I was reading this old series of posts on the whole Office Ribbon bar design (quite a fascinating from a developer perspective). I came across the comments where quite a few have ranted on the 'paste unformatted text' as being more preferred than paste. I too used to be in that same group but that was before I came across this whole section dedicated to configuring copy-paste under the Advanced tab in Word options. Here you can configure the default paste action. For keyboard freaks there's always the Alt+H, V, S to get to the Paste dialog.

While we're on the topic of Copy/Paste. Do yourself a favor and install ClipX, you have absolutely no idea what your missing.

Outlook 2003 had a nice feature that allowed you to create a signature from an HTML file. This went missing in Outlook 2007 and a google search for Outlook 2007 signatures brings up a number of posts with people asking for help on how to do this.

ScottH posted a tip that showed you how to do it but it involved editing an obscure html file, the location of which varied from XP to Vista.

The solution is quite simple really and left me scratching my head as to why I didn't think of it before. All you need to do this is the humble copy and paste.

Using a browser open up the html file that you want to embed as your signature, highlight everything and copy/paste it to the signature window in Outlook 2007.

Here is a step-by-step on how to do this.

1. Create your signature using Google Pages. Browse to http://pages.google.com (create an account and log-in if you don't have one)

2. Click on the Image button and upload the image that you want to include in your signature. Format the rest of your signature and Publish it.

3. In the resulting page, highlight any part of the page that you want to include in your signature and Copy it.

4. Switch to Outlook 2007. In a new message, on the Message tab, in the Include group, click Signature, and then click Signatures.

6. On the E-mail Signature tab, click New. Type a name for the signature, and then click OK.

7. In the Edit signature box, paste in the signature that you copied from Google Pages.  

I've been playing with uploading videos today and MSN Video seems to outshine the other when it comes to uploading as well as viewing video.

The biggest strength being the uploader that comes built in to Windows Live Photo Gallery. With YouTube you need to wait for the whole video to upload which can take quite a lot of time, if not you need to muck around with some compression program and fine-tune the settings before doing the upload. I don't have the patience for that.

The Photo Gallery uploader seems to compress the file as it uploads making it extremely fast.

Then Windows Live Writer makes it as easy as Insert->Video to allow you to pick the video that you uploaded.

If like me you frequently send money back to Sri Lanka, it's important to know how to play the game.

You can save yourself some dollars or rupees by knowing if things are going up or down, here's where x-rates.com comes to help.

Pick the two currencies from where your sending and receiving and hey presto you have a graph.

I for one will be waiting a couple more days before my next transfer.

Oh and I nearly forgot, the guys at Ceylinco Fast Cash give a really good service when sending money home. My last transfer went through like a breeze, in less than one hour, I deposited some money in Sydney and my brother withdrew from Colombo. Both of us were SMS'd every step of the way by their automated system.

Plus if you use there service about 6 times they provide a number of free benefits including a "doctor on call and other medical services for your loved ones in Sri Lanka".

If you have Vista running try this. Open an Explorer window, move your mouse to the top right left corner (thanks Kavinda) and double-click.

What happens next?

I used to use the debug feature in Query Analyzer when working with SQL Server 2000 quite a lot. There were a number of time when I did want to do this in SQL Server 2005 but couldn't quite figure it out. I looked high and low on SQL Server Management Studio to no avail.

The reason? Debugging was moved out of SQL Server Management Studio and into Visual Studio.

Read all about it in this article by Scott Mitchell.

Did you know that you can view all the images on a site by searching for site:<url> e.g. site:merill.net. Works on Google Image search as well.

Most IM clients minimize to the system tray which becomes a problem for keyboard freaks like me. I need to use the mouse to get to the window.

Enter Windows + B and you can use the arrow keys to choose the program and hit enter.

Chandana is bitching about Dialog's so called Live Updates on 777.

I've found Sky's 'Cricket Live Scores' to be pretty reliable on my really lousy phone and I only spend a few cents each time I get an update.

If you find the url too long to type:

1. Go to google.com/m 
2. Search for 'cricket'
3. Sky is second on the list (BBC is #1 maybe they are better)

Remember to add 'Cricket Live Scores' to your bookmark and you wouldn't need to search each time.

I'm always on the lookout for productivity tips that help me be a better myself.

I used to love Steve Pavlina but most of his posts in the last six months or so have been quite bland.

Enter Scott Young. This article on doubling your reading rate is good. I'm hoping is other stuff is the same.

Aside: Moving to a new house (my very own one!), the baby and some other stuff have been disrupting my usual flow. Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me again...