Finding offscreen windows
I blogged ages ago about how I tend to organise my IT…. that is a portable hard drive with as many apps on it as possible so that my entire IT “ecosystem” is portable.
One small, but irritating, problem has been when moving from a multiple to single monitor setup. Many apps remember the screen coordinates of any windows when they last shut down. That means when starting on a single monitor they are off-screen. One “hack” is to hit Alt-space which brings up the window menu, then “M” which allows you to use the arrow keys to move the window. There are some apps which just don’t allow you to do this…. so Force Window Visible is a nice simple (portable) app to allow you to reset app window coordinates. Does what it does on the box!
IMD Update
Following on from my earlier post Alasdair Rae at Sheffield Uni has now updated to include earlier years. From the horses mouth (so to speak):
“Just click on an area for a pop up with chart showing IMD ranks from previous years. I’ve included the chart (a bit of code which has been difficult to figure out!), the numbers and the rank change between 2004 and 2010. Hopefully this is of interest.”
Get it here. Very useful stuff.
Using Kindles in HE
I gave a talk yesterday about using Kindles in HE and, in particular, using them for marking, reading research papers and briefly pondering about their student use. This really comes out of my initial reactions to using the Kindle and further experience. Slides are linked below if they are of interest.
Dynamic Landsat Archive
ESRI have released their Change Matters Viewer which provides dynamic access to the USGS Landsat archive and allows you to explore change over time using pre-defined band combinations. Its a good tool to demonstrate the utility and power of geoinformation and the importance of maintaining an archive. OK, its not a “power” tool but the interface is engaging and easy to use. Also a useful blog entry here.
Bluetooth Keyboard in Android
Ages back I bought a bluetooth keyboard for my Palm TX to allow typing whilst on the move. I’ve used it on and off and thought it would be neat to hook it up to the San Francisco. Its a legacy device so, of course, there are no Android drivers for it from Freedom. Some digging around brought up KeyPro which is a “universal” bluetooth keyboard driver. Its hardly the cheapest app at $10 but it works! Brings the old (perfectly working) hardware back in to serviceable use. Its perhaps not the most functional “front-end” to set the driver up, but there are 3 steps to follow:
1. Pair the keyboard to the phone using the stand Bluetooth control panel in Android (“0000” or “1234” are the default password settings)
2. Go in to the driver Settings and select your keyboard. Strangely enough the Universal Keyboard (which I have) gave all the wrong characters, but the SmartKeyboard worked fine!
3. Scan for your device to connect to it. This showed my a blank screen at which you needed to press the menu button and then select the scan option. None too obvious!
All work well then so $10 well spent. Incidently, I’m in the process of sorting out the hardware for my Durness-to-Dover ride and want to keep weight to a minimum, but still keep the photography and blog posting going. So San Francisco (with FTP upload) and keyboard will offer a perfect combination. More on other parts of the comms shortly.