How to Make Bullet Points Smaller Font in Kingsoft Writer

In Kingsoft Office/Writer 2013, if you are getting huge bullet points (compared to MS Word, for example) here's how to fix that:

1. Right-click on the offending bullet point
2. Click Bullets and Numbering
3. Click Customize
4. In the "Customize Outline Numbered List" window, select Font
5. If you are writing in text font size 14, try size 8 for the bullet points. Where it says Size on the top level, select 8.
6. Select OK and exit all windows accordingly

How to Create a Playlist in VLC

For this guide, I will assume you already have a folder with correctly numbered VLC-playable videos.

1. Add one of the videos to VLC (you can just play it, or select VLC first as default if not already done so.)
2. At the bottom of the VLC window, you should see a Play button (basically a triangle pointing sideways.) To the right of that, click the little icon that has a bullet-point and list. If you hover your mouse, it will likely say "playlist."
3. Click that.
4. Now you are in the Playlist mode. Add your other videos. If they arrive out of order, you may sort them. To do so, click along the top row where it says, "Title." There are other options to sort, such as by duration and ID. You may get even more by right-clicking along the aforementioned row.
5. Then click, along the top-most bar, "Media" then "Save Playlist to File." Choose a location where you want to be able to click-and-run the file. 
6. Done!

[Using VLC 2 and Windows 8]

How to Download Udacity Educational Videos and Skip Quizzes

Udacity is a great place to learn computer-science related topics. Sometimes the quizzes get in the way, however, and you don't want the playlist to pause every time. Here's the link to get around that -

https://www.udacity.com/wiki/downloads

As you can see it's perfectly legal and they're cool enough to provide it to everyone.

Let's look at how to download, and which files are necessary:

Downloads are separated into Units, Problem Sets, Office Hours and Subtitles. For an example of what I mean, check out the great Computer Science If you are only looking for the main part of the course, only page here: https://www.udacity.com/wiki/cs101/downloads#units

If you are only looking for the pain part of the course - the video series, then only download the Units. Unfortunately, as far as I know, you have to download the Units one by one, of which for the CS101 course, for example, there are 11.

[As of writing, I did look for a complete DL from PirateBay and Kickass torrents, but none are available for the term "Udacity."]

If you have downloaded all the Units, then that is great for a general overview. In CS101, I only want the overview, because I am learning Ruby on Rails, not Python. However the CS concepts are similar, so I watch them anyway for the main points.

The Problem sets are like homework. Haven't yet checked out "Office Hours," but if you have, please mention what they are in the comments! I'm guessing it's just Q&A of popular questions from Udacity students.

If you want to take the courses with quizzes etc., just head over to Udacity!

How To Skip Pandora Video Ads on iPhone

Using iOS 7 and the latest Pandora of today, here's how to skip those annoying video ads.

1. When an ad comes on (the video type which hijacks your screen), pull the top-view down (as if checking old text messages etc.)
2. With your finger still having control of the pull-down screen, keep it down near the bottom of the screen, hovering. DO NOT let go of the pull-down screen.
3. The ad should go away at this point.

How to solve “undefined method `title' for nil:NilClass” in Rails Tutorial

If you are following http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html or similar, you may get the awful  “undefined method `title' for nil:NilClass” problem. In that case, just go over to app\controllers\post_controllers.rb and put all "private" headers at the bottom. For example, if you have,

private
      def post_params
        params.require(:post).permit(:title, :text)
      end

which you should, as it's part of the tutorial, then make sure this block, and any others that say anything about being private, as far down the column as possible. Here's how mine ended up looking afterward:

class PostsController < ApplicationController

    def new
    end

    def create
      @post = Post.new(post_params)

      @post.save
      redirect_to @post
    end

    def show
      @post = Post.find(params[:id])
    end

    private
      def post_params
        params.require(:post).permit(:title, :text)
      end
    end

--
Condensed from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17810348/undefined-method-title-for-nilnilclass-rails-guides-tutoraial

How To Use An Oven to Save A Water-Damaged iPhone

I've put my iPhone in the oven two times now, all in the name of saving it from water damage. It's worked perfectly both times with no adverse affects.

Please note, I take no responsibility if something goes horribly, horribly wrong with your phone. I've used this on my iPhone 4. Here's how.

