tail -f findings.out

Excel 2007 is an amazing tool. I normally find Microsoft’s software unintuitive, annoying, and slow. But for quick numeric analysis tasks or advanced reporting, Excel can do amazing things. Before utilizing all this reporting and analytical firepower, you have to get some data into Excel. One method that allows for a very flexible setup is pulling data in from a web query. You can direct Excel to pull out one or more data tables from any URL-accessible resource. Here’s how:

• In a new or existing workbook, go to Data in the Ribbon, then select “From Web”:
  
• Then in the address field, enter the URL of the table you want to pull in. But first, watch and laugh as the MSN homepage loads by default and throws runtime errors in Microsoft’s own software. Always a good time.
• Once you enter the URL and press Go, the tables available will load in the window below. Click the yellow arrow to the left of the table you want to import. It will turn green.
• WARNING: If the report contains HTML you want to render, like links, you need to perform an extra step. Click Options in the top right of the query window. Change formatting to “Full HTML formatting”:
  
• Then click OK
• Once you have your table selected, click OK at the bottom, and the data should be imported.

Now a new sort of infrastructure becomes feasible. Web resources serving up raw or slightly processed data in the form of HTML tables connect to backend data sources. Spreadsheets pull down the latest data, which then powers advanced reporting and analysis functionality built into the spreadsheet. This allows a central source of data to feed a variety of individual approaches to crunching that data, without a steep learning curve or expensive reporting system.

In all fairness, OpenOffice’s Calc does offer the ability to import data from a web query. However, I continuously had problems with it not working with certain URLs. I’m not sure if the intended use case was different, and OO Calc only supports importing certain types of documents. But any arbitrary page with a table on it that one could view in a web browser would work fine with Excel every time. And this makes things a lot easier.

It’s not much fun filling your desk with computers if you have to add in a keyboard and mouse for each one. Far cooler would be a single keyboard and mouse for any number of screens you can fit into your ken, whether their parent machines are running Linux, Windows, or Mac OSX. Who doesn’t want a ridiculous setup like Stanley’s in Swordfish? On a more practical note, this sort of setup could be indispensable for testing or running platform-specific programs, if virtual machines aren’t practical.

Features

And it’s easy to do using Synergy. One machine is setup as a Synergy server, and as many others as you want connect via TCP/IP as clients. Once this is place, the keyboard and mouse of the master can be used on the clients, simply by dragging the mouse from the server’s monitor to the client’s, in a direction you set. A shared clipboard is also added, so you can cut and paste text across machines. Files can’t be transferred, but the setup is still quite useful. This page provides a more detailed overview.

Setup

This page describes how to setup the server and the client on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It’s quite straightforward:

• On the master (the machine with a keyboard and mouse you can easily reach), install the Synergy server. System requirements (while paltry) are listed here. This page should link to the download options (not entirely positive, as Sourceforge is somewhat broken right now).
• Next configure the server. On Windows this is through a configuration dialog, on *nix/OSX you do it through a text file (also see QuickSynergy below). This is additional useful, as you can put your synergy.conf in a VCS.
• Start the server
• Connect with a client
• Enjoy!

Security

One thing you might see noted frequently is that this setup is not secure. Indeed it is not, but it can be made so. However, if you are just connecting machines on your own LAN, and you have a firewall in place on the machines, or at least on the router or whatever is between you and the internet, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.

QuickSynergy

QuickSynergy was developed as a Synergy GUI configuration tool for Linux and Mac OSX, as only the Windows packages comes with one. Their homepage has installation and use instructions, as well as a video guide.

When hanging out in Windows land, life is pretty rough without PuTTY. And while PuTTY is awesome, it too is missing a few nice features. One noticeable default lack is the inability to open multiple tabs with sessions in a single window, as is common for terminal applications on Linux and OSX.

Luckily, there is the PuTTY Connection Manager! This serves as a container that spawns PuTTY processes. It not only allows tabs, but also a nice view of saved sessions, automatic login ability, import and export of your encrypted config database, and more!

When I first needed to take a screenshot in Windows Vista, I came across The Snipping Tool. It is very handy, and makes taking snapshots about as easy it as it could be.

Then I decided to check out what services were running by default on my machine and turn off unnecessary ones. One that I excised was “Tablet-PC Optional Components” since, well, I don’t have a Tablet-PC.

Thereafter, needed to take another screenshot. Well let’s go find The Snipping Tool. It’s missing?!? Turns out that it gets added by the… “Tablet-PC Optional Components”? I mean, why would you want a handy tool to take screenshots on a normal laptop? Printscreen not good enough for you? Anyway, if this happens to you, here’s how you can turn it back on.

I had some problems using Launchy on Vista a while ago (slow, crashed), but the latest version has been working like Ajax on the plains of Scamander. I won’t go into the details of Launchy here, as much has been written about it. Basically it is an awesome keystroke launcher, similar to Quicksilver, Gnome-Do, and the like.

There are some plugins for Launchy that expands what it can do, and one super handy one is the PuTTY Plugin. You will need to exit out of Launchy before running the installer. After you install it, go into Launchy’s Options, then Plugins, then PuTTY. Check the “Add session names directly to catalog” option. Now you can get Launchy to open a session for you based on whatever names you have assigned in PuTTY! So now with something like “mycoolserver” + enter, you are logged in. Couldn’t be much faster unless you assigned a keyboard shortcut to login to your servers, which only works if you have a few.