Chase Brook Software

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Our high school has apparently started using iWorks for documents, and in particular the Pages word processor and layout tool.  We were unable to open a .pages file at home using Microsoft Word and other programs.  A quick search on the internet provided a helpful solution: export the file in Word format from the Pages program.  So that will work next time – but didn’t help for the file on hand.

So the trick is to move the file to a PC, then add .zip on the end of the file name.  Then double click to open the file, and there should be several files, including

• Thumbnail.jpg
• Preview.pdf
• index.xml

These files can then be extracted.  Thumbnail.jpg shows what the document looks like.  Preview.pdf provides the document in Adobe PDF format.  From there, you can simply select the text, then copy and paste it into Word, or any other editing program.

Thanks to Experts Exchange for the tip.

Portable hard drives are now very affordable.  These are the small USB-powered drives that have become my preferred backup method.  They don’t require a power supply, and usually work seamlessly with any PC or Mac.

Today, I purchased a Toshiba Canvio 320 Gb drive for $70 from Best Buy.  No special installation software, and the included backup software was simply deleted without any problem.

I mention this last issue because I recently tried some Western Digital My Passport Essential drives.  They come with backup software (“WD Smartware”) that can’t be removed.  The drives are preconfigured with a partition that operates as a virtual CD drive (with the backup software and disk drivers), and another partition for the removable drive that operates as you would expect.

The “CD drive” automatically installs a program that then runs from the taskbar.  To disable this activity, you need to download a special program from the company website, install it, connect the drive, and then reconfigure it to disable the CD drive functionality.  Note that the CD drive files remain – they just stay dormant.  What were they thinking when they designed this?

Or you can just get the Toshiba drive and save yourself some headaches.

I attended a part of the Symposium on the Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College. This was a day-long event that included a variety of presentations showcasing applications of technology in the liberal arts.

Some of the programs I learned about:

Project Bamboo: trying to figure out how to use technology and social media techniques to help with research projects.  I didn’t really understand what this was all about.

Dartmouth Dante project: a fairly straightforward compilation of commentaries on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The information is easily searchable, and contains material that is otherwise difficult to get to.

Variable D Salon: a weekly meeting of students and professors to discuss technology.

“Photo Fakery in the Digital Age”: a talk about digital manipulation, with some pertinent and amusing examples from current media. The speaker Hany Farid was very good, and is a professor at Dartmouth.

Archimedes in Bits”:  a talk about using imaging techniques to recover a lost text of Archimedes that was written on a manuscript that had been recycled with something else written on top. Website

And I didn’t go in this, although I noticed it parked on campus – but the Tiltfactor Playcube is quite interesting.