Get a container you can put in the oven (glassware is great.) Put a bunch of rice in there (enough to cover a phone.) Turn off the iPhone (doesn't matter if battery is charged or not, I've tried it both ways), and make sure to take off any case (except those clear sticker cases, which are ok) and stick the iPhone in there so that it is completely covered in the rice, INCLUDING ON THE BOTTOM. You do not want your iPhone touching anything but rice. I suggest white rice, but not sure if any other type would be bad. This will prevent the hotter-to-the-touch glass from contacting the phone.

So stick your phone in the oven and turn it on. I have used convection and normal bake modes. Honestly I think the convection method worked better. If you don't have that, the normal mode should be ok. Set it to the lowest temperature, which is for me 170 degrees. I'd suggest not over 180. 200 is an absolute keep-your-fingers-crossed maximum, for my money.

How long? I'd say increments of 20 minutes. Once I forgot it and it was in there for 40 minutes straight. No worries, but stay on the safe side. Just check it out, make sure battery acid hasn't exploded everywhere (or, that it's not TOO hot to the touch; it should be kinda hot like you left it in the sun a long time, but you should still be able to handle it.) Unless you dropped it in the toilet or some other embarrassing thing, the phone should be good to go after 20 to 30 minutes, depending on convection methods etc.

How do I feel comfortable doing this?
I have been in the sauna at the gym before, where it gets up to 180 degrees. The worst thing that happened is my phone showed a exclamation point warning and locked the phone until it cooled down. For the iPhone in oven method, just turn it off, then wait for it to cool down before using.

To cool down your phone: DO NOT stick it in the freezer or refrigerator. There be moisture in there. You can let it cool down on its own, or take it in your hands and let the heat transfer away to you.

Why rice?
Rice has natural drying properties. Some water damage phone guides say to use only rice, but that is unnecessarily long.

The problems I solved with my phone:
One time when it was really damaged and showed only some strange blue screen with garbled colors.
Another time (today, actually) when it was possessed (by water), and it was doing all sorts of random home-button functions (mostly sending me to Voice Control or whatever it's called.
 

Any questions, I'm happy to answer.

How to Trade Properties in Monopoly for iPhone

In "bird's-eye" view mode (looking at the whole board):

1. At the bottom of the horizontal screen, you will see a number of square buttons. If you have not already rolled, you will see a some dice.
2. You should also see two deed cards (they actually look more like old-school wheel iPods) with red and green arrows facing each other. Tap this button.
3. If there are more than two players, click the icon of the player you want to trade with. Then tap the green checkmark button. 
4. Now you are able to tap that players cards, and view them up-close. Tap the one you want.
5. Tap the card once more, once it is already shown close-up. This will select it, and you will see a green checkmark in that card's upper-right hand corner. To deselect, just tap it again.
6. Tap the green checkmark button at the bottom of the screen to exit close-up view. 
7. Continue doing this for any other properties, and money trades. You can select more than one property per trade. 
8. Once you are finished, tap the green icon on the bottom of the screen, with the hand holding a deed card (looks like a calculator.)
9. If you are trading AI, you may choose to offer more if they decline your first offer. 

Tip: Be very careful in this screen! It is possible to give your property away for absolutely nothing by forgetting or simply not entering any $ or card value for the other player. Also, beware of "fat thumbs" - make sure to confirm whether it says "decline" or "accept" when doing either action from another player's offer. Those two action buttons are very close to each other.

How to Mortgage a Property in Monopoly for iPhone

Once you own a property:

1. From the "bird's-eye" view, tap the property you want to mortgage.
2. Tap a second time to see the Title Deed (card) for the property you want to mortgage.
3. On the left, on the black card saying who owns the property (must be you to mortgage), there is a green button with the icon of what appears to be a bank. Click on that to mortgage, and confirm.

What To Do If iTunes Won't Let You Change a File Type (Music, iTunes U etc.)

If you have just imported a file into your iTunes library, and are having trouble changing the file type of any other properties under "Get Info," this brief guide is for you.

The problem is easily fixed. Go to the folder or original destination where the file you imported is. It is likely that the file has been marked "Read Only," which is preventing you from making changes. To fix this, follow these instructions from the Microsoft Help page (in Windows):

1. Find the file you want to edit. Right-click the file, and then click Properties.
2. Click the General tab, clear the Read-only check box, and then click OK.
3. Edit and save your file as needed.

Now that you have done that, delete the files that you already imported into iTunes, and do so from within iTunes. This will get rid of the unchanging files. iTunes may ask if you want to get rid of your original files, but say no; you will re-import these shortly.

After deleting the troublesome files from iTunes, just re-import the files after you changed them to not be read-only. Now you can change them freely!

