You're using Word 2007 or 2010, right? If you look at the Font pulldown menu on the Home tab, you'll see Calibri (Body) under Theme Fonts at the top; if you scroll down past All Fonts, you'll see Calibri listed. I don't know why they are different, but I think the Calibri (Body) selection has some different spacing included in the style that's not easy to find.

If you select the Calibri (Body) text and change it to the Calibri listed under All Fonts, it should match the rest of your document. Or you could select a paragraph that is formatted the way you want, click the Format Painter (the little paintbrush in the Clipboard section on the Home tab) and select the paragraph you want to change.

Another option is to clear formatting - the easiest way is to select the whole paragraph (or whatever text is showing up as +body) and press Ctrl+Spacebar. That paragraph will be reformatted to whatever the default text setting is for your document, but you will lose any bolding, italicizing, hyperlinks, etc. Clear Formatting is also a button in the Font section.

When I'm pasting text, I right click first and select Keep Text Only or Match Destination Styles from the Paste Options so it doesn't mess up the formatting. Or paste as usual, and a little clipboard shows up at the end of the pasted text; click the little arrow to see the Paste Options. You don't need a separate program to paste unformatted text.

You say you've done system restores but have you simply formatted the disk and installed a fresh OS? That is the next thing you need to do if it is an option for you. Remember formatting deletes ALL data so make a backup of the files you care about.

Make sure you've got a good view of what is actually using your CPU. Open the Task Manager and try to account for all % used and have a valid explanation for each process running. Take this information with a huge grain of salt because viruses can hide themselves from this list and appear to be legitimate processes when they aren't.

High CPU can be caused by a lot of things (viruses included), but it can also be caused by hardware problems. If you format/install and still have 90% CPU usage on your first boot of a fresh install of Windows, I'd start leaning towards hardware problems (and would be surprised it even made it through an install).

How's your memory usage look in Task Manager? I wouldn't expect it to cause high CPU usage, but your memory could be having issues which has caused some of it to not be used, which is causing the computer to use the hard drive for memory (aka swapping), which is extremely slow and will bog down your computer immensely. You should see 90%+ memory usage if this is happening. Memtest86 is a great (free) program that searches out buggy RAM in your computer; let it run overnight.

Finally, going after things that bog down entire computers quickly, it could be the thing most likely to fail in your laptop (IMO): your hard drive. The easiest way to diagnose a bad drive is to remove it and test it in a known-good computer.

Anyway, definitely FORMAT and reinstall (if you can handle a format without losing anything).

And degragging is the most overrated fix to anything in the history of computing. Hard drive fragmentation is not causing your problem, nor will it ever in home computing. I don't remember the last time I defragged anything, and I've never seen defragging fix anything.

Defragging's main purpose is to get users like yourself off of the phone for a few hours when you're out of troubleshooting ideas. Linux/Unix doesn't even have a concept of defragging in the majority of their native filesystems.

Install both a flash and ad-blocker plugin for Chrome (and Firefox while you're at it).

I'm assuming this is an old Windows machine (like Win 98 or something); if it's an old Mac running OS 9 or earlier, you can put together a custom set of startup extensions which are limited to what you need to get online.

If it's a Windows machine, you can find out what everything you see in the Taskmanager actually does, and whether it's something you can kill. Just plug "what is " into Google (no quotes needed, usually) and you'll get websites that describe all the weirdly named processes do.

Depends on the battery technology (chemical makeup) being used. With a fairly new laptop you must be using a Lithium-ion battery.

In general you can recharge a Lithium-ion battery whenever you want in the battery discharge cycle without causing any problems with ability to hold a charge or the battery's depth of charge, that is there is no such thing as "memory effect".

Here is some text from Apple that explains the versatility of this type of battery.

Of course, what you want is to not run out of power when you are working, so in any case, be sure to have some type of battery monitor installed that gives you plenty of warning if you are running low so you can get it plugged in or save your work and close it down in time.

If you are using some other type of battery this story will be different.

I actually thought the time limit for non-"Directors" was 10 minutes and they would let you get away with a few seconds more. They used to give people "Directors" accounts back in the day for people who made longer vids. I upload to YouTube all the time and I'm fairly certain the time limit is 10 minutes though. If you don't mind waiting around while it loads, you could always try to upload your video, but you will likely get an error message.

I suck at web development but I'll throw some basics out.

There are a lot of ways to tell something to be centered in HTML, and a lot of reasons why these ways won't work under various circumstances. It's hard to say exactly what your HTML needs to look like without a link to the page in question.

IMO the easiest and most generic way to center something is by putting <center> tags around it.

Something like this for a Youtube video:

<center>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</center>

But that might not work for a lot of reasons, top of which is that <center> is not even a standard HTML tag, but a relic from the olden days. It just happens to still work in pretty much every browser.

Other tags that may put you in the right direction:
<div align="center">
<table width="100%" align="center"> (or possibly <td align="center">)

Additionally, this is a super common problem, so I bet if you put "how to center an image in wordpress" (or whatever) into Google you can figure it out. I suggest figuring it out with images before videos just to make it easier to Google, but it shouldn't matter in the end.

