Hot key "Unformatted Text" in MS Word

Sometimes I like it when I paste things into MS Word and it retains all the formatting. Many times, I would rather it just paste it as unformatted text so I can make it merge with the rest of the doc.

Using MS-Word 2003, this is what I do so I can make Ctrl+Shift+V map to the Paste Special\Unformatted text.

Copy something off your browser with formatting.
MS-Word Tools\Macros\Record New Macro...
- Name macro PasteUnformatted
- Click the Assign Macro to Keyboard. Press Ctrl+Shift+V. Press Assign.
- Go to Edit\Paste Special. Choose Unformatted Text
- Click the Stop Button

View and/or edit the macro from the Tools\Macros\Macros... menu item
Select PasteUnformatted and click the edit button. It should look something like this.

Sub PasteUnformatted()
'
' PasteUnformatted Macro
' Macro recorded 3/30/2007 by Rich Alger
' this pastes the contents on the clipboard with no formatting
'
Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdFormatPlainText)
End Sub

See Paste Unformatted Macro

Once you are done you can use the Ctrl+Shift+V hot key to quickly paste in unformatted text.

UPDATE 2008-08-19
The last several times I had to do this, I always have to edit the macro and make sure it says wdFormatPlainText

UPDATE 2010-05-10
I was referring to this to get this to work in Outlook 2007. I just found that Ctrl+Alt+V brings up the "paste special" dialog box. You can arrow up and press enter. No need for a macro anymore. It works the same in Word 2007. "Alt, E, S" works in Word and Outlook 2003.

For other applications that do not have paste special you could use an application like PureText

Disable new mail notifications in Trillian

I am setting up a new PC and could not remember how to disable trillian from notifying me when a new email comes.

For Trillian Basic 3.1 build 121: Trillian\TrillianPreferences... menu.
Advanced Preferences
Automation
Uncheck Mail: New Mail

Google Maps Traffic

I first started using online traffic data to choose my driving home route. I commute from El Mirage, AZ to Tempe, AZ. At the end of 2005 I started using Google Earth. We were experimenting with it at work and considering buying an enterprise solution from them. We figured out how to make an overlay using the graphic at ADOT onto the Google Earth surface.

That worked quite well. The biggest problem I had with it is that it took 45 seconds or more to load Google Earth and to view the overlay. After a while, I stopped using it.

I then tried using traffic.com. I was intrigued by its stated ability to accept a route and email me if that route was too congested. I found that there were too many false positive reported and I was not always leaving work at the exact same time each day. I stopped using it too.

I had seen yahoo's traffic but the little dots didn't stand out to me.

A few months ago, I tried maps.live.com. It shows me stripes like ADOT does. Yet the stripes are only partially opaque, so you can see the street names underneath. It shows accidents, which is the real decider if I should go one way or another. I am able to create a url specifying the exact location and turns traffic on. I use this bookmark to see traffic every day. The final bonus it that is loads fast. It is up in about 7 seconds. Often I have to refresh it once to get the traffic to show, but that is real fast!

In about 10 - 15 second of looking at the image, I can tell which route to take. I can see any accidents and the resulting backup.

Yesterday, Google maps announced that they have traffic on their site. The most interesting part of their implementation is their coverage. They have data for the Loop 101. I do not know where they get this data from. Allpointsblog.com hasn't found out yet either. I have not been able to find it from ADOT. Another thing I noticed is that Google displays data I few minutes later than Microsoft.

Firefox Settings and Windows Start Up

I like Slimbrowser. I have used it for years , mostly for a tabbed Internet Explorer. I recently got a new computer and decided to try FireFox as my primary browser.

I wanted it to behave more like Slimbrowser. I found the following FireFox add-ins,
Tabbrowser Preferences
LastTab
Duplicate
Faster Fox
Restart FireFox

My wife still uses Internet Explorer as the primary browser. There are enough sites out there that still do not work well with FireFox that I still want it too. I wanted to be able to open GMail with FF. I created a shortcut on my desktop with this target ("C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" http://mail.google.com/mail/)

I also was looking to reduce the number of programs running as well as quicken the Windows XP Home Edition login. I found MSConfig.exe. Just run from Start/Run and adjust it. My wife used Windows Live Messenger. I found in MsConfig where to disable its start up. I then could add a short cut to it in the StartUp folder of my wife's login. That way it starts up for her but not for me and the kids login.

What does "non-commercial use" mean?

Google Maps Terms of Use, "For individual users, Google Maps, including local search results, maps, and photographic imagery, is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. For business users, Google Maps is made available for your internal use only and may not be commercially redistributed, except that map data may be accessed and displayed by using the Google Maps API pursuant to the API terms and conditions" (paragraph 1)

Google Maps API Terms of Use, "The Service may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge" (section 1.4)

The most confusing part comes when I look at the Google Terms of Service. "The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service".

What does "non-commercial use" mean? The most concise definition I can find is "Non-commercial means that you are not getting compensated in any form for the products and/or services you develop..." (Intel® Software Development Products).

Is this the definition of non-commercial? "Non-commercial means that you are not getting compensated in any form for the products and/or services you develop. You cannot use the service to assist you to develop products and/or services that you are compensated for". This definition would mean I cannot use Google to search for programming references.

Perhaps non-commercial means, "you many not use this service to sell a product or service". By this definition employees of the company I work for cannot use Google Maps to sell our products or services. On the other hand, I can use Google Search to find programming references and tutorials.

How to Setup nUnitAsp for Unit Testing

After months I finally set up my first working unit test using nUnitAsp. It is great because it has classes that mimic the ASP.net web controls.

I ran into a bug that was hard to reproduce. After a day or so of exploratory testing I reproduced it. I did not want to lose this knowledge to I decided to try to implement a testing suite to document it with a test. (See “Code the Unit Test First”)

After looking into and trying to implement several blends of unit testing frameworks, I chose, nUnitAsp which extends nUnit so that you can easily test web controls. I also installed TestDriven.net so I could more readily run tests from VS 2003.

This article was the guide that produced results for me, “Advanced Techniques with NUnitAsp” by Tim Stall. I only followed the simple example and then adapted it to reproducing my bug.

I downloaded nUnitAsp version 1.5.1. I ran the nUnit 2.2.0 installer included with it at \NUnitAsp-1.5.1\bin. I installed TestDriven.net-2.0.1605_Personal.

Now that I have coding the unit test first, I can fix the bug.

The good, fast and cheap triangle

The good, fast and cheap triangle.

I saw this on Bernie Mac last night. His general contractor to add on a spare room showed him this triangle. It rings true. There are some that think you can have all three.