This Side

Replacing Text & Preserving Formatting in a Cell

tjcoppet — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:50:35 +0000

I found that if you use the built-in Excel functions to manipulate text, the formatting goes out the window if you have mixed formats within a single cell. I discovered the little written about the Characters class and wrote a grotty VBA function to help me out.


Private Sub ReplaceText(row As Integer, col As Integer, pos As Integer,
                        oldsub As String, newsub As String)
    Dim fontName As String
    Dim fontSize As Integer
    Dim nlen As Integer

    nlen = Len(newsub)
    With Cells(row, col)
        fontName = .Characters(pos, 1).font.Name
        fontSize = .Characters(pos, 1).font.Size
        .Characters(pos, 1).Insert (newsub)
        .Characters(pos, nlen).font.Name = fontName
        .Characters(pos, nlen).font.Size = fontSize
        .Characters(pos + nlen, Len(oldsub) - 1).Delete
    End With
End Sub

Get It While You Can

tjcoppet — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:40:00 +0000

I was sitting at my desk when the fog rolled in. Another wave in our weekend storm. I thought it would be great to try some evening shots in the Public Garden playing the Christmas lights against the fog, the recent snowfall, and the clouds reflecting the light of the city.

3 hours later I’m still typing at my keyboard and there’s no more fog and no more clouds. I missed it.

Boosting Web Browser Performance

tjcoppet — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:55:35 +0000

If you use Firefox 3, you can enable HTTP Pipelining to give your browser a performance boost for web sites that support pipelining. It cuts down the additive latency you get from a ping-pong style of protocol by submitting the requests for the same server together. On low-latency connections it won’t matter as much but it may be more noticable for those long-distance web sites with a gazillion little gifs.

HTTP Pipelining isn’t enabled by default because apparently it can have negative effects with servers that don’t support it (it’s only been 10 years since HTTP 1.1 was published). So far so good with me, perhaps those servers have an I and an S in their name.

Go to about:config and search for network.http.pipelining. It can be enabled for http and https connections as well as set the number of requests. I jacked it up to 16 and will see what happens. I don’t use firefox as my regular browser so I’m just playing around. Safari feels “lighter” to me as an application, and gives me the illusion of performance.

But Safari doesn’t support HTTP Pipelining. Maybe in another 10 years? I did stumble on SafariSpeed which is a little utility that sets various Safari preferences such as disabling the built-in page display delay and turning off the favorite icons. If you can never remember the names of the preferences, this tool might come in handy. I can feel the difference by disabling these two “features” in Safari.

For Internet Explorer, the best thing you can do for a better web experience is to change browsers. The best thing you can do for my web experience is to change browsers.

City of the Future

tjcoppet — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:27:52 +0000

I attended a lecture from Richard Dimino, CEO of A Better City. Although I’m quite familiar with most of the development projects and activities in Boston, especially those related to the CA/T project, what hadn’t occurred to me that many of the ideas were rooted in activities that occurred 30-40 years ago in Boston. And how much of a difference it makes when the communities are involved in design and decision making to preserve neighborhoods and reclaim usable space.

Dimino’s lecture centered around the theme that transportation projects can provide the biggest opportunities for urban development. Despite its problems, there is no greater example than the Big Dig. It wasn’t just about building tunnels underground. And to say that it restored downtown is an understatement. The project left a new city in its wake.

I had come to believe that the next big challenge for Boston is dealing with its aging transit system. Here is an opportunity that not only effects downtown Boston but can positively impact the life an economy throughout this region. I was disheartened to hear that the continued strategy will be based on incremental improvements and bus lines.

I first heard of the proposed Silver Line many years ago. A modern light rail system to connect the unfortunate radial design of the current T system. The improved connectivity would release pressure in Boston’s congested core, restore transit to the South End after the relocation of the Orange line, and expand the reach of the system to neighborhoods in Cambridge and Boston not conveniently situated near the existing lines. What we got was a bus to the airport.

To be fair, this plan falls under the Urban Ring and is a visionary idea that dates back to the 70′s. However, my hope for Boston in 2030 isn’t a bunch of buses stuck in traffic bringing people to and from the Red Line that stops every 50 feet in rush hour. The Green Line is cute, but it shouldn’t take 20 minutes to travel a mile. Whether or not the Urban Ring is constructed, what is to come of this growing metropolis in 25 years if we don’t start taking on the big problems.

The solutions are expensive. It is evident that the downtown subway infrastructure needs to be replaced along with many of the tunnels. The old streetcar pathways cannot support rapid transit. Control systems need upgrading to pilot and manage more capacity. My all time favorite is watching a train stopped on the Longfellow because another hasn’t cleared Park Street. When you can walk faster than rapid transit, it isn’t rapid transit.

Commuter rail in eastern Massachusetts needs to be designed as rapid transit. The city has sprawled and real estate prices have forced both residents and businesses to move further out. The frequency of service forces many people to continue drive to the subway stations, if they can find a parking space, if they bother coming into town at all.

Although the current financial situation with the MBTA does not allow for implementing big ideas, it doesn’t mean we can’t have them. 35 years ago, there were big ideas put on the table, probably crazy to most at the time. We could have simply replaced the bents of the Fitzgerald expressway or run a new harbor tunnel through East Boston. These incremental actions would have been considered safe bets for the economy of the time. Incremental approaches in long range planning lead to mediocrity. If Boston wants to compete globally it also needs to compete with new urban centers that are building 21st century transit systems.

