Learning: Find and Subscribe to a Reddit Discussion Group

This guide will help any English-speaking user locate a Reddit discussion group on a particular topic and subscribe to it.

Step 1. Accessing Reddit
If you already have a Reddit account, skip this step and proceed directly to Step 2. Searching for a Discussion Group

If you don’t already have a Reddit account, you will need to create one. Begin by typing www.reddit.com in your browser’s address bar and clicking enter.

Once you are on the Reddit website, look at the top, right-hand corner where there is a search bar (Search Reddit) and the option to log in or register (Want to join? Login or register in seconds). Select register and proceed through the registration process. (See Figure 1a and 1b. The Reddit Login or Register Options)

Figure 1a and 1b. The Reddit Login or Register Options


 









Step 2. Searching for a Discussion Group 

Make sure you’re logged into your Reddit account. Your name/nickname will appear in the top, right-hand corner. If you’re not already logged in, then enter your nickname and password at the top, right-hand corner using the fields provided, then click the Login button. (See Figure 2. Logging into Reddit)

Figure 2. Logging into Reddit 

Once you have logged in, use the Search Reddit field on the top, right-hand corner (see Figure 2) to enter the type of discussion group you’re lookinog for and click enter.

For this example, we are looking for Minecraft game discussion groups using the advanced search option to narrow down by author, using GenerikB. We type in the search field: minecraft author:GenerikB. (See Figure 4a and 4b. Reddit Search Example—Minecraft Discussion Groups, by a Particular Author)

Figure 4a and 4b. Reddit Search Example—Minecraft Discussion Groups, by a Particular Author  

 

Notice the section that says “too many results? Narrow it down to a subreddit!” This is another option to allow you to narrow down even further by popular category (a.k.a, subreddit) under the topic you’ve just searched for.

Try clicking on one of the options there to see if the results are a good match for what you’re looking for.

Step 3. Subscribe to a Reddit Subreddit/Discussion 
Once you have identified a discussion group, or subreddit, to subscribe to, click on the green Subscribe button on the far right hand-side.

Figure 5. Subscribing to a Reddit Subreddit/Dicussion

Any questions or concerns, please leave a comment! Thank you for reading!

Learn: Making an Animated Gif

There's a work project that I would like to develop where a banner featuring company logos transitions in order to show a number of company logos for a few seconds.

It's basically an animated gif banner using company logos for finalist companies in an award competition. The banner will feature all the participating company logos, and since there's a few of them, they can rotate through so all of them appear in a few seconds.

The bad news is, I haven't made an animated gif since approximately 1999-2000.
So I have completely forgotten how I used to make them.

To remedy this issue, I went and looked up animated gif tutorials on trusty YouTube and Google search. There's a lot of programs that can make these nowadays!

Here's some of the highlights from the tutorials that I found. Hopefully they can help out someone who is also wondering...

Wired: How-To Make an Animated GIF


To make an animated gif using Adobe ImageReady:



To make an animated gif using Microsoft Paint and UnFreeze:

Managing PDFs in Preview

If you're a mac user, you'll invariable end up at some point needing to modify your PDFs. Did you know that your mac's (OS X+) nifty Preview application can do it all for you?

Deleting a page in your PDF using Preview
1. Open the PDF file
2. Make sure you have selected View/Show Sidebar
3. Highlight the page you want to delete in your Sidebar
4. Click Command + Shift + Delete
5. Save your revised PDF

Merging PDF files using Preview
1. Open the first PDF file
2. Open Finder and the folder where all your PDF files are located and arrange your open PDF and Finder so you can see everything
3. Make sure your first PDF file is open and the Sidebar is showing
4. Drag the first of the PDF files from your Finder window to your Sidebar, hovering over the last page of your open PDF until a box surrounds the icon. A blue bar will show up under the page to show the new PDF you're dragging will be saved there.
4. Continue until all the files have been added in the correct order, you can drag and place.
5. Save your revised PDF file

Thoughts on Project Management and Scrum

Heads up. This is not exactly Internet or Computer related, but it has to do with it in a relevant way. Or...at least, I seem to think so.

