Windows 8 - Setting the Sound to not be output via HDMI

Windows 8 - Setting the Sound to not be output via HDMI

I was struggling to get my computer to output sound via the jack (speaker) output rather than the HDMI output when it was connected to an HDMI projector. 

A quick google explained how to do it - I've written up my own guide with screenshots.

Tea time

Tea in Berrima, NSW a couple of weeks ago.

Fun

Fan noise (rattling) on MSI Wind / Advent 4211

Recently I've purchased an Advent 4211 - one of these new 'netbook' laptops that are nice and portable. It's great and I'd recomment the Advent 4211 to anyone (it's the same as the MSI Wind apart from cosmetics, and cheaper!).

However, today it started making a rattling noise from the fan! Rather annoying. Anyway a quick look on google led me to a comment about someone else who had this and tightened up the screws on the bottom and the rattle in the fan went away. So I gave it a go and hey presto - my fan now doesn't rattle. Let's hope it stays that way.

Just thought I'd write this here in case it helps anyone else find out this information and maybe helps with their rattling fan.

A very useful software application

I'm a great fan of freeware apps for computers. One of the most useful I've found is this:

http://www.nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html

It's an extended clipboard that keeps in it's history the last 20 entries you made. It lets you select from this history with a shortcut (Alt+C) by default. Very useful for when you want to clip several bits of text from one application into another and don't want to continually switch between them.

It worked for me when I had XP, and now works on Vista too. You'll probably want to add it to your startup folder so it starts when Windows loads up.

Bye for now,

Andy

MS Word find and replace tips

One thing I often find useful in MS Word is to remove formatting from a particular block of text. (It's helpful to first see what formatting you've got in a document by turning on Show Paragraph Marks.)

Say I want to remove all the tabs in a table. Here's what I do:

1. Select the cells in the table I want to remove the tabs from.
2. Press CTRL + H on the keyboard to bring up Find and Replace (or use the menu if you don't like keyboard shortcuts).
3. In the Find what field type "^t" (without quotes). This is the code that tells Word you're looking for the tab character.
   
4. As I don't want to replace it with anything leave the Replace with field blank.
5. Select the Replace All button, select No when it asks me if I want to search in the rest of the document. Done!

That's a lot easier than pressing the Delete key 81 times (as I would have had to do for my most recent example).

If you wanted to remove all paragraph breaks you use the code "^p" in the Find what box. There are other things you can search for as well such as footnote markers - select the More (or Options?) button and then select Special and choose what you want to search for and it will put the code in the Find/Replace box for you.

Hope this is helpful.

Microsoft Word searching with formatting options

I just found a nifty feature in the search box on MS Word. I happened to press CTRL + U to try and take off underlining on the word I just found using 'Find', but actually as the search box was still active it refined the search even further so that is was searching for the word I typed in and where it had underlining applied to it. You can do three types of search like this - 'search word' + underline, 'search word' + no underline, 'search word' (i.e. find it regardless of underlining).

I'm guessing the same will work with all sorts of formatting options. Hope this might be useful to someone out there. Do comment to say if it is! I'm using Word 2007 but I'm guessing this feature has been there for a bit.

Being away was good, being home is good

Well just a quick post to say that I've been back in the UK for a week now. And I think I'm finally over jet lag.

I'm currently at my parents house before I start 2 Christian summer camps for under 18s on Saturday, and then have a week of holiday in the UK. After that my course at college starts on 3rd September!

On the weekend just gone I managed to get back to Cambridge which was good. I saw my old work colleagues on Friday, and then other friends on Saturday, and then friends at church on Sunday. I also brought home another car load of stuff as it didn't all fit in when I moved out over a month ago!

This week I'm getting ready for summer camps and getting admin done. It's a bit quiet at my parents house as they are away on holiday.

Somewhere before term starting I've got to try and fit in reading for college. It'll be a busy few weeks...