Excel VBA Version Control with GIT

You might have tried using Microsoft's Excel XML in zip container (.xlsx and .xslm) for version control and found the vba was stored in vbaProject.bin (which is useless for version control).

The solution is simple.

1. Open the excel file with LibreOffice Calc
2. In LibreOffice Calc
   1. File
   2. Save as
   3. Save as type: ODF Spreadsheet (.ods)
3. Close LibreOffice Calc
4. rename the new file's file extension from .ods to .zip
5. create a folder for the spreadsheet in a GIT maintained area
6. extract the zip into it's GIT folder
7. commit to GIT

When you repeat this with the next version of the spreadsheet you'll have to make sure you make the folder's files exactly match those in the zip container (and don't leave any deleted files behind).

Race For Life

Added Race For Life link to tomanddot.com.

Community Badge

Dave Winer asks us for a Community Badge

1. I used "news-stream" filtered by "icons" in a Google Advanced Image Search
2. Found this
   • 
3. Led me to Chris Schnyder's One Stream to Bind Them All blog entry.
4. Led me to Chris's Slideshare presentation including (from slide 94) Activity Streams

conclusion

Chris Schnyder's work is interesting to our community and maybe his badge could be our badge.

St Andrews Apartments to Amazon S3

Moved the updated website for St Andrews Apartments to Amazon S3 Bucket.

http://st.andrews-apartments.com/

Yacht Magrathea Site Updated

Loaded the updated website for yacht Magrathea.

http://yacht-magrathea.com

Mamma Mia Restaurant

Hard to find Mamma Mia on the web:

 99-101 Mount Pleasant Road
 Royal Tunbridge Wells
 Kent
 TN1 1QG 

Tel: 01892 522272

Visit Tunbridge Wells link

Style My Home's got a new Web Site

Style My Home has a great new web site hosted by Remedy Creative.

Good Bye and Good Luck

Rails on EEEPC

sudo apt-get remove xandros-scim
sudo apt-get remove scim

sudo kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list
add these five lines:
deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free
deb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 main
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main non-free contrib
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main


goto http://code.google.com/p/pimpmyeee/ and download pimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh
chmod +x pimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh; chmod +x unpimpmyeee-1.0.2.sh
./pimpmyeee-version.sh

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install inkscape
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install mysql-client
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get install ruby ri rdoc libmysql-ruby
sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
tar -xvzf rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
cd rubygems-1.0.1
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Ruth and Rory

Ruth and Rory

Added new domain ruthanddrory.com

Torpedo Dolphins

Life is just not fair. The owner's wife travelled all the way over to Las Palmas to wave us off from the dock and wish us God's speed. She also endured ages waiting on the shoreline trying to identify us among the hundreds of yachts milling around to capture the ultimate startline photo. Despite all that she has not yet seen any dolphins nor any phosphorescence - and last night we saw both simultaneously! In the dark early evening yet another pod of them arrived and zoomed up both sides of us. In the dark we could see nothing in the water but the phosphorescence churned up by their bodies and air bubbles. It looked like a series of green torpedoes streaking down the side of the boat. Quite spectacular.

Nothing much else is spectacular. The wind has wobbled around 13 knots with a moderate swell. We cannot carry the spinnaker very well in these light winds - and in any case we cannot hold the course we want so we are back to main and poled out genoa. It can be quite pleasant for whole minutes at a time before the boat succumbs to a pendulum attack and we have to put up with five or six major swings with all the associated clashing and flapping of sails. We've talked to a few boats on the VHF and know that they have tried everything like us and are suffering in the same way. Apart from that the sky is clear blue, the sun is hot and the sea is relatively flat. Some might call it champagne sailing - but you would not keep your champagne inside the glass for long in these conditions. No pictures so far today. The crew have been streaming fishing lines again and managed to hook what they say was a big dorado - enough for about two evenings dinners. Chef was a little more sceptical -something along the lines of "I'll believe that when they have got it on board". Chicken it is tonight - the fish managed to escape and so no photographs of the triumphant fisherman with the catch. We are assured it is just a matter of time. Hmmmm!

Magrathea in ARC 2007

Added some new pages to http://yacht-magrathea.com including news and ARC 2007

Blunkett-Evans

Blunkett-Evans

Added new domain blunkett-evans.com

Google Desktop Search is flawed

I use Google Desktop Search (GDS) and find it invaluable. The "Browse Timeline" option is really useful but I find that I have to organize my work to suit GDS because it's missing some really basic configuration options.

I only want GDS to index data files, so I have set up a drive just for data and I exclude all other drives from the GDS search crawler. GDS can't recognize some of my data files yet they are still indexed and they'll never be found in any search except by filename - an option to exclude specific file extensions would solve this.

The other problem is email. I have to have Microsoft Outlook switched off when I'm not using it. If I leave it on I get spam (which spambayes takes care of) then GDS indexes the spam. So, to suit GDS, I stop GDS indexing, check my emails, delete the spam, then start GDS indexing. If I'm unlucky I'll get some spam delivered while I've left Outlook on with GDS running (so it can index the email) - an option to exclude specific email folders would solve this.

Because GDS is so valuable to me I change the way I work to suit the software. I imagine that the two (fixes?) enhancements I require wouldn't be too much trouble to implement. How do you get software improved when it's free?

Rose and Crown Refurbishment

Rose and Crown Tunbridge Wells

The Rose and Crown Tunbridge Wells.

Added the Rose and Crown Tunbridge Wells rose-and-crown.info/tunbridgewells

Address: 47 Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN1 2AY
Telephone: 01892 522427

The car's got to go

I've decided that I'll never buy a manual gearbox 164 until I've sold the auto-box car.

Alfa Romeo 164s are one of the automobile world's best kept secrets. They run well with excellent speed and acceleration with the kind of comfort you would get in £30,000 cars. Because nobody wants them they sell from around £500.

This one has only partially let me down once (corrosion in the wiring loom, up front near the grill and that was very easy and cheap to fix). It failed to start in torrential rain but when it stopped raining and dried out I managed to fire it up and drive it to the garage.

Changing Broadband Provider

Force9 has been a bit eratic and their limit on downloads has caused problems. Decided to change to Be* Unlimited Which is faster (24MB/2MB) and cheaper (£18/£21.99 per month).

Be

Tom and Dot

Tom and Dot.

Added new domain TomAndDot.com

Yacht Magrathea site updated

The Yacht Magrathea website http://yacht-magrathea.com has been restyled and updated by Notch

Rose and Crown

Rose and Crown.

Added new domain rose-and-crown.info

Rectory Society on New Domain

The Rectory Society has changed it's home page to http://www.rectorysociety.org.uk/

This is to reflect the name change from The Rectory Club.