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Odds & Ends

Things that don’t have a home anywhere else

…Early Riser

Dec 26th, 2018
by CannibalRabbit.
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Jasper Fforde really pushes out the SciFi / Fantasy / Dystopia genre with this one. An alternative UK where nothing is quite as it seems and extreme winters that mean that humans hibernate.
This new environment means that everyone has to gain weight to survive the winter, and being to thin is seen as very socially undesirable. I should fit right in! I’m not so sure about the comparatively lo-tech alternative though. Early Riser almost has a Terry Pratchett Discworld feel to it and keeps you guessing to the end with lots of questions raised that are wrapped up neatly. This is somewhat disappointing as it leaves no room for a sequel to this stand-alone masterpiece of story-telling, but it is rather refreshing in this age of a trilogy is not enough novel series.Early Riser Cover

There is one quote that I wanted to pull out, that calls itself out as being paraphrased from someone else but I can’t find a source with my meagre Google-Fu:

“If you can’t have change without injustice, then there should be no change”

The Egg

Dec 5th, 2017
by CannibalRabbit.
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A wonderful short story from Andy Weir, The Egg, all summed up in this quote:

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

In less than 5 minutes you can be enlightened. A very real Golden Rule.

…The Stone Gods

Jul 6th, 2017
by CannibalRabbit.
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Wow, Jeanette Winterson takes us on a roller coaster ride with The Stone Gods. Three interlinked stories that left me wanting just a little bit more, and keeps us guessing.

Winterson The Stone Gods

Dystopian sci-fi at it’s best, written in 2007, there is a fair amount of foreshadowing of our current detached political environment. There is also a stark warning of the effects of ignoring the environment.

“Human beings aren’t just in a mess, we are a mess. We have made every mistake, justified ourselves, and made the same mistakes again and again. It’s as though we are doomed to repetition.”

Sure there are awkward passages, and the transition between the three sections is a little difficult but the final tie-up makes it all worthwhile.

Say Something

Apr 8th, 2017
by CannibalRabbit.
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Just a little note of something that I need to remember:

“If people are choosing between saying something and saying nothing, they’re almost always better off saying something.”
Emily McDowell via The Art of Non-Conformity.

Emily has created around 2,000 cards that aren’t full of platitudes, and realise that there isn’t always a good way to say hard things.

No good card

Resume Excel 2013 Open Workspace

May 22nd, 2015
by CannibalRabbit.
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Okay, so the last post about partially regaining the Save Workspace function in Excel 2013 didn’t set the world on fire.

There was one thing missing though. In order to get your collection of Excel files open again you had to have a file open, even if it was just a blank workbook. I found this a little annoying once I got over the jubilation of getting the Save Workspace function back.

A solution was found in the form of a bit of VB Script, in effect a Windows batch file (.vbs rather than .bat).

set objExcel = CreateObject(“Excel.Application”)
objExcel.visible = true
objExcel.Application.DisplayAlerts = true
myStartUp = objExcel.Application.StartupPath
objExcel.workbooks.Open myStartup & “\PERSONAL.XLS”
objExcel.Run “personal.xls!OpenWorkSpace2013”
set objExcel = nothing

Open Notepad and paste in the code above. Then save the file with a “.vbs” extension somewhere easy to get to, like your Desktop. When you click on the file Excel will open with your saved workbooks. You may need to update the name that you gave the macro that Opens the Workspace file; “OpenWorkSpace2013” in this case

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