If you are working in Excel, and you want to show the worksheet name in a Cell on that worksheet, you can use the CELL function to do so.
By default the CELL function will return the current document name, if used with the filename info_type:

=CELL("filename")

This provides a full path to the spreadsheet, with the worksheet of the current Cell at the end, e.g:

C:\folder\[myfile.xls]Sheet1

You can easily get just the worksheet name by using the FIND and MID functions to do the hard work. You need to find the location of the last square bracket, and find achieves this as shown:
=FIND("]",CELL("filename"))

This would return the position of the last bracket. In this case it is at position 22 of the text that CELL(“filename”) returns. The MID function can extract text starting at a location for n length, where n is an arbitrary number. So we would combine MID, FIND and CELL functions to return just the worksheet name like this:

=MID(CELL("filename"),FIND("]",CELL("filename"))+1,255)

The reason we add a +1 is because we want to start extracting the text one character AFTER the right square bracket, e.g. at the start of the Worksheet name. Our result is:

Sheet1

Worksheet names from another Worksheet

So far so good, and how is this any different than any other blog post or forum post on the net explaining this? So far it’s not, but here comes the fun part.

What if you have multiple Worksheets, and you do this:

1. Have a cell with content, Sheet1!B2
2. Sheet1!B2 displays the content of OtherSheet!H5, i.e.:
   

   =OtherSheet!H5

3. You want Sheet1!B1 to display the worksheet name where the CONTENT of Sheet1!B2 comes from.

You could try using the MID/FIND/CELL function combination to try this. In Sheet1!B1 you would enter:

=MID(CELL("filename",B2),FIND("]",CELL("filename",B2))+1,255)

However this would yield the worksheet name of B2 itself, not the worksheet where you are taking your content from:

Sheet1

Not what we wanted. Somehow you need to get the Value of the formula used =OtherSheet!H5 and look up the worksheet name for OtherSheet!H5

The Solution

To do this you ware going to need to do two things:

1. Make a new function to display the formula, sans the equal sign
2. Make your CELL function use the result of your function to lookup the filename info_type

We can use the Excel VB Editor to create a new function, and call it GetLocation:

Function GetLocation(Cell As Range) As String
   GetLocation = Mid(Cell.Formula, 2)
End Function

But we can’t just use GetLocation to directly feed the CELL function. We need to use another handy function INDIRECT. This allows us to return the result of the GetLocation function as a Reference. This then allows the CELL function to evaluate the filename/Worksheet details for the destination cell in the other worksheet:

=MID(CELL("filename",INDIRECT(GetLocation(B2))),FIND("]",CELL("filename",INDIRECT(GetLocation(B2))))+1,256)

This now provides the Worksheet name of the cell that Sheet1!B1 is using to get it’s content from which is OtherSheet!H5:

OtherSheet

This is very handy when you need to show on a master worksheet which other worksheet your data is actually coming from. Windows Excel only, not Mac I’m afraid – until they bring back VB. Enjoy!

In my case I am Using Solaris 9, and have Oracle 10g databases and client files for use by BOE.

When running the cmsdbsetup.sh script you get the following error pertaining to clntsh:

           Business Objects 

Current CMS Data Source: DBNAME 

err: Error: Failed to get cluster name. 
err: Error description: Unable to load clntsh 

select (Select a Data Source) 
reinitialize (Recreate the current Data Source) 
copy (Copy data from another Data Source) 
changecluster (Change current cluster name) 
selectaudit (Select an Auditing Data Source) 

[select(6)/reinitialize(5)/copy(4)/changecluster(3)/selectaudit(2)/back(1)/quit(0)] 
----------------------------------------------------------

This error “Unable to load clntsh” refers to the libclntsh.so library used by the Oracle client. Since BOE runs as 32bit, the 32bit Oracle client libraries should be accessible by the user running BOE.

If you are running a 64 bit Unix and a 64bit Oracle install check that the environment for the user running BOE (user that will run the CMS) has the 32bit libraries in the path:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib32

Then check that either the user is a member of the Oracle dba Unix group or everyone has permissions to access the 32bit libraries under Oracle 10g:

su - oracle
chmod o+rx $ORACLE_HOME/lib32/*

Feel free to leave any comments if you need help with this.

