Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • From the Archives: The Skinny on Pages' TOC

    __Originally featured in__ “*Kibbles & Bytes issue #662*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb662/

    Pages is one of those apps that really filled a void in my world. Word was slow and cumbersome (and pre-version 2008 for Mac, not very pretty) and AppleWorks never transitioned into the vibrant OS X “Cocoa”:http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/cocoa.html world.

    While I know the application pretty darn well by this point, I’m always excited when I learn something new. *Case in point: the automatically-populating Table of Contents feature.*

    If you’re writing a paper that needs a Table of Contents, there’s no reason to do it manually. When done correctly, the TOC will display your Heading styles and apply a page number to them, and then update on the fly while you’re making changes. If you haven’t used it before, you should–but there are some initially perplexing things about the formatting, so here are some tips:

    * Heading styles are found in the *Styles Drawer,* the window that appears to the right or left of the document you’re working on. (Note: if you don’t see it, click the View icon at the top of your document and select Show Styles Drawer.)

    * Each page of your document should be its own Section; select *Section Break* in the Insert menu to break out each page.

    * Once you have broken out your pages into Sections, your TOC should show each *Heading* (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) with an assigned page.

    * To edit what is shown in the TOC, click on the *Documents section* of the Inspector, and select TOC. There, you can check or uncheck any number of options to show.

    * The individual Section preferences are found in the *Layout section* of the Inspector. This is where you can designate your pagination.

    * You can control your pagination by selecting either *”Continue from previous section”* or *”Start at: [put your page number here]”* under Section in the Layout part of the Inspector.

    * *Important:* If you want to have your document start at ‘1’ __after__ the TOC, you need to select “Continue…” on both the cover page (if you have one) and the TOC and select “Start at: 1” on the first actual page of your document.

    * The font, font size, line spacing, etc. are all editable in the TOC using the *Text section* of the Inspector. And even though they are linked, you can make your page numbers a different size than the rest of the text in the TOC.

    Anyone else out there a Pages fangirl or fanboy? “Send us your comments!”:mailto:kali@smalldog.com

  • RIP AppleWorks

    Way back when, the go-to word processor for me was ClarisWorks. In grade school I mastered its simple interface. I was able to make pamphlets and donation sheets for scouting bike-a-thons, keep team statistics for my youth hockey team in a spreadsheet and type out all of my homework. In a time before America Online, these would all print out of an original StyleWriter.

    Over the years I’ve transferred this time capsule of my childhood from double-density floppies, to high-density floppies, to zip disks, to jaz disks, to burned CDs, to external hard drives, and one day I finally consolidated all of it and emailed it all to myself using Gmail for relative perpetuity.

    Eventually, ClarisWorks became AppleWorks when Apple bought Claris. AppleWorks functions under Snow Leopard but not under Lion, so if you upgrade you’ll need to give it up. However, the documents all remain accessible in Pages under Lion.

    I’m not really sad that AppleWorks is dead, unlike so many customers who’ve written in with similar nostalgia or, sometimes, panic; I’m just glad the documents are all still viable. There are way too many of them, but one of these days I expect they’ll all need to be converted to PDF, or whatever format seems to have the longest expected lifespan in a few years or so.

    Things are similarly simple for those of us who used early Microsoft Office programs. Office 2011 will effortlessly open these ancient files, but don’t expect them to look perfect (not that the old Apple and ClarisWorks files always come out perfectly either).

    What digital data do you value, and hope to access far into the future? What safeguards do you have to ensure its safety? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

  • Getting Involved in Our Community

    A great example of our community outreach efforts was our recent donation of four MacBooks to Girls Inc. of New Hampshire, an affiliate of the national Girls, Inc. organization. Girls, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that responds to the changing needs of girls and their communities by utilizing advocacy and research based programs specifically designed to empower girls to reach their full potential and to understand, value, and assert their rights.

    I had the pleasure of presenting the computers to the staff at the Manchester, NH center, where over 50 joyous young girls were learning, playing games, and having fun. The addition of MacBooks to their computer lab was met with elation, seeing how they only had a handful of PCs!

    When I booted up the laptops and got Photo Booth running, the faces on these little girls lit up. It was like Christmas morning! These laptops will provide a great resource to help these bright young girls develop into inquisitive, confident and intelligent women. Small Dog was thrilled to be able to support Girls Inc. with this donation.

  • It’s Jan filling in for Don again as he and Grace wind down their vacation. As I write, they’re in Switzerland motorcycling their way through the Alps. Several of the folks here at Small Dog have motorcycles, and I am already hearing the chatter about getting some good last rides in before the snow flies. Hopefully, they can ride up until December!

    I thought a good subject to write about this week is Small Dog’s involvement within the communities we serve. Year after year, Small Dog is recognized by local and national organizations for being a socially responsible and caring corporate partner.

    We contribute thousands of dollars to charitable causes either by directly matching customer contributions through our Charitable Contribution program or by in-kind donations. Our employees also donate their time to local efforts, through various community service initiatives.

    We believe that it is imperative to strengthen the bonds within our community, and to facilitate a strong network of individuals and businesses. Read more about our community efforts below.

  • How to Eject a Disk When Your Computer Won't Boot

    If you’ve ever called Small Dog or Apple for technical support because your Mac wouldn’t boot, odds are it was suggested that you attempt a reinstallation of your operating system from the disks that came with your computer. The problem here is that if the reinstallation fails for whatever reason, there is no apparent way to eject the disk if the computer doesn’t start up.

