Tze Chuen’s Weblog

Service Pack 1 for Office 2008 was just released recently. However, many people (including me) have experienced the infinite looping setup assistant problem. Basically, you can’t get any of the Office Apps working. If you try launching any of the Office apps, it would bug you with the Setup Assistant over and over again.

So here’s how to fix it:

Make sure you have your CD Key ready.

Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (you can use the Finder’s Go => Go To Folder… feature, just cut and paste this into the box)

Delete Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist

then Navigate to /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/

delete OfficePID.plist

You will be asked for the CD Key the next time you launch any of the Office apps. But that’s about it, it should fix the “Setup assistant loop” problem. ;)

Recently, a friend asked me if there was a way to access IE-only sites on his Mac. Off the top of my head, there are two options - one is to use IE itself thru virtualization methods and secondly is to spoof your User Agent in Firefox.

Every browser has its own designated user agent that tells the website what browser you’re using. Therefore, you can actually trick the website to think that you’re actually using a different browser such as Internet Explorer.

Enter User Agent Switcher - this Firefox add-on does just that.

This add-on is extremely easy to use. First, download it here

After installing, you will see the option to switch between different user agents in Tools => User Agent Switcher

As you can see, there are 3 different user agents to choose from. The add-on itself is also easy to use.

Here, using IPChicken to check my user agent and indeed the add-on spoofed it to IE7. Neat stuff.

This tip works on any computer that has Firefox. Doesn’t matter if it’s running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD etc.

Hope you found much use with this tip. Cheers ;)

Wanna do a quick Youtube search? How about a quick Google translation for “Good morning” in Spanish? Wanna quickly shrink your subway-long url’s with TinyURL? These are just a few of 600+ search engine functions that can be done with Quicksilver.

All you need to do is go Quicksilver => Catalog => Modules

Make sure “Web Searches (from docs.blacktree.com)” is ticked.

Enjoy the power of the web in your hands. As you can see you can even quickly track your UPS package with Quicksilver. What? That’s amazing.

What’s your favourite Quicksilver trick?

If you would like to know what Quicksilver is all about, check out my Quicksilver introduction here.

A reader recently sent me an email asking how can she watermark her artwork with free or cheap software. After having done a quick google search, I’ve found a software that’s both free and easy to use.

Introducing Kigo Image Converter 2.0, this program allows to resize and watermark your images in a few easy steps.

First of all, download the app here.

Upon launching the application, drag all your images into the white box area of the app. Choose the ‘General’ tab under ‘Convert Settings’ and choose your desired Output format (or leave it at default as jpg). Choose your output folder - this is where your watermarked images are gonna be put in.

Choose the ‘Watermark’ tab. Choose image and then Browse… and choose your watermark file. Then choose the preferred alignment (Top left,right, bottom left,right, center etc). After you’re done setting up, click the CONVERT button.

Your watermarked/resized images should be in the folder that you’ve assigned the app to save in.

Hope you find much use with this tech tip. Feel free to email me any geeky or techie questions. :)

A lot of people ask me if Mac’s are actually good and do I recommend them on getting one. I would tell them it depends on a few factors such as do they wanna play the latest and greatest games.

I created a simple flow chart to help you make your decision. I hope you find much use with it. Enjoy!

Any comments or questions are welcome :)