I’ve uploaded the initial public release, v1.2, of my simple Tweet plugin to the WordPress Plugin Repository. You can install the plugin by:

• downloading it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet/ ; or
• On a recent version of wordpress, v2.7 or above, follow these steps:
  1. Login to your wordpress dashboard
  2. Select the Plugins/Add New menu item as shown
     
  3. Search for Author lantrix as shown
     
  4. Click on the Install link for the Tweet plugin

If you need any assistance, you can leave a comment over on the dedicated page for the Tweet WordPress plugin for Twitter.

If you like the plugin, I’m happy to accept donations if that’s your thing.

You can read about it on the dedicated iPhone page.

via TUAW

  Fatal error: Cannot use object of type WP_Error as array in wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 1010

• If you use vertical splits, this will help move left and right across the split. Put in your ~/.vimrc
  

  " Map multi window keys
  set wmw=0
  " CTRL-H move to left window
  nmap <c -h> </c><c -w>h</c><c -w><bar>
  " CTRL-L move to right window
  nmap <c -l> </c><c -w>l</c><c -w><bar>
  </bar></c></bar></c>

• When scrolling up and down a window, you can use zz to jump the current line to the middle of the window. If you want this on always ala Scroll locking, then you can use this function. It is a toggle option. use \zz to toggle it. Put in your ~/.vimrc
  

  " Map \zz to lock scroll to middle of window
  map <leader>zz :let &scrolloff=999-&scrolloff<cr>
  </cr></leader>

• In a window split (of any sort) if you want to maximise to the current window, this will do it for you. When you press CTRL-W then o it will maximise the current view, then when pressed again will return your split arrangement! Put in your ~/.vimrc
  

  " Max/unmax splits
  nnoremap <c -W>O :call MaximizeToggle ()<cr>
  nnoremap <c -W>o :call MaximizeToggle ()<cr>
  nnoremap <c -W></c><c -O> :call MaximizeToggle ()<cr>
  
  function! MaximizeToggle()
    if exists("s:maximize_session")
      exec "source " . s:maximize_session
      call delete(s:maximize_session)
      unlet s:maximize_session
      let &hidden=s:maximize_hidden_save
      unlet s:maximize_hidden_save
    else
      let s:maximize_hidden_save = &hidden
      let s:maximize_session = tempname()
      set hidden
      exec "mksession! " . s:maximize_session
      only
    endif
  endfunction
  </cr></c></cr></c></cr></c>

If you would like your own copy for Palm (or windows mobile) you can download it from the ereader website.

This list of changes that come with SD5 are available online.

So if you purchased Speed Download 4 with MacHeist II, and choose to upgrade, then proceed to yazsoft’s website in a quick and orderly fashion to get the upgrade offer.

For those new to this, NewsFire is a news reader for blogs, news sites, and anything else that publishes an ‘RSS’ syndication feed. It watches for news so you don’t have to. When a new story is published, NewsFire brings it to your attention with some super-slick animation. Unlike other readers, NewsFire is designed with a deliberately minimal interface. The news is what matters and it takes center stage.

Download this must have mac application from his web site.

With the latest version of Adobe Illustrator costing $600, it’s no surprise that the Mac community has been clamoring for a powerful, fast, and easy to use program for creating vector art that doesn’t break the bank.
Say hello to VectorDesigner. Though relatively new, VectorDesigner features an impressive feature list, including Bezier lines, vector shapes, iSight, QuickLook, and scanner integration, and a conversion tool for turning non-vector images into vector.

Valued at $69.95, MacHeist.com have set VectorDesigner to be unlocked for all customers once $300,000 has been raised for charity.

This bundle is very graphics and web design orientated, and the budding freelance designers out there can always make use of PixelMator, CSSEdit and now VectorDesigner if it becomes unlocked. You can buy the bundle here at macheist.com – I have purchased 3 of them – and 25% of your purchase will go to your chosen charity.