How To Find Bookmarks.plist in Windows 8 and 7

Here is how to find bookmarks.plist on Windows 8, 7, and possibly Vista. Apple and Windows really hide this from users, so this guide will save you quite a bit of time.

1. Access the "Run" command from the start menu. On Windows 8, put the mouse cursor in the lower-left hand corner of the screen, then double-click; select "Run."
2. Type the following in the Run command line: %appdata%
3. Hit enter.
4. Find the "Apple Computer" file in the folder that pops up for you, courtesy of the Run command.
5. Open "Apple Computer," then open "Safari"
6. You will see "Bookmarks.plist" here. 

Bookmarks.plist contains your reading list and bookmarks info for Safari. Safari unfortunately does not allow easy moving around and management of the "reading list" feature. Possibly, you could just switch a new Safari installation's file with the old bookmarks.plist file you have, thus importing it like that.

How to Fix Errors Related to ImageMagick When Using Paperclip

While following along with a Team Treehouse tutorial on Installing Paperclip, I was getting a Paperclip::Errors::NotIdentifiedByImageMagickError. This would happen whenever trying to upload an avatar or change an image album.

What went wrong first: On the ImageMagick page, under Binary Windows Installations, I first used ImageMagick-6.8.6-9-Q16-x86-dll.exe. However, after much difficulty I could not get that to work in Treebook. The program "IMDisplay" would run normally on my PC, once I clicked the desktop file, but it was not working at all for my online purposes.

In the end, I deleted that installation (Windows Uninstall.) Going back to the IM download page (binary, windows, same page as before) I instead elected to go for ImageMagick-6.8.6-9-Q16-x64-dll.exe. I am running Windows 8 x64, so that seemed more suitable (the descriptions on the same page say which are Win32 and which are Win64.)

 An interesting note: I did not shut down any other running apps during my first installation of IM. It did "recommend" this, but I did not elect to do it. However, on the second approach, with a different installation, I closed all other apps, being extra cautious.

Once I began installing IM for the second time, I carefully read all notes. I ran the following in a bare (not "rubified") CMD window (In Windows 8, Run>CMD). (These are per the instructions that can be found in the IM install wizard, once it is successful.)

First type: C:\Users\MyAdminUsername>convert wizard: wizard.jpg
Hit enter, then type: C:\Users\MyAdminUsername>convert wizard.jpg win:

After "convert wizard: wizard.jpg" it won't really say anything, and will just give the "C:\ ..." prompt again. However keep going with the second "convert..." command as mentioned above. Then it will open the converted file, showing a successful installation.

Setting up Command Prompt with Ruby on Rails on Windows 8

I've been getting started with Ruby on Rails for the last few days. There are a lot of guides out there, but some try to accommodate for both Mac and Windows, and it can get confusing. So here's a Windows-only guide to get you started.

1) A tutorial website called Treehouse has a great video tutorial - and it's just over 2 minutes to boot. So visit their Windows-only tutorial for installing rails. They will show you how to use Rails Installer to set up several important things at once.

2) I did run into a few obstacles with that guide, although it is a good outline. When following along with their instructions, they will have you type "ruby -v" and "rails --help" in your command terminal. This part was troublesome for me: The console returned "access denied." To solve this, make sure your firewall is allowing the necessary programs access to their communication points. View the event log in your Firewall. Depending on which Windows you have, search how to find your firewall as necessary. The Windows firewall hub will tell you whether Windows or another program (McAfee, Norton) is handling your firewall security. Make sure access is granted regardless of what program is handling your firewall.

This should be enough to get Ruby on Rails installed on your system. If you are unsure of how to start practicing, you can continue with the next free video on the site we initially learned from. To continue:

3) To access the tutorial on creating a simple RoR application, visit this Treehouse link. As useful as I've found the tutorials to be, there are some tweaks that I found necessary, especially running Windows 8. However, here's the cure to the potential headache.

