Concatenate cells in OpenOffice & LibreOffice
I have fairly simple needs when I do spreadsheets. Concatenation and Sums are about all I do. I’ve had trouble with concatenation before. What is concatenate? It’s when you have cells like “Mary” and “Watson” and you need to push the data in those cells together inside a separate cell to be “Mary Watson” combined. Why? I don’t know, maybe you’re doing a mail merge and putting “Dear ‘Mary Watson’ you owe us back debt. You need the space between her names for her to take you seriously.
Here’s how it’s done in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. You have the spreadsheet set up and you select the cell where you want to have the combined name. Either type the equal sign in the cell or click in the formula bar.
=CONCATENATE(D2;" ";E2)
Notice the two semi-colons right? This was always hanging me up. I kept getting Err508 or Err509 or something when I’d do this. Thankfully a little playing around worked. You want to know what else? LibreOffice can use commas instead of semi-colons in this formula, but OpenOffice cannot. Also there’s a shorter way to do this too. You don’t need the word CONCATENATE or the parentheses. And you can use & instead of semi-colons. Short and sweet.
=D2&" "&E2)
What else? Well just in case you haven’t done this, if you have a big spreadsheet, you can duplicate your formula where it will replicate itself properly and use the correct cell numbers. To do this, you just select the cell with the formula and click on the lower right square dot and drag downward as far as you need. Your formula will regenerate properly for the rows beneath it.
February 13, 2011 at 12:50 am | computers, learning | No comment
Google recommends religion
A little experiment tonight with Google’s search-as-you-type recommendation engine. These are all too harsh in my opinion and they are certainly in no particular order.
February 7, 2011 at 2:45 am | humor, interesting | No comment
How to link to a GPS coordinate on a webpage using geo url
Since smart phones are all smartypants these days, many of them have preloaded map system or are hooked to Google Maps. And with the popularity of mobile sites, it’s nice to think we can share our locations with people to quickly find us on GPS. I discovered through a few sources that you can actually link in a webpage or email a link to GPS coordinates. This is pretty cool and I think has some use cases.
“Hey, come to our office open house party where we have hidden buried treasure! [inserts multi-line street address]“
Now my Nexus One is smart enough to detect some addresses on a page or email and send to Google Maps. But that doesn’t mean all phones are, nor does it mean that Google Maps is the recommended GPS app. If you were writing an email or a website that could help assist someone finding your place, why not link right to the location for GPS as well as typing out your address? And for good measure, underneath that you could link to the Google or Bing Map as well to give them choices. OR you could even use a QR code to link to it from a paper flyer. (Yeah you like that idea don’t you!)
Here’s how you write a GEO URI in HTML for use on a webpage:
<a href="geo:38.62464092991612, -90.18476128578186">go here</a>
But wait, that’s a fine bit of knowledge however, how does one get the coordinates to a location in the first place?
Good question! Is it something in Google maps you can easily get? Unfortunately it’s not an “out-of-the-box” feature of Google Maps, but I’m going to make it simple to get GPS coordinates using a quick Javascript hack on the Google maps webpage.
- Find your location on Google Maps, right-click on the map and choose “Center on this location”
- Paste this code snippet into the browsers address bar (all by itself) and press enter.
javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter())); - You’ll get a popup that returns the GPS coordinates: (38.62464092991612, -90.18476128578186)
- Remove the parentheses and construct the geo url as I did above.
<a href="geo:38.62464092991612, -90.18476128578186">go here</a>
That was the full HTML code. If you were writing an email to people, you’d want to write in Rich Text mode and then do a hyperlink to just the geo:38.62464092991612, -90.18476128578186 part.
So let’s try it together shall we? Crank start your mobile browser and… Here goes nothing!.. GPS LINK GO!!!
Note: If you tried to click that GPS link from your PC right now, it will likely fail because your home PC / laptop doesn’t have a GPS program to launch. So come back here with your phone and try it when you get a moment.
