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Friday, 30 April 2004

Newsletter Issue 78, April 2004


Sam Young Newsletter


Issue 78, April 2004

Hi guys,

Looking after each other becomes more of a problem as we constantly cut down government services to avoid paying more tax. Read about our aging population in When We Get Older below.

Want to improve your typing accuracy or speed? Then read all about the packages in Typing Tutor. 


Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.


When We Get Older...



How's this for a stat - nearly one in every four New Zealanders will be over 85 by 2051. Amazing, isn't it. In 1800 our average life expectancy was apparently a miniscule 14 (nothing like high infant mortality, is there). By 1900 we had romped up to 40. And now we are averaging something like 80.

Apparently the number of New Zealanders aged 65 plus has doubled over the last 50 years. That number is also expected to double over the next 50 years. And the really interesting thing is what this longer life is doing to our habits; we are getting married a decade later, having children about a dozen years later and living on to actually enjoy our retirement.

This of course creates a whole raft of problems; including one of the key ones being a question that I would love to ask Mr Muldoon's National government; "Why did you spend the country's super fund on think big projects in the 1970s?" In our 20/20 hindsight we can now see that there are a lot of prudent retired people who paid in their taxes 6% for super, but who now have no retirement provision.

I read an article from Maxim Institute recently, stating their opinion that our aging population was due to moral and institutional selfishness. Funny, I thought it was due to our living longer.

They think that this "selfishness" manifests itself in declining fertility rates, euthanasia and abortion. Hmm.

Declining fertility rates are a global issue, and there are strong suggestions that, aside from starting families later, this is largely due to our additive- and preservative-ridden diet and environment. There have been some studies done on pollution, sedentary roles and male fertility that are particularly damning, as are stats about smoking and both male and female fertility. There have also been many studies undertaken on viruses and male fertility. As men's sperm counts have apparently halved since WW2, I don't think our decreasing fertility is due to selfishness.

We don't euthanase in New Zealand, so I don't see how that's a problem. And wouldn't our life expectancy decrease if we did?!

Abortions will decrease the number of live births, but interestingly, NZ has one of the highest birthrates of all our trading partners. Bulgarians, at number one on the lowest birthrate table, only have 8 children per thousand per annum. Latvians and Germans about 8.5. New Zealand has the 65th lowest rate in the world out of 224, at 14. All our other OECD countries are well under our profligate 14. And beyond us lie pretty much the who's who of third world nations.

NZ's stats on teenage pregnancy rates (that's completed pregnancies, not abortions) are appalling. As we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the world, I am not so sure that having a high birthrate is such a flash idea.

Never mind being "selfish". I think we are better placed to be prudent. We need to shore up some cash in the bank to look after our golden oldies in the same manner that they did that for us, thirty plus years ago ..."will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four" :-)

To read more, follow the links below;




Typing Tutors



If doesn't matter you are a "hunt & peck" keyboarder, or if you just want to stop yourself constantly typing "inforamtion" - there is something out there to help you. The internet - what a wonderful thing - has a wealth of software programmes that can help you get your keyboarding up to speed in a variety of different ways;

  1. Typing Tutor is freeware, available at http://www.aetech.co.uk/ttutor/download.html. This is a great little programme with tests and exercises that is simple and easy to use. This is best for those of you who have little to no keyboarding experience.
  2. You can test your keyboarding at http://www.typingtest.com/index.asp?go=typetest with a free online test. You can also get at http://www.typingmaster.com/contents/gamesdl.htm their TypingMaster freeware
  3. At http://www.goodtyping.com, you register on a web-based course. The course has 27 step-by-step lessons to learn keyboarding from the beginning. It doesn't require any downloads, and is free. You can do a dry run at http://www.goodtyping.com/introduccion.htm?n=Guest&e=Invitado&t=1& to see if you like it
  4. KP Typing Tutor is also freeware at http://www.fonlow.com/zijianhuang/kp/downloade.html. You can practice basic typing, sentences or longer text.
  5. Fast Eddie's Typing Speedometer tests typing speed using jokes and puns. Speed, accuracy & net speed are constantly updated on screen. Freeware from http://www.justmarkham.com/software.htm
  6. Gabe's Typometer is also freeware. To download, go to http://www.informatics.no/ and click the link at the bottom of the page
  7. Bruce's Typing Tutor is also freeware. Download at http://www.tucows.com/preview/252911.html
  8. SES Type focuses on accuracy and can be downloaded free at http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~pmh/Type/
  9. Download a copy of Accu-Type at http://www.learntotype.com/atdown.htm and then register online for £9.95. This software is excellent if you want to get more than one licence.

