How many times have you copied something from a web site and found that you also copied the formatting that you really didn’t want?   Or you copied from one document to another and included unnecessary formatting.  It can be very frustrating at times, can’t it?  The standard method of copying (Control>C) and pasting (Control>V) brings along all the unwanted text formatting, including text with a different font size or colours, images, tables, borders or any other formatting that you don’t want or need.   

A simple utility called Plain Text allows you to follow the same copy>paste routine but you have options to paste unformatted text with a different keyboard shortcut key (Control>Windows). 

I have used Plain Text for quite a while now and really wouldn’t want to do without it – it saves so much time removing unwanted formatting.  Visit the Plain Text web site for more information on this must-have simple utility.  I highly recommend it.   If you find you need a bit more information on how to use this utility, click on the “Home” tab on their web site.  

Enjoy!

According to security experts you should choose a different password for each one, including numbers, letters, symbols and upper/lower case characters.  Oh, sure – you can remember that many different passwords – or even one password with extra symbols – did that = go before the 3 or was it a + sign?  Does that sound familiar?  And how much do you rely on the “forgot my password” please click here message?

We all probably do the same thing, use a unique password for sites that are extremely important to keep secure such as banking or other financial sites.  All the others share the same easy-to-reember string of letters and digits.  Or you may use the same forget-proof password for everything.  Unfortunately at some point even your dog will know that forget-proof password!  So, any hacker-in-training could figure that out without flexing a single geek muscle.   This will leave you very vulnerable to having your password hacked, especially at sites with less than stellar security to begin with.

Dealing with dozens of passwords is a pain, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.   The solution to trying to remember all those passwords is to come up with unique passwords for eeach site and store them in a safe – a software tool that remembers them, so you don’t have to.   But don’t forget you will have to remember the password for the “safe”.   And, no, don’t write your passwords down in the back of your address book.  That would probably be the first place a burglar would look for information after the refrigerator where you store your diamond necklace!

There are quite a few software programs available to use for password storage.  The most popular and it seems the most secure is Robo Form.  Another password security software you may want to look at is My One Log On.  This suite of tools is based on the web, not on your computer, so you can use it from anywhere.  If you have Norton 360, you do have a built-in password security system.  There are many other free utilities available, but with free, you do get what you pay for, so check out any free utilities very carefully before using them.   Open Source software is free and usually very safe, so you may want to take a look at KeePass Password Safe, a very powerful open-source program.

May I wish each and every one of you a very Happy New Year 2009. As we look forward to 2009, and think back to what has happened globally in 2008, may I wish for you:

Light at the end of the tunnel.

Joy in a world that seems so joyless.

Love and peace when hate and violence appear to be winning.

Grace in a rude world.

Kindness to those who least deserve it.

Goodwill and good news to counter the daily negative headlines in our newspapers.

Healing for the problems of the world.

We are reminded on a daily basis of the horrors of war, the plight of the less fortunate and the woes of the financial system, but in the midst of all this doom and gloom there is one message to remember – hope, love and kindness – these three above all will help us overcome the darkest days and difficult times we will be facing in 2009.

May there be peace and prosperity worldwide and love in all our hearts!

Have you ever gone into one of your fabric cupboards or drawers to find something and more or less shook your head in dismay, wondering how you had ever managed to store so much in one cupboard or on one shelf? Then you never do find what you are looking for as it isn’t where it should be! I had a bit of a cleaning frenzy recently where I decided it was time to tidy up cupboards, beginning with the kitchen cupboards, and then tackling the cupboards in my sewing room. It really was a monumental chore, as I worked on it in the evenings for nearly a three-week period. But they look so good now – and the burning question is how long before they go back to the pre-tidy state?

As part of the tidying frenzy, I decided to reline the cupboard shelves, which leads me to the “helpful hint”. Have you ever priced shelf paper? It is horrendously expensive! But if you purchase odd rolls of wallpaper, your relining project becomes very reasonable. And if you go to a thrift store to purchase your wallpaper, you go from reasonable to almost free! One roll of $2.99 wallpaper did all my kitchen shelves and a roll of 99 cent wallpaper did the sewing room shelves!

What else can you find in thrift stores? Buttons – purchase a designer blouse at a bargain price and use the buttons on a project of your own. And if you are very thrifty, use the blouse as a duster (that is if you can find time to do housework!) It seems that nowadays the buttons cost more than the fabric so this will really save you more money to spend on thread or embroidery software, won’t it?   Old patterns, belts, belt buckles, anything that can be taken apart and used for embroidery or crafts are all at your fingertips when you start wandering through your local thrift store.  The old adage “Another man’s junk …” may just become your treasure!

Canadians, it seems, are a very quiet patriots, and at times it can seem we aren’t proud to be Canadians, but look at a group of Canadians when the first bars of “O Canada” begin to play! Oh, yes, we are proud to be Canadians!  Our Canadian Thanksgiving is on October 13 this year, as always on the second Monday in October.

