Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with objects

How to "select all" drawing objects in Word?

roxie110 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:46:13 -0800

Is it possible to "select all" drawing objects at one time in Word 2000 (in order to move them together) rather than holding down the SHIFT key and selecting them individually? I need to add titles to the axes of a graph that's a picture embedded in a Word document. Right now, the margins of the picture don't allow room for this. I can adjust the bottom margin of the picture but when I try to adjust the left margin, the graph just moves to the left, so I can't make room for the axis title that way.

The solution I've come up with, since I can't seem to enlarge the canvas of the picture (does anyone know how?), is to move all the elements of the graph to the left. Currently, I have to select each element using the SHIFT key, then move them together, which is time-consuming (there are TONS of little "pieces") and can lead to errors. I'd love to be able to select all elements at once and move them at once. I thought "Group" might work, but you still have to select individually. Help!

(PS--If more recent versions of Word provide a solution, I'd love to hear it.)

What ARE these?

millipede — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:23:44 -0800

Please help us identify these confounding objects! Photos inside. Here are pictures of the confounding objects:

a box with rotating rods

a small chain-hook thing

a larger chain-hook thing.

They are from my boyfriend's grandmother's garage in Corpus Christi, Texas. She has passed away, so we can't ask her what they are. My boyfriend thinks they are from her parents or her grandparents, who lived in southern Texas, possibly on a ranch or a farm.

The box is especially confounding.

Any ideas?

GiftFilter: must-have objects for a year-long trip

XiBe — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:09:08 -0800

What are the must-have objects for a year-long trip in the World's south-east (India, Asia, Australia). So, my brother is about to embark for his year-long trip (previous questions) on a shoestring (15€/day, roughly $20), and I'd like to buy him something truly useful to take with him, something that he hasn't thought about yet.

He already has a good list of usual items (french, in english): Swiss-army knife, mosquito net, dynamo headlamp, ziplock bags, and then some.

Requisites: small and lightweight (has to take it around the world), cheap (can replace it easily if lost), very useful/needed/helpful...

Please give me your ideas, hivemind!

Help me understand object oriented programming, please

saraswati — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:50:07 -0800

I'm looking for an introduction to the concepts of object oriented programming. My goal is to be able to learn Objective C for Mac OS X development. I've done a lot of procedural programming/scripting both personally and professionally using languages like Perl, PHP, VBScript, etc. I understand the fundamental concepts of computer programming but OOP has always escaped me. Are there any good primers on the subject, preferably (but not necessarily) targeted to new Objective C developers?

Blue Vase Mystery

zenpop — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:10:49 -0800

One final attempt. Anyone know where I can find this blue vase? Or a vase that's similar?

I've spent months trawling different online merchants that carry crystal and 'fine' art objects for the home -- from Orrefors to Target -- to no avail. So, finally, I've come to the MetaMinds collective.

Here's the object.

Does anyone have a clue?

The mimetic and narrative capacities of artefacts

0bvious — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:58:58 -0800

I am interested in the mimetic and narrative capacities of artefacts, how cultural remnants transmit information through time and how meaning is translated once an artefact is re-appropriated or examined from a new perspective. I have several avenues of study at the moment (a list in extended explanation), but would like some more ideas. Areas of critical theory, linguistics, evolutionary psychology and poetics are all relevant. I want to show that the narratives and metaphors which can be understood as the architecture of our brains are somehow mimetically present in the physical, cultural and linguistic artefacts which surround us.

Here are a few of the readings I have gathered so far:

- Anthropological and evolutionary studies into the nature and transmission of narrative by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama (in particular her essay 'Reverse-Engineering Narrative' from the book 'The Literary Animal').
- Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Discourse in the Novel' (where he talks about language as having 'genres' or 'tastes' which can transmit as much meaning as the words themselves).
- Michael Shanks and Lynn Hershman Leeson's conversation at Seed Magazine on 'Presence' in art and archaeology and how new technologies affect it.
- Susan A. Stewart's book 'On Longing'.
- Gaston Bachelard's book 'The Poetics of Space'

Thanks in advance!

Soon we'll be Living the Dream, but first: How to move an arcade game cabinet up the stairs?

fiercecupcake — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:03:48 -0800

What is the best way to transport a an arcade game cabinet (Ms. Pac-Man, if you must know) across town and then up the stairs? My partner likesuchasand and I are going to look at a Ms. Pac-Man arcade game tonight, and we are pretty sure we want it. One of the things I'm most worried about, though, is how we will get it across town (rent a U-Haul? Then how do you strap it securely?) and up the stairs to our second-floor apartment. Without breaking it.

