Place spreadsheet side by side - an idea

This is an idea piece.

Spreadsheet is a wonderful program for handling data. Now a day, almost all spreadsheet programs allows multiple sheets. Spreadsheet program usually offered facilities to allow user to see various part of a spreadsheet simultaneously.

One thing I haven't seen is to allow user to see different sheet of the same spreadsheet file at the same time. As we all know, data can be processed and passed/linked through various sheets and it is very likely that one would like to look at the original data to see if the data processing process is doing the right thing. The idea is, hence, to allow user to see various sheets side by side.

This idea can be extended to other kind of programs. For example, browsers today are becoming a dominant viewer. Again, almost all browsers provide the tabbing ability. But not many of them allow user to view tabs side by side, even though, most of the time, you can open a tab in a different window.

phpbb relative url howto - bbcode

Forum can host a lot of information and, from time to time, same or similar topics can be asked again and again. It is, therefore, not unusual, that forums contain links to pointed to one of its other threads - just like links in web pages that pointed to pages in the same web site.

Lot of times, relative URLs are used for these links for various reasons. For one, if the site is to be moved from a developing host to the production server, with the relative URL, none of those links need to be updated. From time to time, we also see companies got purchased and need to moved to a new domain and, hence the new URL. All of these justify the use of relative URL in web pages.

For the phpBB, up to version 3.0, the [url=][/url] BBCode does not support the use of relative URL. To overcome that, one solution is to create a customized BBCode called, say, [rel=][/rel].

Customized BBCode can be defined through the phpBB's administrator panel. Log into the forum as an administrator and click the 'Administration Control Panel' at the bottom. Re-confirm the administrator password. Click the 'POSTING' tab at the top menu bar and click the BBCodes link under the MESSAGE title in the left side bar. Click Add a new BBCode and enter the following information. In BBCode usage textbox, enter '[rel={LOCAL_URL}]{TEXT1}[/rel]' and, in HTML replacement textbox, enter <a href="{LOCAL_URL}">{TEXT1}</a>. Click the submit button.

If you would like to save the typing even more you could use <a href="/phpBB/{LOCAL_URL}">{TEXT1}</a> instead. In this case, all you need is the the URL part that run off your phpBB root directory.

MS Word mail merge using MS Access LIKE operator

Mail merge refer to the process of using/linking data from an external source to fill out an otherwise static document. An example can be a formal letter that send to all board members. The content of the letter is the same (static), but the title/address-block and greeting can be pulled from a database so that letters are with proper greeting and title of the addressed board member.

For most part, Microsoft's (MS) word processing (Word) and databbase (Access) works well with each other. However, under one situation, the normal way of linking MS Word and MS Access failed to work correctly. This article is to report a work around for that situation.

In general, database can hold a lot of information and it is not uncommon that a mail merge incident only need a small part of those information stored in the database. For example, the database may hold the contact information for all employee, while the letter is addressed only to board members. In database, queries are used to filtered out unwanted information and MS Word can use queries to obtained the needed information. For most of queries, MS Word worked well with MS Access.

The Problem:
When a query uses the LIKE operator/keyword, the normal way of linking MS Word and Access could fail. The Word will return results that would be produced with the '=' operator instead of the 'LIKE' operator. This problem had been reported dated back to 2005 and still exist today (Aug. 2011) in Word 2007.

The work around:
To work around the problem, we can have Word linked to Access through an ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), which defines a standard protocol to be implemented by middle-layer software to allow applications (e.g. Word) to connect to various database.

To proceed, in Windows environment, you proceed by defining a DSN (Data Source Name) through the ODBC manager ( -Start -Control Panel -Administrative Tools -Data Sources) with 'Driver do Microsoft Access' as the middle-layer software and the Access database file (.mdb) as the database file.

Once the DSN is in place, you can now use it as the mail merge data source. In Word, when prompt to select the data source, click the 'New Source...' button, Select ODBC DSN and click Next. Select the DSN you created, click Next, select the query using the LIKE keyword, click Next and you are prompt to save these settings in a data connection file to be used later. Click 'Finish'.

Now you can highlight the connection file and click open. The query should work correctly.