Following the lead of other bloggers, I thought it would be pertinent to let you know that MacHeist II has completed all their heists, and the bundle sale is well underway. This morning the last of the 10 11 12 applications, Pixelmator, was unlocked. The developers say “If your image editing experience so far has been defined by PhotoShop, we guarantee you will be blown away by Pixelmator’s speed and beautiful UI”. I’m a casual user of Photoshop on Windows, and would like to find a decent alternative for the Mac for “casual” image editing for web design. The layering capabilities of Pixelmator appears to put it above and beyond other similar priced applications. This alone makes the bundle worth it, as the bundle is USD$10 than the retail price of Pixelmator.

The bundle now features other great applications like CSSEdit, Speed Download and AppZapper. If you have ever tried the demo of these applications, but not yet purchased them, you can get the whole lot for the price of what you would have paid for one of them.

With the current USD to AUD exchange rate, it will cost us Aussies about $55 or less to purchase the licences, and 11 applications later your Mac will have many more uses which you never knew about.

So after considering that, and with only 9 days remaining, I invite you to buy the bundle – just as I will be doing – and 25% of your purchase will go to your chosen charity.

• Photoshop vs. Gimp
• Apache HTTPD vs. IIS
• Windows vs. Open Solaris/OpenBSD/Linux etc.

It seems like we are not the only ones thinking about this topic. Slashdot today posted that CNET has a feature promoting Open Source application alternatives for the average home user, if only to reduce software costs to the end user. It does not include Operating Systems in comparison, so this article appears to be aimed at Windows users.

Read the list of ten Open Source applications CNET believe you need.

WordPress has no native way of moving comments that are incorrectly posted under another post. You can have a hack at the database yourself, or you can use a plugin that recently (in the last few months) went to Version 1.

I came across it while trolling google for a decent solution to a mis posted comment.
It is as simple as this to install (I have my own server, so I have shell access, YMMV):

livewire:/tmp# cd /tmp/
livewire:/tmp# unzip move_comments.zip
livewire:/tmp# mv move_comments /var/www/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/

You can download it from the authors own blog.

The orginal hint showed how to set up an AppleScript droplet to modify the creation date of a file. But what if you want to sync the modified date and Creation dates instead? This script has been created to do just that. It has evolved from one Daniel A. Shockley provided in a macosxhints comment to the previous hint, and has been extended to fit this purpose.

To set your files modified date to be the same as the creation date, use the AppleScript as a droplet application. Copy and paste the text into a new script in Script Editor, and then save it as an application. Run the application to bring up a requester, or drop your files (not folders) on the application directly.

Download the Applescript (Note: not tested on Leopard/10.5.x)

Note: a reader of my post suggested a simpler date change routine.

Last Friday at work my Mac (OS X 10.4) laptop HDD died. After the purchase of an extra external HDD and some custom recovery software, Data Rescue II, I tried to recover as much as I could. The bad news is the Hard drive had not just gotten corrupted, but failed. After an attempt to clone it to a second drive for analysis, and during my recovery attempt it developed the click of death. Now it no longer appears in the Hardware list on Data Rescue.

However, I was lucky on two counts:

• I sync my entire iTunes library music+photos to my ipod WITH the full resolution photo option enabled
• I recently started using Carbon Copy cloner to sync to an external Firewire drive

The external HDD was bootable and I got my system back online with it, albeit 4 weeks old. Carbon Copy Cloner had cloned all the data, and made the drive bootable as requested. Note: using a firewire HDD was required to make it bootable. I’m not sure if this is still valid with newer intel Macs.

The iTunes sync alone saved my music purchases and iPhotos from the last 4 weeks. I will be sure to commence a more thorough backup regime, and I will be using my 2 HDD’s now as Primary and Secondary backups – one being offsite (at work). Its not worth the hassle of having anything less.

Are you lucky enought to have upgraded to OSX 10.5 already? You might be thinking you could use Time Machine, but it wont produce an instantly usable bootable backup in the case of complete HDD failure. I think Time Machine will complement any use of CCC.

I did lose 4 weeks of Mail, Documents, and a new CVS repository I setup – but this is small compared to what could have been lost.

The lesson learnt is that anyone with a mac should buy an external firewire hard drive of the same size or greater than their “Macintosh HD”; Clone it with CCC; and reclone it regularly (synchronise option). This will prevent the heartache of loosing all your photos, music and data in this electronic world.

