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This post has been written using WriteMonkey as the text editor. Not only that but I’ve utilised Markdown as the method of text mark-up. All of this has been achieved using WordPress as my CMS, Firefox as my browser and a Firefox plug-in called It’s All Text.

My first impressions are actually good. Although its taken a little setup, I’m actually happy with the result. You see, using WriteMonkey as a text editor is, well, gorgeous. The screen is emptied of all distractions. With typewriter mode enabled, it is a pure joy to use.

Now to get this to work I did the following:

• disabled the visual editor in WordPress,
• installed the It’s All Text Firefox plug-in,
• installed the PHP Markdown plug-in for WordPress,
• started writing :)

Not so hard is it? Actually the writing bit is the hardest. But you knew that…

What it now means is that when I begin writing a new post in WordPress, I simple click the little edit button that appears, and WriteMonkey fires up, comes to the foreground and I start writing. To finish up, I press CTRL-Q and I click YES I do want to save it.

So I can whole-heartedly say that it’s worth the effort to setup WriteMonkey. Go do it! It feels good.

Of course, now the hard bit is about to start, that is, do more writing.

PS: Only found out about WriteMonkey via DownloadSquad

Had an issue yesterday where we wanted to remove some entires from Outlooks location list.

Huh? When you book an appointment in Microsoft Outlooks calendar you can specify a location. If ACT! by Sage has a Resource that is designated as a location, when ACT! sync’s with Outlook that location list gets filled in.

So, we wanted to edit that list in Outlook. Well, you can’t.

But you can clear the list completely, which for our purpose suited us fine, it’ll get repopulated with the correct values.

Thus, without further ado, here is how you do this:

Open up Regedit and remove the value from this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences\LocationMRU

Note that you will need to replace the version number for your version of Microsoft Office (14.0 = MSO2010, 12.0 = MSO2007).

Hat tip to superuser.com.

So you’re working on a Microsoft Server machine, merrily getting stuff done, when you get a message saying that it can’t continue because files are open. Sound familiar? It happens to me often.

Here is how I find out which files are open and who has them open:

If you’re working on a Microsoft Server 2008, Start | Administrative Tools | Share and Storage Management | Manage Open Files…

If you’re working on a Microsoft Server 2003, Start | right click My Computer | Manage | Computer management (local) | System Tools | Shared Folders | Open Files

Makes it a great deal easier, now you know which file needs closing, and who you need ask to do it.

Hope that helps you. Anything you’ve found helpful? Let me know in the comments.

Google Wave is occuping a great deal of mind space at the moment, the best site I’ve found that explains what it is, and how to use it is this, which starts out with this:

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a comprehensive user manual by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that’s notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. read more here: The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave.

The jury is still out for me, but at this point Gina and Adams explanation has made more sense of it, how this helps CRM and how it can be integrated with ACT! is what I’m mostly interested in.

Often I’ve been told “my ACT! won’t print reports, it doesn’t matter which report I select, it won’t print”.

In the majority of these cases, the fix is actually very quick and simple.

You simply require at least one printer installed and have it set to be the default printer.

See, that was simple. Unfortunately, people sometimes remove all their printers, or for some reason none of their printers are marked as being the default printer and the first sign of trouble is that when they go to print out a report in ACT! it doesn’t work.

After spotting a link to both the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition and Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, I’ve read the original 1980 paper by the Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus (A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition)which made for interesting reading.

It describes (suprise!) 5 stages one goes through when learning a skill:

• Novice
• Advanced beginner
• Competent
• Proficient
• Expert

I’ve yet to read the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, but the two chapters that are online (“Introduction” and “Journey From Novice to Expert”) and the mind map shown all lead me to believe that the book uses the Dreyfus Model as a basis to then provide practical measures to implement in order to make your way from novice to expert.

This is of interest to me because since October 2008 I began working with a product called ACT! which is a Contact and Customer Relationship Management product. When I began I was a Novice at using and implementing ACT!. My employer provided great training which got me to the Advanced beginner stage. Constant use and troubleshooting got me to the Competent stage, which was validated by my passing the ACT! Certified Consultants Exam. Now I’m chipping away at the Proficient stage, made just a little more interesting by the fact the the software has just been updated to version 12 (ACT! by Sage 2010).

But enough about me, what have you been working on becoming an expert on?

Just had need of this article, method #2 describes how to turn of Microsoft Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration.

Quick tip on getting the Network Connections control panel applet, do one of the following:

• WIN+R, ncpa.cpl<enter>
• CTRL-SHIFT-ESC, Applications, File, New Task, ncpa.cpl <enter>

This will give you quick access to changing network settings, useful if you have no mouse… as per a workstation I’m working on right now.

Yes – I signed up to Becomeablogger.com – after reading the free road map PDF and watching the 10 free Howto videos.

Even tho I’ve been blogging since 2002, in the last 24 hours I’ve already learnt stuff. Plus I’ve got access to a private forum (ie no trolls) where like minded ‘students’ and experts like Yaro and Gideon answer questions.

What it means for my readers is improved quality from here on in.