Archive for March, 2006

LEGOs, apparently

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 20, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

So today appears to be a LEGO related day.

  • BrickQuest: a fantasy based game, like HeroQuest, which uses modular tile sets to create the game board. I’ll have to look through my LEGOs and see what I could make. Also, as I have non-LEGO blocks from MegaBloc’s Dragons series, there would be many more options.
  • LEGO USB drive: instructions can be found here and here. Once I do this, the pictures will be forthcoming. The only thing is, what type of blocks do I use?
  • Camelot! (it’s only a model): A classic - the Camelot scene from Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail done with LEGOs.

That’s all for now.

Printing from DOS (via LPT1) to a network (IP) printer using Windows XP

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 16, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I was helping out a co-worker on Tuesday with an issue of printing to a network printer from DOS; not something I need to do. I’m not sure why, but either the co-worker hadn’t searched on Google for the resolution to this issue, or just didn’t find a good answer. Anyway, Google was the first place I went to. Many of the pages I came across said the solution was to setup the printer as being shared, or setup a print spooler, or something like that; I really don’t recall, as those were not viable options. Eventually, I came across a page that simply had a comment of “pool the printers”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I Googled it, and lo and behold, the answer presented itself. So, without further ado, here is what I did to print from DOS, via LPT1, to a network printer using Windows XP.

Note: this, of course, will probably not work if you bypass Windows XP (i.e., booting directly into DOS).

  1. Open Printers and Faxes from the Start menu.
  2. Select the network printer you wish to configure, right-click, and select Properties.
  3. Select the Ports tab.
  4. Check Enable printer pooling.
  5. Now, with the initial port set for this printer (which would be something like IP_xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx if you let Windows name it), scroll all the way to the top of the port list and check LPT1 (or which ever LPT you wish to use). Scroll down and make sure the network port is still selected.
  6. Hit Apply and OK.

And that should be that. To test it, open the command prompt, go to C:\, and type dir > LPT1. You should hear (provided it is nearby) your printer spring to life and print out the listing of your C:\ directory.

An uspecified amount of time passes and Sean digs through his browser history.

So, I’m not sure how I got to it, but I eventually came to Bruce Sanderson’s Windows Web: Printing from DOS with Windows 2000 or XP, where the following was listed:

the printer is a Local Printer and the print device is connected to a USB or some other kind of port (e.g. a Standard TCP/IP port).
In this case, you need to either:
a. pool the port the printer is on with the LPT1 port (see Pool in Glossary) (thanks to Steven Latus for this suggestion)
or
b. create a share for the printer and map the printer to an emulated local port that DOS know about (e.g. LPT1).

As I was not sure what was meant, I then copy-pasted pool the port the printer is on with the LPT1 port into the Google search box in Firefox. The first item listed was the page mentioned above, but the fourth item was a “solution” on Experts Exchange. My first thought was that I was not going to find anything worthwhile, as typically the “solutions” they list are not really that helpful. The fourth comment listed here (oddly enough) was the solution above. The explanation is as follows:

The concept here is a printer pool is a collection of printers that are exactly the same and when printing to this type of printer the first available printer is chosen to be printed to. By performing the above steps you have created a bunch of printer pools that consist of one printer and an LPT1 port. When a job is directed to LPT1 and since there is no printer there, it will print to the “other” printer in the pool.

Makes sense, and the setup is easy enough.

Getting the color/format of a referenced cell in Excel

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 15, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

This one took me a while to find what I needed to do on Monday. I personally would expect that there would be some built in function to reference a cell and get its format, background color, and data, but there is not. What I had to do was create a macro and then run it on a cell or series of cells. I found the following code online, I just don’t recall where right now.

