Excel tip: some useful buttons

At work we use to share some Excel workbooks (systems inventories, and things like that). To avoid not being able to open such files because your coworker has already opened it, we always open them in read-only mode. The problem comes when you actually want to make change to the file!

Before we used to close the workbook, and reopen it, this time in read-write mode. Not very efficient, was it?

Recently I found those buttons available in Excel “customize toolbar” options:

* “Update File“: With that button, no need to close and reopen to get last changes made by your co-workers ! Just press the button. Like a “refresh-that-file”…
* “Toggle read-only“: This button reopen the file in R/W if it was in R/O mode (and the contrary if it was in R/W mode)

I found that buttons very useful. Couldn’t work without them now!

WordPress Plugin: Related Entries 2.0

Yesterday I installed that plugin in my blog: WordPress Related Entries 2.0. It tries to guess what posts are related to each of your posts, so you can link your related posts together and supposely ease your readers’ navigation through your blog.

The plugin can either guess the relation basing itself on the title, or use special tags that the author put in the posts.

Nevertheless, in my case I already use Jerome’s Keywords Plugin to tag my posts, so repeating the keywords twice wouldn’t be productive, so I modified Related Entries so it can work with Jerome’s Keywords format. And it seems to be working fine .

v1.2 of my Cacti host templates for Unix

Here is a new version of my Cacti host templates for Unix systems — read HP-UX, Solaris and Linux machines and maybe other Net-SNMP compatible OS.

This new version introduces the following changes:
* I’ve splitted the “Solaris Linux ucd/net-snmp” template into two separated flavours. That way I’ll be able to tweak the graph templates of each OS according to its own particularities;
* one example of this is the CPU graph template: while in the Linux template it show nice, sys and user %CPU, in the Solaris version it now shows: kernel, wait (instead of system) and user CPU. I’ve also removed nice CPU as it won’t graph on a Solaris box.
* I’ve removed the Detailled memory graph from the Solaris template, as Solaris doesn’t seem to report such detailled metrics . It’ll only be in the Linux flavour.

Feel free to download version 1.2 of the Unix Template Set for Cacti, and use and/or redistribute it under the terms of the GPL license.

You may also check this post on the Cacti forum, for further information.

Open question: Does any of the net-snmp templates I provide (Linux or Solaris flavour) produce good results for AIX hosts? Have somebody tried it?

Goodbye to “the Transmission”

I recently discovered the Transmission, a podcast by Ryan and Jen about the ABC TV series Lost. The fact is that I found that podcast very interesting, and dynamic.

Unfortunately, the show is over, as they declared in their last episode “Aloha“.

Aloha–

Upgrade to WordPress 2.0.1

One month after the release of WP2.0, the WP guys have released WordPress 2.0.1.

After testing the upgrade process on my “test” box, I’ve just upgraded my blog to 2.0.1.

I was especially bugged by WP2 troubles in handling it’s new builtin cache feature. After doing some tests that used to fail in WP2, I can’t reproduce the problem, so it seems that WP2.0.1 solves the troubles !

So, while I don’t see any strange behaviour, I will leave the cache feature activated.

UPDATE 04/02/2006: The problems have happend again! SO: 2.0.1 doesn’t solve them. I’ll disable the cache again…

Revelado digital online en MyPixmania

Estos ultimos meses habia subido poco a poco mi seleccion de fotos de casi todo el 2005 (y del periodo de Año Nuevo) a mi cuenta de MyPixmania. La verdad es que lo mas dificil fue seleccionar las fotos, a veces incluso tenia que buscarlas en algunos de los CDs donde las habia grabado.

Este fin de semana me decidi por fin a lanzar un pedido.

La verdad es que me ha sorprendido gratamente:

* Facilidad en el envio de las fotos (se suben en unos albumes. Yo las puse todas en el mismo album por bagueria). Una vez subidas todas seleccionas “realizar pedido” y poco mas.
* Flexibilidad y variedad de los formatos de revelado: se elige un formato por defecto que aplicara a todas las fotos del pedido. A continuacion, se puede cambiar el formato para cada una de las fotos. Tambien se puede cambiar el numero de copias y añadir mas formatos de revelado a una foto.
* Facilidad en las formas de pago: proponen desde transferencia bancaria hasta paypal, pasando por todas las tarjetas de credito… (En mi caso pague con Amex),
* Rapidez de envio: mande el pedido el domingo por la tarde-noche, y me ha llegado al medio-dia. Es decir: 3 dias.
* Habia seleccionado entrega en la tienda para ahorrarme los 12euros de gastos de envio (los gastos son progresivos segun el numero de fotos a revelar. En mi caso estamos hablando de un pedido de mas de 550 fotos), pero aun asi (no se por que), me lo han mandado a casa, y no me han cobrado ni los gastos de envio a casa, ni siquiera los gastos de envio a la tienda en Madrid (1eur).
* Packaging excelente: las fotos vienen agrupadas en cajitas rigidas de mas o menos 80. Las cajas venian a su vez metidas en una caja de carton, con espuma para proteger lo todo.
* Por lo visto el revelado se realiza en Francia, ya que el bulto vino por DHL desde Paris CGD.

Muy contento! Lo recomiendo.

Por cierto, no formo parte del grupo Pixmania, solo soy un cliente satisfecho y con ganas de compartir mi experiencia.

(Por cierto 2, es mi primer post en castellano).