Remember to take regular breaks & have fun!



Some Spelling Tips



We truly have become a global community, and with that there are a whole raft of communication problems. You would think that one of the most simple ones to avoid today would be poor spelling, punctuation or grammar - and you would be wrong.

If there is something that we consistently get wrong, it is EXACTLY that triumvirate. So here are a few simple rules to ensure that your readers don't wince when they are reading your business writing;

  • Retain original spellings in book and article titles, proper names of institutions, places, and especially keep quotations exactly as the author wrote them, or mark bits that you have changed with square brackets
  • Consistently use either English or American spelling throughout your document
  • Be consistent in using -ise or -ize spelling in words where the alternative spellings are permissible (ie authorise/authorize, organise/organize, realise/realize). However, it is more usual for UK English to use "ise" rather than "ize". However, be aware that some words should always end in "ise" such as advertise, advise, arise, braise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, concise, demise, despise, devise, disguise, enterprise, excise, exercise, expertise, franchise, improvise, incise, merchandise, precise, premise, prise (cf open), reprise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise, televise, treatise
  • Do NOT put apostrophes in plurals. A TLA (three letter acronym) that is a plural becomes TLAs, not TLA's
  • Remember those words ending in 'o' that require the addition of an 'e' for the plural form - potatoes, tomatoes, avocadoes etc.
  • Watch out for the commonly dropped "u" from UK English to American English eg harbour/harbor; labour/labor; odour/odor etc
  • Many foreign words have become so accepted in general English usage that they have been anglicised and need not be (a) italicised and (b) don't have to have the original languages' accents. You can choose to use élite/élite/elite; régime/régime/regime; façade/façade/facade. Just be consistent once you have decided which way you want to use the words
  • Some words have acceptable alternative spellings. Spell them consistently one way - eg: acknowledgement/acknowledgment; adviser/advisor; ageing/aging; appendixes/appendices; biased/biassed; bylaw/bye-law; connection/connexion; dispatch/despatch; focused/focussed; gipsy/gypsy;  grey/gray; guerrilla/guerilla; inflection/inflexion; inquiry/enquiry; judgement/judgment; medieval/mediaeval;
  • In some cases use of a slightly different spelling signifies a different meaning, eg advice (noun), advise (verb); dependant (noun), dependent (adjective); forbear (abstain), forebear (ancestor); forward (onward), foreword (introductory remarks); principal (CEO), principle (moral code); affect (verb), effect (noun)
  • Some commonly misspelled words are that you need to always double-check (all spelled correctly, so you can get them right) include; accommodate, battalion, committee, desiccation, homogeneous, millennium, necessary, religious, sacrilegious, stereo



TLAs for SMEs



Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;

  • J2ME, Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition. Programmers use this platform when working with Java programming language and related tools, to develop applications for mobile wireless devices such as cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs)
  • DCE, Distributed Computing Environment. Industry-standard software technology for managing computing and data exchange over a wide area network (using client/server). Using DCE, application users access their programmes and data from the server, not the actual PC, so they can get to their data and programmes anywhere on the network


Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.



