Quick posting

A quick posting today with lots to do.  The night sky for May 2011:- http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/

http://www.formula1.com/  I really like the layout for this site.

Advanced notice - I shall be away on holiday for four weeks from next Tuesday.  It is unlikely there will be any postings during that time, unless I can get to an internet cafe somewhere :)

Am still having problems with my Dell Dimension desktop PC.  I had Windows XP loaded and booting fine at ten to twelve on Saturday evening.  Then I managed to set up a network using a BT Home Hub - quite chuffed really, then the automatic updates started and we crashed trying to install service pack 2 which is needed to upgrade to Vista.  Now as I type the machine is format the hard drive again, as it went trhouh that many restarts I figured it best to start again and I hadn't put anything apart from a word processor (The excellent Open Office) on it.  So we wait with fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I'll put some photo's of our blosom tree that until recent winds was doing quite nicely.

Have a great Tuesday.

Computer keyboard Short cuts

Computer keyboard Short cuts

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people including some of my student's who do not know about keyboard short cuts on computers. The very first PC's never had a mouse to navigate the screen easily. For example the control key, located bottom left near the Microsoft key. My Dell keyboard is nicely designed and has two control or Ctrl keys, one at the left side and one at the right.

If you are using an application, say a word processor, then you can save time by pressing the Ctrl key and S together to either save your document to the hard drive or floppy disk. Other examples are Ctrl + P to print your document.

It is well worth checking out the keyboard short cuts, just in case your mouse fails, you will be surprised at what you can do.

Also when using word processors you can use the Home, End keys to get to the beginning of a line of text or the end of a paragraph. Likewise, the Page Up and Page Down keys to move the page, yes you guessed it up and or down.

I dare say that as with the touch screen mobile phones our PC screens will eventually go down that route and we will be able to touch icons to access the multitude of applications our computers are able to run. Unless voice recognition software gets to Star Trek perfection levels then there will be always a need for a computer keyboard.