1. When the instructor says directory, he means what is also called a folder (as in, a folder but not a "file.") I'd be more than happy to tell you how to make a directory, but here are two resources that will save us both some time: First visit http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/book/ex0.html, then head over to http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr05/cos126/cmd-prompt.html. The latter will tell you how to make directories from right within command prompt, and the former will tell you what to do with this knowledge. 
2. When the instructor at Treehouse mentions "rvm use 1.9.3", that step is not necessary for Windows (at least if you followed the steps I've outlined in this post.) If you try in Windows, you will likely get an error.
3. Continue with the Treehouse instructions, but if you get another error with "rails server", be sure to read what it says. It will likely say (among many other things) "Run bundle install". So type in "bundle install" and be on your way. 
4. Set up your server as shown in the video. Remember to access port 3000 with 127.0.0.1:3000 rather than 0.0.0.0:3000 (just type it in your URL bar of any browser.)
5. If you've gotten this far, keep on going; Great job! Now it's time to test your statuses update. If you are on Windows 8, you may get the following error: "ExecJS::RuntimeError in Users#index". Easy fix. Head over to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13530042/execjsruntimeerror-in-usersindex-ror, and find the answer by Kevin P. (It's the one that gives 3 options.) The third option helped me out, and one JBickford helpfully told us that for if we used Rails Installer as in the videos, then the necessary file is at C:\RailsInstaller\Ruby1.9.3\lib\ruby\gems\1.9.1\gems\execjs-1.4.0\lib\execjs\ru‌​ntimes.rb . Just edit it with Notepad, Notepad ++, or any other simple code editor.
6. Go and check that your status updates are working. 

Now you should be up and running with Rails, now how to set up and end a simple server, and have some basic CMD commands under your belt. I mostly wanted to put all the resources that helped me finish the lesson into one place, so that it would be easier for others to follow. Any questions, just let me know.

How to Fix an Unresponsive Trackpad on an Asus Aspire One

Yesterday the trackpad on my Asus Aspire One apparently stopped working. I was simply using Evernote, typing some normal text, and suddenly the trackpad quit on me. I initially feared some sort of hardware probably, but eventually came across a simpler solution. Hopefully one of the following solutions works for you.

Try these solutions in this order:

1. Simply hit the Fn+F7 keys. On many Windows laptops, some keys have normal functions, and then a special function. The special function on most of these keys must be activated by pressing the Fn key, usually found in the lower-left hand area of your keypad. So hit Fn ("Function") and also F7, at the same time.
2. The above does indeed work for some people. However, it did not work for me; not the first time, anyway. So if simply hitting Fn+F7 did not work for you, try restarting your computer, if possible. If you can attach an external mouse, this may be easier to navigate. Then hit F7+Fn again, when Windows has finished loading.
3. Here is what worked for me: The trackpad gave out late at night, so instead trying to fix it right then, I simply turned in for bed. I put my computer in "hibernate" mode (which is my selected default action when the computer lid is closed), plugged it in to charge, then headed off to bed. 8 hours later, I wake up, unplug the computer, open the lid, and once everything is loaded (it takes a bit to wake up) I pressed Fn+F7 at the login screen. And it worked! I was so grateful I decided to come and share that experience. 
4. If none of these things worked for you, let's do a special restart. Shut down, remove both battery and power cord, and press the power button for at least 30 seconds.

***
Running Windows 8
Asus Aspire One - Model Q1VZC 

How To Quickly Rip Audio from Multiple Video Files for Free Mac/Windows

Want to quickly and easily extract audio from multiple video files all at once, quickly and easily? If so, there is a terrific and FREE program that can help you do just that. It's called Audacity, and is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Applying the steps listed below should be very similar whether you are using Windows, Mac, or Linux. Adapt accordingly. This guide is specifically written for the Mac-based program.
Getting Started:

1. Make sure you have Audacity installed correctly. Open it up* to get to the following page: 
2. Go to the taskbar at the very top of your screen (where File, Edit, and View are, etc.) Click File>Import>Audio. Select all the files you want to extract audio from (you can select more than one file!) and then click Open.
3. Once the files have been loaded into Audacity, go to File>Export Multiple. Click on "Options" if you want to change the audio quality of the exports. You can also set the option to mp3 or another such file. Choose the correct folder to extract to, and click to affirm and continue. (Note, on Mac "Export Multiple" is a different choice than simply "Export" or any similar option. 
4. 
5. Once you move on, you will have the chance to change several important tags/metadata for your individual files. Once you do this for one audio file and click to continue, you will do it for the next file, and so on. Do this for all the options, and then Audacity will extract the audio. (If, say, you are just planning to take the files to iTunes, simply filling the track name field will be enough, and you can batch-edit album name and artist name there, all at once.)
6. 

And that's it! You can find your files in the folder you sent them to in one of the previous steps.

*Audition may give you a prompt about how some it wants are not installed. Click past the notices, and try running the guide anyhow; sometimes it can work, depending on the files named. If it doesn't run, just restart the program and install the indexes as necessary (once you affirm you want the indexes, Audacity provides the necessary instructions.)