Back in 2005 I became interested in project management. I must have discovered it was an actual science or career by reading something online, somewhere.

The fact is, after purchasing a membership in the Project Management Institute, and a copy of the Body of Knowledge to begin studying it, I found it intensely terse and process focused.

When you overemphasize tools and processes, you focus 90% of your time and attention to the tools and processes and only 10% on deliverables and end goals/objectives. That's a no-win in my view.

Half-hartedly I stepped up to take the CAPM exam, and failed with flying colors. It was a big setback, both economically and emotionally, because I had seen a glimmer of hope in my skill-set and career prospects. Yet, obviously, hoping against hope that a new, trendy career path would work out for me was the wrong mindset to have, to begin with.

When you're looking at expanding your skillset, the financial aspect is usually what makes or breaks the decision. It's also important to path out the decision and the work required after the decision takes place to make it where you're heading.

When I went to take the CAPM exam in a specially-designated testing center, I realized immediately upon the third or fourth question that the test was rigged to fail people rather than to test knowledge from the study materials.

Many associations with certification programs make it seem like their certification is the only thing between you and your next paycheck/promotion/crown of laurels. They throw your way a membership requirement ($), then the prep material ($$), then the user study group ($$$), then the prep test ($$$$), and finally, the actual test ($$$$). Don't forget the annual coursework to keep up the certifiacation ($ⁿ).

They urge a candidate to participate in online communities and in-person networking events. I can't imagine having that much time in my life, to be honest, to be spending supporting an organization with my time, money, and presence--just to sort of validate their sales objectives.

The PMI certification is pretty much irrelevant and unknown EVEN in IT circles. It's a "heard of it before" "nice to have" kind of thing, but no one really has it as a job requirement. To be honest, I've yet to see a job description where that's even mentioned anywhere.

It's so document focused, you basically have a total encyclopedic bible by the time you're halfway through your project, imagine what it looks like when the project's completed! People on these sorts of teams will actually spend valuable meeting time arguing about which tool, software package, or document template is better. Instead of focusing on the deliverable, which is probably two years down the line.

So now, seven years after, we have agile workplaces and workspaces--a.k.a. insane project timelines, team members thrown together at the whim of superiors, and no concrete project plans because everything is done on the fly.

Agile working environments go along with Scrum: what have you done since yesterday, what are you doing today, what are your challenges in getting it accomplished? Scrum is the latest flavor in collaboration and efficiency for the management of products and projects. It's almost the exact opposite counterpart of Project Management.

Scrum is all about daily face-to-face meetings (the bane of most office workers existence), ownership and hard work, and story-boarding things to death--then jumping right in to the project work to provide periodic deliverables which are as complete as they can be--until they come up with new cool features you should have added and that they forgot they wanted. Changes are welcome in a continuous stream and must be available in the very next reiteration.

The Scrum philosophy, to work in a practical application, relies on on capable product owners and independent, stimulated, enthusiastic workers. I know I'm being sarcastic (no! you? really?), but very few team members have all three qualifications (independent, stimulated, enthusiastic).

Self-centered moochers company jumpers abound. Most teams I have had the pleasure of being a member of, seem to just want to do the bare minimum to get by, prefer to dump work on whomever in the team they respect the least (for whatever reason), and make a big deal out of team bar hopping building at the beginning of each project and at the end of each project--and at birthdays, anniversaries, departures, new staff member welcomes, and any other similar money-out-the-window-let's-get-drunk celebration. Apparently, there are some drawbacks to working in an office full of 20-something-year-olds. Go figure.

This is when motivation theory may kick in and discuss the financial rewards of a job versus the intellectual rewards of a job, especially in IT, where you're likely to have both and no spare time to sleep and brush your teeth. Family? What's a family? Vacation time? Mwahahahaha!