This page is awesome for learning HTML/general web development: http://www.w3schools.com/

PS: if you need to post literal tags in a QL post like I did above, you need to use the "entity" codes from this chart in place of the < and > symbols - http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/special.html (specifically the less-than and greater-than codes)

You should check out this spiffy and free Windows utility called WinDirStat: http://windirstat.info/

It gives you a visual overview of your disk space usage. I've found it really useful before to track down where all my disk space went.

What you really need is to get the drive mounted in a Linux environment and go to town with your favorite scripting language. I'd start with a perl script that builds a list of files and their md5sums, then starts looking for duplicate md5sums.

A quick Google for "windows 7 find duplicate files" shows some promise too, but I can't say I've used any of the utilities that come up.

I'd also give it a little time. Google doesn't re-index every site at every moment (so changing your keywords won't bring about instantaneous results). If you've got other blogger friends, outside links to your site will push you up in the rankings. Suggest a link swap.

Probably just need to recycle it. Here's some info:
http://blog.questionland.com/free-recycling-computer-parts-in-seattle-wa

As far as the hard drive is concerned, the safest thing to do is just take it out and destroy it. If you have a very strong magnet then you can use that to wipe anything off the drive permanently.

Yes, it's possible and very easy if you do it the proper way. Just go into Settings -> General -> Network -> Set up Personal Hotspot. The phone will prompt you to call AT&T or Verizon to set up a tethering plan, which runs around $30 a month.

Doing it without paying for it is not terribly hard, but it is getting more and more difficult to get around the carriers themselves. You'll need to jailbreak your phone, which, if you're not running anything before iOS 5 is easy (the iOS 5 jailbreak isn't out yet if you upgraded with a non-hacked firmware package). Then you just buy a jailbreak tethering app.

However, AT&T and Verizon have both started cracking down on unauthorized tethering, and if you do tether they'll just sign you up for a tethering plan. There is one jailbreak tethering app that claims to get around this (http://junefabrics.com/iphone/index.php) but I haven't looked into it that much as I de-jailbroke my iPhone with iOS 5.

Well, if the desktop is connected via wireless you might find the password in the control panel. It's Windows 7, right? Click on the Start menu icon, then type "manage wireless networks" in the search bar on the start menu. It might take a second or two, but the link to that control panel will show up. Click on it - if it's connected via wireless you should see the name of the wireless network. Right click on that, then go to properties, then click on the security tab. You might have to click the box for "show characters", but you should be able to find the password there.

If the desktop is not connected via wireless you can sometimes find the default password by searching online for the router name and model number. It's also possible that the wireless router has a guest network, which is why it looks like you can connect - those types usually take you to what looks like a website to enter the password. If you wind up searching online for the default password check for this option too.

If you mean an ad inside a video, that has to play before you can watch the video you want, I don't know how, but if you're just talking about ads elsewhere on the page, you want Adblock.

http://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

You can also block videos that start with Flash (almost all of them) with Flashblock. It allows you to start the Flash items you want (say, a menu or something) while leaving blocked the ones you don't (Ford ad, autostarting video, etc.)

Shoreline? Drop by Game Gurus on Lake City Way and 125th Ave.

They fixed my Rock Band drums once years ago, and seemed like good people.

Good reviews on Yelp too:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/game-gurus-seattle

Are you sure you are in the "new account" portion and not the "login" section?

If you do it yourself, be very careful with the cassettes, first off. Make sure they have proper tension before jamming them into a tape deck. Just use your fingers to hold the supply reel and gently wind the take-up reel until you feel tension. Then exercise the tape since they haven't been played in a long time. Give them a full fast-forward and then a rewind once you're certain the tension is good. Then you can press play. Make sure they are fully wound one way or the other once you are finished with them. Store them in a case that has some sprockets to keep the reels from unspooling.

As far as gear, a TASCAM or Marantz deck should be suitable. I would avoid those all-in-one USB devices if you care about sound quality. You should, however, check out M-Audio, Apogee, MOTU, etc for a USB or Firewire audio interface. You only need two channels, but there are lots of options. Each of these should be $300-500. You will also need editing software. Audacity is crap because it is free, so look for software you can afford. Use the highest resolution your USB/firewire interface provides (prob 24bit, 96kHz wav). You will need some extra hard drive space, but down the line you will be happy you did it. Especially if you plan on releasing any of it.

This is absolutely a project you can do yourself over a period of time. It's always best to monitor the complete transfer, but once you master the software you can set the recording time to a minute or two past the cassette side length and let it run. If something goes wrong you'll find it later. Just always spot check your recordings once you are finished.

That's not quite how it works. There is no easy way for people to directly access the video file on your desktop over the internet.

QR codes are essentially bar codes. They only contain text. So a QR code that "embeds a youtube video" is actually just a QR code that points to a youtube.com URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

QR codes are easy to make. Here is a seemingly decent website where you can make them:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

And here is one I made:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdQw4w9WgXcQ

So, for you, the first thing you need to do is get your video hosted somewhere you can easily share it with others. Youtube is obviously an option -- maybe as a private video? There are other Youtube-like sites as well like Vimeo.

