Robert Acosta, President Helping Hands for the Blind (818) 998-0044 www.helpinghands4theblind.org From: dan Thompson [mailto:dthompson5@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 7:53 AM To: dan Thompson Subject: Cooking with a flat-topped stove, and quickly adjusting windows 7 volume from anywhere, Dan's tip for Tuesday August 19 2014 *I. Cooking with a flat-topped stove Posted by Aaron Cannon - July 01, 2011 - Updated July 05, 2011 When we first moved into our home, I was quite disappointed to learn that our stove is electric and not gas. Even worse, the stove has a perfectly smooth glass top, so it is impossible to tell where the burners are without sight, or so I thought. I've found two ways to successfully center a pan on the burner. The first and simplest way simply requires that you turn on the burner that you want to use to its lowest setting and you should then be able to touch the stove surface with quick light touches to determine where the edges of the burner are. But what if you need to move or replace a pan when the burner is already very hot? I find I can still use the technique of feeling the heat of the burner without actually touching the stove. What I do is move my hand around next to the pan a couple inches above the stove top and feel which side of the pan is hottest. Then, I move the pan a couple inches in that direction. I repeat these steps until the heat coming off the stove all around the pan is fairly consistent. The other method for making sure the pan is centered on the burner is to place marks on the stove. However, I didn't mark our stove directly on the burner itself for two reasons: (1) I don't know of anything to use that is sufficiently heat resistant and (2) if I put dots on the burner, it would unbalance anything I set there. Actually, there's a third reason, and that is that my wife would probably wash it off. So, what I did is place two dots on the sides of the stove in a position such that if you placed two rulers straight out from the dots, they would intersect right at the center of the burner. I can then use these dots to line up the pan. There are undoubtedly other ways to accomplish centering a pan on a flat-top stove, but these are the techniques that work for me. *II. Easy Steps to Quickly Adjust Windows 7 Volume Control by Brad Dunse And adapted by Dan Thompson http://blindhow.com/posts/687#content So you've got Windows 7, a keyboard without a master volume control, a button that isn't too handy, or a laptop with some obscure function key; and you're fed up with hunting down the Sound applet in a panic just to mute, turn up, or turn down your music before and after the phone rings. What if you never had to go through all that search box typing, tabbing, clicking, and other nonsense just to make your adjustments, but rather one hot key combo that let's you arrow up or down as needed? Well here's your answer. Windows 7 Volume Control Keyboard Shortcut 1. First you must copy the line below to the clipboard for later pasting in to a shortcut edit field. a. Using a mouse, highlight the line below that starts with windir. Then click the right mouse button and click copy. windir\System32\SndVol.exe -f 49825268 b. Using a keyboard with a screenReader, place the cursor at the beginning of the line that starts with windir. Do this by arrowing down to that line and pressing the home key. Next press shift plus the end key. Finally press control plus the letter c. windir\System32\SndVol.exe -f 49825268 2. Right click on an empty area on the desktop. Alternatively when using a screenreader, from the keyboard You can do this by a. Press windows key plus the letter m. The cursor is placed on the desktop. b. Hold down the control key (left or right, it doesn't matter), and tap the spacebar until hearing "not selected." 3. From the keyboard, press the application key or shift plus f10 followed by the letter w until hearing "new." If there is only icon starting with w in this menu, the submenu will automatically open. However, if there is an additional icon starting with w, you will need to press enter when reaching your choice of "new" as in this instance. b. Next press the letter s for "shortcut." If using a mouse and the pointer is currently on that blank space mentioned above, click on "new." Then click on "shortcut." 4. In the location area, paste the clipboard's contents by: a. Using a mouse, click the right mouse button and click on paste. b. From the keyboard, press control plus the letter v. 5. Tab to the "next" button and press enter 6. In the name area, type in the word volume or whatever you wish to call this shortcut and then hit enter. This will put an icon on your desktop. Now, to assign a shortcut key to the desktop icon, do the following. 1. Focus on the newly named volume icon. 2. Press ALT+Enter to pull up the icon's properties window 3. Tab to the shortcut area and press the letter v or whatever letter or numeral you wish to use for this shortcut. Windows will insert the keys control plus alt in that window. So do not be concerned if when pressing the letter v and the screenreading software says "control plus alt plus v", or if sighted, you see the keys of control plus alt automatically added. 4. Tab to okay and hit enter. The shortcut is now created. To access volume control from anywhere, press alt plus control plus the letter v. If you wish not to hear that anoying ding ding as the volume is changed, do the following: 1. Go to Sound in your control panel or press the start button, type sound in the search box. Then arrow to it and hit enter. 2. Press control plus tab until reaching the sounds tab. If using amouse, click into the sounds tab. 3. Tab until you find the list of events which sounds are assigned, and fine Windows default by arrowing up/down. 4. Tab again until you get to the sound assigned to Windows default, then press the home key, or arrow to "none" at the top of the list. 5. Tab to OK and hit enter. Wala! Note: Assigning no sound to the Windows default is system wide, but generally it is a non-important sound notification. Now, when you want to adjust your music, simply press CTRL Shift V, or whatever key combo you assigned it, it will pop up right on the slider ready for you to make adjustments. Use the up and down arrows, Page Up and Page Down, or your End and Home keys to make your adjustments. Just press Escape to close it. The above will also adjust your screen reader if it is also assigned to your computers sound card or head phones. You can always consult your screen reader's adjustments or help files to assign it to a different device such as a headphone or second sound card, that way you can adjust your music coming from your spea kers and not your screen reader in your headphones. "Prayer is not a check request asking for things from God. It is a deposit slip - a way of depositing God's character into our bankrupt souls." -Dutch Sheets, To subscribe to Dan's tips or dedaily devotions, send an email to dthompson5@xxxxxxxxx with either "subscribe dan's tips" or "subscribe daily devotion" in the subject. This message has been scanned by Norton 360