How to get Word to paste unformatted text by default

Posted on July 12, 2015 by blogmywiki

This is something that drives me mad. Why (oh why) do word processors (Word, Open Office) paste formatted text by default? Almost always what you want to do is to paste unformatted text, so that it matches the font of the document you are pasting into, not the one you copied it from. Anyone who spends a lot of time filling in job application Word documents will feel the need for this.

After ages messing around with the infuriatingly complex OS X key re-mapping tool Karabiner, I found a way of doing it in Word itself. (These instructions relate to Word 2016 for Mac.)

First make a new macro in Word. Go to Tools > Macro > Macros… and make a new macro called PasteUnformatted.

Paste this code into the Visual Basic editor:

Sub PasteUnformatted()
Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
End Sub

Then remap the cmd+V shortcut by going to Tools > Customize Keyboard… then pick ‘Macros’ from the Categories list. Find PasteUnformatted and assign cmd-V to it, click on the ‘assign’ button, and now every time you press cmd-V it should paste unformatted text that matches the formatting of the new document you are working on.

If you want to keep the option of pasting formatted text, assign a different, unused keyboard shortcut, but I am so convinced that unformatted is the thing you need 99.9% of the time, I’ve just replaced it.

Posted in computers, MacOS X | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments

Adobe Audition 3 on a modern Mac

Posted on July 5, 2015 by blogmywiki

I wrote previously about getting CoolPlay to run on a Mac. CoolPlay is WindowsXP software used for playing audio clips, developed for BBC Radio, but it has other uses too, and I don’t know of any Mac software that does the same thing: to allow you to organise a playlist of audio tracks that play one at a time, stopping at the end of each track and waiting for a button to be pressed before playing the next track.

My favourite audio editing / mixing tool is probably Adobe Audition 3 – an old version from 2007, and it was never ported to Mac OS X. More recent versions of Audition are available for Mac, but Audition 3 strikes the right balance for me of simplicity and functionality. It also gained some popularity because it was part of Creative Suite 2, which was released in early 2013 with official serial numbers when Adobe shut down the CS2 activation servers. I still can’t figure out if that means you could nab CS2 and Audition 3 for free, or not.

Could I run Audition 3 on a new MacBook Air running Yosemite? I tried WINE, but without any luck. The Audition installer bombs out very early on. I then thought about using BootCamp to dual-boot the MacBook Air into WindowsXP – but no luck there either. Yosemite and the 2015 MacBook Airs do not support any version of Windows older than 8, and I don’t think Audition 3 plays nicely with Windows 8. It may be possible to install WindowsXP on a new MacBook without using BootCamp, but I have no idea how you’d get the relevant drivers to make XP work properly on Apple hardware.

So I thought I’d have a go at using a ‘virtual machine’ – I installed the free Oracle VirtualBox, and – purely as a proof of concept – installed WindowsXP from an OEM disc. (This Windows install will stop working in 30 days, when it demands to be activated.) I had problems getting VirtualBox to install off a Windows CD-ROM, so I made an ISO disk image of it using OS X Disk Utility (pick the ‘CD master’ option, and rename the resulting .CDR file .ISO), and it worked fine installing from that.

I was very doubtful it would work, but my golly the Audition installer ran perfectly, and it seems to be fast enough to play, edit and mix audio. I even put by MacBook Air to sleep, opened it this morning, Audition was still there and resumed playing instantly when I pressed the space bar. I even managed to record audio straight into Audition running in the virtual WindowsXP machine, using the MacBook Air’s internal microphone, with no tweaking or fiddling with settings. Which is just incredible really.

Mounting USB devices in the virtual XP machine is a bit counter-intuitive; if you plug a memory stick into your Mac, you then have to eject it in OS X, but leave it plugged in so you can then mount it in XP. But it works just fine. I can even see how my web pages look in Internet Explorer 8!

And CoolPlay works too, much more reliably than it does in WINE.

Now if only Microsoft would make WindowsXP free, or open source it…

Posted in computers, MacOS X, Windows | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Headless Raspberry Pi broadband wifi switch problem sorted

Posted on June 2, 2015 by blogmywiki

This is probably blindingly obvious, but I was quite pleased with this solution…

We just switched broadband providers and I got home to find the provider changed, new wifi router installed and the old one unplugged. Problem was I have THREE headless Raspberry Pi computers in the house – that’s to say Pis with no keyboard or screen. One is our wifi print server attached to an old laser printer, another is the internet radio in the kitchen, and a third is an experimental audio player running Volumio. Of course none of them would connect to the network now, as they had the wrong wifi network name and password inside them, and I couldn’t SSH into them to update them… because they couldn’t join the new network. Catch 22.

