For some reason Doug Glancy’s Excel Blog has escaped my attention up till now, but having a browse today, I discovered this loopy animation:
which would not have been out of place in Douglas Hofstadter’s “I am a Strange Loop”
I really should have sent Doug G. a copy of this letter: A Tail of Two Letters …
But anyway, the Blog Roll now includes Sumbuddy.
And three more links from Alfred Vachris:
My latest (and final) President’s column from the Concrete in Australia Magazine:
Some responsibilities of engineers are universally recognised. Everyone accepts that we have a duty to carry out design and construction so that structures will be serviceable, strong and stable, and will be safe at all stages of construction and throughout their life. There may be debate about how this end is best achieved, indeed I will be discussing this question at the Concrete 2015 Conference in September, but there is no argument about the basic principles.
Then there is sustainability. Too often this is seen as not real engineers’ business. Something that we will incorporate if we can, to keep the architect happy, or to provide the client with some PR material, but not something that should be allowed to interfere with good engineering design. In my opinion this approach fails to recognise that using and providing sustainable products is as fundamental a part of an engineer’s responsibilities as any other. In 1828 Thomas Tredgold, one of the founders of the profession of Civil Engineering, described it as “the art of directing the great sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience of man”. Implicit in this statement is the requirement that we should consider the effects of what we do on all humanity, including future generations. If we recognise that the use of materials cannot be sustained in the long term, or that our current practices may have a significant adverse effect on the environment, now or in the future, then we have a duty to do what we can to change these practices. Far from being antithetical to a good engineering approach, a consideration for the future effects of what we do simply requires a process of design optimisation, but one that includes allowance for hidden and future costs.
Fortunately, there is plenty of scope for changing the way we do things. New materials and new design and construction techniques provide great opportunities for innovation. These will combine with changing financial and political pressures to result in widespread changes to current standard practice. Future commercial success will demand a readiness to accept change on a wide scale. Examples of innovation of this sort that will be illustrated at the Concrete 2015 Conference include the use of ultra-high strength concrete in bridge structures, the use of geo-polymer concrete in buildings and airport pavements, and the extension of the life of old structures through remediation and strengthening. These innovations, and many others, demand the transition from academic research into industrial application. This is the theme of this year’s Concrete Conference, and I recommend attendance to all interested in maximising their future opportunities.
This year the 27th biennial Conference of the Concrete Institute of Australia will be held in Melbourne from 31st August to 2nd September, in conjunction with RILEM Week.
On behalf of the organising and technical committees, we cordially invite you to join us at Concrete 2015. Concrete 2015 will be the 27th Biennial National Conference of the Concrete Institute of Australia in conjunction with the 69th RILEM Week conference. This historic joint event will provide national delegates with valuable exposure to cutting edge research and development exchanges in the international forum of RILEM Week.
Concrete 2015 will focus on the theme Research into Practice. The conference is dedicated to bringing together global leaders in the concrete industry, covering all aspects of concrete design improvements, research, construction, maintenance and repair of concrete projects. Concrete 2015 will offer participants from around the world the opportunity to connect face to face and share innovative and interesting ideas on valuable research outcomes and latest construction practices.
The multidisciplinary theme of Concrete 2015 provides an excellent forum for networking and education and an opportunity to meet and interact with practitioners, engineers, scientists, researchers, academics, practitioners and professionals, and also to engage with international delegates from RILEM technical committees. Whether you attend technical sessions, sit in on multiple committee meetings, or network with friends and colleagues this conference will provide you with ample opportunity for professional growth.
On behalf of the Organising Committee, we look forward to meeting you at Concrete 2015 in Melbourne, Australia.
I have posted solo recordings of Blackwater Side from Bert Jansch and Anne Briggs before, but here they are together, about 30 years on:
Which led me to a video of Bert Jansch’s 60th Birthday concert:
Recently a thread at the Eng-Tips forum prompted me to look for help on the Go To-Special function in Excel. Pressing F5-Alt S, then clicking the help icon in the dialog box brought up:
It seems that the offline help AI can’t work out that if you click the Help icon in the Go To-Special dialog, that is probably what you want help with. If you give it a little hint, it gets the message:
Never mind that I had just come from the Go To dialog, so I must know how to find it, I’ll follow the link to the help. Here it is in full:
That’s it, the full extent of the offline help: the Find and Select function lets you find and select things. It doesn’t even mention using the F5 key, let alone give any details on the “Special” options.
Using the online help works better. It takes you straight to help on using Go To Special, and it gives a reasonable amount of detail (although still no mention of the F5 key).
Now I know that Microsoft would really, really like us to use their on line help, but dumbing down the off line help to the point of making it totally useless really isn’t the way to go about it. There are actually good reasons for using help off line:
One of the things that made the Lotus 123 spreadsheet so popular in the early days of personal computing was that it gave near instant helpful and relevant help at the touch of the F1 key. Now more than 30 years later, in spite of processing speeds and available storage increasing by factors of thousands, the help available in Excel doesn’t come close to matching what we had then.
OK rant over, let’s get back to what we can do with Go To-Special. The discussion linked above asked how we could use VBA to fill a table containing blanks using the last entry above the blanks as the text, and filling down to the next non-blank cell. Left to myself I would have looped through the table cell by cell in VBA, which would work OK, but there is a much simpler way (provided by the original poster in the discussion):
Select the range to be filled, then open the Go To-Special dialog (with F5 Alt-S), and select blanks (or press k):
All the blank cells will be selected, and the cursor will move to the first blank cell. Type “=” and select the cell immediately above:
then press Ctrl-Enter:
The table is instantly filled as required. The remaining step is to convert all the generated formulas to text, which can be done quickly by selecting the entire table, press Ctrl-C, then Paste-Special as values.
A few lines of VBA will do all this automatically:
Sub FillInBlanks() 'select the range you want to fill in and generate formulas: Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeBlanks).FormulaR1C1 = "=+R[-1]C" ' Convert to text: With Selection .Copy .PasteSpecial xlPasteValues End With End Sub
For more on using Go To-Special see these articles at Chandoo’s Blog:
Newton Excel Bach, not (just) an Excel Blog 