A developer's blog

My work is not mainly about Excel but people often come to me for solution to their everyday computing problems. Eventually after several months of repeating the same thing to many people, I decided to sum up all the questions and make a training session covering simple but many people just don’t know they existed in Excel.

I am not intending to teach people how to use Excel but how to use it efficiently. So my method is mostly visual-based: I use a lot of images to illustrate concepts so they can recall what I’ve said later easily. I intended to make some practice exercise to reinforce their knowledge too but my folks were strongly oppose against homework so that idea was abandoned :p

Introductory slide

The first session have 4 attendants, which I considered a successful experiment. It lasted for around 45 minutes and covered the following topics:

• Quick count
• Conditional counting
• Counting with multiple conditions
• Look-up functions
• Error handling
• Pivot tables
• Data validation
• Cell formatting
• Visual Basic for Application basics

I intended to record the session for later broadcast but forgot it on that day. So if you are interested, here are the slides at screen resolution (72 dpi i.e. it look pretty crooked) together with notes in PDF format. Powerpoint file  is available upon request if you want to conduct similar sessions. I love to spread knowledge :)

Enjoy!

“This is why it’s so goddamn hard to be in love”

Warning: this may spoil your Valentine’s Day :P

The title is just a quote from Alex Hitchens from Hitch, a 2005 romance comedy. It describes just what I feel: all men got tested until they can’t keep up and either be sorry, regretful, or something. Men have their own lives, yet they have to give that up to running around in panic whenever their beloved got problem; and because they are men, they have to solve the problem themselves!

It’s OK if they are capable of solving all problems all the time. Unfortunately, most men can’t. What if their significant someone got into some kind of situation when they are having important meeting at work in which they’ll get fired for leaving?

• The rich man’s most caring move will be asking someone else to do their job, which costs them money and reputation should their preference is absolutely required.
• The average man have their friends or relatives do his job, which they may or may not do.
• If he is alone, he will have to storm there and risk everything he has.

Just worth it, if that’s for the one you love.

Yeah…

Imagine what if there is no situation and it’s just she wanted to have dinner with you early so your date that evening you last longer?

Some recent reader’s letter posted on Vnexpress discussed about the wife’s controlling techniques on their husband. Most wives like to control their husband, which is fine; but some just wanted to push their men to the limit. The stories are long  and complex but eventually, their men get used to it and developed all kind of counter moves, from silly to ingenious.

I see little difference between those wives and 5 years old kids

• I won’t eat spinach if you don’t buy me that toy! (cries)
• I’m really sick; could you be home right now? (about to cry)

Those wives love their hubbies, I know. It’s great to be in love. Men feel great to be relied upon and is willing run to their wives when ever they are needed. Those moments make they feel their manhood is complete. But as I said, they can’t do that all the time.

Life doesn’t always go like films. A recent research found out that, those who crave for romance films have lower chances to success in love. Why? Because they wanted everything to be perfect – just like films. When prince charming will just abandon his castle, his country, his job to run across the seas, the mountains, slay dragons to reach the princess…

Then in the end, Shrek the monster is the lucky guy.

The main moral of Shrek: not your typical fairytale.

But that is also a film. In Real Life™, will you live happily ever after with a drunk, snoring monster as a husband?

Back to the main topic: wives are controlling but do they really need to? Their husband may not listening when they talk, not care about them as much as they wanted but why don’t they just… ask for it? Is it any harder than hiring private detective to spy on their hubby? Why the one time they can’t care about their beloved is enough to defy all others? They keep saying their husband doesn’t give enough care for them… Do they notice that their husbands were caring when they are mad?

At least that many why explained why there are such a lot of humors about men’s understandings of women. Like everything men knew about women.

Disclaimer: I don’t write about all men or all women, I’m just writing about some of them. So if you see any coincidental similarities between you and those people, just consider yourself apart from them. How sick of me to rant about love when Valentine is so near :-<

English training

The first time I have come to an English course outside school for the last 10 years! One year from the last time I took any English class – still that plain old familiar feeling. The class is cleaner, though not as clean and carpeted as if it were paid 10 times more for.  The chalkboard is still there, the table is too low for an adult to sit. In short: I’m at an elementary school; not an English training center.

Well, that’s all you are going to get being trained for the national foreign language certification, anywhere in this country :”< . Since the international certification like IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC all fixed their prices at $150, which translates to 2 years tuition fee at my university (and even so that does not include training materials), I am left which one choice to reinforce my knowledge, 17 times cheaper :-<.

Based on all the criticism for this certification I’ve heard, I figured it would be easy to take, writing-only exam. Seems like all the rants are for other degree granting institutions, which have lower standards. At mine, the examinees have to work through four skills: writing, reading, listening and speaking with increasing difficulty for each level. They composed half of the test materials. The other half are taken from other textbook and courses: New Interchange, Lifelines, TOEFL training etc.

Got to work myself out :-<

Switching from formal training to freestyle learning and then back gives a whole new perspective. I felt like I’m in a linguist class =). I used so many patterns, structure and grammar daily for reading and writing without remembering what their names are. I can’t help wondering why they used such fancy words for beginners who just started to learn the language in the first place. Auxiliary verbs, what is that? Some kind of verb that can be put through electronics’ auxiliary port?

Another funny thing is the listening I heard in the first day. It sounded like Mojojojo (albeit with a British accent):

“Because of the huge interest in X, the X meeting will be moved from room 203 to 302, that’s room 302, and for Y, the meeting will be held in room 203, and that room will held the Y conference at 10:00″

“I have personal reminder for professor X, Y and Z. Professor X? Professor Y? Professor Z? Your Blah Blah conference will be held in Bangkok in June. And professor A? I got a reminder for professor A. Please leave your speech at the reception desk before 16:00 this afternoon. Thank you”

I felt somewhat silly answering question based on stuff like this. Oh well, a fair price to restructure my English know-how.

Nodame Cantabile anime

Animax is showing this, I watched 2 episodes without understanding a thing. They speak Japanese the whole time :-<. All I can hear are names and honorifics like “sempai”, “sensei”, “chan” xD.

Look like it pretty much stick to the manga. The drama is also conveyed with static images rather than moving ones; this anime looks more like a collection of moving sprites to me. The only advantage watching this over reading manga is I don’t have to search my files for the song being played by the characters. Characters voices are a little unrealistic but the music is fine :).

When I’m gonna get this language anyway?