I had some trouble with getting it working in the default apache chroot jail, and found very little information out there on this app in a chroot jail. Here are my notes I recorded and and steps I took. Hope it helps someone else, but YMMV:

Download chpasswd to /tmp

  cd /tmp<br />
  tar -zxvf chpasswd-2.2.3.tar.gz<br />
  cd chpasswd-2.2.3<br />
  ./configure --enable-cgidir=/var/www/cgi-bin/ --prefix=/etc<br />
  make &&  make install<br />
  make clean<br />

  mkdir /var/www/etc<br />
  mkdir /var/www/tmp<br />
  mkdir -p /var/www/var/tmp<br />
  chmod 777 /var/www/tmp<br />
  chmod 777 /var/www/var/tmp<br />
  mv /etc/chpasswd* /var/www/etc/<br />

  ldd /var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi<br />

/var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi:
  Start    End      Type Ref Name
  00000000 00000000 exe   1  /var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi
  03d1e000 23d4f000 rlib  1  /usr/lib/libc.so.38.2
  09e55000 09e55000 rtld  1  /usr/libexec/ld.so

  mkdir -p /var/www/usr/lib<br />
  mkdir -p /var/www/usr/libexec<br />
  cp /usr/lib/libc.so.38.2 /var/www/usr/lib/<br />
  cp /usr/libexec/ld.so /var/www/usr/libexec/<br />

  cd /var/www/etc<br />
  vi chpasswd.conf<br />
  vi ipauth<br />

  mkdir /var/www/etc/squid<br />
  touch /var/www/etc/squid/passwd<br />
  chown root:www /var/www/etc/squid/passwd<br />
  chmod 660 /var/www/etc/squid/passwd<br />

  vi /etc/squid/squid.conf<br />
  <samp>
    auth_param basic program /usr/local/squid/libexec/ncsa_auth /var/www/etc/squid/passwd<br />
    auth_param basic children 5<br />
    auth_param basic realm Home Localnet to Internet access<br />
    auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours<br />
  </samp>

  squid -k reconfigure<br />

Growl provides notifications, which “… are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you’re already in.”

So many people have written long and excellent examples of an internet application layer filtering solution.

However, what if you need a quick and simple internet filtering solution? Want to block out all the garbage for the younger generation?
Look no further than Dansguardian.
I’ll assume you love OpenBSD as well, and have the following in place:

• OpenBSD running as your router, multi-homed
• the same machine running pf
• the same machine with squid installed and working as a transparent proxy
• Packet filtering is online, your internet access works from the router and from an internal host with your squid working transparently
• wget installed

Download the latest beta from dansguardian.org and extract it, reading the install doco for good reference:

cd /tmp
wget http://dansguardian.org/downloads/2/Beta/dansguardian-2.9.9.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf dansguardian-2.9.9.1.tar.gz
cd dansguardian-2.9.9.1
less INSTALL

./configure \
--mandir=/usr/local/man \
--with-logdir=/var/log/dansguardian \
--bindir=/usr/local/bin \
--sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc
mkdir /var/log/dansguardian
make
make install
make clean

chmod +x /usr/local/share/dansguardian/scripts/bsd-init
cat >> /etc/rc.local << EOF
# DansGuardian
if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/dansguardian ]; then
 /usr/local/share/dansguardian/scripts/bsd-init start
fi
EOF
cat >> /etc/rc.shutdown << EOF
vi /etc/rc.shutdown
# DansGuardian
if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/dansguardian ]; then
 /usr/local/share/dansguardian/scripts/bsd-init stop
fi

cat >> /etc/pf.conf << EOF
no rdr on $int_if from { 10.0.1.1, 10.0.1.2 } to any
rdr on $int_if inet proto { tcp, udp } from any to any port www -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
EOF
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

/usr/local/share/dansguardian/scripts/bsd-init start

This post over at the IBM Rational Clearcase forums describes EXACTLY what I was after, and explained it in the precise terms I needed. I’m thinking differently now, and if it works as I intend, then I shall write further about this adventure into SCM.