I think I like the working environment of Scrum and agile better. People are actively involved in verbal communication and have a sense of community and team-manship (yes I just made up a word). People are stimulated intellectually and have a healthy list of assignments aligned with their skill sets--unless they lied on their resume and now the project and the team are screwed.

Ideally, people may be in "the zone" most days, working away and building usable iterations for their customer or product owner. Never mind the drumbeat and whip background noises...keep rowing kids!

There's also very little hierarchy, and more focus on staff with the skill-sets to get results in products as fast as possible. Even the lead and product owner are in the same cubicle layout as the team members. These elements seem to set up a fair and equitable foundation for lots of work that creates efficiency and gives employees a sense of belonging and of achievement. Then again, middle and upper management may get bitter that they have to share their working space with common serfs on a daily basis.

I want to learn more about Scrum. I think it suits the Millennial attitude a lot better than the stodgy Project Management philosophy. There's more face-to-face time, there's more communication all around, and there's a sense of achievement and progress with each iteration.

Having said all this, I can't shake the feeling that this is just another "latest flavor" of the same old thing: the industrial cubicle farm. Just rosier for now. What will tomorrow bring? Well...besides the 10 am Scrum meeting.

You can learn more about project management from the Project Management Institute, and you can learn more about Scrum from the Scrum Alliance.

Facebook Friends Likes and Comments

With Facebook's latest revamp, one can easily become overwhelmed by seeing friends' likes and comments on other friends' walls.

I personally would rather not see people's photos and posts if they're not on my own friends list. So what to do?

The reason I am interested in this feature is that I accidentally commented twice on other people's walls or photos because I thought they belonged to my friends when they appeared on my feed.

Unsubscribing from a Facebook Friend's Comments and Likes

There's a reason I don't have some people on my friends list, and there's no reason why other people's friends need to have me posting on their pictures and uploads! Otherwise we'd all have all our posts set to public. Right?

Apparently there isn't a mass-unsubscribe option, which of course would be a fantastic and easy service to users.

Instead, you can target each instance of TMI sharing as it happens on your feed. Just click on the upper right hand corner of a particular "offending" post--you'll see a little white down-arrow where you need to click. A pop-up menu will appear. Look for the very last option on the bottom, that says "Unsubscribe from the comments and likes by XXX" and you're done.

Cheers!

PS - doesn't that baby jaguar in the photo look like it's ready to hurt someone? ^^;

Formatting Leading Zero Numbers in MS Excel

When you're trying to input into an Excel cell a number which includes various zeros (leading zeros) at the very beginning, you'll find that Excel deletes the multiple zeros out.

My example is the number: 000014. Excel was showing it as 14, so I right clicked on the cell formatted it the way I describe below, and the result was a 000014.

In this particular case, I was not able to use the apostrophe shortcut to override the cell's number format, because we needed to use the document as a merge source for a database project. The apostrophe would have affected the export.

In order to keep the zeros you will have to modify the custom format option. This is amazingly easy to do. Here's a run through:


1. Select the cell or column you need to format to allow leading zeros in a number
2. Right click and select Format Cells
3. Under the Number tab, select Custom at the bottom of the menu
4. Look for the section "Type:" and input the format you need the number to appear in. In my case it was 000000.
5. Click OK and you should be set.


I hope this helps anyone out there who also had this same issue come up. Cheers!

Troubleshooting: Pandora on Droid Charge

I wanted to use Pandora today, since it's TGIF and I need some uplifting of spirits after a hard week.

Well, there was just no getting my Pandora to work. As I clicked on of my radio stations from the home page list, I would get 1) a black screen with the navigational buttons on the button and no sound, then upon clicking different radio stations 2) the screen would go black for a split second and then switch back to the main page listing all the stations.

I looked online and found an Android App FAQ page on Pandora.com where they suggest you uninstall Pandora, turn off your phone, remove and reinstall the battery, reboot, then reinstall Pandora.

It worked.

Blogger Themes vs. Google Analytics

Silly me. I thought that because Blogger now includes some really poor limited Google Analytics statistics from within the Blogger dashboard, that it was therefore easier to integrate Blogger and Analytics. Tisk. Tisk.

