24/05/2010 by Bertha.

What a weekend. Temperatures up in the mid 20’s, wall to wall sunshine and not a drop of rain. If like me you were ablt to get out to the countryside (or seaside) then hopefully you took plenty of photos.

Now what though? Don’t you find all those digital photos tend to just sit on your computer doing nothing?

Make today the time to do something with them. Picasa is the free management, editing and production program from Google and is a good starting point. You can download, manage (that’s find again) all your photos and edit them.

This last one is very important. Earlier this year the Imperial War Museum held an exhibition of Don McCullin’s work at Manchester. One of his most famous photos was on show Shell Shocked Soldier, Hue) along with a print without any editing. The two were unrecognizable as being from the same negative. If a professional of McCullin’s standard needs to edit his photos then you certainly do!

As an indication of what can be achieved with Picasa look at the two photos below which were taken on Christmas Eve 2009 about 30 minutes before the sunset and in low cloud.

The original unedited photo	The edited photo

So what to do then? Why not use Picasa to make a video of your pictures? Have a look what can be done by clicking HERE.

There’s plenty of other things to do with your photos. Have then printed (obviously) which can be done stright from Picasa, make a montage of them (Picasa again) or even upload them for the world to see.

Paul’s Flickr collection can be found HERE.

Happy clicking!

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25/04/2009 by Bertha.

As promised here are a few more keyboard shortcuts to make life a bit easier.

We all know the feeling, you’ve been surfing the net, answering E-mails and listening to music so there’s more than a few Windows open and now you need to find a shortcut on the desktop. Either you minimise each window in turn or use Win key+D. What’s the “Win” key when it’s home you ask? Its that one between the Ctrl and the Alt key down at the bottom left of the keyboard.

 While on about the Win key press Win key+Tab when you have a number of windows open and you can scroll through all the windows to see what each one is. Very useful if, like me, you often have a lot of windows on the go at any one time!

Fancy another Win key? Try the Win key all on its own. Yes, you guessed, it does the same as clicking on Start on the screen! Press it again and the window will go away.

The next one isn’t exactly a shortcut but it does save time. You know how it is when you pop a CD or DVD into the drive on your computer and Windows starts doing whatever with it straight away whether you want to or not? Fine most of the time, but what if you want to control what’s happening? Easy, hold the Shift(upper case or capitals) key down as you closed the draw of the drive and wait until the light has finished flashing.

Ever wanted to send more than one photo of little Johnny to Grandma? Ever wanted to do it without selecting each photo one at a time? Select the first photo (or any file be it music, pictures or whatever) then hold down the Ctrlkey and select all the other files you need to. Hey presto, all the files are selected at once and you just have to carry on as usual.

This one is something that has saved me plenty of time. There you are busily writing away and suddenly you look up and eVERYTHING is the wrong way round - yes you’ve pressed the Caps Lock key by mistake!!! No problem. Highlight the offending text (hold Shift while using the arrows) and then hold Shift while pressing F3. The text will scroll through a combination of all lowercase, all uppercase and first letter uppercase - problem solved!

Now, all these might not work as described, some might not even work at all. XP and Vista do work differently from one another at times. It even makes a difference which program is open when you try the shortcuts! Sometimes it’s just trial and error. However, for those of you who are interested, a full list of XP shortcuts can be found HERE with a list for Vista HERE.

Happy shortcutting.

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18/04/2009 by Bertha.

or the Alt or the ones called F1 etc for that matter?

Have a look at your keyboard and you’ll see, up at the top, a row of keys numbered F1 to F12. Now have a look at the bottom, either side of the space bar (the big one at the bottom) and you’ll find some called “Ctrl” and “Alt”.

Ever wondered why they’re there or what they do? Believe it or not they are actually very useful - if you know the secret combinations!

Let’s start with an easy one first. Press the F1 key and Windows Help will open just like magic. 

Now, unless you actually want some help, let’s get rind of it.

