Broken MSDN

See attached link!

Presentations: Powerpoint Templates for FREE

omg!!!!!!!1 totally sweet ppt tmplts

LaTeX: conflict between hyperref and bibentry (natbib) packages?

well? anyone know anything??

generates an error along the lines of:

! Use of \pdfmark@ doesn't match its definition.
\@ifnextchar ... \reserved@d =#1\def \reserved@a {
#2}\def \reserved@b {#3}\f...
l.25 ... \textbf{\bibentry{purvis02seng}}

at the point it hits the bibentry line.

Leave me a comment! nobody seems to know..

LaTeX: More new formatting tips

General help: here
This page is also great.

• Line spacing, line height:

• \linespread{1.0}

• \linespread{1.5}

• etc.
• Custom formatting commands:
• \newcommand*{\CommandName}{\textsf{Hello this is the New Command}}
• \newcommand*{\CommandName}[1]{\textsf{#1}}
• etc..
• Adding bibliography to your Table of Contents:
• \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Bibliography}
• put this line _after_ the line:
  
• \bibliography{bibfilename}
  

LaTeX: error - missing $ inserted

Single $'s are used to indicate the start and end of math mode (i.e. typesetting of mathematical forumlae).
This error could, of course, occur legitimately if you left off a $ from your math mode section, however it ALSO occurs if you use an underscore _ or a ^ character outside of a math mode section.

THE FIX: enclose these characters in $'s or use something else.

LaTeX: inserting jpg files

First problem:

Command: \includegraphics[width=60mm]{input.jpg}

! LaTeX Error: Cannot determine size of graphic in input.jpg (no BoundingBox).

FIX:
\includegraphics[width=Xmm,bb=A B C D]{input.jpg}
where {A-D} are integers which describe the dimensions of the image's bounding box,
and X is a value with describes the width of the image.

Second problem:

Image sizing placement! i.e. the image is either massive and you can only see a corner, or it's the right size but is overlapping text.

FIX(es):
- enclose in a figure and add the environment variables (correct term?) [htp]
- scale the image back to a nice size for your doc
- set the width (or height, or both) of your image area
- set the bounding box because jpg's don't contain these (unlike EPS) - i am guessing the bb params are bottom left, top right x-y pairs, and are specified in millimetres by default. Trial and error is how you figure out the size of the bb.
- clip stops the image from overlapping text, but if your bb is too small, then.. image gets clipped!

Non-placement related stuff:
- caption text inside [] is what is displayed in the table of figures
- actual caption text is within {}
- label text is used for intra-doc cross-ref'ing


e.g.

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.2,width=80mm,bb=0 0 800 1100,clip]{Images/img1.jpg}
\caption[My Image] {My Image}\label{fig:img1}
\end{figure}

SQL Server import - Data Overflow. Invalid character value for cast specification

Error occurs when using SQL Server's Data Transformation Import Wizard to import data from Access and you have dates outside the following range: 1/1/1900 and 6/6/2079

Just run the query below on the offending table, and change the resulting dates to something like #1/1/2004 01:01:00 AM" (this depends on your column's date format)

Query:

SELECT TABLE_NAME.DATE_COLUMN_NAME
FROM TABLE_NAME
WHERE (TABLE_NAME.DATE_COLUMN_NAME) Not Between #1/1/1900# And #6/6/2079#;

thanks to attached page..

Battling procrastination

This should work for almost everyone:

• Go outside and do some exercise
• Think of someone you want to do better than

Things that might work:

• Visualise yourself completing the task

Things applicable to essay/report writers:

• Create a document skeleton
• If this doesn't get you going, revise it - as you go write in whatever content comes to mind. I call this the iterative approach.
  
• Get your template/general look all sorted out - you'll appreciate it later when the fruits of your procrastination come to bear

Preventative methods:

• Start early because:
• a small addition to your knowledge at time X1 becomes magnified at time X1 + a, where a is a couple of weeks. I think this is due to the human subconscious mind processing new information over time.
• This is the key: find a way to leverage/motivate the change in yourself. Main attributes to consider: pain or pleasure in the extreme. This is very hard to do later on, so again: START EARLY.
  

Things to remember:

• Stick to your beliefs and standards
  
• The beliefs must match the standards. If you have high standards but believe you are lazy and will do things at the last minute, then you may as well lower your standards right now.
• The pain of not doing what you feel you must, SHOULD be more than the pain you go through while procrastinating. Often this is not true because it is easy to cop out by doing things at the last minute and then forgetting the whole sordid episode occurred once the deadline has passed. This is common, but is a terrible state of affairs.
• You only have a finite time to complete the task. Do not overestimate your effort/time ratio. By now you should know what you're capable of. The first change to make is your motivation, NOT your work rate, because how could you possibly do this without first increasing your motivation.
  

Bad things (to avoid):

• Self-sabotaging thoughts

Repairing flashing question ? mark on os x startup disk

Some useful pages:

general
apple
Mike's open firmware page
igm

an interesting product

can't open: error
macosxhints

My particular symptoms:
Flashing question mark in a floppy disk icon when you try to boot.
If you try to boot into Single user mode (by holding down 's' while booting), you get the error "Can't open: " repeated many times. Following this, you get the flashing question mark again.

Things i tried:
Resetting the PRAM (hold down command-option-p-r until you hear two chimes (after the first one you hear on the first boot)) - didn't work
Booting into the OS X CD and trying to repair the disk. The startup disk couldn't have anything done to it - all greyed out. Size reported as zero bytes.
Booting into OS 9.2 CD. Disk First Aid utility couldn't recognise the disk.
Booting into Open Firmware (hold down cmd-opt-o-f until the OF shell shows up:
set-defaults
reset-all (mac will reboot)
-- didn't work!

I think the disk is dead. RIP.