the screen exploding.

Someone who is well familiar with the ins-and-outs of html can open a Notepad file and type in text, adding their own html code to put in the formatting, such as font, colour, text-size etc. Of course, the code remains visible as code when the Notepad file is saved.


But by altering the file-extension (.txt) to .html, the file takes on a new function as web page, that’s recognised by the computer.

Useful elearning:

I’ve found this use of Notepad to be a valuable one-off measure for sending onto students active links to videos on the Internet. You can try this for yourself.

Browse to your favourite YouTube video. Copy the embed code that permits you to share the video. Open a Notepad file and paste in the embed code. It's also easy to add a caption or notes.

When you name and save the file, add the extension .html in place of the usual .txt . If you then examine the file, you’ll notice that it will be saved as a web page, as shown by its icon and file-extension .html .

Double clicking the new file opens it, but the code that was pasted in will not be displayed. Instead you will see the familiar start menu for your chosen video. Altering the file extension to .txt permits editing.

The html file made this way can be sent as an email attachment, making it easy for the recipient to open and view the video contents immediately, provided there’s a connection to the Internet.

Obstinate files and Notepad:

Occasionally, Windows Explorer’s indexing prohibits a file from being deleted until the next time the system is started up. This can be frustrating, but you can often use Notepad to help you delete the file. Here’s how:

1. Open Notepad and select File > Open
   
   
2. check that Files of Type: is set to All Files,
   not Text Documents (*.txt)
   
   
3. navigate to the location of the file to be deleted
   
   
4. right-click on the file and choose Delete and follow through to delete the file
   
   
5. empty the Recycle Bin.
   

Not a criticism of Notepad:

Something I learnt recently is that some people don’t like using Notepad. Perhaps it has earned this reputation from its peculiarities. Here’s an old one that I’ve only just come across.

Apparently there is a bug in the application that can be made evident by saving a Notepad file containing 2 three-letter words, 1 four-letter word and 1 five-letter word, in any order with single spaces in between. Example lines that do this when saved as the only data in the file are:

this app can break
edit the end error
Nero hid the facts

Choose your own four-letter name instead of Nero in the last example. Provided the Enter key isn’t used at any time when entering any one of the text lines shown above, the text becomes invisible when the file is saved and is then re-opened. Not all words trigger the fault.

One line that I tried that didn’t disappear was: Good for USA Obama

I don’t think it’s a political plot. Check out WinCustomize.com.

Thought for the week:

If odd bugs are to be found in Microsoft Windows' simplest application, perhaps it’s best to take all the automatic updates!

May It Be A Lofty Mountain

A peak near the shore of Lake Wakatipu

Whāia te iti kahurangi, ki te tūohu koe, me he maunga teitei.
Pursue the treasures you hold most dearly – should you stumble, let it be against a lofty mountain. – Māori proverb

I’ve just dropped in on Andrea Hernandez’s latest post, Getting (and staying) focused. She summarises her goals for the year but goes further, speaking of the self, the inner being, its place and relationship with the rest of the universe, and the need for avoiding overstretching. She has started what she set out to do by giving her blog a new look.

I said in my heart,
“I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.
I have need of the sky.
I have business with the grass.” – Richard Hovey

Andrea also reflects on her resolve to blog this year. I recommend you take a look at her post. It made me think about how I do things and how I go about them.

Praxis through observation:

I’m a great believer in ‘practice through observation’. Yes, you may have to read these last 3 words again. This may be a strange concept to some, but it’s one I’ve been aware of for a while. I call it mind praxis.

I first discovered how it worked for me about 30 years ago, when I had to hang a new door while renovating my living room. The plan was simple. I knew what to purchase. I had the tools and got all the required materials. I’d just never hung a door before.

I had watched my father do this task when he did renovations at home. And I’d watched him perform similar jobs with his chisels, many times, for I loved to watch my father at work in his joinery workshop. Through the practice of observing, and only observing, I’d learnt a lot.

I pencil-marked the positions of the hinges. When it came to the chop and I had to lift the chisel and mallet to chip away the recess for the first hinge, I knew how to hold the tools. It was awkward at first, but the memory of watching my father showed me how to present the chisel to the timber, how to tap with the mallet, lightly at first, to mark the wood. How to take care not to tap too heavily, working delicately close to the pencilled line, clearing away waste timber from the recess as I went.