More Information / Sources
GEO URI Wikipedia Article
Javascript Google Map Coordinate Hack
Dive Into HTML5 Geolocation
January 16, 2011 at 5:54 am | learning, webdev | No comment
My plans for 2011
I’ve had a great 2010. I watched my beautiful son in his first year, did some home improvements, had a lot of fun riding my bike. Went to Japan again. But I also have a lot of empty spaces. Well intentioned things left undone. And I want you to know, I write this up not because I think I need to somehow be more of a person to be worthy or loved, but because life is short and a little more pressure and alignment with my life goals is a great thing.
So here’s my list of things to crank on for this year under my chosen categories.
Health, Fitness and BMX
I used to run pretty frequently, and I did run a couple miles maybe 2 weeks ago, but I’ve started to let that slide. Mostly because winter kills my motivation. Luckily there’s a new image of motivation helping me during this winter… This.
It’s a photo of a guy in Belarus, a republic in eastern Europe. I don’t need to explain what’s going in this pic do I? Not only does this make me laugh thinking about it. It’s also an example of some of the eccentric badassery in the world that is unfortunately in short supply around me. So I’ve got my plan to do winter runs. Do them because they suck, but also because they are a small form of badassery. Much more rewarding afterwards than during. (Well except for the part where the thick air made you taste like you’re coughing up blood for 2 hours afterwards.)
BMX. My passion is Flatland BMX, no doubt. Running is fun, but nothing beats coasting on the front wheel of my flatland bike, spinning, switches, scuff tricks. I’m extremely excited to say I ramped up my riding in 2010 to levels not seen since college. But it’s not enough. I’ve got a few stunts to pick up and practice from that I demand from myself in 2011. Not that most people care, but making gains in this sport matter to me, even if I know I’ll likely never be a Matt Wilhelm, Simon O’Brien or Matthias Dandois. (Video links of those guys in action) I believe that to get good, you have to go out with a mission every day, an agenda of what to accomplish. Usually I figure that out once I get there, or I’m just on fire in my mind, something burning to be learned that I’ve been visualizing over and over. That needs to continue and be exploited. I’ve had a hard time riding in this weather, so getting around that problem is next. By warmer weather, I intend to participate in more shows just like I did in 2010.
Knowledge
I want to read one book a month. That’s reasonable right? There are a few classics I need to get to as well as some newer books that I own that have been untouched. Couple classics to mention, Great Gatsby, Art of War, and biographys of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Some newer ones to enjoy, Where ideas come from, Hitch-22 and something by Seth Godin.
I also want to write a book this year. Doesn’t need to be awesome, it just needs to be a contribution. I think I want it to be a book to my son, so far anyway. And it can include pictures / photos or not. Actually I’ve already started this book, but it’s not had a direction. That’s all it needs, focus and continuous contribution.
The last part of knowledge I’m stealing from a writer, Steven Johnson. In a book he wrote (and I’ve read this before.) he said most of the great idea people always had their notebook with him to record their ideas, document their experiences and work and their findings. I’ve started to do this already. It’s no masterpiece, but I found the book I like and filling it in has been helpful. I feel better knowing that interesting quotes and observations are slowly making their way into my little archive. I’ve always wanted a book like that to pick up 40 years later to say “wow” this is a fun little legacy keepsake. I’m not gonna lie here, basically I want my own grail diary from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I’ve always wanted one of those. Or my own DaVinci notebook.
Freelance
The bottom line on this topic my freelance work needs a reboot. I’ve tired of my web company name, SmickWorks. Too many company use the word “Works” in the name and I need something that feels a little more fun and unique. I don’t mind changing things up and I think the right name will draw the right clients. I don’t take on too many clients because I’m too busy in life, but I desire to keep my company strong and to always have it ready for when it can take an uplifting turn to something bigger. Let me quote Steve Jobs, I want to make a dent in the universe with this one, but despite not always knowing how, I’ve gotta set myself up that way. And if it’s my son who ends up building from a foundation here, then I’m more than happy to let him make the dent.
Not to get too far off course here because this is more important in the short term. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve allowed the clutter around me to drain me and to let my freelance projects slip. I’m embarrassed to say it and if you’re a client who has suffered waiting for things longer than you should have. I can only say I’m sorry and I don’t mean to put anyone through that. The road to good intentions is paved with milk and cookies, or however that saying goes. BUT I realized that I don’t have a simple enough way to keep my project tasks in order. Emails, phone calls, text messages. My requests come in and I just can’t seem to keep it all in my mind when I need it.