I recently updated my blog template and a couple of days later (no surprise there!) find that my hits as recorded on Google Analytics (not the analytics within Blogger) have gone down to zero.

Checking the status for the blog(s) on Google Analytics was pointless, because GA was saying it was receiving data. Which it wasn't.

This is a typical occurrence whenever you modify the blogger HTML via the design and layout options: the Google Analytics code needs to be re-inserted into the <head> </head> tags to keep working.

Because Blogger in Draft now has an updated interface, things have moved around. More fun. In order to access the HTML edit mode in the new navigation in Blogger in Draft, do the following:


1. Log into Blogger, and navigate to your dashboard.
2. Select "Template" on the left-hand side menu.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the template page, and select: "Edit Template HTML."
4. find the </head> tag, and just above it paste your Google Analytics tracking code.

Voilá.

Specifying the Downloads Folder in IE 9

I recently downloaded IE 9 at work because my IE 8 version kept conflicting when accessing my work Facebook account.

However, I really became annoyed when my downloads began to dissappear. I realized I hadn't specified where downloads should be saved. The process to change which folder your downloads save to, is quite easy.

There is an instruction walk-through on this page, but their screen print doesn't match where the "options" button appears--in my version of IE, the options button appeared on the bottom left corner of the pop up window.

Now it's much easier for me to access my downloads, without wasting precious time. Easy peasy! That's how we like it.

Learn: Secure Delete Trash in OS X

I had this weird thing happen to my MacBook Pro OSX+ over the last month: everything I put in the trash bin would refuse to budge when I was trying to clear it out.

I finally decided yesterday to visit an Apple store Genius and finally we figured out what it was. I had selected secure delete from the Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Empty Trash Securely

Apparently, when you're deleting securely it takes way longer to delete as it's really scrubbing stuff out. If you delete say five things at a time, it's all groovy. If you have, say 2,000 items *ahem* it just doesn't budge.

Better delete securely a little at a time or just take the secure checkmark off and just do a regular delete.

This was so simple I almost smacked my forehead. Thank Mr. Genius guy!

Blogger Template Designer

I've been playing around with Blogger's Template Designer, in particular to find good fonts for the Blog Title under the Advanced tab.

I've set some interesting fonts for all my blogs over the past few weeks. I think I got inspired to play around after I started my Foodie Blog, which is a little more creative than the other ones.

It pays to check out some of the latest additions to Blogger, via their Blogger Buzz blog, in order to learn a little more about what's possible with CSS and other features. You never know what you might be able to pull off, with a little help from Blogger ;o)

MS Word Character Count

We just had to figure this out in the office and I found the instructions somewhere online.

If you ever need to get a character count, not just a word count, in MS Word, this is what you need to do:

1. open the Word document
2. click on the Office button
3. Select Prepare
4. Select Properties
5. There's a drop down at the top, left-hand corner of the new bar that just opened. Select it and click on Advanced Properties.
6. The window that just opened up has a Statistics tab, click on it.
7. Voilá

Resetting MS Word's Language Settings

Excellent post today by GoLanguages.com about the steps required when resetting the language settings in MS Word for a particular document you are working on.

To iPad or Not to iPad? A Decision By the Numbers

Many business people are dragging around their little iPads lately. Showoffs they are.

I see them at meetings, on the plane. The little case or portfolio that they use allows them to have them at an incline on a table to easily view and type on the cornea display.

Some say that an iPad's more convenient than a laptop...it's lighter, you can access almost any document pending you have the right app, and they're very portable. Alternatively, of course, there is the Mac AirBook...

Options, Options
So what are the options if you're also considering an iPad as part of your mobile toolset?

First of all, you need to decide whether you want the Wi-Fi model, or you want to spring for the more expensive 3G and the required data plan.

According to the Apple iPad page, the Wi-Fi model come in these flavors:

• 16G for $499
• 32G for $599
• 64G for $699

The 3G models come in these flavors:

• 16G for $629
• 32G for $729
• 64G for $829

That's an increase of $130 just so they can insert a 3G chip!

