Posted on 01 January 2009
NY Times captured these stunning images of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Israeli soldiers clean the barrel of a tank near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip.
Cars buried under rubble at the site of the ministry buildings compound. Israeli aircraft bombed a government compound, buildings linked to the Islamic University and the home of a top Hamas commander
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Posted on 19 December 2008
The year 2008 was an extraordinary year by any standard. From the stock markets hitting record highsand then melting down in what was described as a once in a century event, from China showing its prowess during Bejing Olymipics, from war in Iraq and Afganistan to democracy being restored in other parts of the world, from the gyrations in oil prices to focus on global warming, the world we it all ...
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Posted on 29 November 2008
"Do not come up, I will handle them", these were probably the last words which Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan told his men as he was hit by bullets while engaging terrorists inside the Taj. He and fellow NSG commando Havildar Gajender Singh lost their lives as did Hemant Karkare, the celebrated head of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, while fighting the terrrorists. I feel so sad for their families and may God give them the strength to bear the loss.
India has ...
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Posted on 23 November 2008
The key to increasing speed of calculation and improving performance of your excel worksheet and VBA code lies in understanding how Excel calculates (and re-calculates) each cell and resolves dependencies. Whenever an event occurs that causes Excel to recalculate (for example a cell is changed, a VBA code calls for re calculation or anything else), the entire calculation process is carried out roughly as follows:
1. Load workbook in memory when the workbook is first opened.
2. Track all dependencies and build ...
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Posted on 22 November 2008
In one of my previous posts (
How to read data from Pivot Tables using VBA), I talked about using the getpivotdata() function in VBA to read values from a Pivot Table. In this article, we are going to look at building an alternative to pivot tables. Let's begin.
Pivot tables are an immense help while working with data sets – they sum up the data into a small, neatly organized space. You can pick and choose the various values from ...
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Posted on 11 November 2008
One exercise that is done with almost religious fervor in all companies at the beginning of each financial year is the preparation of the budgets and targets for the next year. Every year a fresh faced newly recruited manager is identified, handled this dreaded responsibility and asked to present the first draft to the management team. And so the rookie spends a couple of nights pouring over multiple spreadsheets and a plethora of for complicated formulae and comes out with, ...
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Posted on 09 November 2008
Getting the Flex command line compilers can be a bit of a trick. I recently started working with Flex and it took me a little time to get the configuration right.
The 5 step process to get the Flex compiler to work in Windows:
1. Download Flex Builder from
Adobe
2. Download Java SDK from
Sun
3. Install both on your computer
4. Go to the Flex Builder's SDK bin folder and ...
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Posted on 08 November 2008
I started learning Flex (Flash if you please) a few days back. (See
Another step):
Well here's my first app :-)
(File stored at Storewith.com)
Just one minor hitch though...can't get wordpress to correctly render large .swf files. Which means that I can't embed any of the examples that I'll make into my wordpress blog :-( Have tested a lot of pluggins but none of them seem to get over this problem. ...
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Posted on 08 November 2008
This article describes 3 ways of simulating multithreading in VBA using Excel.
One feature that I sorely miss in the VBA's integrated development environment (IDE) is the ability to do multithreading. I think part of that comes from having worked in my previous avatar with Java and C++.
In the past few days I’ve been thinking about ways in which one can ‘simulate’ multithreading in excel. (If you noticed, I said ‘simulate’ – you can’t actually multithread with vba – not atleast ...
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Posted on 07 November 2008
I mentioned in one of my previous articles that for data visualization to become truly interactive one may need to explore newer avenues. I was mighty impressed by this graphic
behind the results that appeared in USAToday recently.
Here’s why:
1. The authors (Analysis: Paul Overberg of USA TODAY and Robert Lang of Virginia Tech and Graphic: William Couch and Juan Thomassie, USA TODAY) ...
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Posted on 07 November 2008
Reading pivot tables using vba can be quite easy. Here are a few ways you can do it.
You may also want to read my previous article on
formatting pivots.
(Before you dive further, you may want to download this
example which will guide you through some of the steps in reading a pivot table data using vba)
The Pivot Table Hierarchy
Lets look at this peice of code:
Sub ListAllItemObjects()...
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Posted on 01 November 2008
A sure shot way of spreading some holiday cheer around the office is to send your colleagues regular excel workbooks/reports with a bit of mischievous vba code in it :-)
Here's my top 5 list:
1. Add a new menubar to excel. In my previous posts (
Get each of your spreadsheets a customized menu), I talked about how to add custom menus to your excel workbook. Well......let's say that with a ...
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Posted on 25 October 2008
There are three strong contenders competing for the market
share of the RIA (Rich Internet Application) development market - JavaFX, Adobe AIR and Silverlight. All three are aimed at the same market but carry strong influences of the parent company. Take Adobe AIR for example - Adobe hit it big with Flash a few years ago and is now used in more than 92% of all websites. Adobe makes its bucks by offering ...
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Posted on 24 October 2008
There has been ample supply of opinion polls and charts regarding the US presidential elections. I’ve been guilty of using Google Trends on this blog earlier. But over the past few days and weeks, the 24x7 in-you-face coverage of dresses, speeches, daughters/family, grand-fathers, great-great-great-grandfathers and anybody remotely in the vicinity of the candidates, has pushed me to a point where I am almost wishing that the election takes place over the weekend be spared the remaining weeks.
However a recent story ...
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