I’ve also experienced this learning when watching technique in playing a musical instrument. Studying a master musician can lead to learning by proxy, if it’s done vigilantly and often enough, making it so much easier to accomplish when the technique is attempted by oneself.

I’m not saying that all can be learnt this way. There comes a point when what’s perused has to be put to practice. But if one is familiar with related skills, putting a new technique into action isn’t as traumatic as it may first seem.

If I don’t manage to fly, someone else will. The spirit wants only that there be flying. – Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s the same with blogging. Skellie’s advice is to study other expert bloggers. Just do it, and don’t think about the subject of the posts you’re studying. When the desire to write is there, the key is to start. If you have no past experience, pull on what you’ve learnt form your observation of others. For most bloggers just starting off, this will be all the experience they have had.

Richness in variety:

My involvement in the Comment Challenge in May last year was so very helpful to me, and for a number of reasons. One of the most helpful things was the sheer variety of tasks we were given to perform. And every new task held something different from the last. Michele Martin and her team of masters, recognised the need for the learner to keep shifting place while learning.

There is a need for learners to provide this variety for themselves, to try things new. Even if it’s only a bit removed from what was done before, the difference is important. Sooner or later, the learner will see opportunities to put what’s learnt or observed into practice.

Always keep moving
Move to the open space
Be ready for the open pass – Lino Di Lullo

Trying something completely new with technology is sometimes traumatic for me. This is part of how I am, and it takes a lot of effort on my part to make the leap. I don’t think this idiosyncrasy I have is entirely my own genius, for I’m sure many others have the same or similar hang-ups.

But often I find that by trying something new, I’m taken down pathways that can be so intriguing, and worth exploring, that I inevitably find many new things to learn.

There is a bevy of questions that I ask myself, always to do with relevance, as I take stock of what I'm learning, and it’s sometimes difficult to avoid the old cognitive overload that Andrea refers to in her post. It just takes time when there’s a lot to look at and learn, and I have to counsel myself to remember this.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. – André Gide

Andrea mentions the need for her to share and to trust in this sharing – with her students, with her work mates, with her colleagues in the blogosphere. Through these developments, the individual can discover new learning pastures and help others to do the same.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone. But the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. – Theodore Roosevelt

Having read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers twice now, I have twice confirmed my suspicions about the attributes of purpose, resolve and perseverance being so important to gaining expertise.

Andrea has made a decision to push herself to improve in the way she shares her development and learning with others. Her words are resolute. They define exactly what it is she has chosen to do.

Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful (people) with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
– Calvin Coolidge

Ship-shape and Bristol Fashion

Plimsoll Line on the Good Ship Blogger

Several miles inland, on the estuary of the English River Avon, is Bristol City, one of the oldest seaports in the world. It has been in use for over a thousand years. A consequence of Bristol’s geographical location is that it experiences extremely variable tidal flows. Water levels vary as much as 10 metres between tides.

Ships anchored at Bristol were stranded on the mud at low tide. Since they were beached twice a day, they needed to be built robustly to avoid damage. As well, cargo had to be securely stowed to prevent it being ruined by the severe movement incurred when a ship was repeatedly beached and then set afloat with the cycle of the tides.

It is believed that the term 'ship-shape and Bristol fashion' originated because of the critical specifications that ships had to meet before entering Bristol Harbour. Everything on board had to be secure, neat and orderly. In 1805, a floating harbour was built that prevented ships from being beached at low tide.

Ship-shape and Bristol fashion:

I was reminded of this phrase when I read Sue Waters’ advice to bloggers on not using MS Word when writing blog posts. The introduction of messy coding that’s often not seen by the writer, through the practice of copying from Word into the writer’s blog post, can cause problems.

It happens because of the presence of what’s known as html. It is carried across with the text when copying from Word. Sue rightly recommends ‘stripping’ the html by pasting the copied text into a Notepad file, and then copying the ‘cleaned’ text from there into the post. In this way, the html, that may well have been invisible to the unsuspecting writer, is left behind.