To combat this, I’ll be installing a very cool Issue Tracking app on my website. What this will do is allow me to post project and bug fixes to the database. And I always know where to look. Not only that, but I can set up my contact form on my websites to auto-generate an project request. So it doesn’t have to be a complicated extra step or require sending logins to clients.
I have a few freelance projects I intend to do. Both are actually secret, but they are 2 websites I think need addressing. And this is all doable. Nothing amazing required except for the desire and follow through.
Learning in my field of web and design.
Outside the regular book reading I want to do, there are gains I want to make in my work. I’ve never been a trained artist or a programmer. I’ve tried to fill the shoes wherever I could. Sometimes that meant looking for the right solution premade because I couldn’t do it myself. And that will get you pretty far, but I have a few areas where I think I can be more helpful (and enjoy my work). That would be learning Javascript (JQuery) and PHP. There are a massive number of resources to do this. Too many actually. But the key is to stick to something and practice. That’s it.
Other than Javascript, I want to dabble a little in IIS web server so I understand how it works. And install a few instances of Dot Net Nuke to see where it will help me, if at all. At work we have a need for one-off microsites and it might be a good way to deploy them. Or not. But I’ll never know if I don’t jump in.
Besides Dot Net, there are a few Content Management Systems I want to work on. I’d like to work more with ModX CMS, Mediawiki, and MindTouch Deki. I’d also like to continue to use WordPress and maybe try out WebGUI.
I’ve already kinda mastered 2D graphics software, but my art still needs a lot of work. That’s why I’m so happy my wife bought me this sketchbook called 642 Things to Draw. It’s a book of blank pages, but it has labeled spaces for certain things to sketch in the spot. So it narrows focus. That is awesome. I want to make a big dent in this, getting about 80 drawings into their spots. When I was little, I remember my dad helping me with a drawing, he did a really good job. I think having a sketchbook to give to my son might inspire him to learn how to see and practice the craft too.
Another end to exploit is video. I’m actually pretty flipping good at video when I eventually get onto the editing suite. I’m NOT good at thinkng about video projects because the amount of footage overwhelms me before I even open the tapes or files. I procrastinate on that. The difference now is, well I’ve got a kid and a life and an opportunity to share things with his family overseas. So video is the way to do that properly. And it’s a skill I want to teach him and I want to document our experiences that way. So I’ll be adding short videos to my monthly projects. Not enough to overwhelm. But things to get done.
Lastly in terms of planned learning, I want to get my head around the latest incarnation of Blender 3D. I haven’t worked with 3D for a while. I’ve played around a bit, but there is a lot to enjoy when you can get around the software. Since Blender changed so much I’ve avoided it to see where it finishes. But it’s pretty much where it’s going to be in terms of interface and so I need to dig in. Plus it will help me contribute to projects and solve visual problems.
Finishing projects
I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve got a lot of half-finished projects I must address. These are videos and websites. I’ve made some promises, but kept the deadlines as soft. This has got to stop. Because if you’ve ever read anything about Getting Things Done, there’s a premise in that book that says projects that are unfinished make your brain always have to work harder because it’s always looping back to them. The more things in the done pile the better you’ll feel. I’d venture to say that unfinished projects even pulling softly at you could even affect your health. Time to knock out those. Most if not all could be finished by March if I don’t pile anything else on them.
Family
My son is almost one years old. My wife has spent most of the year cooped up in the house and not seeing a lot of outside. Some by choice, but I think introducing activities will help Andrew’s brain and let us enjoy our lives more. So I’ll be cooking up at first, monthly outings and then maybe increase that. Part of the things that can help a lot are family home projects that also need addressing. I’ve never been particularly good at them, but it’s not that I can’t work on them. I just too often choose not too. I have a basement to get situated, and a few wood projects and trim work. Those will be done in 2011 even if I have to enlist my dad.
Blogging in the ole notebook
A hundred thousand people will be resolving this year to write in their blog in order to make something meaninful. I’ve kept mine for years and several times made commitments to fill it up daily or weekly. BUT what I never did was create an editorial calendar to schedule blog posts. And that’s what I just did now. I used a google doc spreadsheet that lists the 52 weeks of the year. And I’ve made columns for each of those weeks to list a 1st blog topic and a 2nd blog topic. Two blog posts a week could be one post covering graphics, design or other area of my interest. Topic 2 can be related to family or photo post, or could be a contribution for my upcoming book. Filling in these areas on the editorial calendar is the important thing. I already know I can write. It’s the habit I need. I’ve already made twitter a habit by using a few tools and slightly modifying my routine. That will be helpful to lead into expanding tweets into full posts. Not only that, but I’d like to see my blog be a little more relevant and interesting to friends, family and colleagues. It’s always been challenging mixing the 2 topics, but 1 post per week of both types will let me do that. One challenge will be that I also operate 2 other blogs, Snackhunting.com, and Readerwar.com. Trying to contribute to all of those is probably too much on a weekly basis. I think that’s ok though. My editorial calendar will help me iron out how to space those as well.
Sleep
Most of my issues in life are the result of a degree of discipline, focus and being energized and ready when I need to be. Sleep has always been hard for me because my cycle seems to be longer than most. Meaning I don’t get tired at 11pm, I get a second wind, that can take me to 4am without any effort. But I admire more the ability to wake up early being prepared to handle tasks. I’d like to beat a few people into work each day and even do morning exercise before breakfast, like the runs I mentioned earlier. I can do that if I make a habit of sleeping a little earlier. A fresh routine with the proper sleep-wake, wake-sleep transitions will help. This might be the hardest though. Because I tend to love the quiet of the night. But when you go to bed earlier, actually you can still get the quiet stillness of the night, just that it’s the after you’ve had full nights rest this time. I need a few tools for this one I think. On my own I’ll probably fail. If any of you have suggestions, please send them along!
So that’s a big list, but nothing too crazy, and it aligns with what I want to do just fine. I think that it will make a great year for me. Just have to read it over, stick to it.
December 31, 2010 at 8:19 am | family, inspiration, learning, publishing, writing | No comment
Yahoo! is not shutting down Delicious social bookmarking
Update: I knew I was rigth on this one. Not that I had actual facts, but just because of critical thinking. Delicious may live somewhere else. (Why not keep the same domain too!) A blog from the Delicious team confirms it will live, though the actual posting is down at the time of this writing.
* * *
No web service is certain. Del.icio.us, or Delicious.com has been around for years and is no exception. So you always take a risk in depending on the cloud, using a free service. And given what happens to Yahoo services like Geocities for example, we’ve been shown that web services from Yahoo can be vulnerable despite their longevity.
But Delicious should be more immune than a lot of other fly-by-night web services. It represents a very important informational center with a long history in web years. Not only that, but as boring as bookmarks might seem it also makes up a unique and usable social network. Using Delicious, I can gauge interest in a particular subject, participate in the promotion of something, and find things that I wouldn’t normally be exposed to. I can locate like-minded people and get a hell of a lot of entertainment from all this information.
I was understandably shocked at the articles about the “sunsetting” of Delicious and a screengrab of an internal presentation at Yahoo! that proves it. But here’s why I don’t think we have to worry.
We have entered the period where data visualization is JUST about to get a hell of a lot more interesting to a lot more people. Touch devices in the hands of millions, tablets and readers set to become mainstays, phones, large format screens. This is the age where reading data live and interactive is going to enhance people’s lives. There is NO slowdown. And let me quote Joshua Schachter, an original creator of Delicious, “Showing a user how popular his actions are is inevitably addictive.”
Ever since I watched this TED talk on Data Visualization by Hans Rosling I’ve understood how meaningful this is. Services and tools that can be used for trending in more animated ways are here and are coming.
A problem with delicious is that it can be misused and spammed. This hasn’t been much of an issue for most of us though. The popular feeds may contain uninteresting items, but they don’t make up the majority of bookmarks and things will be uninteresting whether they be spambot or deliberate human bookmarks so users expect anomalies and know how to ignore them. They also don’t infect the more specific or specialized tags so the more you need good specific data, the less you’ll see spammy residue.
Let me point to the main reason I’m not convinced of it’s closing Delicious. PR is a bitch. A user revolt on Yahoo is NOT what they need right now along with an impending layoff. They can call it a service that doesn’t align with their goals. But social bookmarking, whether they like it or not is a service people want and need. I personally have invested enough time to generate close to 8000 bookmarks of my own. The beauty of it is, even though many of my stored links have probably expired (from dead sites) there is an extraordinary amount of data in Delicious, and feeds are generated from every which way. The mining of that data is valuable, but only if the service remains current.
If people who use Delicious and Yahoo are stripped from their Delicious collection and the ability to use, track and follow the site, you’re going to see blowback in the form of cancelled Yahoo Mail accounts across the board. Delicious being a very “hackable” simple system and has gathered followers that respect that kind of software. Those same followers aren’t ones you want to cross. Because those same people blog, promote and above all, complain in all the right spaces.
Yahoo isn’t ready for the backlash. They aren’t prepared to lose their ass over a simple site. Time to man up, get the right people, lean and mean on the job creating the next generation of tools used to view and data mine all these wonderful resources. And then selling those tools to the tablet content creators, to the tablet owners, to the digital signage companies, making them offers they can’t refuse. That is how Delicious will continue, through exploiting it from the inside and outside. Because as long as the data remains for the majority of us to share easily and hack a little bit, how it’s sold and marketed doesn’t really affect us. After all, we chose to make these things public because we want this data to be seen and found.
December 17, 2010 at 5:32 am | computers, media, publishing, tools, webdev | No comment
A clever visual mystery for a Facebook promotion
WOWIO books is an online ebook marketplace. I stumbled across their site today as one often does in this world. What I encountered was so simple and clever it has to be shared.
One of their home feature banners offers a free Ebook, but you don’t know what it is, just that it’s a graphic novel. Of course you want to click to find out, they grab you with the mystery and the FREE, which is a real whammy.
Next you are transported to their facebook page. Actually they tell you this will happen, but you didn’t read that because you were too busy imagining the free awesomeness of a mystery revealed.
Then very clear instructions. You know you want the ebook, just press Like, as in become a Facebook fan.
Then a nice satisfying landing page to download the ebook. All within the WOWIO Facebook page in a customer “Offer” tab.
Fun, clever and a great use of visuals for a simple promotion. The power of ebooks is that they are both flexible and attractive like that. They serve as a great free gift, because they have an emotional value to them. I feel bad ruining the mystery of this offer, but it’s worth it to point out what you can do with just a few images.
Nice job WOWIO. I’m your newest Facebook fan or “Likeee” or whatever you might call it.
October 25, 2010 at 9:43 pm | books, games, graphics, inspiration, interesting, media, publishing, webdev | 1 comment
Simplify all your social networking with Tweetdeck
I was pretty late to Twitter. Now I enjoy it the most out of all the social networking sites. It was when I got a smart phone that I started looking at social networking beyond just having a Facebook account. For several reasons, being able to check in with your phone makes social networks make more sense. Just on the PC, they seem very wasteful. On the home PC, checking Facebook once in a while is OK for me, but I don’t see the point of living there. Still want to share some things and add new friends occasionally. And I realized it’s nice to be able to set up a business fan page that people can press “Like” on and make you feel somehow desirable.
TweetDeck is Free!
Then I realized that I might want to separate business tweets from personal ones. And some new initiatives I’m working on such as my ReaderWar website made me want to create more separate accounts.
Too much redundancy though. I can’t be logging in and out all the time. Too much room for mistakes. I can’t be wasting that much time on them to say the same things twice and 3 times. Maybe it’s better just to post under one umbrella and let things fall where they may. I thought that until I found TweetDeck. It’s a cross-platform application that let’s you read tweets on your subscription and see in multiple columns your retweets and direct messages and user profiles. It doesn’t let you read facebook postings, but it DOES let you post to both your facebook accounts, AND the business or other ‘fan’ pages you set up for yourself. If you’re an admin or owner of a fan page, you can post JUST to that page only using TweetDeck.
How do you post separately? When you set up multiple account profiles for Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In etc., you can toggle them on or off when writing the tweet. See illustration below.
What you can do with TweetDeck
Post updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Foursquare, MySpace, Google Buzz
View updates from these sites
Post to Facebook Fan pages (that you own or administrate)
Retweet comments from Facebook
Send messages to Facebook users
Look at Twitter user profiles
Attach Photos
Automatically shorten URLs (bit.ly is default URL shortener)
Quick Preview shortened URLs just in case
View embedded Youtube video links in tweets
View Facebook photos and through galleries
Global Filter posts or topics you don’t want to see (e.g. Justin Biebr or #fail)
So TweetDeck does a lot, it’s a fantastic app for your PC, Mac, laptop. They also have an iPhone and iPad version.
Other Applications like this
Hootsuite
Seesmic
CoTweet
Tweetie
Echofon
June 13, 2010 at 1:41 am | friends, learning, media, tools | No comment
VNC black screen and no refresh when remoting into Linux Mint
I was trying to remote into my Linux Mint desktop using VNC both on Mac and Windows. The Linux box was allowing the connection, but I’d just get a black blank screen. I thought this was strange because I knew from seeing the monitor around the corner that my mouse movement was working.
When fiddling with TightVNC settings, I could change the type of connection and finally get an image, but it wouldn’t refresh. After searching for a while, I discovered that I the problem was probably that Compiz desktop effects needed to be disabled. Makes perfect sense actually, since the Compiz effects are kind of a second overlay on top of the existing system. Get rid of the middle man.
Instead of searching the Control Panel preferences, just right-click on the desktop to change the desktop background. I figured out that I could do all these steps as long as I restarted VNC with each click. Restarting VNC was the only way to get a refresh and see the result.
From Appearance Preferences screen, you can click the Visual Effects tab and set it to none, disabling effects completely. As soon as I clicked that radio button, my screen started moving very well, even on my wireless connection. Hurray!
One step closer to getting my home server running the way I want.
March 16, 2010 at 1:43 am | general | 1 comment
Yahoo! mail sucks to the 419th degree
I had one message in my Yahoo! account today. Been trying to phase it out years it seems. Today though, one shiny new 419 scam message came through. I guess I’ll have to give my friends at Yahoo! a few tips on filtering. Ok, so Yahoo! if a message comes through with the words, ‘inheritance’ and ‘Nigeria’, it’s a f–king scam and puts your users at risk! When this occurs it should be sent into the bulk spam folder. OK!? What’s that? I can filter things using my own mail options? Normally that would be the case, but you chumps limited me to 8 filters and the slots have been filled since the first day I used your email service 15 years ago.
This message did make me smile though. Could Yahoo be wise to my personality from all their data mining and know we’ll all get a little chuckle at the lengths scamming parasites will go to fish for idiots. They’ve been doing this inheritance bit since the ’70′s or something. I’m starting to think that 419 scamming is like a service that autostarts on Nigerian computers, kind of like a Google Toolbar. “Thank you for installing Nigerian Skype ‘Mr. Olaide.’ Check this box if you would like to additionally install the 419 Scam-bar so you can chat with your rich American friends.”
Update
This was a boring post granted, it’s just that I don’t see how Yahoo will get me back to using their stuff when I get more spam, everything is slower ( had to fully disable the advanced email interface it was crashing my browser for a long time.) And today I got a repeat of an email from the exact same person with the same photo and the same sender that I marked as spam. Same subject line. Something about connecting with some Chinese goddess named Yao, with a singles photo. I’ve given up trying to understand spammer motivations, because there are many, but at least I want no repeats of them after I’ve made my decision to send them to oblivion. That’s Yahoo!’s filter’s job.
February 15, 2010 at 8:13 pm | rants | No comment
My son is so awesome!
I mean this little guy is a pain quite often during the day, he’s thrown off my already ridiculous sleep schedule, but who couldn’t love a guy like this?
February 5, 2010 at 1:27 pm | general | 4 comments
