CBT Bazar

A few days ago, we posted an article detailing how to batch convert Microsoft Office formatted documents (doc, xls, ppt), to their Open Document counterparts (odt, ods, odp), using the built-in document converter found in LibreOffice. For many people, this will be a perfect method, as LibreOffice is already installed on their computers (particularly true for many Linux users).
For others, however, this isn’t the greatest solution, as LibreOffice is a very large program, that once installed can take up over 400 MB of space. Linux users have another option, although not as comprehensive, in the form of Abiword. Abiword is an open source word processor, available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and it can be used – from the Terminal, no less – to batch convert word processing documents.
Here’s how it works. First, if it’s not already installed, you’ll need to install Abiword. In Ubuntu, you can type sudo apt-get install abiword into a Terminal to install it.
You can also use the Ubuntu Software Center. Just search for ‘abiword’ and install it that way.
Once installed, you’ll find Abiword in the Dash.
For our purposes, however, we won’t be opening Abiword, as the conversion can take place without any GUI, in the Terminal. So go ahead and open the Terminal.
Now use the ‘cd’ command to change your working directory to where you keep your files that you want to convert. In our case we’ll type cd Documents/ as we store them in our Documents folder. Your command will vary depending on where your documents are.
If you have just a single file – let’s say it’s named Addresses.doc, then you can convert it to a different format (we’ll use Abiword’s native .abw for our purposes, but know that there are more than 2 dozen supported formats available) by typing abiword –to=ext document.ext into the Terminal, changing the appropriate pieces of information to match your document, of course.
In our case, we changed “–to=ext” to “–to=abw” to tell Abiword to convert our document to the Abiword format, and “document.ext” to “Addresses.doc” to tell it which document to convert.
Easy!
But this article’s title talks about batch converting documents. How do we do that? Simple. We wrap the above command in a bit of code, so that the conversion is run again and again, on every document that matches. For instance, let’s say we want o convert all documents of a particular type to .odt (Open Document Text). We would type for file in *.doc ; do abiword –to=odt “$file” ; done into the Terminal.
This command tells Abiword that for every file that matches the string “.doc” to convert it to “.odt” and to use the document’s orginal name, replacing only the extension.
If you want to convert all documents in a folder (and they are all formats that Abiword can import), then you can replace “*.doc” in the above command with simply an asterisk, which would run the conversion on ALL documents. That command would look like this:
So if you used to have a folder full of MS Word documents, like this:
Simply run the command, and before you know it, you should have a folder with double the documents, your originals and the converted ones.
At the end of the day, you still need to install a piece of software to get this to work. Now, Abiword is a lot smaller in size than LibreOffice, but of course it can’t convert nearly as many file types (only word processing documents, compared to word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and more). Still, if your needs are more aligned with converting word processing documents, this is a neat trick.

Nokia Lumia 900 is an amazing Windows Phone smartphone packed with a beautiful polycarbonate unibody design, features a 4.3” AMOLED ClearBlack touchscreen display, powered by a 1.4 GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 8MP rear Camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash, 1MP front camera, a non-removable battery of 1830mAh, 4G LTE, and more. Nokia 900 looks highly similar to Lumia 800 and N9, however it’s considerably bigger than these two and the way to insert SIM in it is bit different as well.

Just like iPhone, Nokia Lumia 900 uses a Micro SIM (mini-UICC card) which is certainly smaller in size than the standard SIM card and the way to insert SIM corresponds with iPhone. So, let’s see how to insert or change the Micro SIM card on Lumia 900 -
1. Take out the SIM door key that comes within the package to unlock the SIM tray. You can also use a paper clip if the SIM eject tool is misplaced.
2. Turn Off your phone.
3. Look for the SIM door on the top side of phone as shown below.

4. Insert the SIM door key into the SIM door hole and push until the SIM tray pops out. Then pull the tray out.

5. Put your Micro SIM card in the SIM tray and make sure the golden contact area of SIM is faced upwards. (Refer to image below)

6. Push the SIM tray back into your phone in same manner until it locks into place.

Now turn on your Lumia 900 and it should recognize the SIM.
~ People with a standard SIM card can cut it into a Micro SIM either manually or using a SIM card cutter. You can also ask your carrier to do the needful.