The stairs are your typical apartment complex stairs: poured concrete in a metal sort of frame, with metal edges. Is this even possible? Am I trying to build the pyramids? Does my solution involve blankets, plywood, rope, what?

Assume several strong people, who will be rewarded with much beer. Thank you!

Does psychology provide an argument in favour of object-oriented programming?

primer_dimer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 08:58:35 -0800

Does psychology provide an argument in favour of object-oriented programming? Over the past year I've been learning, and teaching, object-oriented programming (Java). All my previous experience was in scripting languages. It occurs to me that the good thing about OOP is that it fits in well with the human instinct to understand the world in terms of entities/actors (objects) performing actions. It seems very natural to describe complex systems in this way and we do it all the time - "the computer is trying to connect to the internet". Similarly, when discussing code - "this line of code tells the button to change its colour to red". I've never studied psychology, but I'm guessing that this tendency (for people to think about things in this way) is probably a well-known phenomenon. Has anyone thought/written about programming in this way? I'd be fascinated to read any articles.

Curious assortment of objects

nthdegx — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 02:37:49 -0800

Can you cast any light on the meaning or purpose of this arrangement of objects I came across under a rail bridge? The words in chalk read "In the end no one lives".

Bullets fired into the air - a health hazard?

Glow Bucket — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:53:35 -0800

Don't bullets fired into the air hurt or kill people when coming down? I haven often wondered what happens to those bullets that get fired into the air say, as a warning or in celebration of something by gun-toting folk. They must come down somewhere and even if they are not as fast coming down as being fired they must surely hurt if not kill, no?

Are there any accounts of people getting hurt or killed as a result of shots fired in the air, or am I getting this wrong and they simply bounce off of heads?

Well designed objects

vincentm — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 07:33:43 -0800

Where can I find other webpages like this one ? What blogs present other nice items (in terms of usability).

why use business objects?

taumeson — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 06:06:18 -0800

From a technical point of view, why use business objects during development? I understand the everyday reasons behind separating business logic from presentation logic. I even agree, for the most part. But technically, you're creating more work for yourself creating business objects, and it's often just as convoluted in the presentation layer dealing with your business objects as it would be dealing directly with the data. So, don't give me reasons involving OO, or making multi-development projects easier, or the same "it's a good idea because...." stuff I get everywhere. Give me hard reasons, or justify why it's a good idea to separate the presentation and business layers.

Bulk printing under windows xp/2000?

ph00dz — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 08:15:29 -0800

How the heck can I bulk print thousands of mixed documents under Windows 2000? Ok... so here's my situation: as part of our production workflow, I've got to print about 1,000 documents every day. They're all word or html, sitting in a single directory.

I wrote a ghetto-ass php script that opens the docs using com objects within Word, but that seems to working worse and worse as the load increases.

Anyway, anyone have any tips of printing this type of stuff? Ideally, we'd just use Word, but it seems to get stuck open sometimes -- particularly when I'm printing html docs from word -- and that just backs up the entire queue.

I can't use the standard "select all," right click, then "print" feature either... it just can't handle the rock.

Identify this geometric novelty toy

Faze — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:09:55 -0800

What do you call those three-dimensional geometric novelties, consisting of eight cubes, joined to each other at one edge to form one large cube, whose pieces can be flipped around to display different images on the exterior of the large cube? What is the history of this delightful object? What are the geometric priniciples behind it?

There are these odd metal objects my office mate keeps finding on the road

pissfactory — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:00:13 -0800

There are these odd metal objects my office mate keeps finding on the road (+) in parking lots, along roadsides. they quickly rust and are flat on one, worn or bevelled on the other.
th entire photographed collection was found within a block. we are at a university. there is a bus stop along that route. here are the pictures:
http://www.artistportfolio.ws/tmp/

In OOP, when to use a Collection of Objects with Properties vs. one Object containing a Collection for each Property?

badstone — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 13:23:08 -0800

OOPFilter - How do you decide when to use a Collection of Objects with Properties vs. one Object containing a Collection for each Property? [mi] That is, when you are going to have a bunch of things with some set of properties, how do you decide whether to:

1. Make an object with the properties in question as its fields, and then create an collection of instances of that object for each of the things in your dataset.

VS.

2. Make on object with a collection for each property, and have the properties of a particular item in your dataset spread across the different collections, at the same index in each collection.

Very simple example: say I have data for a scatterplot. I could either make a Point object with a field for x and y, and create an array of Point instances, or I could have a Points object with an array for x values and an array for y values.