So what is html?

HyperText Markup Language sounds a bit of a mouthful. Its initialism, html, is far easier to remember. Html is a code that was developed in the early 1980s to permit the formatting of text for use in web pages. The so-called tags, marked by the < > signs, and code-words written in text form, permit size, colour, and font to be defined for a line of text.

While the actual text is easily recognised in html, the tags and other code-words tend to make it look like gobbledygook. When that’s carried across and pasted with the text into a blog post, it is sometimes displayed as gobbledygook. Not what a blogger wants to see in a newly published post!

Notepad - the html scrubber:

So why does Notepad not permit the html to be carried across? Notepad is really a very simple digital tool. A component of Microsoft Windows, it is the so-called ‘plain text editor’. Because it is so simple, it acts as a filter, so that only the text in a portion of copied data is recognised and accepted into the Notepad file. Presto! Anything that is then copied from the Notepad file will be just text.

The other splendid thing about Notepad is that it is a true WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). So if there’s something in the text in Notepad that shouldn’t be there, you will see it. Not so with the hidden code in a Word file or text that you copy from a web page.

So why does web page text have code?

A web page invariably uses html for formatting its text. That’s what html is for after all. You can inspect this in a web page by right clicking on the text and selecting View Page Source. Try it on this page. Gobbledygook, right? Copying text from a web page can carry some of that gobbledygook across with the text and it can be pasted, with the entire messy html that you don’t want.

Text that’s copied from a web page can be cleaned of html by pasting into a Notepad file first. So, lesson well learnt. No more messy html.

From now on, we will have the content of our blog posts all ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

On Weapons of Mass Destruction

There have been 7 enemy assaults since mid-November 2008. Three intrusions in the last few days were from different locations. The latest sorties brought activity within local boundaries to a near halt. Strong garrison defended the battlements and three prisoners were detained - origin unknown. Following a perfunctory hearing, they were summarily executed and their remains destroyed.

It’s not clear the extent of local injury sustained by the attack. Collateral damage is still being assessed and there’s a likelihood of some loss of life.

Fortunately, alerts aroused the attention of the home guard, prompting immediate vigilance within the resident defense systems.

The most recent attacks showed how important it is to ensure strong garrison is put in place, to provide frequent updates, and to be vigilant so that defense systems are kept on the alert at all times.

Here’s my list of enemy attacks to date:


The SbCtri.exe, alias W32.Spybot.worm, is particularly nasty. It was buried in the Registry of my computer spitting out clones of itself, which, fortunately, WinPatrol and Spybot-Search And Destroy were able to detect and eliminate.

I had downloaded updates from Symantec just the day before, for I’d already been alerted to the presence of the worm. It was only when I received the latest update from Symantec the following day, that I was able to destroy the intruder SbCtri.exe, together with a couple of resident Trojan horses.

My total defense system consists of the following:

BlackICE PC Protection (firewall)
Symantec Antivirus (virus checker)
Spybot-Search And Destroy (spyware detector and destroyer)
WinPatrol (spyware detector)

I perform frequent updates to my security system and spyware detectors. I take automatic updates from Windows. I also run Ad-AwareAE by LAVASOFT quite frequently.

A few years ago I used to do weekly updates to the virus checker.
Now I do it daily, sometimes twice a day. It’s a bit of a worry.

Blogging, When A Thing Is Worth Doing Badly

"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly!"

G K Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World

Manny Charlton, once asked if he could come over to my place and watch colour TV. He wanted to see the launch of The Magical Mystery Tour - The Beatles’ first TV film. Colour TV was new technology then, and Charlton’s black and white TV couldn't do justice to the production.

A few days after watching the film, I met up with Charlton. He was still dazed. He idolised The Beatles, along with Jimmy Hendrix and other pop icons who were around then.

“I’ve put my guitar in the cupboard,” he said when I asked him what he’d been up to. “There's no way I can follow that!” was his explanation.

Musicianship:

Of course, he got over the trauma of seeing his idols in action. Charlton may be a humble Spaniard, but he is no mean guitarist. Even at that time, he enjoyed local fame as a member of the local pop band. Charlton had quite a following in his hometown, Dunfermline, and in the surrounding Fife district.