We have so much to be thankful for, that we should always remember what we do have, especially during the turbulent times we are going through right now: freedom, democracy, a great quality of life on our North American continent and so much more.

Canadian Thanksgiving celebrations, are the same as in many other countries on their Thanksgiving Day, a gathering of families and friends over the customary “family feast” of a turkey dinner. It is a time for sharing, loving and family reunions. The central idea behind the celebration is to be thankful for the past harvest and praying for the coming year.

The Canadian Thanksgiving Day came about because of a combination of traditions. Before the first Europeans arrived in North America, the farmers in Europe held celebrations at harvest time. The farm workers filled a curved goat’s horn with fruit and grain to give thanks for their harvest having been a good one. This horn was called a Horn of Plenty or a Cornucopia, and the farm workers who started a new life in Canada took this tradition with them.

In Newfoundland in 1578, the English navigator Martin Frobisher held a ceremony to give thanks for surviving the long journey.  He was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in Northern Canada named after him – Frobisher Bay. As other settlers arrived they continued these ceremonies.

In 1621, in what is now the United States of America, the Pilgrims celebrated their harvest in the New World. By the 1750′s settlers moving to Canada from America had taken this celebration to Nova Scotia. At the same time, French settlers arriving in Canada with the explorer Samuel de Champlain held thanksgiving feasts and shared their food with their Indian neighbours. After the Seven Years War ended in 1763 the citizens of Halifax held a special day of Thanksgiving.

At the time of the American Revolution, the people who remained loyal to the Government in England moved to Canada and spread the Thanksgiving celebration to other parts of the country. Other English settlers were also used to having a harvest celebration in their churches every Autumn.

In 1879 the Canadian Parliament declared the 6th November as a day of Thanksgiving and a national holiday. Over the years the date has changed with the third Monday in October being the most popular time. Finally on he 31st January 1957 the Canadian Parliament proclaimed that….

“A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God
For the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed…..
to be observed on the second Monday in October.”

History of the First Canadian Thanksgiving

The first Canadian thanksgiving was celebrated on 15th April 1872 to thank the recovery of King Edward VII from serious illness. The next thanksgiving was celebrated after a few years in 1879 on a Thursday.

Canada later had a turbulent time deciding the day of national Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was celebrated on a Thursday in November between 1879 and 1898. It was later celebrated on a Thursday in October between 1899 and 1904. Thereafter, it was celebrated on a Monday in the month of October. This was between the period 1908 -1921.

In later years, Thanksgiving came to be celebrated on ‘Armistice Day’. This was however, amended in 1931.

Finally on January 31, 1957, Parliament announced the second Monday in the month of October as the official “Thanksgiving Day”. It was declared as “a day of general Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed.”

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

These may not be the three “R’s” that you knew as a child in school, but one of the most important things you can do when learning about your embroidery machine or  accessories for the machine, find suggestions as to how to embroider a project you are working on, perhaps a good type of stabilizer to use for specific fabric, thread someone talks about that is reasonably priced or has a great range of colours or, for that matter, anything else embroidery-related, is to read and listen and learn.

Now, that seems a strange embroidery tip, doesn’t it? But just think what you can learn by listening to people at an embroidery club meeting. They talk about the stabilizer they used for a design, where they purchased that adorable design you saw , where they found a new line of embroidery thread at a great price, and so much more. And quite often this conversation is over a cup of coffee, so by listening carefully you are actually increasing your embroidery knowledge, aren’t you?

Now as for reading, read your manual, join an embroidery mail list and read the questions and answers on the list. There are many embroidery lists, whatever your interests are, be it embroidery, digitizing or any other subject, that will be just what you need.

Do a bit of research on the net by doing Google searches for specific questions. There is a lot of available information, but you must read, listen and search to find it.  If you are new to embroidery this will increase your comfort level with embroidery and if you feel you are old hat, you will still find that one little gem of an idea that you had never thought of!

There are several ways to learn about new software programs or operating systems, but the key to learning any program is research, research and more research! Where do you find the answers you need to learn how to use the program or operating system?

• You could read the manual, but at times the manuals are not written for the ordinary person.
• Check the software manufacturer’s web site for tutorials or links to teachers of the program.
• Join a program-specific mail list. A mailing list is an automatically distributed email message on particular topics going to certain individuals who sign up for a mail list. There are several mailing lists or groups available but the most popular mailing list is Yahoo Groups. * (see below).
• Search the web with a search-specific question for your software. An example would be “Embird – masking designs”. A quick Google search will have 2,570 hits on this subject, sorted by relevance. Changing the wording to “Masking Designs in Embird” results in 2,560 hits. Usually the first page will have the most relevant links.

How do Search Engines Work?

Search Engines for the web do not really search the World Wide Web directly. Each one searches a database of the full text of web pages automatically harvested from the billions of web pages out there residing on servers. When you search the web using a search engine, you are always searching a somewhat stale copy of the real web page. When you click on links provided in a search engine’s search results, you retrieve from the server the current version of the page.

Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders. These crawl the web, finding pages for potential inclusion by following the links in the pages they already have in their database. They cannot think or type a URL or use judgment to decide to go look something up and see what’s on the web about it because they are basically brainless and do not have the ability to do anything that is not automated. (computers are getting more sophisticated all the time, but they are still and possibly will always be brainless.)

If a web page is never linked to in any other page, search engine spiders cannot find it. The only way a brand new page – one that no other page has ever linked to – can get into a search engine is for its URL to be sent by some human to the search engine companies as a request that the new page be included. All search engine companies offer ways to do this.

After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for indexing. This program identifies the text, links, and other content in the page and stores it in the search engine database’s files so that the database can be searched by keyword and whatever more advanced approaches are offered, and the page will be found if your search matches its content.

Many web pages are excluded from most search engines by policy. The contents of most of the searchable databases mounted on the web, such as library catalogs and article databases are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. All this material is referred to as the Invisible Web or what you don’t see in search engine results.

(Information derived from U.C. Berkley Library)

Search Engines

Google currently is the winning web search engine and so people need to learn to use it really well.

Google alone not always sufficient, however. Less than half the searchable Web is fully searchable in Google. When comparing search engines, more than 80% of the pages in a major search engine’s database exist only in that database. Getting a second opinion or checking with another search engine is therefore often worth your time.

• Google
• Ask.com
• Yahoo! Search
• Windows Live Search
• Dogpile
• Alta Vista

* Mailing Lists or Groups
Yahoo Groups states that “It’s where people with a shared interest meet, get to know each other, and stay informed. Your group gives you instant access to shared message archives, photos and photo albums, group event calendars, member polls and shared links.”

To find a software specific group at Yahoo Groups, browse the list of topics or enter a search topic in the “Find a Yahoo! Group” search box. Enter the word “Machine Embroidery” and there is a list of 664 machine embroidery-specific groups.

If you want to find a list on a specific topic, enter that term into the search box. As an example, if you want to find a group for your embroidery machine, enter the name of the machine. One of the newest embroidery machines on the market right now is the Viking Diamond. Entering those words into the search box will give you five groups with only two software-specific to the Viking Diamond embroidery machine. Adding two more words to your search “Viking Diamond Embroidery Machine” narrows the search down to only two groups.

The most information on any group will be when that group is brand new. There will be many people anxious to learn and there will be a great deal of activity on the list, sharing tips, hints and information on the topic. If possible, join a group at the very start-up of the group.

If you are joining an already-established group, search the archives of the group messages, files, links and photos for previous entries or links. The message archives of any group can be a goldmine of information.

Keep postings to the group on topic and be as definitive as possible with your questions. Do not expect a mailing list to teach you how to use your software. Most groups are discussion groups, not a free tutorial on your software. You will learn a lot about different aspects of your software or the subject for which you joined the group, but a mail list will not take the place of a software-specific tutorial.

Before asking basic questions, search the archives. A simple question may have been answered several times and you will find the answers in the archives.

Be pro-active in the group. By that, I mean don’t join to just take, these groups are give and take, so try to give an answer as well as ask an answer.

Now that you have all this information at your fingertips, you will have your own “encyclopedia ” available at any time on almost any subject.

With the align tool, you have the ability to “perfectly” align two or more designs vertically, horizontally or in both directions with several sub-commands as to the alignment. The most important thing to remember, though, is that the align tool will be grayed out until two or more designs are selected.

• Open Embird Editor.
• Open or merge two or more designs or add text to a design in the workspace.
• Select all design objects.
• Click on the align tool, fifth tool from the bottom on the left toolbar.
• A new pop-up screen will give you several options to align the designs, as shown below.

• Choose the horizontal and/or vertical alignment for the designs that you wish to use.  Click on ok and you have “perfectly” aligned your designs.
• Click on file/save as, saving the design with a new name.   You are now ready for embroidery.

Hint:  Remember that if you want to change the alignment you can click on edit/undo or Control/Z to eliminate the change you have made to the design.  In Embird you have fifteen “undoes”.

Enjoy Embird!

The winner of the free Font Engine plug-in for Embird is Jackie Sage.   Congratulations, Jackie, I know you are going to enjoy Font Engine.

Jackie’s name was picked from the list of those who entered the contest ,using a random number generator at Random.org.  She was thrilled to win and told me that she had been collecting and saving dingbats for quite a while, hoping to be able to purchase Font Engine fairly soon.  She won’t have to wait any longer to enjoy Font Engine.

Thank you to Dusan and the Embird team for providing this free plug-in for Embird and thank you to everyone who did enter the contest.   There will be more contests in the future, so be sure to check back often.

Mary Pozdnekoff

Congratulations, Mary and I know you will enjoy My Thread Box.

Thank you to all who entered the contest and be sure to keep tuned for further give-aways. I am very grateful to the people who provide these products to me so I can share my enjoyment of them with the lucky winners. I am sure you will enjoy hearing about what the next give-away will be!