Posted: September 21st, 2011 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Technology | 1 Comment »
For years, I found it daunting to look at the box shown above. It’s not so much the complexity of the character strings, but the complete lack of information displayed about what they mean. The underlying message seems to be that somewhere out there, someone is doing something so complicated and esoteric with Excel that if you don’t intuitively understand what those more complicated formats are for, then there’s no point in trying to explain it to you.
Sure, there are explanations available, both on Microsoft’s official help pages, and on many other sites. But in my research, I have been unable to find one place that actually engages the specific default “custom” number formats and explains what each of them actually do. Most explanations speak briefly and obliquely about certain aspects, letting you know that, say, the # symbol stands for a number, or that a zero is a placeholder for a zero. But neither of those things is really true; it’s just that the real explanation is much longer and more difficult to get across. One might say that the # symbol represents a digit that could be any number 0-9, unless it is a leading or trailing zero. But to spell that out would be to admit that the whole system is actually complicated and strange, a sort of dumbed-down and more poorly documented version of regular expressions. Without further ado, I present a plain-language explanation for every default “custom” number format that comes with Excel 2007.
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Posted: July 9th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Miconian At Large, Technology | Tags: jonathan bender, kansas city star, notcot, unboxing | No Comments »
Today, an article on unboxing and teardown by Jonathan Bender appeared in the Kansas City Star (in the print version, it appears on page A13, at the front of the business section). It includes a couple of quotes from me, taken from a much longer email interview that I did. For the curious, I’ve posted the rest of the interview below.
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Posted: July 2nd, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Technology | Tags: wordpress.com, wordpress.org | 8 Comments »
You’d think this explanation would already be written somewhere, in succinct, plain language. But it’s not. At least not that I’ve found.
People often ask me “What kind of blogging software should I use?”
My answer is usually “WordPress.”
Then they go and do a search for “wordpress.”
A few days later, they come back.
“Which version of WordPress should I use? WordPress.com or WordPress.org?”
“Well,” I say, “it depends.” Then I babble on incoherently for several minutes.
When they get bored, they ask: “But which is the free one?”
Aye, there’s the rub. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: May 27th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Technology | 1 Comment »
Now you can pretend you spent the money on a new Asus Netbook without actually, you know, doing it.
This is the 1000HE, by the way.
Amazon box…
Asus box…
The computer came with a cushy shell case. Good thing I didn’t buy the one that Amazon recommended I make part of the same purchase.
This thing is so small and light that I literally wasn’t sure which piece of wrapped equipment was the actual computer.
Comes with battery, adapter in two pieces, and a wipey thing that I immediately used to clean the monitor on my Macbook.
They really keep you in suspense.
Felt like I was lifting a spiral notebook.
Yes, that’s a whiskey flask. Just for the sake of size comparison.
The power adapter came with two velcro wrappy thingies attached, to keep the cords from getting messy. Very nice detail.
This is the 2GB RAM chip I ordered with the netbook, pictured next to the box it came in. Somewhere, a tree just died needlessly.
Like unwrapping a patient’s eyes after surgery.
This thing is cuter than R2D2.
With my 13″ Macbook (1st gen Intel). So much smaller and lighter it’s ridiculous.
Other than my iPhone, this is the smallest computer I have ever had. The keyoard and the positioning of the icerink mouse will take some getting used to, as will the tiny screen. I will also probably put Linux on it.
It is very small, light, shiny, and blue, though. And supposedly has nine hours of battery life.
Posted: January 6th, 2009 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Technology | Tags: america online, aol, chinese aol | No Comments »
Remember ten years ago, when I would tell you about a cool new entertainment website, and you got confused because you couldn’t get to it by clicking on the “entertainment” category button in your AOL interface?
Remember when people used to ask you for your email address, and you just wrote down the username part, because you felt that “@aol.com” should be implied?
Remember when you heard about Mozilla, and how you wanted to try it, but you got confused and nervous thinking about viewing a website through something other than the default AOL browser? That somehow that seemed “unsafe”?
Has it been long enough that you can admit that you were acting like a complete fucking moron?
What’s that? You’ve finally decided to commit ritual seppuku?
Oh, sorry. I must have misheard you.
photo by cplbasilisk
