Beware the Geek » Computing

Firefox fonts bold and italic after upgrading to 3.6.x

Sarah — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:11:31 +0000

Has the latest Firefox upgrade caused font problems? Are fonts randomly appearing in an ugly bold italic format on certain places? I recently had this problem myself and a lot of research into it suggested that upon upgrading, some of the main system fonts become corrupted. The most commonly corrupted font was arial, so your first port of call would be to replace this font with a clean version. Here’s how:

1. Download a fresh version of Arial: http://web.nickshanks.com/fonts/microsoft-core-web-fonts

2. Close your browser and anything else currently using the Arial font on your system.

3. Delete the arial font from C:/WINDOWS/fonts

4. Run the installer to install the fresh version of arial.

5. Reboot your computer

6. Start your browser up again and check to see if the font problem has resolved.

Now, here it is important to note that it might not be Arial causing your problems, but one of the other main fonts used in websites – particularly courier, trebuchet, helvetica, verdana or times new roman. If the problem still hasn’t resolved after replacing Arial (in my case I needed to replace Helvetica), then repeat the process with different fonts until you find the right one. Good luck!

Disclaimer: this article assumes you are comfortable and confident making changes to your computer’s system files. bewarethegeek.com assumes no responsibility should following any of the changes suggested here cause a system failure.

Delete a Message Stuck in the Outbox – Microsoft Outlook

Sarah — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:00:48 +0000

Ever had that problem where you’re trying to send a message in Microsoft Outlook and it gets stuck in the outbox? You’ve tried deleting it but it gives you the message that the message is in the process of being sent so you can’t delete it? And any other emails you try and send get stuck in the queue behind the message that won’t move? The reason the email got stuck in the first place is usually because it’s too large for your server to process. If you google the solution to this you’ll find a long list of really complicated ways of trying to remove the message, often involving having to add new PST files and who wants to do that? I have two easier solutions for you.

Solution 1:

Go to file –> work offline to put outlook into offline mode.

Go get a cup of coffee/tea.

Come back, close outlook.

Re-open outlook and try and delete the file.

Solution 2:

Go to your outbox.

Right-click on the file and click “move file to another folder.” and move it somewhere else, say drafts.

Go to drafts, delete the file.

Are you Skynet?

Sarah — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:13:12 +0000

Today is my day off work. I was planning on a long, leasurely sleep-in, maybe read a bit…no. I forgot to turn off my alarm. I was woken at some ungodly non-day-off hour. Sigh. So what does a young nerd do on her day off when she’s awake 3 hours ahead of schedule? Why, plays with Wolfram Alpha of course! For those of you who haven’t already heard about it from some source or another, Wolfram Alpha is a new method of searching for the answer to problems. It’s not a search engine; the creators call it a “computational knowledge engine.” In a nutshell, it’s very cool. And I wish I’d had it when I was at university wading my way through maths!

If you click the approximate form links, x is approximately 11. I’ve also asked it about plutonium, gravity, and the molecular mass of DNA. But what really blew my mind is when it offered to sequence some DNA and find code occurences within the human genome. When I was working in the lab this would have been an amazing tool! And I bet most of the scientists out there who work in molecular biology or genetics don’t even know this thing exists.

So the Terminator nerd in me just had to ask…

I’m glad it doesn’t want to launch missiles at us.

Mac Viruses Do Exist

Sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:42:34 +0000

It amuses me somewhat that the first post I make on this blog is about porn.

Nah, not really. I’m reading about boobytrapped porn sites designed to infect Macs and wondering about the whole thing. I’m always engaged in a constant war of Mac vs. PC with various Mac-loving-PC-hating friends of mine and strangely the number one point in every argument they present is that Macs don’t have any known viruses. Untrue now? I think untrue previously but quashed by marketing attempts and as the article says, it’s lead to a whole lot of complacent users.

Are PC users as complacent as Mac users? Hell no, because they’ve all been brought up on a steady diet of spyware, malware and email viruses. Even my (very computer illiterate) father knows how to use a virus scanner. And of course I’m not saying Mac users don’t know how to use virus (or any other type of) scanners but given the way the internet is today it seems risky to listen to the Mac marketing people when they assure everyone that Macs are safe. Also, that no one kicked up a stink when it took Apple 6 months to plug a security hole is pretty amazing. If Microsoft haven’t patched new security problems within 6 hours half the PC community starts crying foul.