Unstoppable Cell Selection in Microsoft Excel

In Excel, moving the mouse anywhere on the screen will result in selecting all cells the mouse passes over. Excel does not respond to the right or left-click and can only be closed forcibly. In other words, the mouse cursor behaves as if the left-click is being pressed while in Excel causing it to do nothing but select cells indefinitely.

I believe this issue to primarily be a conflict with the Novell GroupWise Office integration (ODMA) for Microsoft Office. Secondarily, it may be an issue with the mouse driver.

Resolution:

1. In GroupWise, turn off or uninstall integrations (who likes them anyway?)
2. Search the computer and remove any instances of GWxl97.xla or GWXLUS.XLA.
3. In Excel, reset the Worksheet Menu Bar by going to View > Toolbars > Customize > Toolbars… then select “Worksheet Menu Bar” and hit Reset… This screen also shows a “Standard” toolbar which sometimes must also be reset.
4. Reboot.
5. If the issue persists, remove the mouse driver, reboot, and allow Windows to install a generic driver.
6. If the issue still persists, remove the mouse driver, install the driver specific to the mouse and reboot.
7. If the issue persists, then it’s not an issue with GroupWise integrations or your mouse driver. Good luck!

Domino’s Pizza Tracker

Domino's Pizza Tracker (click for larger view)

Filing under the “learn something new everyday” category, I’ve found that not only can you order Domino’s pizza online, but you can “track it.”

The Pizza Tracker will keep you up to date with the status of your order as it passes through the order, preparation, baking, boxing, and delivery stages. Not only will you know know where the dough is, it’ll also tell you the name of the employee man-handling your order each step of the way, including the “delivery expert.” The application updates without the need to refresh so you can plug your laptop into your big screen LCD TV and give the whole family something utterly unproductive to do while you wait.

Now, if they could only stream video of the whole process taking place, it’d be just like being there! It’s a nice toy, but I’m okay with ordering pizza without the need to stalk it.

What do you think? Is this just a neat toy or the best thing to happen to world since sliced…. pizza….?

Shadowrun 4 Character Generator

SR4CharGen Splash

Trying to generate some Shadowrun character sheets? You could use the spreadsheets that are floating around, all over the intertubes, OR you can try out the Shadowrun 4th edition Character Generator by DaisyBox software. The SR4CG is a fully functional (beta) program, dedicated to creating characters for Shadowrun. The program defaults follow all SR4′s standard rules and regulations, but you can customize the program’s data files to create custom categories and items!

The SR4CharGen creates, prints, and saves your Shadowrun characters with an easy-to-use interface completewith detailed drop-downs and tabbed sections for  greater organization. Most selections come with a description of what you can and cannot do, and errors are explained to minimize frustration!

Panoramic Photos on the Cheap & Easy [AutoStitch]

I’ll being filing this one under “Shared Discoveries” because I didn’t find this program all on my own; A friend of mine introduced it to me a couple of years ago on a trip down Highway 1. For some reason he wanted to take a panoramic photo so I tried setting my cheap digital camera to pano-mode. It’s supposed to make pano shots easier by allowing you to take a photo and then show part of that photo on the LCD screen so you can line up the next shot. However, as everyone knows, manual panoramic shots either with a built-in camera function or later trying to line up those shots in a photo editor are just awful.

So my friend starts taking random shots of this eroding hillside along the highway. There was no rhyme or reason, just snapping shots of the hillside. Then, he ensures me that this program he’s telling me about will be able to take all those photos and make a perfect panoramic photo out of it. I was skeptical, but sure enough, it did!

The program? From the project home page: “AutoStitch is the product of two years of research by Matthew Brown and David Lowe at the University of British Columbia.” And from Wikipedia, “The software uses the SIFT- and the RANSAC-Algorithm. This program differs from others such as photostitch in that it automatically stitches together even unaligned or zoomed photographs seamlessly without user input, whereas others often require the user to highlight matching areas for the photographs to merge properly. The only requirement is that all photographs be taken from a single point.”

In other words, AutoStitch is a free program (or “free-to-try” for non-commerical purposes) that takes a selection of separate photographs and “stitches” them together to make one large photograph. The resulting photograph doesn’t necessarily have to be a traditional panoramic photo. AutoStitch will make sense out of photos taken in any order, location, or size of particular scene. AutoStitch will also perform needed contrast, brightness, color and level image adjustments in order to create the seamless image.

Here I offer a couple of examples of AutoStitch’s work on photos taken by me on a recent trip to Yosemite National Park. Continue reading »