IE6 Usage Dropping

tjcoppet — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:20:04 +0000

IE6 usage on www.bostonbyfoot.org has dropped to 21% from 39% last year. Interesting, IE7 has only risen 7%. I imagine the increase in Firefox accounts for some defection from Microsoft altogether (however I personally prefer Safari).

While these are both good trends, I wouldn’t mind seeing IE6 disappear altogether. I got used to the CSS tweaks but the PNG alpha channel hacks are flaky at best.

The Uprising

tjcoppet — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:39:00 +0000

Those of us in Boston like our little rebellions. There appear to be a number of people arguing over whether or not the intro price to the Nikon D3X is reasonable and debate over who needs how many pixels.

The poor reaction comes from surprise. I think many of us assumed that the D3X would follow the same path as the D2X. It didn’t. Those who tried to time the product at $5K lost, at least for the time being.

I’m still a D2X owner and feeling more like a mainframe person every day. I have 3 pain points with this camera.

ISO range: D3 does well here but the D3X will likely not be that much better than the D2X (we shall see).
dust bunnies: I was really really looking forward to a button to push.
megapixels: don’t tell me I don’t need any

The D3 solves one of my 3 pains, and the D3X also solves one. Though if I had to choose, I’d choose ISO and dynamic range over MP. And for $8K? It better knock all three out of the park and make me dinner.

Nikon sat on this since they leaked out the sensor type in a firmware release last April. Anticipation built. People are disappointed and they want Nikon to know it — so stop giving them grief.

And remember what happened when the tax on tea didn’t drop enough?

Nikon D3X

tjcoppet — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:38:25 +0000

Nikon announced their new flagship camera. I feel like this guy.

Certified Mail from the IRS

tjcoppet — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:41:27 +0000

I got to my mailbox at 5:32 to see the letter from the post office. The post office closed at 5:30.

I made it to about 5:40 and just had to know what this was about. I couldn’t sweat this out all weekend waiting for the post office to open. This has been the week of bad luck, and please, not one more thing.

I searched on the web for people who have received certified mail from the IRS and what I found wasn’t good. Audit. Owe. Court. And owe some more. Weekend is off to a great start.

I went to the IRS web site and found their telephone assistance number.

Hello, I received a notice from the post office for certified mail, and I’m hoping you can tell me what it might be about.

What did the mail say?

The post office is closed and I won’t be able to find out until Monday. Can you tell me now so I don’t have to stew on this all weekend?

[type type type]Your account balance is zero.

That’s good, isn’t it?

Yes. But we just closed the 2005 returns, maybe it has something to do with that. [type type type] Your 2005 account balance is zero.

So, that is also good?

Let me check something else.

Oh, it says here we sent you a notice this year that you still owed $216 from 2005 return, but we took that out of your 2007 Massachusetts refund.

Yes, I remember that, and I received that notice already.

Ok, then the certified mail is the notice asking if you want to contest it.

[phew]No not me. I’m good.

Have a nice weekend.

And I did! It isn’t often one gets to say something nice about the IRS, but how cool is it that they not only had off-hour service but were able to dig all the records up in real time and settle my worst fears over the phone. I didn’t think they were that sophisticated. This shows that not all certified mail from the IRS is bad news.

Macbook Pro Battery Problem

tjcoppet — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:19:59 +0000

My laptop has been on my desk charging since yesterday. I was about to head out to one of my branch offices and noticed the battery charge was at 7%!

Thank goodness I opted for AppleCare, but the last laptop I brought in (logic board fried) I got the hairy eyeball from a genius because it was also dented. When did you do this? They always want to blame the obvious. And wouldn’t you know, last week my most recent laptop fell off a chair at one of my conference facilities and now the front is dented and doesn’t close very well.

I was unhappy about this involuntary cosmetic conversion, but the mouse pad works so much better now! It really does. It has a much firmer click to it and better spring. Apple should consider front-end-dented macbook pros for their next release. Anyway, to unnecessary exposure to my clumsiness, I searched, and macbook battery problems returns 1,020,000 results in google. I wasn’t alone.

Since the charging light was amber, I got to reset the power management thingy by powering down, removing the charger and battery, then holding the power button for 5 seconds. Now I’m charging again!

If your light is green and it doesn’t charge, off to the Apple store you go.

Lost Your CS3 Install Disc?

tjcoppet — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:35:00 +0000

I’m in the middle of upgrading machines and have no clue what happened to my install disc. Since I had a valid license key that I paid for, how hard could copying over photoshop from one machine to another be?

There are a number of directories that need to be copied over “as is”, complete with permissions, file owners and setuid bits in place. Miss something, and you will encounter “missing file in application support” errors, and even problems with the licensing.

This reference was very helpful. The blog describes case sensitivity problems that I didn’t have. I just didn’t know all the magic directories. Here’s a cheat sheet.

/Library/Application Support/Adobe
/Library/Application Support/Adobe PDF
/Library/Application Support/Adobe Systems
/Library/Application Support/FLEXnet Publisher
/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax

And of course, your CS3 application folder. The application itself I dragged-and-dropped via an external disk. All the stuff in /Library I used a tar archive as root to make sure the setuid bits and owners were correct.

Somewhere in there, it copied my license so when I started it up, I simply had to re-activate the program with Adobe. Now I’m off and running. If you decide to use a case-senstive file system, check out Imagination Unbound.