    A huge percentage of computers entering our service facilities have disks “stuck” in the drive when they’re checked in. To eject a disk, simply press and hold your mouse or trackpad button immediately after powering on your machine. Once the disk ejects, you can let go of the mouse or trackpad button and then press and hold the power button for about ten seconds to force your computer to turn off.

    Alas, this tip works only with a wired mouse. No bluetooth or similar wireless mouse will work, unfortunately. If you have a wired keyboard but wireless mouse, there is another way: use the boot manager.

    The boot manager is a screen summoned by pressing and hold the Option key on your keyboard immediately after pressing the power button. After a few moments, a screen will come up showing you the available startup disks. Once this screen appears, wait about ten seconds and then press the eject key on your keyboard to eject the disk.

    Your mileage may vary on this one. Note that a drive that makes the usual ejecting noises but fails to eject a disk will require removal of the drive itself to save the disk. Failure to eject and inability to eject are two completely separate issues!

  • Easy Hard Drive Failure Prevention

    It’s true that laptop hard drives tend to fail before desktop hard drives (unless your desktop computer uses a laptop hard drive, as is the case with the Mac mini). This is simply because laptops tend to be moved around much more than desktops.

    I see customers close their laptops to make them sleep–which is fine–but they often then pick up the computer immediately and begin walking with it. The problem with this is that modern laptops take the contents of memory and write it to the hard drive. This is what makes “safe sleep” possible, and it can take up to a minute.

    A hard drive is like a record player. There are platters inside that spin anywhere from 4,200 revolutions per minute to 15,000 revolutions per minute. If you’ve ever bumped into your record player or otherwise jarred it while it was playing music, you know that it doesn’t sound very good and can damage your stylus or the vinyl. The same holds true in hard drives.

    Perhaps the easiest and most effective thing you can do to protect your laptop hard drive is to wait after closing the lid. When the sleep light begins “breathing,” your computer is truly asleep. If the light is solid or off entirely, your hard drive is still spinning. Take a deep breath and wait until the hard drive spins down; your data will thank you, and so will your wallet.

  • Mac mini Solid State Drive Upgrades

    I’m very glad to announce a great new offer here in the Small Dog Service department. It is an opportunity for a tremendous upgrade to the newly released Mac minis: the addition of a second hard drive. This can be any 2.5″ SATA hard drive.

    This upgrade can either serve as an enormous addition in storage space or, if you prefer, a great increase in performance. Adding a solid state hard drive into your Mac mini and making it the startup disk will give you an unimaginable increase in speed. Just like the hard drives in the current generation of MacBook Airs, solid state hard drives have a very high read/write speed (many times that of a standard spinning hard drive), which varies by brand/model.

    By adding a solid state drive to your Mac mini and making it your startup disk, you have increased your computer’s performance without sacrificing space, as you still have the original hard drive installed, which can serve as a storage space for your files, such as iTunes library, iPhoto library, etc.

    We now also offer a great selection of “*Kingston SSDs.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=solid+state+2.5%5C%5C%5C%22+internal&refinecat=Storage_and_Backup|Solid_State_Drives|Internal With the purchase of a new 2011 Mac mini, SSD of your choice and necessary installation hardware ($49.99), we’ll do the installation for FREE. This includes the SSD install and installation of the OS on the SSD to create the boot volume.

  • Tip of the Week: Don't Forget Your Master Password

    FileVault is an encryption technology first included in Mac OS 10.4 that’s useful for anyone whose computer contains sensitive information. It can prevent unauthorized access to the items in your home folder by encrypting the entire folder with a current government-approved standard called Advanced Encryption Standard with 128-bit keys (AES-128).

    When you first turn on FileVault from System Preferences, you’ll also create a master password for the computer that will allow you to reset your regular login password if you ever forget it. While FileVault is an excellent and functional way to protect your files, if you ever forget your master password and your regular login password, your files are gone. Forever.

    A customer came in this morning asking for her password to be reset. When I realized she used FileVault, I called her to ask for the master password. She didn’t know it. This case was a double-whammy because I also discovered that her hard drive was failing when the computer took about 5 minutes to arrive at the login window. The drive was still working well enough that I was confident the data could be recovered, but since FileVault was enabled, there was no point.

    So, here’s this week’s tip: *do not, under any circumstances, forget that master password.*

  • Happy Tuesday,

    With another week of flood recovery behind us, the piles of debris are much less common. Much remains to be done, though, to get back to normal. Huge expanses of roads remain washed out where rivers carved new paths, buildings remain moist and mold-prone, inundated crops must be plowed under and many bridges remain out of service. With many town offices and records destroyed, Small Dog has been delivering temporary technology solutions to help keep things moving.

    It’s always nice to hear from Tech Tails readers when an article helps them directly. Last summer, Owen was skunked several times. After I wrote about it in a newsletter introduction, dozens of you responded with remedies that had helped you in the past. The most common suggestion worked best: baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Owen made it all the way to September this year without a skunking: last night on our before-bed walk, he was sprayed from a distance, leaving him coated evenly from head to tail. It’s a good thing I keep several bottles of peroxide on hand, and I’m thankful both to provide help to readers and to receive tips and tricks as well.

    As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    “matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com

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