Inserting Landscape and Portrait pages into the same Document

Maybe I'm alone here, and if that is the case then I am highly humbled, but I've been using MS Word and other word processing software since the late 80's or early 90's and I've never known how to insert a portrait-oriented page into a landscape-oriented document, or vice versa.

Finally plucking up the courage to find out how to do this, I found one page (no doubt of many) that tells you how to achieve this -

http://www.castlejb.com/webdesign/landscape/landscape.html

It's actually pretty easy - just define new section breaks and format those sections the way you want them! In MS Word 2010 it's a bit different to the instructions listed here;

• Select the beginning of the section to format
• Page Layout
• Breaks => Next Page
• Go to the end of the section to format
• Page Layout
• Breaks => Next Page
• Then select the section and go to Orientation => Landscape / Portrait

Voila!

Happy 35th birthday, Star Wars!

Friday, 25 May, marks the 35th birthday for Star Wars!

How will you be celebrating this auspicious occasion that marks the birth of the greatest sci-fi saga a long time ago?

Disciples II: Gold Edition FREE for a limited time

If you want a free game, or love RTS, or enjoy Disciples, then grab it now by visiting this URL!

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/za/en/pc/games/strategy/disciples-ii-gold-edition/

Free SMS in Gmail comes to South Africa

Finally, it's here! Free SMS in Gmail to South African mobile networks.

If you are a Gmail user (if not, WHY not?) you can now send SMS'es free from your web-based Gmail client to (currently, as of 2012/03/16) MTN and 8ta networks.

I am hopeful that the networks supported will grow over time, so keep an eye on this link and scroll down to South Africa to know when you can hit Cell C, Virgin and Vodacom. A useful guide is located here which has prominent logo's displayed of the currently supported South African cellular networks and also explains how to use the facility.

I already had the SMS lab application running on my Gmail client (for US and Canada numbers) so one day I noticed this pop up on the side:

New! Free SMS in Gmail Send free SMS directly from Gmail - just enter a phone number and click Enter. SMS replies are sent right to your Gmail inbox.

and realised it was letting me target South African numbers too. In order to use this feature you have to enable the SMS (text messaging) in Chat lab.

Added information on the feature is located here. The basics are as follows:

• Use the Send SMS box above the chat window and enter a number to send an SMS (or if you have Google Voice credits, to call the number) or select Send SMS from the box of options that appears to the right of your contact's name. If you already have a chat window option select Options and Send SMS.
• Sending an SMS is free and any replies you receive are treated in your standard Chat Window, and are billed at normal cellular rates.
• You start with 50 credits and even if you send an SMS to an unsupported number it bills you for one credit. When you hit 0 credits you will be entitled to one free SMS a day. If you receive SMS replies your credits will grow again by five per received SMS, so if you hit 0 credits just wait 24 hours and then send yourself an SMS and you'll be back in business with five credits! The maximum credit at any time is fifty.

For extensive information on this service go here.

Hints and Tips:

• Save the incoming Gmail SMS number associated from your account because this is linked to your unique Google Account! Any time you send an SMS to this number it appears as a Chat message in the Gmail account. 
• If you'd like a higher message credit, send yourself an SMS from Google to your phone, and then reply. Every reply earns you five SMS credits. Effectively you are paying your service provider (e.g. MTN) one SMS in return for being able to send another five. If you do this once a day you can get five SMS messages for the price of one.

Clonezilla SE stuck at loading TFTP

I've recently begun trying out Clonezilla SE on a DRBL-live CD and it works great.

The one problem I've experienced is that clients receiving the DHCP broadcast freeze while loading the TFTP menu prior to loading Clonezilla Client.

It sits at the boot screen for PXE boot menu after it's received an IP from the DHCP server and is about to load the TFTP, with the word "TFTP" and then progress dots ". . ." going on indefinitely.

The solution that works for me is to set the Clonezilla SE IP address to another subnet to the clients; for example the default IP for the clients is 192.168.100.* and I've set the Clonezilla SE IP to a static 192.168.72.44 and it works fine.

Of course, you must agree to set the local ethernet IP to an alias for both IP ranges, if you're using one ethernet card.

Hope this helps someone out there :)

Today's date is 3.14 - Happy Pi Day!!

Thanks to my good friend (and nerd) Chris for alerting me to the fact that today is Pi Day!!

Celebrate it with all your fellow nerds - get a cylinder of radius Z and height A and enjoy in the full volume of its goodness!*


* If you don't know the volume of a cylinder of radius Z and height A, let me elaborate: Pi * z * z * a = Pizza!

Register here to express an interest in Raspberry Pi

Heard of the Raspberry Pi?

If not, here's the low-down from Raspberry Pi SBC:

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer board that plugs into a TV and a keyboard. It’s a miniature ARM-based PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays High-Definition video.

Features

Picture used without permission from MyBroadBand.co.za

• Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with FPU and Videocore 4 GPU
• GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
• GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
• 256MB RAM
• Boots from SD card, running the Fedora version of Linux
• 10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket
• HDMI socket
• USB 2.0 socket
• RCA video socket
• SD card socket
• Powered from microUSB socket
• 3.5mm audio out jack
• Header footprint for camera connection
• Size: 85.6 x 53.98 x 17mm

How much will this little beauty cost you?


R260.00.


