Jan 152012
 

There are various keyboard shortcuts that one can use to navigate and manipulate text very quickly and easily using only your keyboard. Some of these shortcuts include Copying, Cutting and Pasting. These are fundamental shortcuts that everyone should know because they are virtually universal in all text programs as well as in your operating system and will make your life easier.

For copying simply select the text you want to copy and press CTRL and C at the same time. Then move to the place you want to paste it and press control V. If you want to remove the text from the original spot you can Cut it by pressing CTRL and X and then paste it using CTRL and C.

You can navigate text quickly by using CTRL. Simply hold down the CTRL button and use the arrow keys and you will move by a single word. A word is defined by being separated by a space. Sometimes if there are hyphens this method will go to the hyphen, but in general it will move by the word separated by a space.

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Jan 122012
 

“There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

Do you get it? If not, then this article is for you! Binary is the basic ‘language’ of computers. Common analogies are on and off switches. In binary, on and off are represented with 1 and 0 respectively.

Computers use bytes to store data. A byte is represented by 8 bits. A bit is a single 0 or 1. The highest number value a byte can go up to is 255. Technically it’s 256 values because 0 is a value which is a power of 2.

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Oct 072011
 

A little over 17 years ago I started working with computers. Like most people when they first start with computers I was clueless with all these terms and acronyms accompanied with using computers. If you are a newbie or maybe even low-intermediate user I hope to enlighten you of at least one new term covered in this article.

OS: Operating System. The essential piece of software to use any type of computer. Whether it be a graphing calculator to the computer you used to get this article there is an OS instructing the computer how to turn the information it receives into something you understand..

Tech Fact: Microsoft DID NOT steal the idea of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) from Apple, in fact, they both got the idea from Xerox who developed the GUI and the mouse. Microsoft just released their product a little before the Macintosh was released and a lot of people hate them for that.
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May 192011
 

How many times have you gotten half way down the page typing and something has happened that made you lose the whole thing? It has happened to me many times (unfortunately). If you are using Microsoft Word it does have a back up and recovery feature, but it isn’t foolproof, you still can lose a lot of work.

There are many other programs that may be used on a daily basis that don’t have this recovery feature. One rule of thumb is to save right away and then save every 5 or so minutes. I suggest every time you are done with another paragraph or a big change click that save button or press CTRL + S.
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May 192011
 

Emoticons are very useful and commonly used. They are simple, easy to remember, ways to express certain feelings in an email with text.

A : or = are usually used for the eyes and variations of ( and ) make a lot of the emotions. I will just display the = as the face, but just keep in mind it can be switched out for the colon :.

=D – Very Happy
=) – Smile
=( – Sad
=0 – Surprised Continue reading »