One solution might have been to connect them by ethernet to the new router, but I didn’t want to move them or then have the hassle of working out their new IP addresses. So I plugged the old broadband router back in, but did not connect it to the phone line. I then waited for the 3 RaspberryPis to connect to it, then I connected a laptop to the old wifi network. This had no internet access now, but it did allow me to SSH into the 3 RaspberryPis using their old IP addresses to edit the wifi details with the

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

command. I typed VERY carefully, as I only had 1 chance to get this right. Luckily, all 3 worked and then I unplugged the old router and switched the laptop back to the new wifi network. Simples!

PS: @ryanteck points out that an even simpler solution is to rename the new wireless network SSID and password to match the old one. I’d have done this but for the fact that a family members had already attached their phones, laptops and tablets to the new network and I couldn’t face telling them they’d have to change them back again. But it’s clearly a more sensible solution.

Ryan’s tweet has given me an idea though – keep an old router handy for use as a portable not-so-hotspot so if you take your headless Pi elsewhere (holiday, Raspberry Jam etc) you could use it to SSH into the Pi to update the wifi details. Again, there’s probably a much simpler way of doing this…

Posted in Raspberry Pi | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How to Win Eurovision

Posted on May 25, 2015 by blogmywiki

As soon as I heard Mans Zelmerlow’s ‘Heroes’, I knew it was going to win Eurovision. Or to be more accurate, as soon as I saw it I knew it would win. It was the smart graphics and animation that won it for Sweden, along with a catchy pop tune.

The United Kingdom’s recent record in Eurovision is something of a national embarrassment. Luckily, I think I may have the answer.

If the smart animation won in 2015 for Mr Zelmerlow, let’s go one better and dispense with the human being and put up a cartoon character, Gorillaz-style, in 2016. It could be carried around on a portable screen and be shown laughing, crying, necking virtual white plonk in the green room and so on. It would be so cute, everyone would vote for it.

But what theme for the song?

I’ve been thinking about this. What unites Europe but also reflects our individuality and differences at the same time?

I’ll tell you what.

CHEESE.

Every nation has its own cheese. And we all love cheese. But all our cheeses reflect our national characters: the crumbly solidity of Lancashire or Cheddar, the soft sensuality of a ripe Camembert, the efficient deliciousness of a Gruyère. It would also help get the French back on board who had a complete nightmare in 2015.

So, introducing GBR’s 2016 Eurovision winner MR CHEESE with ‘We are united by our cheese! / woooa-oh-a-oh!’. Or Monsieur Fromage. Or Sr Queso. We can internationalise the funk out of this one.

Failing that, we need to call on Mr Neil Innes to save us:

Or just send Portishead doing Machine Gun. Just to see the expression on everyone’s faces:

Portishead – Machine Gun from Mintonfilm on Vimeo.

(If someone with artistic talent cares to knock up a Mr Cheese – or Sr Queso – sketch for me, I’ll be happy to put it on here).

Posted in media, music | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

50p reverse LED Arduino theremin

Posted on May 13, 2015 by blogmywiki

Okay, it’s not exactly musical, but this is a pretty cool quick Arduino project you can make with:

  • an LED
  • a piezo buzzer
  • er, that’s it

Okay, you need an Arduino, but it doesn’t even use a resistor.

I used the code in this project: http://mvartan.com/2013/03/11/1-photo-theramin-and-more-fun-with-reversed-leds/ and removed the push button because I found it worked better with the button always pressed – so I just shorted it out.

I wired up the LED and the buzzer like this:

The important thing is that the LED is wired up back to front – this is what makes it act like a light detector, rather than emitter. You connect the long, positive leg of the LED to ground (GND) and the short, negative leg to Analogue pin 0 (A0).

Connect the positive side of the buzzer to Digital pin 8, the negative side to GND and I just shorted digital pin 7 to GND because I couldn’t be bothered to tweak the code – in the original a push button sits between Digital pin 6 and GND.

Wire it up, upload the code and the closer you move your hand to the LED, the more ambient light gets blocked and the higher the pitch of the note goes.

Oddly, when I tried to film this on my iPhone, the soundtrack was almost entirely silent, though it was really loud in the room – and loud enough on my Fuji X10 still camera. Also, if you touch the negative side of the LED, it goes NUTS!

Posted in Arduino | Tagged , | Leave a comment