Two hundred and sixty Rand.

If you want to get your paws on one of these beautiful gadgets, you need to pre-register now and be on the waiting list - on a first-in, first-out basis.

Go here to register: http://za.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi

Student protests: how to protect your car

Camouflage!

Decisions, decisions ...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Not that I celebrate such commercialised tripe, but thanks to the protesting students on campus I've got the day off, so I guess I'll surprise my missus with some strawberries and chocolate dip. The thing is, do I get 200g of dip for R20 or 400g for R19? Decisions, decisions ...

International Rugby Calendar 2012 and onwards

Back in 2011 I posted about a Rugby World Cup calendar for you to import to your Outlook, iCal device (iPod, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.), and so forth. I didn't realise that Mike Riversdale would continue this calendar past the World Cup and as it appears, it's still being updated for international rugby events through 2012. That's very exciting :)

So, if you own an Android tablet, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, or such then you can add this calendar to your device to keep track of all the international rugby events for 2012 (and hopefully beyond).

To add the calendar pick one of these links:

• The XML format
• The iCal format for most mobile devices and Google Calendar
• An HTML version for bookmarking on your browser

Super 15 Rugby Fixtures Calendar 2012

If you want the latest Super Rugby fixtures list, for 2012, then pick one of these for your desired format:

• Click this link for the iCal format (BlackBerry, iPhone, Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.)
  * you can add iCal format calendars directly into your GOOGLE CALENDAR account by loading up calendar.google.com and then at the bottom under "Other calendars" clicking Add by URL.
• Click this link for the XML format
• Click this link for the HTML format
  * you can bookmark this on any device that has an HTML browser and you'll always have the calendar directly at your fingertips.

If you want to customise the calendar yourself, then you'll need a CSV format, which you can obtain here. This CSV file was courtesy of Arthur the Grandmaster from MyBroadband.co.za forums and is the root source for all of the modified formats above.

Alternative options:

• http://www.ougrote.com/2011/09/03/2012-super-15-fixtures-for-outlook-and-ical/
  this one offers a few options but it lists each event as an "all day event" for the day it's due rather than scheduled at the correct time in an iCal calendar.

Free undercover parking for as long as you like at Westwood Shopping Centre

I don't promote nefariously abusing what I'm about to tell you but use it if you feel justified in doing so...

You know how you have to pay R5 for 1 hour's worth of undercover parking at Westwood? Well, shopping at Pick 'n' Pay gives you 90 minutes free parking but what if you end up being delayed in the queues to pay for your shopping and the 90 minutes expires? Simple: swipe your ticket again!

You see, the system at Westwood seems to work by setting your timer back 90 minutes (e.g. 12h00 arrival becomes an effective 13h30 arrival so at 12h45 the system technically sees you as 'not having arrived yet') but when the 90 minutes is up the system seems to just count up from zero again (you've arrived at 13h30 so it counts as normal from then) so if you then swipe your ticket for another 90 minutes of free parking it thinks you're resetting another 90 minutes (e.g. 13h30 'arrival' becomes an effective 15h00 arrival).

If you are already within the 90 minute cycle then swiping your ticket again has no effect. You have to wait for the 90 minute cycle to end before doing this again.

And yes, I've done it myself and have had a friend do it too so it definitely works.

Feel free to +1 me if this post is helpful.

Download YouTube to MP3 using YouTube MP3 and many others

If you've ever wanted to download a YouTube video's soundtrack to 'high-quality' MP3 there are a few sites to visit to achieve this which I've listed below. If you use Google Chrome you can also choose to install an add-on that will allow you to do the download at the click of a button while viewing the YouTube video. The add-on is called, creatively, YouTube MP3 and can be downloaded here http://www.youtube-mp3.org/addons/chrome.

If you want to use a web interface then try out these sites:

• www.youtube-mp3.org/ the parent site for the Chrome add-on
• www.listentoyoutube.com/
• www.video2mp3.net/
• www.vidtomp3.com/

There are of course plenty more that are just a quick Google search away and also a bunch of add-ons for other browsers - this is simply to point you in the right direction (and if you didn't know it was possible beforehand, now you know!).

Enjoy downloading your favorite Rebecca Black tracks this Friday!

SAOL information misleading

Dear SAOL

Your homepage announcements are not providing the correct information about comparative pricing between Telkom and SAOL and this is false advertising.

SAOL:	Telkom:
Circuit Speed	Up to 1 MB	Up to 1 MB
Extras	ADSL + 1 Gig FREE + Email	ADSL Only
Top Up per Gig	R29	NA
Price	R299	R326

The Telkom website quotes the 1Mbps line as R289 (incl. VAT) per month. Your site says Telkom charges R326 which is not correct. Will SAOL be offering a better price than Telkom or should we stick with Telkom for our 1Mbps ADSL lines? In either event, please update your website to the current pricing to avoid misleading potential clients.

Regards,

Bryan Johnston

NeoGo - 24GB mobile data + USB modem for R799 once-off

"Best prepaid deal" in South Africa at the moment, although there's no mention of the speed for the modem. Either way, 24GB of data for R799 (including the modem) is a very good price. That's R33 a GB which is equivalent (almost) to Afrihost's R29 per GB for ADSL. Just be aware that the modem is CDMA which is a lot less connected in South Africa than 3G...