Author: Ian

  • What’s In a Website

    A website is made of many components.

    1. Servers and software. You can host it in many ways. WordPress is a CMS and you can put onto WordPress.com
    2. Site setup, logins etc. Different levels can be setup: Admin, editor etc.
    3. Site layout, types of pages and posts, templated.
    4. Site behaviour, hover, parallax etc.
    5. Colours, backgrounds, borders, rounded edges, spacing, drop shadows etc.
    6. Fonts and font sizes
    7. Borders
    8. Site content: Images, icons, and text editing.
  • 100 Years Ago Passchendaele

    This isn’t my Grandfather Frank Clifford Butterworth but he was wounded exactly 100 years ago in the Battle of Passchendaele.

    The commitment to service is strikingly shown in the form below: “Terms of Service: Duration of war”

    He was wounded in his face, shoulder and leg.

    • His shoulder wound severed a major artery. The records show he received a litre of blood.
    • He never gained normal function of his arm.
    • His facial would was severe enough to later cause an infected parotid gland (the salivary gland).

    He ended up in a hospital in England and was “invalided” to Canada October 18, 2018 for further months of recovery.

    Note if you are interested you can access Personnel Records of the First World War here.

  • Farm Animals

    My favourite cat!

    The boss (rooster), making noise

    And a colourful chicken.

  • Canmore Folk Festival Bruce Cockburn

    40th Anniversary of the Canmore Folk Music Festival. It rained but ended well before the Blackie and the Rodeo King’s rocking set followed up by Bruce Cockburn’s performance which ended too soon. He did some of it with Colin Linden of Black and the Rodeo Kings. They have fun performing together! Colin was producer of the new album coming out mid September which I’m eagerly awaiting.

    Here’s a recent nice short interview with him.

  • Thumb recovery

    This blog needs a post now and again. So here’s one. I’m one week into wearing the brace. One more week to go and then a couple of weeks part time. It can’t go any faster.

    This is my x-ray analysis.

    This is my x-ray.

    And this is the x-ray example on the Wikipedia page about Gamekeeper’s Thumb.


    By James Heilman, MDOwn work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

    The blue rubber band on the thumb is to hold the velcro on as it isn’t holding well as the material has stretched.

    The sad part is no bicycling for a while. And, the bill just arrived, from Alberta Health Services. Rockyview General Hospital – Wrist Splint 1 @ $35.00.

  • Excel Power Utility Pak

    I first found out about John Walkenback from his books. He, without question, has the best books on Excel. Back when books only were made from dead trees I judged books by how much real information versus fluff. He wins outright. His books now are available in paper format or electronically.

    He also has a site with many good Excel tips.

    For many years I have also used his add-in. It is another reason why I am running Excel on Windows as the Mac does not support these add-ins.

    In fact even if it had only the cells items

    And the text tools items

    It is well worth the money!

    I also get the source code which he sells for an additional price. That opens up many opportunities for programming or learning programming.

    On his site, and I agree he says:

    PUP is an Excel add-in that adds dozens of new features and functions to Excel. A free 30-day trial version is available.

    There is also an Enhanced Data Form for free.

    The J-Walk Enhanced Data Form is a free Excel add-in that provides a general-purpose data entry dialog box. The VBA code is available for a small fee.

    There are other competing Excel add-ins. But I trust J-Walk’s and it is just the right amount of add-ins in the menu bar.

    If you ever have questions or issues with Pup, John replies very quickly to any support request.

    I had a glitch installing the latest version of Pup, enabling the worksheet functions, and found out that it was my Excel file.

    • You need to ensure that a workbook’s VB project is not protected. If you unprotect your VB project, it should work.
    • And, you also need to make sure the workbook is not shared.