Sub ColorOfAssignment()
    'Selection.Interior.ColorIndex = xlAutomatic   'clear color
    Dim rng As Range, cell As Range
    Set rng = Selection
    For Each cell In Intersect(rng, rng.SpecialCells(xlFormulas))
        On Error Resume Next
        cell.Interior.ColorIndex = _
            Range(Mid(cell.Formula, 2)).Interior.ColorIndex
        On Error GoTo 0
    Next cell
End Sub

Sub FormatOfAssignment()
    Dim rng As Range, cell As Range
    Set rng = Selection
    For Each cell In Intersect(rng, rng.SpecialCells(xlFormulas))
        On Error GoTo passby
        Range(Mid(cell.Formula, 2)).Copy
        cell.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlFormats, _
            Operation:=xlNone, _
            SkipBlanks:=False, _
            Transpose:=False
passby:
        On Error GoTo 0
    Next cell
End Sub

In the workbook I was working on, here is what I did with this code:

  1. Opened the Visual Basic Editor. I did this by going to Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor. This can also be done by pressing Alt - F11.
  2. While in the editor, I created a new module. I did this by going to Insert->Module.
  3. Copy-and-pasted the code into the module.
  4. As I don’t want the cells filled with white and instead want them empty, I modified the following line: 
    'Selection.Interior.ColorIndex = xlAutomatic   'clear color

    Notice the ‘ in front of the line, that comments it out. (I’m under the assumption that people landing here for this may not know anything about VB code.)

  5. Save and then close the editor.
  6. Select the cells (or series of cells) you wish to run this macro on.
  7. Run the macro. This can be done by going to Tools->Macro->Macros…. This can also be done by pressing Alt - F8.
  8. The Macro window will then appear. Select the macro you want to want on those cells and click Run.

Done and done. Now your cells referencing data from elsewhere in the workbook will also reference the background/format. I personally used this to get the background color of a referenced cell when the color was related to the position of an employee in the organization I work with, and the 50 some non-colored cells were starting to be a bit much.

The benefits of IM at work

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 7, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

So, while working on some stuff at work, I got an IM from my friend Pete. He works in Philadelphia in the public school system as tech support. The issue he was facing involved an iMac G5 that was overheating and not turning on. I did some quick research and found two pages, one blog titled iMac G5: overheating problems, which references a document on the Apple site titled About the iMac G5 diagnostic LEDs, as well as another page at Apple title iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues.

Why do I call this a benefit? Because, without IM, I probably wouldn’t been able to hear about my friend’s issue or have a reason to look up information about overheating G5’s. Without looking up that information, I wouldn’t have found out that our G5’s in the office, and thus, in our computer labs, fall in the range of serial numbers that might have this problem. Now we’ll be prepared for this in case it starts happening. According to the page at Apple, the overheating/power issue may be caused by something else, or may not be an issue, but it’s good to know.

And knowing is half the battle. Yo Joe!

This isn’t the first time that I’ve talked to my friends about computer tech support issues at work. It’s helpful, as we know that each of us have certain areas in which we excel, and that we can get assistance, albeit limited, through IM. It is kind of like parallel computation. My friend and I are going to be researching the same item (possibly with different search engines and terms and people) and throwing the answers back and forth. Somewhere along the line, one of us will reference something the other one missed, which may or may not be the answer. Eventually, the desired result, if there is one, will be found.

The main reason I commented on this is because it happened recently and I learned something which makes me valuable to my organization. Using IM software, or even the Internet/web, to do this is nothing new. I really can’t imagine trying to get work done without it.

MySpace on the Daily Show

Published by Sean Et Cetera on March 4, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Here’s the MySpace clip from the Daily Show. It’s from a couple weeks back.

Meghan pointed it out to me when she saw a rerun on Comedy Central. Part of me says that I should have seen it, only because I like the daily show and it is a good lens to review current culture, but part of me says that if I hadn’t heard about it, it wasn’t that important. Then again, it could just be I wasn’t looking at the sites I should be looking at, and that the people I work with may not have noticed or cared that much about it. Stuff like this just interests me.

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