Ergonomics is the study of work and the efficiency and safety of the human-machine system. Ergonomics removes barriers to quality, productivity, and safe human performance by fitting products, tasks, and environments to people.
EHS employs a part-time consulting ergonomist in order to assist the campus community with ergonomic issues, testing, worksite evaluation, job analysis, and the like. Contact EHS for assistance.
Marty Dagostino, CPE
Ergonomic Solutions - Athens, OH

Office Setting

Avoid awkward posture and positioning by following these guidelines for proper computer workstation ergonomics.

Stress Relieving Exercises

Give joints and muscles a rest by taking periodic breaks and stretching.

	Back Stand and raise your right arm overhead, bending to one side. Count to five. Repeat on the opposite side. Do three times daily. Stand, supporting the lower back with hands, and gently arch backward. Count to five. Next, bend forward, placing hands on knees, and count to five. Do three times daily.
	Neck Lower your left ear to your shoulder. Slowly tuck chin to chest and roll head to the right until the right ear lowers to the shoulder. Repeat often during the day.
	Shoulders Circle your shoulders forward, then backward. Repeat often. Cross arms over chest and hold for a count of five. Leading with the elbows, push arms back and hold for five. Repeat often.
	Hands & Wrists Tightly clench your hands and then release, fanning out the fingers. Do this five times. Rest your forearm on a table top. Grasp the fingers of one hand and gently bend back your wrist for five seconds.

Method 1 – Control Panel

You can also right-click on the Desktop and choose Personalize to get to this same screen. The unintuitive part is clicking on Window Color! I never clicked on it because I didn’t think window color and icon size fell in the same boat! Anyway, that’s not all! Then you have to click on Advanced appearance settings.
Only then do you get the familiar dialog that we have in Windows XP:

Method 2 – Desktop Context Menu

Method 3 – Use the Mouse Wheel

Using a scanner to archive old photographs can be a rewarding experience. You bring your old snapshots into the digital age, and have the chnage to fix them up as well. Image editing software such as Photoshop and The Gimp have a lot to offer, including cropping, straightening, enhancing an image’s color saturation and brightness, and more. In this article, we’ll talk about using the Heal Selection tool in The Gimp to get rid of minor (and sometimes major) imperfections, such as scratches, spots from dust on the scanner bed, and other blemishes.
The first thing you’ll need is an image to work on. For our examples, we’ll use a cover image from a book that was definitely not in pristine condition. It had obviously been read, and the front cover bent back quite a bit, which resulted in a line where the cover image had flaked off, for lack of a better term. Here is a closeup of an area we’re trying to fix.
There are a number of ways we could attempt to fix these blemishes, such as the smudge tool, or by copying a bit of color that matches the blemish, and pasting it over the bad spots. We could also, for a fast but crude fix, simply paste a matching color into the imperfections. As mentioned, however, we’ll be using the Heal Selection tool in The Gimp to fix the cover (at least as much as possible).
The Gimp used to be installed by default in Ubuntu, but it isn’t any longer, so we’ll need to install it. You can do so by typing sudo apt-get install gimp gimp-plugin-registry which installs not only The Gimp, but a large variety of plugins, of which the Heal Selection tool is one of.
Once fully installed, go ahead and open The Gimp. We’re using Ubuntu, so we’ll open it via the Dash, but you can use The Gimp in Windows and launch it via the Start Menu.
You could also right-click the image, then choose GNU Image Manipulation Program (or it may be called GIMP) under the Open With menu.
Once the image has loaded, zoom into the image until one of the imperfections is readily visible. Now select it using any of the three selection tools.
For those unfamiliar with The Gimp, the far left tool – the Rectangle Select Tool – selects a rectangular shape, the middle one is the Ellipse Select Tool (for circles and other elliptical regions), while the far right tool is a Free Select Tool which lets you outline more precise regions. We’ll be using this. When your region is selected, it should look something like this.
When using the Heal Selection tool, you should select small areas as the surrounding pixels are most likely to be similar to the selection, which helps in a result that looks at least somewhat close to the original. Once you’ve selected your area, simply go to the Filter menu, then to the Enhance submenu, and finally select the Heal Selection tool.
A window like this should appear, with the tool’s options.
There are three options when using the Heal Selection tool. First is the number of pixels surrounding your selection the tool should choose from. What the tool does is take in the surrounding pixels, and attempt to blend in the area you’ve selected to match its surroundings. If the area around your selection is fairly static, you can leave the number at its default (of 50 pixels), but if you need to be careful not to have the tool match a wildly different area, you can shrink the number of pixels it takes into account.
The second option you have is whether the tool samples pixels from the entire surrounding area, just above and below, or from the sides.
Finally, the third option is how the selected area should be filled. There are again three options. The tool can randomly place pixels, or can fill the selected real starting from the outside and going in, or conversely, start from the inside and move out.
Once you’re finished with the options, click the OK button. The tool should think for a bit (depending on how large a selected area you’re working on.
When you’re finished, hopefully the area has improved. Here we’ve made a few corrections.
Below, you’ll find that we’ve composited two images of a slightly larger area than was just modified(“before” and “after”) to show what can be accomplished with judicious use of the Heal Selection tool. As you can see, the Heal Selection tool is quite good for removing text and logos (as long as there is enough room around them for the tool to get some idea of what would have otherwise been “under” the text or logo).