Wi-Fi vs. Data Plan
Wi-Fi models can survive munching off free Wi-Fi from Starbucks, some hotels, and other generous locales. Meanwhile, the 3G will only work wherever the 3G network extends to. But there's also a third option: using the Wi-Fi model with a Mi-Fi card. A Mi-Fi is an intelligent mobile hot spot you can use for a laptop, a tablet, your Wi-Fi enabled smart phone, and more.

When it comes to iPad service providers, you have AT&T and Verizon. I looked at Verizon's iPad page first because they're the recent partners and may have some exciting propositions to compete against old hat AT&T.

The Verizon Proposition
I was surprised to learn that the Verizon iPad page offers only a Wi-Fi version of the iPad (all three memory size offerings) bundled with a Mi-Fi 2200 mobile hotspot.

The plus here, is that their Mi-Fi comes free in this bundle for the price of the iPad at whatever memory tier you're picking, and with a one-year ($70) or two-year (free) contract for the data plan. Typically, the Mi-Fi only goes for $269.99.

So if you go for Verizon's iPad, you get the three memory option iPads at face value, the Mi-Fi hotspot for free, and service at these levels:

• 1G data for $20 monthly, $20 per GB rate after allowance
• 3G data for $35 monthly, $20 per GB rate after allowance
• 5G data for $50 monthly, $20 per GB rate after allowance
• 10G data for $80 monthly, $20 per GB rate after allowance

Verizon calculates a Gigabyte at 1024 Megabytes. They also estimate that a low-res digital photo ranks at around 500KB.

Is it me or are they making most of their money off of people who don't know how many G they need and end up paying over after the allowance? Hm.

Plus:

• mobile insurance for $4
• line activation $35
• you should add I-Dial if you like roaming
• tolls, taxes, and surcharges @ anywhere from 5-39% of your monthly bill
• monthly Federal Universal Service Charge on interstate and international telecom charges @ 15.5% per line
• monthly regulatory charge up to .02 per line
• monthly administrative charge up to .06 per line

This information was last updated on the Verizon site on January 1, 2011.

The AT&T Proposition
On the other hand, AT&T seems to be offering the Wi-Fi+3G option in the three memory levels. They seem to assume that if you want the non-3G you'll just step into your nearest Apple store to get the device on your own.

The AT&T Wi-Fi system includes over 200,000 Wi-Fi spot locations. You can find one of their hot spots using their Find an AT&T Hot Spot site.

The AT&T 3G plans come in domestic or international flavors:
Domestic

• 250MB at $14.99 a month 
• 2GB at $25 a month

With these two options, you will get an on-screen reminder of when your data is low.

International with usage limit and 30-day expiration

• 20MB at $24.99
• 50MB at $59.99
• 100MB at $119.99
• 200MB at $199.99

Plans automatically expire when you run out of data or when the 30-day cycle comes to an end. Plans automatically renew every 30-day cycle.

My personal experience with the 3G network under AT&T is that it doesn't typically provide healthy coverage during our vacations. If you're hoping to use the GPS feature to help guide you to and fro your travel itinerary destinations, it can get scary. Have paper maps or a real GPS unit. Let me tell you, it's not a fun surprise to find out your iPhone signal isn't available when you're in the middle of the road between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, or out in swampland highways in the middle of Louisiana.

AT&T has a Coverage Viewer page where you can look up the data coverage provided by their network in the US.

I was unable to locate small print fee information for the AT&T data package.

Before finalizing your decision, it's best you go somewhere in person and 1) play around with the device yourself, and 2) talk numbers and specs with the attendant there.

I hope this helps someone out there trying to make heads or tails out of the service plans, and hoping to make their iPad buying decision soon. Good luck!

Hide Your Facebook Photos

My niece asked a very good question: can you hide your profile photo from all others who aren't your friends?