Short+Hot Keys... and now tips

Here's a very short list for you. All you can do using a comma;

  • PowerPoint "Display a white screen, or return to the slide show from a white screen" , (comma)
  • Outlook "Previous item (with item open)" Ctrl & , (comma)
  • Word "Shrink Font" Ctrl & Shift & , (comma) 

Hot Linx

Do you pronounce words properly? Then go to the Top 100 at Your Dictionary. While many of these are Americanisms,  a lot are true of Kiwiland. Check it out at http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html?GXHC_GX_jst=8258c07850ea6165

Want to know anything about the 1972 Watergate scandal but don't know where to look? Then this is the site for you at http://www.watergate.info/

Another great site for research is the Wikipedia site; written by, staffed by and managed by volunteers. Good informational précis on a huge range of topics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Want to get the low-down on science and technology from a reputable source? Then you probably can't go past New Scientist at http://www.newscientist.com/?GXHC_GX_jst=8258c07950ea6164


                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here
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Friday, 2 April 2004

Newsletter Issue 77, April 2004


Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 77, April 2004
Hi guys,
The English language is constantly changing. Each year we add more words to our dictionaries and a few grammatical rules are amended slightly. But there is one that I have been puzzling about in the The Round Bracket Debate below.
If you are having trouble with spam, then check out the article on Spam Filters below. 
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

The Round Bracket Debate

I had always assumed - great thing, makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me" - that if you were going to put use round brackets (parentheses) in a sentence, that it was an "aside" sub-clause within that sentence. Which I would punctuate as follows;
Bob had decided, despite the rain, that he was going to the fair (it was too good to miss).
However, recently I have read a number of books and found that publishers no longer seem to treat round brackets in a universal way. I have seen the sentence above often treated thusly;
 Bob had decided, despite the rain, that he was going to the fair. (It was too good to miss).
So how are we supposed to use round brackets in prose? Just because it appears to have been normal practice to have brackets within the sentence (ie, before the full stop) doesn't mean that this is correct usage; or that it is current usage. After all, modern usage of full stops has changed - we no longer use them after initials, "Mrs", "Mr" and "Dr", nor do we use them in anagrams (FoRST not F.o.R.S.T.). We are also asked by publishers to not use two spaces after a full stop at the end of a sentence.
I had a bit of a trawl on the internet in order to try to determine correct UK English usage. The UK's University of Southampton says "don't put marks of punctuation before brackets used within a sentence or a bibliographical reference; they should always come after the brackets". Oxford University's online site's examples concur with Southampton, as does Massey here in NZ. A classics professor at Victoria also told me that completing punctuation AFTER the brackets was what he would consider correct usage.
For curiosity's sake I had a look at some US sites, and found that using a full stop before a bracket appears to be acceptable in US English. See EnglishPlus.com for examples. The Americans also (horrors) capitalise the start of the brackets (sub-clause) within the sentence.
So on the surface, English usage appears to be "aside sub-clause within the sentence", while US usage is "aside sub-clause within or without the sentence and you can use capitals at the start if you like" (the latter being a bit of an oxymoron!). However, if any of you have any references and rationale to support either way, I would really appreciate you passing them on to me.
Nothing like being pedantic, is there?!

Spam Filters

Are you, like me, getting stacks of junk emails and emails with virus attachments? I get an average of 60 each morning on start-up and probably receive another 30 during the day. My top scoring day was 450 junk messages.
While MS tries hard with their Outlook 2003 Junk Senders list, what I think the software effectively sends EVERYTHING to the Junk Mail bin. Nearly all my messages went there.
To correct this I created rules that check my inwards emails at the inbox and then route them to the appropriate folder (eg "Private", "Clients" "Deleted Items" from known spammers etc). Unfortunately I then ended up with my email in the appropriate folder, but ALSO a duplicate message in the Junk Mail folder as Outlook has decided that this person is a Junk sender and I don't seem to be able to change that <sigh>. Then I got sick of deleting the junk mail, so I routed all Junk Mail to Delete so at least I only have to check one place.
So not very effective, really. Made more work (which was not the idea).
However, there are a load of software programmes that can fix these headaches. A selection of these, that you too can try, follow;
Good luck!
 