There are some Windows errors that are masterpieces, meaning they have been around since the beginning of time and never fail to go away. One that pops into my mind is “Windows has recovered from a serious error”. If you search Google for that, you’ll find thousands of entries! Another one like that is “Windows Explorer has stopped working”.

And sure enough, I got one of these error message on my Windows 7 PC last week. The problem with these errors and the reason why they are so popular is because they have all sort of causes. It’s not just one issue that causes the error, otherwise it would be easy to fix. In this article, I’ll try to go through all the different methods you can use to fix the error.

Method 1 – Perform a Clean Boot

The hunt it on! This problem is normally caused by something on your computer other than the OS. Windows itself rarely crashes on it’s own with this error. So the first thing to do is try and isolate what service, program or startup item is causing the issue, if it’s one of those.
You can do this by performing what is called a clean boot. It’s described here in detail on the Microsoft website:
http://support.microsoft.com//kb/929135
Basically, we use MSCONFIG to disable all third-party services and startup items and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then you know it’s one of those services or startup items and you have to start a cycle of enabling half the items, then rebooting, checking, etc. It’s a little time consuming, but worth it to have your computer running properly.

Method 2 – Disable Shell Extensions

If you perform a clean boot and the issue is still occurring, then you can try to disable all non-Microsoft shell extensions. You can do this by downloading a free program from Nirsoft called ShellExView.

You want to run the program and then sort all the items by Manufacturer. Anything that is not from Microsoft should be disabled. Again, if the issue goes away, then you know it’s one of those shell extensions and you can enable them one by one. To disable, just select the item and then click on the red circle button.

Method 3 – Update Video Driver

Oddly enough, an old or corrupted video driver can cause this issue. Go to the manufacturer’s website and download the latest version for your version of Windows, making sure to get 32 or 64-bit depending on your system.

Method 4 – Always Show Icons

Another strange fix is to go to Explorer, Tools, Folder Options and then the View tab for Windows XP. For Windows Vista and 7, you want to click on the Organize button, then Folder and Search Options, then View tab.


On the View tab, check the box that says Always show icons, never thumbnails.

What does this do? Well, basically instead of trying to show a small thumbnail preview of a picture or video, it will just show an icon. That may not be ideal, but if it gets rid of the problem of explorer not responding, then it might be worth it.

Method 5 – System Restore

If you installed something like an update or a new driver and now all of a sudden you are having the explorer problem, it might be a good idea to restore your computer to a previous state. You can use System Restore to go back to a time before the update or installation that you believe is causing the problem. Click Start and type System Restore.

Method 6 – Run System File Checker

If this problem happens to be caused by a corrupted file in Windows, which is pretty rare, you can fix it using a few different tools. The first one is running the system file checker command at the command prompt. You can do this by opening an elevated command prompt (Click Start, type command and then right-click and choose Run as Administrator).

At the command prompt, simply type in the following command:

sfc /scannow

This will check all system and protected files and replace them if any of them are found to be corrupted. If this does not work, you can try a repair install.

Method 7 – Repair Install Windows

You can get to startup repair from the System Recovery Options dialog shown above when the computer first loads. Basically, you need to press and hold F8 while your computer is booting. Then you’ll get the list of Advanced Boot Options, where you will choose Repair your computer.

Click Startup Repair and let it do it’s thing. Also, while you are in the System Recovery Options, you’ll see an option for Command Prompt. From there, you can try running the following command:

chkdsk c: /r

Method 8 – Virus or Malware Removal

If absolutely nothing else is working for you, then you may be a victim of a virus or malware. If you think you may have a virus, you should try to install some anti-virus and anti-spyware software to see if you can find any problems. If you have a really bad virus infection or lots of malware, your only choice may be to do a fresh install of the OS.