Prior Art Initiative

Well. I was working on a program and is, again, considering the value of my solution. At this moment it takes me about 10 hours to come-up with something I think is workable. I intended to some amount of time in programming to implement that idea.

Aware of my earlier advocates[1] on urging people to public posting their crazy idea as a counter measure in defeating some of the crazy software patents, I am ready to write up a blog on Prior Art Initiative. Just then, I googled the web and found that there is Prior Art Initiative at here. Unfortunately, following their FAQ, it seems there isn't a definite mechanism in place yet.

At this moment, I will continue as follow:
1. I will create IDs with a form similar to: PA GUID.
- So that it is easier to refer to the prior art.
2. I will document the idea behind the code.
- This is intended to give some idea on the limit of the idea.
3. I will document the efforts in terms of work hours.
- This is intended to provide some effort-measures information that can , hopefully, used to gauge the value of some of today's software patents.
4. I will setup terms that should be followed when implement the idea.
- This is mimic to the general open source terms that given credits to the creator.

I will monitor the progress of the "Open Source as Prior Art" movement and adjust my terms accordingly.

[1] My first attempt on this is an email to Richard Stallman. In his response, he talked about the criteria of a prior art and is not very postive on what can be done with just an idea. My latest attempt is my comment on an article, possibly, related to Apple - I hope I can find those references. But I am not going to make a big deal out of it.

USB drive write protected error

Well. I was copying files from my hard disk to a flash drive. In the middle of it, I click the cancel button. After that, I was not able to copy any file to it or delete file from it. I can't even format it.
The message I got is 'write protected'.

I googled for solutions, there are basically two kind of posting:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
2. diskpart

I tried both, but neither one worked.

I did followed the diskpart instruction and was able to play it with a new USB flash drive. The diskpart is basically a text based utility. Once you type the diskpart in the Run or DOS Command window, a terminal like window is popped up and you can issue text commands. Type help and hit enter will show you all the command available. Typing help and a command name will show you how a given command is for and how it is used.

In my USB case, it seems that my USB is dead - I can issue the clear read-only status command and be notified the successful of the command. But when I check status, the read-only status is still set. With my new USB, the diskpart worked like a charm.

Note: There are status for both the 'disk' and 'volume'. You need to check/reset both.

Now - did cancel a copy command killed my USB drive? I don't know. But at this point, I have broken quite few USB drive with no obvious reason - it seems to me it is really un-reliable - worst than the 3.5 inch floppy disk.

I really wondering if there are any statistics about the reliability of the USB drive.

Added on Feb. 5, 2011=============
I actually read some articles about how the USB drive works and a report on the usability of the USB drive. It seems to me that USB drive suppose to be quite reliable - especially for reading only operation. At this moment, I attributed my problem to my frequent writing to the USB drive. I constantly bring work home with the USB drive and, therefore, writing to the USB drive quite often. Based on some articles, the writing to USB is in blocks. So, a single change in a file could result in a lot of writings. My proposal is to keep adding to the USB until it is full. I will then deleted the oldest content and reuse that part of the memory. My hope is that by adding to the USB, I am writing across the USB and distribute my writing over the whole USB instead of writing to the same area over and over again. Hopefully this will extend the life of the USB.

Idea for navigating tags

Related Articles:
Tag, path and weighted tag

As mentioned in previous article, there are pros and cons for either the path or tag approaches in classifying information.

A problem with tags is that a single tag may associated with a lot of information that may or may not related to the specific interest of a particular search incidence. For example, a 'statistics' tag may associated with education, mathematics, physics, program ... etc. A single search of statistics becomes useless.

A possible approach is to make the search a tree/branch-liked search: Once a tag-of-interest is identified, the search program will create a list of data items that are tagged with the searching tag. The program will, then, collect all tags from these data items and try to present choices for the next tag selection and so on. By implement it right, tags can be considered a dynamic tree/path structure.

Android mothership tablet for Android phone

Here's an idea: Make Android tablet a mothership for Android phone. The connection between them is Wifi.

The tablet do not need camera, phone and GIS capabilities. But it can take advantage of those from the Android phone. You don't want to hold the hold tablet to take a picture anyway.

So how do you think?