Apple STILL doesn’t have an APA template for Pages?
I am back in school, and that means research papers, hooray. I am being smarter about it all these days though–templates and citation management software are definitely the way to go!
It would sure be nice if Apple would include templates for the major paper formats with their word processor. And all the ones I could find that others had posted were either not really templates, or got the formatting wrong.
So I created one based off of their research paper template that references the latest rules at Perdue. I couldn’t have done it so quickly if it weren’t for this great tutorial over at the Mac Law Students website, thanks for the handy write-up.
So, if you came here looking for a free APA template for Pages, try this one out and let me know if it works for you: APA template for Pages 09′.
Updated July 17, 2009: Fixed a few annoyances in the template (page titles were not repeating and hyphenation was set for document.)
Mozilla-Fu: Firefox Add-ons
The web is not what it used to be. Aside from being much richer, and useful. It is also much more annoying and dangerous. From seizure-inducing banner ads that distract attention away from actual content, to not being able to find any useful information amidst the onslaught of advertisements; there are many annoyances out there.
With more refined and effective client-side attacks emerging it is difficult to trust any website. From old-school Cross Site Scripting, to slightly newer Cross Site Request Forgery (I will be posting a how-to on XSRF attacks soon, so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed), to emerging threats like Gifar (Great video here, on how it works.) Any site visited may be an attack vector–even sites that you may consider trustworthy.
The intent here isn’t to sound all gloom and doom-ish, really. There are some things that can be done about it. No, there isn’t a cure-all panacea available, but along side the threats and annoyances there have been some cool tools developed to help combat the constant spew of vile coming from the web :)
There are two Firefox Add-ons that I cannot live without, seriously I get really annoyed trying to surf without them:
Noscript is great, it does a couple of things that are noteworthy. First, it helps prevent XSS and XSRF attacks. It doesn’t prevent every type of attack, but it helps immensly. Second, it stops Flash, Java, and Silverlight from running automatically–the applets can still be started manually so it isn’t exclusive of watching the latest viral video, but one noticable advantage is how quiet the web suddenly becomes once these applets have been stopped from automatic execution.
Adblock plus does what is sounds like. It works quite well–I wouldn’t even consider visiting a social-networking site without these two tools!
I Hack Charities.
Here is a cool group I came across at DC16:
Most of the current projects are in support of a school in Uganda, but I suspect that as a project it will take off and expand. They take donations of computer hardware, volunteer time, money and conference swag. All those notebooks, tote bags and pens/pencils that get picked up at conferences could make a real difference for a kid.