Roadrunner:

I coached road running while teaching at Rongotai College in the 70s. The head gym teacher, Sid Turnbull, organised sponsored hundred miler team events, to raise funds for the school’s new gym extension.

Every boy in the school participated. The teams had 10 members who each ran a 10-mile course round Miramar Peninsula. Points were awarded to the teams according to a scale for times taken to complete the circuit.

One of the team runners, Peter, had congenital deformity in both feet. His doctor recommended walking and running to assist normal growth development following corrective surgery.

Peter did not find running easy, but he trained for the event with the others in his team. He clocked a slower circuit time in training for the hundred miler than anyone else in the school. But his coach supported him, and so did his team mates, despite the obvious points disadvantage that would have to be sustained by his team.

Little did Peter’s team know that Sid had already made adjustments to the rules for awarding points to physically disabled runners! Peter’s team went on to win an honourable place in the competition.

The Soldier’s Joy:

In the 70’s, I was introduced to a sheep-shearer, Davey. Davey was interested in folk music and he admired my fiddle playing when he’d hear me playing at festivals. He was well known for his enthusiasm and his hopeless musicianship.

Davey had two passions: going to music clubs, and playing music. At that time he was learning to play the guitar. He approached me at a folk music festival and told me he’d just bought himself a fiddle.

He asked me if I could help him with a tune he was learning to play on his new fiddle and I offered to assist. When he played the tune, I told him that I’d never heard it before. He smiled and said, “You play that tune. It’s the Soldier’s Joy.”

I was so taken aback, it was hard to keep face, for his fiddle playing was so terrible that I honestly could not recognise the tune he had played. I asked him to play it again and I was no further towards identifying the tune.

I liked Davey. His enthusiasm was something I really admired, and me being a teacher, I appreciated his dogged persistence. Fifteen years later I was elected the Performers Officer for the Wellington Folk Centre. A year or so on, I held that responsibility, at the same time accepting the office of President.

It was then that a friend told me about how Davey was very active in the country music scene in Wellington. The suggestion was that I should listen to what he was doing with his music.

Multi-instrumentalist:

I went along to a concert where Davey had been asked to play as a warm-up artist and I was astonished at his ability to play and sing with feeling. He played several different instruments, including the fiddle, very well. In particular, he had a way of gathering together other musicians who played good music with him.

I approached him after the concert and asked if he’d like to do a gig at the Folk Centre sometime. He was visibly humbled, but he accepted the invitation to give a concert.

Of course, I had to publish the program in the newsletter. When some of the committee members learnt that I’d booked Davey to do a concert, they were quite shocked that I’d been so stupid as to ask someone who they said had obviously no talent for music. In fact, they said that I’d spoil the reputation the Folk Centre had established in providing good quality entertainment.

I ignored their harsh words and suggested that maybe they should come along and hear for themselves. None of Davey’s critics turned up for his concert, needless to say.

But on the night of the concert, the auditorium was packed. Most of the audience was from the country clubs, but there was some from the membership of the Folk Centre too.

Davey’s concert was splendid. He sang and played no less than five different instruments that evening, including his fiddle. As well, he embellished what he offered by inviting several of his musician friends, on separate spots, to accompany him on the stage. I thoroughly enjoyed Davey’s concert and so did the packed audience.

What’s this got to do with blogging?

When I’m plodding my way through blogging, I sometimes wonder if I should bother. I feel this particularly at times when I read through some of the fabulous posts of other bloggers. I came across a great post today that was posted only two days ago - 49 comments - several links to the post from other blogs – wham! I start thinking:

“Why am I blogging?”

Then I remember Davey, and how his enthusiasm for his hopeless musicianship served him well to become an appreciated artist. I recall how young Peter ran his way to victory, and won a position for his team mates by his dogged persistence, and competing the way he did.

I think of my friend, Manny Charlton, who wanted to put his guitar in the cupboard after he’d heard The Beatles play on TV. I recall how he went on to become a rock star, as lead guitarist in the group, Nazareth.

Video of Nazareth

The names Davey and Peter, used in this post, are aliases.