Make sure the Help window is selected (make sure it’s the top Window) and press, and hold down, the Alt key and then press the F4 key (so that both keys are pressed at the same time). Wow, Windows Help has now disappeared!

OK so now we know that F1 opens Windows Help and Alt+F4 closes the top Window (or program). (Don’t forget, the + sign means use two keys together as above.) What next?

Ever had a number of Windows (programs) open at the same time and wanted to move between them? Then use Alt+Tab. Hold Alt down and press the Tab key to move through the list of open Windows. Let go of all the keys when you reach the Window you want.

Ever wanted to copy and paste something from one place to another? Highlight whatever you’re copying by clicking the mouse at one end of the thing to be copied, holding the mouse button down and “dragging” to the other end. Now copy it by pressing Ctrl+C. Don’t worry, there’s nothing to see but it is now copied.

To paste the copied thing go to where you want to put it and press the Ctrl+V keys and, hey presto, it appears like magic!

Want to select everything on the screen all at once? Easy! Press Ctrl+A together. This can now be copied and pasted using the above instructions.

Alternatively it can be Cut (deleted-ish) just as easy. Select what you want to Cut and then press Ctrl+X and it’s gone (ish). Why only “ish”? If you then Paste (Ctrl+V) then it re-appears again! Yes, Cut actually means copy it then delete, not a straight, gone forever, delete.

What if you Cut or Paste something you didn’t really mean to, or you’ve just done something else that you didn’t really want to? No bother, press Ctrl+Z to undo the last action.

Oh no! You’ve now just undone something you actually needed. So what, press Ctrl+Y and it’s back again!

And here’s one last on for this week. Press Ctrl+P and the printer window opens!

OK, so these mystery keys aren’t quite so useless then and next week there’s more.

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13/04/2009 by Bertha.

Here at Bertha Central we are all off for the Bank Holiday eating chocolate eggs so not much time this week for anything else (apart from decorating).

So this post is a just long enough to offer a link for you entertainment. Hours of endless fun (OK so minutes then) can be had helping Easter Bunny catch the eggs raining down when playing the Easter Egg Catch courtesy of the BBC.

Happy Easter.

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04/04/2009 by Bertha.

and Internet Explorer is playing up!!

OK so it’s not Internet Explorer as in world wide, just as in on my computer (Big Bertha). You might recognize the problem though, click on a link and, just like magic,  Internet Explorer goes to sleep and makes you wait. Finally after what seems like hours (but really is just a few seconds) it decides to do you a favour and open the link.

Well after much rootling around (computer term?), Googling (slowly - see above) and “poking and hoping” (another computer term honest!) I’ve chased it down to one or more of the ”add-ons” which run with Big Bertha’s Internet Explorer. Guess what, I didn’t even realise most of them were running much less installed!

Want to know how many “add-ons” you have installed? Open Internet Explorer and click on “Tools” (towards the top right of the window and/or in with File Edit etc to the top left). Now look for the choice “Manage Add-ons” and move your mouse over this choice. A new window will open to one side and you need to click on “Enable or Disable Add-ons”.

By default you will now see a list of the add-ons which are currently being used by Internet Explorer. There are other options but they relate to ones which have been used in the past so can be ignored, especially if you have current problems. By clicking on each of the add-ons in the list in turn you can disable or enable them in turn. Getting the right one is a matter of trial and error, isn’t it always?

Which trail and error is best? Largely it’s up to you, either disable the lot and then enable one at a time until the problem reappears and that’s the one causing the problems, or disable one at a time until the problem stops and that’s the one. For a problem like Big Bertha’s, where it freezes all the time, disable the lot - things happen much quicker!

Like everything computer wise, problems with one program are often caused by something else, other programs and faulty hardware being up there among the prime suspects. I even had a problem with a printer this week where Hewlett Packard advise a problem is caused by plugging the printer into a surge protector and not directly into a wall socket of it’s own!

Sherlock Holmes has nothing on a Computer “Expert”!

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