Nmap is a Free Software tool that can be used for a variety of network network exploration tasks and security auditing. Nmap ("Network Mapper") scans IP packets to determine a lot of different aspects about hosts available on the network and also about services these hosts are offering. It can help you find a lot of information about these hosts including reverse DNS names, operating system guesses, device types, and MAC addresses.

Here is a simple command to find all active IPs in your local area network using nmap

nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24

You can install nmap in Ubuntu / Debian by running

sudo apt-get install nmap

Alternatively you can also use

 sudo arp-scan -I eth0 192.168.1.0/24

Being able to write a simple IF statement in Excel is essential, especially if you deal with a lot of numbers all the time. It’s one of those things that’s not too complicated like macros, but not necessarily intuitive like summing up a column of numbers.
In this article, I’ll walk you through a short primer on writing a IF statement in an Excel worksheet. To get started, you should understand the basis of all IF statements:

IF condition THEN true ELSE false

That’s pretty much it. The condition is usually a comparison of something. That something is normally numbers or text. We’ll start off with some basic number comparisons, then text, then include operators like AND/OR, etc. So here’s our first example:

We have a very simple example here. Two columns with two numbers, 25 and 35. If Column C, we want to check if Column A is greater than 10, we will output the text Yes, otherwise the text No. A few things to note:
1. You don’t have to put a set of parenthesis around the actual comparison, but it’s very good practice, especially when the comparison becomes more complicated.
2. To output text for the true or false value, you have to use double quotes. If you don’t, it will think you are trying to refer to a named range in Excel.
Now let’s see some more stuff you can do. In the comparison section, you can also do math too. For example, you can do this if you like:

Here we are saying that if the value of A2 times 10 is greater than 10, then output Yes, otherwise output No. Pretty straight-forward eh? Now let’s say we wanted to output numbers instead of text. Here’s one example:

In this example, if the value in A2 is greater than 10, it will output the value times 2, otherwise it will multiply the value by 5. Pretty useless, but you get the point. You can also use the value of other cells too in the formula.

Here we are saying that if the value of A2 is greater than 10, then multiple B2 by 10, otherwise multiple B2 by 5 and output that value into cell C2. Now let’s make it more complicated. What if we wanted to output Yes if both A2 and B2 are greater than 10?

Here’s something new! If we want A2 > 10 AND B2 > 10, then we have to use the AND function inside the IF function. Sounds tricky, but not too bad. The AND function basically takes multiple comparison arguments (A2 > 10) and does an AND on them. They all have to be true in order for “Yes” to be displayed. You can add three or four or more comparison arguments if you like. If you want to do an OR, simply replace the AND above with the word OR.
What about if you want to return a value other than text or a calculated number. What if you want to return the value of a cell on a different sheet? Well, you can do something like this:

For the true value, I am going to return the value of cell A1 on Sheet 2. That’s pretty easy! So you can easily reference values from other sheets if you like. In the same light, you can also use a value from another sheet in the logical comparison too, i.e. Sheet2!A1 > 10. Let’s look at more stuff you can do! Let’s say you wanted to do an IF statement based on the type of value stored in a cell (number, text, or blank). You can do something like this:

You can use ISTEXT and ISNUMBER for the other two types of data. These functions can be really convenient when writing IF formulas. Note that you can basically use most functions in Excel inside of a IF statement, so feel free to run loose. For example, you can use functions like SUM, MAX, MIN, etc.
So far we’ve only been working with one value in the logical comparison, but let’s say we want to work with a group of cells. For example, if all the numbers in a range of cells is greater than 10, output True, otherwise False.

It’s as simple as using the colon like shown above, A2:A4. In this case, each value from A2 to A4 will be tested to see if it’s greater than 10. If all of them are, then the true value will be displayed. What about nested IF statements?

Here, I am saying that if A2 is greater than 10, output a value, but if not, then perform another IF comparison. IF B2 is greater than 10, then output a different value. You can nest IF statements 64 levels deep, which means you can do some pretty complicated stuff. You’ll probably never need to go that far, but sometimes it’s useful a few levels deep.
This is only a basic introduction to the IF statement, but hopefully it’ll get you started. Are you trying to write an IF statement to do something in Excel and can’t figure it out? Post a comment here with the problem and I’ll try to help you write the proper IF formula. Enjoy!