Friday 20 November 2015

Microsoft Word Comments and Right to left Language Settings

I am collaborating with a researcher from Egypt (yes Omar its you!) and I have noticed that the documents he sends me have a strange language setting - right to left language setting only in the comments. I've tried with Google to find an answer to set it back to the original setting that I normally use (that is left to right) but I couldn't get it working.

With the help from my Microsoft Expert friend Graham, now my document settings are updated to accept both left to right and right to left. I am sharing it here so that it may help someone who is frustrated and searching to solve the mystery of why the comments are working right to left when everything else works left to right.


I am on a Windows 7 and MS Word 2010

Control panel > Region and Language > Change keyboards ...
General tab > Add the keyboard (I added Arabic Egypt Keyboards United Kingdom, US English Table for IBM Arabic 238_L)

Now I can see a tool bar button to have left to right languages and right to left languages.


MS Word tool bar
Now when I see a comment as shown below only allowing me to type right to left 
Right to left language setting in MS Word Comments
I click on the comment and simply go to the tool bar and select the left to right button
Left-to Right setting
Now I can edit the comment with the comfort of left to right language setting.


Left to right setting in MS Word Comments

MOOCs on Estate Management

Now that I have started working for the University College of Estate Management's online learning team I wanted to see how many free online courses were available on the subject "Estate Management". So I went into some of my favourite MOOC platform (Coursera, FutureLearn, edX, Canvas and OpenupEd) and searched for the subject.

CC Image by Heribert Pohl
from  https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3839/15133830361_73ee79a036_d.jpg 
However, what I got was a whole bunch of general management topics and other topics relating to finance discipline. So I thought to go in and check on MOOC-List and Class-Central as well. I managed to find 15 highly relevant (at least that is what I thought) courses on offer.


Course Title
Institution
Platform
1
TechniCity
University of Ohio
Coursera
2
Management of Urban Infrastructures – Part 1
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Coursera
3
Planning and Design of Sanitation Systems and Technologies
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Coursera
4
Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing countries
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Coursera
5
Wheels of Metals: Urban Mining for a Circular Economy
Universiteit Leiden
Coursera
6
Alternative Approaches to valuation and investment
The University of Melbourne
Coursera
7
Give Yourself the Location Advantage by
ESRI
8
Geodesign: Change Your World
Pennstate University
Coursera
9
Financing and Investing in Infrastructure
Universita Bocconi
Coursera
10
Maps and the Geospatial Revolution
The Pennsylvania State University
Coursera
11
Designing Cities
University of Pennsylvania
Coursera
12
Smart Cities
The Open University
FutureLearn
13
Housing Design: from concept to Fabrication
OIKONET Education
Canvas
14
Applied Real Estate
Florida International University
CourseSites
15
Computer-Aided Design (CAD)  (self-paced course)
Saylor

Lot of interesting courses for free.

Thursday 29 January 2015

#FLMobiGame - Finding Screen Resolution

Android Studio has an advanced set of requirements to be met by systems. One of them is the screen resolution. In this blog I am showing how to find screen resolution in various systems.

Window 8.1

Right-click on the Desktop
Select Screen Resolution

Screen Resolution
In this dialog Resolution gives the screen resolution of your system.

Windows 7

Click Start button
Select Control Panel
Under  Display (Microsoft refers to as  'Appearance and Personalization')
Click Adjust resolution

Windows XP

Click Start
Click Control Panel
Click Appearance and Themes
Click Display
On the Settings tab under Screen resolution you will find the screen resolution

Mac OSX

Select System Preferences from Apple menu
Click on Displays
A window will appear with your current resolution highlighted, along with other available resolutions.

Ubuntu

Open a terminal window (Ctrl + Alt + T)
Type command xdpyinfo | grep dimensions

Alternatively you can
Click on Dash Home
Type resolution
Select Displays
A window will open, there you can see Resolution (have a look at this video).





#FLMobiGame - System Information and Environment Variables - Windows

We are getting ready for our fourth run of Begin Programming. As always we are trying to foresee problems that our participants may face and create resources that would help them.

In this blog post I am showing how to view your system settings, available hard disk space and Environment Variables in Windows platforms. System settings show how much memory is installed and whether the system is running 64 bit or 32 bit.

I will start with Windows 8.1 as I am working on one now:

Windows 8.1:

There are several ways you can do this. But this is the easiest for me.

Open a File Explorer window
Right-click This PC 
Select Properties
Right-click This PC  and select Properties 
This will open up System dialog that gives you all information about your system.
System Dialog
In this view under System you can find the Installed memory RAM, System Type (64 or 32 bit system).

To view/change environment variables:
Click Advanced system settings on the left.
This will open up System Properties dialog.
On Advanced tab Environment Variables will show the already set up values for the system.

If you want to setup Java Path this video will help.

To check the Available Hard disk space:
File Explorer > This PC
Right-click the drive you want to check space
Select Properties 
This will show the uses space and available space in the disk

Windows 7 

Click Start button
Right-click Computer
Click Properties
Under System you can view System Type this will tell you your system whether it is a 32 bit or 64 bit system.

To view/change environment variables:
Click Advanced system settings
On the Advanced tab
Click on Environment Variables


To check the Available Hard disk space:
Start > Computer 
Right-click the drive you want to check space
Select Properties 
This will show the uses space and available space in the disk

Windows XP

Click Start
Right-click My Computer
Click Properties
If you don't see "x64 Edition" listed, then you're running the 32-bit version of Windows XP.

If "x64 Edition" is listed under System, you're running the 64-bit version of Windows XP.

To view/change environment variables:
Click Start
Click Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click System
On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables

To check the Available Hard disk space:
Start > My Computer 
Right-click the drive you want to check space
Select Properties 
This will show the uses space and available space in the disk

This post may be of use too.

#FLMobiGame - Begin Programming migrating to Android Studio

We are delighted to offer Begin Programming: Build your first mobile game on FutureLearn for the fourth time this February. To be precise we start on 16th February 2015. If you have not yet registered, there is still time - here is the registration link. What is more exciting is that we are moving from Eclipes to Android Studio in this run.

Android Studio
This was a change that we wanted to do but we thought we'd do it this summer when there is more time at hand. However, Google's move to make Android Studio the preferred development environment made us bring forward our change.

At the end of the last run (#3) in December 2014 we asked for volunteers to help us test the course. We are delighted to say that the response has been fantastic. Our volunteer testers are as good as or even better than paid testers!!! We are so grateful to all of them who have provided us with their test reports of the new materials.

Look forward to this fourth run, the first we are running with Android Studio. Not long to go...