Because Facebook changes its settings and layout so often, it was some time before I found a possible solution. However, people will still be able to see your profile pic. They won't be able to click on it and make it larger though. I think...

This page on FreeMailTutorials.com, "Hide, remove or delete your Facebook profile picture" the section titled "Hide Your Facebook Profile Picture" helped me shed light on a difficult-to-find option to change the photo albums settings.

For some reason, Facebook has different ways to access photo settings instead of just accessing the settings directly from the photos section of your profile.

Under Account / Privacy Settings select Customize Settings, and at the bottom of the first section, Things I Share, you'll see a link to Edit Album Privacy For Existing Photos. That's where you can set who sees what for your photos.

I hope this helps someone out there, because I know it's something useful that's not exactly intuitive to find on the privacy settings.

Playing Around in iTunes

I just bought a CD on iTunes (Goose's Bring It On) and I wanted to convert the songs to mp3, but I forgot how to specify the quality (I like it as high as possible).

It's very easy. Here's the site I used to re-learn how to do it. Go to iTunes/Preferences/General and in the Import section select Custom and pick the


Next, I wanted to find out how the heck one selects multiple songs that are not adjacent one to the other cause I haven't been able to figure that out yet in my Mac. I'm slow sometimes.

It's also very easy, you just click Command and the songs. Duh!

Facebook's New Instant Personalization

FB Personalization

Facebook recently implemented a new connectivity option with partner sites for users.

The aim is to provide users "social and personalized experience with every app and website you use." Your activities outside FB can now be tweaked when you opt to, to obtain a sense of familiarity and connectedness.

Participating partners include: Bing, TripAdvisor, Clicker, Rotten Tomatoes, Docs, Pandora, Yelp, and Scribd.

To turn this off, if you're concerned about privacy, go to Account / Privacy Settings / Apps and Websites: Edit Your Settings / Instant Personalization.

Rotten Tomatoes FB Login

To test this out I went on Rotten Tomatoes. I don't usually use the other websites, and since I was listening to a CD I didn't feel like logging onto Pandora.

I went to Rotten Tomatoes. The page looked unusually busy. On the upper, right-hand corner there is a FB Login button, which I clicked on.

FB permission window

Upon clicking on the button a typical access approval window popped up. Once I allowed the access and then the Rotten Tomatoes website updated to reflect this login.

Once the page has been "personalized" by your FB login, you'll see a little icon up where the FB login button was, saying your name and with a little hyperlink saying "what's this?" that if you click on tells you how the site can or has been personalized to your FB information that's been accessed.

At first glance, the personalization bullet points aren't all that enlightening. It isn't that different from a typical login at Rotten Tomatoes though...unless I'm missing something.

Personalized Rotten Tomatoes

Of course you do have the added social element that you're aware now what your friends' activity is on the left pane...you find out on their FB walls as well if they selected that option on Rotten Tomatoes.

I'll need to play around with this some more to see what the dealio is. Looks promising tho! Easier to get pals to go out to the movies when you find out you're all wanting to go see the same one this weekend :o)

How to Pick the Right Font for the Job

A great article on Smashing Magazine, “What Font Should I Use?: Five Principles for Choosing and Using Typefaces" helps us understand the kinds of fonts out there and gives us some guidelines for making the right decision, every time.

Even in MS Word projects like reports, the font choice can make the difference between an impactful, professional looking document to an amateurish and distracting piece. Which one would you like your boss to have in his hands?

Graphic and web designers have a knack for picking font types, because of the quantity of work they go through and the hard-learned lessons they've accumulated through their years of experience.

Social Media Buttons

Great article today from Practical Ecommerce about installing social media buttons on your sites, blogs, etc.

Find My iPhone, Now!

With last week's iOS update, a nifty little thing came along called iPhone finder.

I completely forgot about this feature until I read this article today by Wired, titled How to Activate Find My iPhone for iOS 4.

Check it out and see if it's worth your while to learn how to access this feature. Mind you, it's only for iPhone 4, iPad or fourth-generation iPod Touch.