Or, if you don't care about your video playing in a web browser, and simply want to share the file, Dropbox would be a good option. They have a "Public folder" where you can upload files and then link them via http://something.dropbox.com/something -- but this will not put the video in a nice player with play/pause/seek and such. It will just provide the file itself.

I hope that is helpful! Feel free to use comments if something doesn't make sense.

Tweet-deck is the answer, I think. It's been ages since I've used it (I abandoned my Twitter account a few years ago), but it will allow you to group various feeds together. So, you could have a "work" group, and it would appear as a separate column in the TweetDeck dashboard. (You could do the same thing with your 90 bajillion news feeds.)

Depending on how it's embedded or how you're hovering over it, it might trap the keyboard keypresses.

I manage fine, and I pay for the second-to-slowest CenturyLink option.

Hulu used to play pretty choppy on my DVD player, but I recently switched to a Roku, and it streams like a dream.

In any Windows 7 application like Explorer, if the top menu (File, Edit, etc..) isn't visible, you can hit Alt and it'll show it. So just press Alt and look under the Edit menu, and you'll find "Move to folder" and "Copy to folder".

I will suggest the cheap, multi-platform, open-source GIMP:

http://www.gimp.org/

The online manual is pretty comprehensive, but here is a quick Google-derived primer to get you going after installation:

1) Open your image file in GIMP, go to the top bar, and select Image > Mode > RGB

2)Select Layers > Duplicate Layer

3)Select Filters > Blur > Pixelize - for starters, set the height and width to 20 px and adjust to taste

4)If you want to emphasize the borders between pixels, select Filters > Enhance > Sharpen and set the sharpness to your liking (e.g. 88)

Good luck!

Seriously, if it's that complicated, get a friend who is stereo savy or familiar and confident to help you set it up. Don't experiment... the wrong crossed cords could blow up the amp and cause costly repairs. (Plus, if the system is already blown...[do you trust your seller?] you want to know about it BEFORE you do any damage. A tech savy friend would recognise this before you might.)

This website is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

We had a glitch yesterday with the RSS feeds, should be better now (but please let us know if you're still seeing problems). You're always welcome to write us at webmaster@thestranger.com if you see anything amiss. Thanks!

If it was me, I'd try the following:
1. REMOVE THE BATTERY (very important)
2. Scrub the phone inside and out with soapy water
3. Rinse thoroughly (deionized water is better than distilled water which is better than tap water)
4. Dunk everything in isopropyl alcohol
5. Let dry completely (be conservative)
6. Reinstall the battery ... if it works, great, if it doesn't, get a new phone.

Becoming infected by a website is possible, but most web-based malware involves third-party code, not a passive exploit. Unless you're running an ancient browser, you're going to be prompted before it runs anything like that. First of all, you won't need to run third-party code to download a torrent. So don't do it. You can minimize the chances of web-based malware by downloading the torrent directly from a reputable torrent indexing site, like Pirate Bay. Make sure you don't click on the plethora of fake "download" links and ads. Finally, if you're running a modern OS like Vista or Windows 7, don't run your browser as administrator or under an administrator account.

My money would be on executable files in the torrent. You shouldn't have to run an EXE to watch a movie. A legit release will just be the media file, like AVI, and a readme. If you're pirating software, watch out for any other executables like keygens or installers, but in that case you're going to have to at least trust the cracked software. Look for releases from a "reputable" group at the original source, like a torrent or newsgroup posting.

Academic point: media files *can* cause viruses or other malware if they exploit the software that is reading them.

Yes, the vast majority of infections come from directly running an exe file or a tainted installer. But everyone knows not to run weird exe files. That's where exploits like buffer overflows come in. They can use malformed data to trick the program into running arbitrary code.

That said, that type of thing is extremely rare and usually patched quickly. Keep your media player up to date and you should be fine.

From what I can tell it's an issue with the feed reader. If you look at the RSS feed, you'll notice the deleted posts aren't actually there anymore. It seems that once Google Reader gets a hold of an item, it leaves in in the list forever, regardless of whether it's been removed from the source feed.

Yes. I had to turn off home sharing and log in again in iTunes for the Shared option to show up on my iPhone but it is working as expected. Maybe that will work for you too. Under the Advanced drop down Turn Off Home Sharing, then turn it on again. Double check your username and password are entered correctly on your iOS device. On the iOS device, open iPod, click More and you should now see the Shared option.

Handbreak. Period.

Facebook lets you do this yourself. Just go to Account Settings, and at the bottom click "Download Your Information"

You can try holding down a few buttons to try to get to the Recovery screen as outlined here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1560

From there you can then do a Factory Restore, if that's what you're looking to do. Assuming you have access to the menus, you can also do the factory restore via the easier method mentioned here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3199

You may also want to post this question and other Apple TV (1st Gen) questions to the following apple discussion board as it's a fairly active board:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1185