Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Blog

  • Start a new Google Doc/Sheet/Slide deck straight from the address bar

    I recently learned of a nifty little trick for users of Google’s Workspace services (i,e. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms etc.): You can start a new document, spreadsheet, slide deck and so on from the address bar of your web browser. Simply enter the appropriate command (below) into the address bar, hit return, and watch as it unfolds:

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  • A further metric for support

    I have previously written about key metrics for support departments – and I stand by everything I said then. I have, however, come to the conclusion that another metric should be placed under consideration. A quick recap, however, of the metrics I proposed then, as well as what they are intended to measure:

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  • Improving your Google-fu

    Search engines can be a great way of finding what you’re searching for. Using them to their fullest extrent, however, requires a bit of knowledge about how to structure your searches. These examples are some that I use on a regular basis:

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  • Deleting site-specific cookies in Chrome

    On occasion, the single sign-on authentication for a few of the systems I work with stops working due to an issue with the cookies stored in my web browser. The solution is simple enough; delete the cookies, and Bob’s your uncle. I don’t, however, want to delete all cookies, as that would mean that all of my logged-in sessions stop working. Instead, I want to delete the cookies for the site or sites affected by the issue. Here’s how:

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  • Hacking team software used by criminal cartels

    Back in 2015, I wrote about the Hacking team data breach. Among other things, I wrote:

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  • Should you start a blog?

    A friend recently contacted me through LinkedIn, writing:

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  • State of the Blog 2021

    This is the sixth year in a row where I return with a summer retrospective article. These are meant to be the summer counterpart to my end-of-year roundup series. As a result, some information will be duplicated across the two series of posts.

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  • How to block everyone who likes a tweet on Twitter

    I am a relatively active Twitter user. One of the things I do in order to keep Twitter a fairly enjoyable place, is to actively use the Block feature. I usually leave it at blocking individual users, but some tweets are simply so nasty that I don’t only want to block the user that tweeted (twote?) the tweet, but also anyone who likes it.

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  • Memes: A bad way to get your information

    As a denizen of the internet for a quarter of a century, I have seen more than a few memes. Some funny, some less so. Some are highly informative, some are entirely for fun, and far too many are entirely misinformation. Whatever the case, I generally find that memes are not a good way to get information, and that one should at the very least critically review a meme before accepting the claims made within it.

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  • The engineer’s estimate

    -A formula for success

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  • Calculating percentage change in Excel

    If you do a lot of work in Excel, odds are you’ve needed to calculate a percentage change. Luckily, Excel does this for you quite readily if you simply apply a basic formula of (New Value - Old Value)/Old Value. There is, however, a pitfall that you’ll not get the values you expect if the cell where you’re entering the value is not set to percentage formatting. Hence, here’s a step to step way to make the calculation:

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