Default Email Error

Recently I had a very weird error whenever I clicked an email hyperlink in any Office 2003 application.
Internet Explorer would bring up a message "Could not perform this operation because the default mail client is not properly installed" and then trot off and spawn 63 Internet Explorer windows. This happened regardless of whether Outlook was open or not.
One major issue was that I couldn't work out if this was an Outlook 2003 problem; a Windows XP problem; an Internet Explorer v6.0.2800 problem; or a combination of all three... making it very hard to find a solution. Anyway, I had a good trawl on on the Microsoft site and - of course - couldn't find anything. It was very frustrating.
In despair I went at last to Woody's Lounge. This was really where I should have gone initially. Woody's Lounge has upwards of 11500 registered members with some serious computer nous, pretty much all using MS Office, all volunteers, who bend their considerable brain-power to solve our most weird & wonderful PC problems.
So I posted my problem at http://www.wopr.com/lounge. I got a reply from a Woody's MVP (Most Valuable Person) with the moniker "jsher2000" who suggested that I try toggling the default email settings in Internet Explorer, which I did; and this solved my problem.
So, just in case any of you are having the same issue, or run across it, I did the following to correct it;
  1. Closed Outlook
  2. Opened Internet Explorer
  3. Went to Tools | Internet Options | Programs | E:mail list and changed to my other listed email in the drop down list (in my case "Netscape")
  4. Closed Internet Explorer
  5. Restarted my PC
  6. Started Outlook, which popped up the message box that Outlook was not currently my default email application & did I want to make it so. Clicked "yes"
I then tested a couple of hyperlinks & it was all good.
If any of you are having PC problems, it is definitely worth going along to Woody's Lounge. You are likely to find that you get things solved tout de suite.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;
  • IMHO, In My Humble Opinion. Internet shortspeak - and usually not a humble opinion, either!
  • BTW, By The Way. More internet shortspeak

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Short+Hot Keys... and now tips
All those hotkeys for you again, but this time we are "plusing" as well;
  • Access "Choose the selected data column for output (The check box next to the name of the column) 1If multiple items are selected, pressing this key affects all selected items. Select multiple items by holding down the SHIFT key while clicking them. Toggle the selected state of a single item by holding down CTRL while clicking it." + (Plus)
  • Access "Add a new record" Ctrl & + (Plus)
  • Excel 97, 2000 "Insert blank cells into a row or column" Ctrl & Shift & + (Plus)
  • Frontpage "Apply superscript formatting " Ctrl & + (Plus)
  • IE "Zoom in" Alt& + (Plus)
  • PowerPoint "Stop or restart an automatic slide show" + (Plus)
  • Word, PowerPoint "Apply superscript formatting (automatic spacing)" Ctrl & Shift & + (Plus)
  • Word, PowerPoint "Expand text below a heading" Alt & Shift & + (Plus) or Alt & Shift & + (Plus) NUM
  • Word "Open the Address Book in the To field; works with keys for sending E-Mail" Alt & + (Plus)
  • Word "Customize Keyboard Shortcut" Alt & Ctrl & + (Plus) or Alt & Ctrl & + (Plus) NUM
  • Windows Explorer, Outlook "Expand selected group" NUM & + (Plus)
Hot Linx
Revamped your website & can't remember what it looked like before you updated? Then this could be the site for you to enter your website into the "Wayback Machine" at http://www.archive.org/ and click "Take me back"
If you want to check your writing for common errors in verb or noun usage, you can't really go past this list from the Economist. Frightening (for me, anyway!) at http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=673903
Want to know one person's take on different terms and usage between the US and UK? Then check out this site at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~chquay/text/dic.htm
This site is dedicated to the world of printmaking. Check out a variety of global artists working in lithographic, mono-print, digital, lino, screen or mixed media at http://www.worldprintmakers.com/?GXHC_GX_jst=8258c07850ea6165. New Zealander Ted Dutch is featured at http://www.worldprintmakers.com/english/dutch/dutcetch.htm
                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here
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