Weekly tech tip #13 - searching for stuff

Dear colleagues,

Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your searches.

Quite often it is useful to add “logical operators” and “specifiers” to your searches.

Here are some tips for searching in your email:

If you want to find emails containing specific words, put the operator AND between them, so, if you want to find one of my tech tips about Chrome, you could search for Weekly AND Chrome – note that the operator should be capitalized.

Other operators include: OR, NOT, >, <, and =

If you want an exact search, you can put the phrase inside quotation marks, so searching for “weekly tech” will find all the emails with exactly that pair of words in them.

You can use specifiers to narrow things down further. As an example if you want to find all the emails from Michael Jackson (God forbid!), you can use the following: from:michael jackson and Outlook will find all the emails from me!

Other specifiers include:

Subject: - example-  subject:weekly

Received: -example- received:1/20/2016 (unfortunately outlook likes the American date system!)

And many more…

You can combine these in various ways so if I wanted to find emails from Andy about field trips, I could use:  from:rodford field

This link is to a cheat sheet of all the main Outlook search functions: https://goo.gl/b47T6H

Most of these search tips also work in Google searches, but there are even more suggestions here:

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/134479?hl=en&ref_topic=3081620

PS, I was able to see four of the five naked-eye visible planets on Sunday morning. Mercury is very hard to see, requiring a clear horizon.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Weekly tech tip #12 - stuff.smus.ca (and morning planets!)

Did you know that many network resources at SMUS can be accessed by typing the short address into the URL bar of your browser? I see many users going to the SMUS home page and then “mousing around” to find the resource they need. Once you have typed these addresses in once, they will tend to autofill as you type making things even faster.

An example is email.smus.ca. If you just type email.smus.ca into the URL space at the top of the screen, it will take you straight to the SMUS webmail login page.

Here is a partial list of places you can go to using these shortcuts:

email.smus.ca – SMUS email

docs.smus.ca – SMUS google docs

sds.smus.ca – SMUS SDS system

moodle.smus.ca – SMUS student Moodle site

staffmoodle.smus.ca – SMUS Moodle site for staff resources

intranet.smus.ca – shortcut to the SMUS intranet site – probably the best collection of useful links for faculty

bigfiles.smus.ca – shortcut to the location where we can make large files available (instructions http://bigfiles.smus.ca/what%20is%20this%20for.txt )

alumni.smus.ca – SMUS alumni page

archives.smus.ca – SMUS archives

gallery.smus.ca – SMUS photo gallery on the web

library.smus.ca – SMUS library pages

mahara.smus.ca – SMUS eportfolio site

papercut.smus.ca – Site to access information about your print jobs (you can also remotely upload pdfs to print)

On the earth science/astronomy front, if we have a clear morning later this month with a good view to the east and south, you can expect to see all 5 naked-eye visible planets. Check out http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury for more information.

January 2016 guide to the five visible planets | Astronomy ... earthsky.org A great drama unfolds in the predawn sky throughout January, 2016. By the month's end, all five visible planets will appear simultaneously before dawn.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Weekly tech tip #11 - I am locked out of my account

One of the most common problems that the IT folks deal with is when users are locked out of their account.

The simplest initial solution is to turn wifi off on all your devices and wait 45 minutes for the account to automatically unlock.

The most common cause of “lockout” is a device with an old, expired, wifi or other password stored. You can find instructions for changing your password(s) on the Intranet here: https://intranet.smus.ca/submenu.asp?Num=9

I recommend making a list of all the devices and passwords that you need to change.

If you get one of the “SMUS Wireless/Dorm Wired Authentication Failed” emails, it is most likely because one of your devices is using an expired password. Again, the solution is to make sure that all the passwords are current.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Weekly tech tip # 10 - tab, tab, tabbing away

Happy New Year, here is another tech tip (as well as some earth science stuff below…)

When you are on a web page filling out a form, one of the most efficient ways to move from one box to the next is to use the tab key. I often see people typing in their username and then using the mouse to click in the password box when a “tab” would do the same thing more easily – see below. The tab key basically moves from one box to the next and should work on any web page.

On the earth science front, I am happy to report that, as of around today, sunrise will finally start getting earlier again (http://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/victoria). Also, this past Saturday, we were at the closest point in the Earth’s orbit to the sun (perihelion). At that point we were about 5000 km closer to the Sun that we will be on July 4^th! (http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/perihelion-aphelion-solstice.html) .

Many of you must have felt the M4.7 earthquake last Tuesday night that was located just south of Sidney Island. http://earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent_eq/2015/20151230.0739/index-eng.php. It was the strongest shaking that I have felt in Victoria since the 2001 Seattle/Tacoma earthquake. The shaking lasted for around 10 seconds and a few things fell off shelves!

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Academic Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC