Excel Multiplication Weirdness
Um, what?
Update: Turns out that the cell with the value “0″ was a text string, and apparently, a text string is equivalent to 1.
Author Archive
When 2 x 0 = 2
Thursday, May 5th, 2011The Race to the Bottom
Thursday, May 5th, 2011From: Monbiot’s The Lost World column:
Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can.
Your place of encounter
Thursday, April 28th, 2011No mean intentions [1], but these are funny Spanglish artefacts seen around here….
Your place of encounter
My place of encounter? Great! Do I need my boots of escaping?
It wishes to send a modification?
It must specify return date!
And when it’s done, it rubs the lotion on it’s skin.
[1] I have high respect for anyone who can speak multiple languages. Having lived in multiple places where English was a second language, that respect only grows. But c’mon, we can still have a giggle at the funny things we see, right?
Time for a Lotus Notes Whinge
Thursday, April 28th, 2011It’s been too long.
Why do they bother putting a search button in the Recent Contacts view? Have you ever tried it? It never finds anything. Like, never. In the normal Contacts view, it finds stuff according to some weird quantum mechanics algorithm. In other words, it returns a random selection of contacts that have no relationship to the search term.
And then, to cap it off, Notes went completely unresponsive for 10 minutes, and pegged the disk at 100%.
On the bright side, it gave me the opportunity to complain about it here.
My brain is smarter than me
Sunday, April 10th, 2011So I’ve been using a European keyboard for the last 12 months or so, except because I’m stubborn, I’ve not switched to the European keyboard layout in Windows. Which means the markings on the key tops are all wrong. Luckily I’m a good enough typist that this isn’t a problem.
Except the ellipses.
On the US keyboard, the left and right ellipse is above the 9 and 0 key, respectively.
On the European keyboard, they are above the 8 and 9 key, respectively.
This causes me pauses everytime I go to use them, and eventually, I have become so confused, that I get it wrong. Every. Time.
It’s actually kinda funny how my brain works though, because it has started to slowly get used to the idea that for a left elipse I need to press the key marked with the right ellipse, and for a right ellipse I need to press the key marked with an equals sign (as far as the superscript marking on the key that is.)
This is where it gets interesting though, is when I go to use the blackberry. That one-key-to-the-right bias carries over, and when I try to type a left and right ellipse on the BB I get a right ellipse and a dash.
Stupid brain =)
Fatboy Slim
Thursday, March 31st, 2011I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
I like his beats, and the way he layers the sounds together, but sometimes I get tired,
of the way he repeats a lyric over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Pants required
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011C’mon Rob, how about an image credit?
Nuclear power: Who can you believe?
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011I’ve been reading George Monbiot’s column for years, and I rely on it for information. He recently publish two articles about nuclear power, in light of the recent disasters in Japan:
- Atomised: The Fukushima crisis should not spell the end of nuclear power.
- Going Critical: How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power.
I’m deeply worried about the the apparant lack of consensus on the subject of sustainable energy production.
I would love to know what he thinks about a recent interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott after the Fukushima Japan nuclear accident.
Apart from the curious relationship she draws between nuclear power and men’s testicles, she does seem to have some alarming scientific facts about the dangers of nuclear power, and how, in her opinion, there is no such thing as a safe nuclear reactor.
How can we make the right choices, and put the correct pressure on our elected politicians, if we can never be sure we are getting the right information?
Who do you trust?
Google account disabled for any reason they like
Saturday, January 29th, 2011Google Accounts: I’m getting a message that says ‘Sorry, your account has been disabled.’
If you’ve been redirected to this page from the sign in page, it means that access to your Google Account has been disabled.
In most cases, accounts are disabled because of a perceived violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.Google reserves the right to:
- Suspend a Google Account from using a particular product or the entire Google Accounts system if the Terms of Service or product-specific policies are violated.
- Terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.
Well that’s just wonderful. This all started when they thought they detected weird logins from multiple countries, and their SMS secret code method completely failed for my Spanish mobile.
And what’s up with that last clause? For any reason without notice? How do they expect to win business customers with that? I am now completely unable to use any google service, and all my data is locked away. Including YouTube, google docs, gmail, rss reader and chrome bookmarks.
Update: Got the account back, and it was pretty straight forward. But four days is too long without your main email repository. Luckily, I was able to redirect my main accounts to another service.
eProductivity: Survey Results are in
Thursday, January 13th, 2011I’ve mentioned eProductivity before. Recently, they did a survey of their users, and here are some interesting factoids:
- 97.3% of respondents feel like they receive a large amount of work-related emails
- 55.8% use a BlackBerry while 34.8% use an iPhone
- 90.4% said eProductivity saves them time, and 72.1% of those people said eProductivity saves them 30 minutes or more every day.
- 87.1% said eProductivity makes it easy to get an empty email inbox
- 91.2% can access LinkedIn at work, but only 73.5% can access Twitter
- 90.5% reported being satisfied with Lotus Notes when using eProductivity, but only 31.1% reported being satisfied with Lotus Notes when eProductivity was taken out of the mix
The last fact sums it up: If you must use Notes, you must you eProductivity. It is that simple.