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Here in Canada, I regularly drive through dead zones of radio coverage. Before podcasts were everywhere, I got the notion to record some favorite radio shows from my PC to listen to while we went through these dead zones.

Fast forward a couple years: now there’s a decent library of Vinyl Cafe, Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap, Gregory Charles (cancelled – sigh!) to pick and choose from to fill dead air during those drives. CBC doesn’t officially podcast any of these shows (or not in their entirety because they play – gasp – music).

Recently I had to tweak my settings to get it working again – and to start recording the Strombo show -  so I thought I’d share how I do it.

There’s two parts to recording something online:

1. Getting your computer to actually record the sound. I tried a few options here, and eventually went the low cost commercial software route on this one and bought a standard license to Total Recorder @ $17.95, after first checking out the trial version to ensure I could get it working. This program basically sits as a virtual recorder on top of your PCs speaker. If you can play it on your PC – this app will record the sound, and can save it as an MP3. The basic license comes with a scheduler – so I just set it up to record at the times of the shows I want.
2. Getting your computer to actually play the radio station that you want. You need this, or else Total Recorder is just recording silence. On a WinXP PC, I use a “Scheduled Task“, under Windows Control Panel  to fire up the link to the streaming radio once a week, and time it to start when your Total Recorder schedule kicks in.

Setting up your scheduled task - like so many other things in life, the trick here is to get it working once.

• First, make sure the radio stream will play through your browser. Go into your Firefox browser, click through to play a given radio stream, and copy that URL – you’ll need it later.
  
• Then setup your “New Scheduled Task” to run Once, in about 10 minutes to test it out, and pick your Mozilla browser as the program to run.
• Now modify the URL after your browser to include the URL of the audio stream that you want to open.
• Once you check it’s working – modify the Scheduler in the advanced tabs to run weekly, and to run and wake your PC even when it’s asleep, and to stop after your show ends.
• Finally, turn down your speakers so you don’t scare the cat when your PC wakes up at midnight to record the West Coast feed of the Strombo show.

Here’s what worked for me – inside the little Scheduled Tasks window:

C:\PROGRA~1\MOZILL~1\firefox.exe -new-tab
http://www.cbc.ca/video/radio-popup.html?networkKey=cbc_radio_2&programKey=eastern

Some final hints:

• Don’t start your recordings at the top of the hour exactly or you’ll catch the news. Boring – and freaks you out when you hear 2 year old news later on.
• If your radio offers multiple timezone streams – take advantage of it so your PC is recording off peak hours.
• Total Recorder is also handy if you want to convert some of the great concerts on CBC Radio 3 into more portable formats for your personal use.
• If you get bogged down with TR’s default file naming scheme – search out a nifty tool called Oscar’s Renamer that’ll let you bulk rename your files so you know what stuff you recorded later on. Otherwise, just bundle your recordings into playlists by show.

Let me know what you think!

My review of the awesome Weed Hound dandelion puller at Cool Tools got published today! Exciting!

I was helping a friend get a complicated array formula working with Excel the other day. She had a sample formula taken from the Web and was pulling her hair out trying to get it working. Now, I know a fair bit about Excel, but I’d never worked with array formulas  before.

In short – they’ll act on a a whole range of cells in a single formula. When you’re done editing them, you hit Ctrl-Shift-Enter to show they are array formulas, and Excel adds in some {} brackets around it. That’s also why they’re called CSE formulas.

Despite this – we had the formula working in pretty short order, cause we applied a bunch of Troubleshooting 101 techniques to the problems.

1. Break the problem down into component parts.
2. Get something working, anything!
3. Reduce the range so a person can see it
4. Check as you go – force some matches
5. Finally, focus on the hard stuff
6. Don’t forget the remnants
7. One, two, infinity. Expand your solution.

Here’s the problem in excel speak – for every row in a huge long range, we were trying to sum everything that matched three criteria:

1. a shopping cart number (column I)
2. an approval number (col J)
3. a month (hardcoded)
4. an invoice column (AG)

=SUM((’[KSB1-2009-2010.xls]Sheet1′!$AA$2:$AA$4006=I4)*(’[KSB1-2009-2010.xls]Sheet1′!$AL$2:$AL$4006=J4)*(’[KSB1-2009-2010.xls]Sheet1′!$AO$2:$AO$4006=”Jan”)*(’[KSB1-2009-2010.xls]Sheet1′!$AG$2:$AG$4006))

Here’s what we did:

• Break the problem down into component parts.

We’re trying to do a sum based on number of multiplications based on matches within different columns. If there’s a match, it turns up as a “1″…so it’s like doing a conditional sum on all rows that match. Looks doable – let’s tackle it in parts. Let’s try an easy sum (non-array formula) first, just to get the juices flowing.

Our first problem was that the template she was using had every cell formatted as text – which can cause you to poke your eyes out if you try and type a formula in it. In this version of excel, even changing the cell format to general afterwards won’t kick your formula into working. You need to change format, then delete and retype your forumla. Ouch. I was starting to understand her frustration.

• Get something working, anything!

Next problem – get ANY array formula working. Neither of us had worked with them before – let’s try a simple one just summing ANYTHING before boiling the ocean.

So we started with a simple one term array formula summing everything that matched I4 – it gave us a result – and we checked it against a pivot table so we knew it worked.

• Reduce the range so a person can see it.

Now we added the other terms back in – but got a bunch of N/A results. Hmm. When we went into Evaluate Calculation pulldown, all we saw was a long series of 0’s and N/As. Time to reduce the range from a 4000 row range to something manageable that a human can get their head around – like 6.

So we changed our ranges down to 6.

We still got the N/A result – but we could now see the problem was with the second term in the equation – the I4 lookup. So we took that term out. We now saw numbers – but they were all zeros.

• Check as you go – force some matches

Once we had the range down to 6, and the wonky term taken out, we were just seeing zeros – no surprise there were no 2 term matches in the 6 rows of data. So we edited this data to fake it – just as a check. Ok the reduced match is working.

• Finally, focus on the hard stuff

Now the only thing left was the wonky I4 match – which turned out to be the result of an evil “number stored as text”, which in Excel looks like text, but does not act as text when used as part of a formula. Even the Excel MVPs don’t write much about the subject – but Excel must do something funny internally to these cells just in case users try and recast them as numbers later on.

However – we were able to force the text to be treated as text, for formula purposes, with a formula called, oddly enough: TEXT.  As my old computer lab buddy Art used to say, “Funny how it’s always the last thing you try that works”.

• Don’t forget the remnants

The above solution worked for most of our approval numbers, which were integers, but we needed to wrap that statement in an IF to handle the remaining numbers which were one digit decimals – because the text function was actually pretty harsh about how it was going to display different numbers.

=IF((LEN(I4)>4),TEXT(I4,”?.?”),TEXT(I4,”?”))

• One, two infinity  – expand your solution to cover the whole problem

Time to put a bow on the formula – re-expand the ranges, fix the master data you changed so you’d have an easy match. The final thing we did was anchor the lookups so that when the formula got copied over to sum different things, it would still work, and de-referenced the month to a header cell at the top of the column.

So it turned out to be 7 or 8 steps peeling the onion. But the onion is peeled, baby!

In my last post, I was talking about how gutsy it was that Logitech would release a trackpad application for the iPhone for FREE – basically cannibalizing it’s own market.

Later in the week I was wondering how the heck Logitech would make any money on this…and it hit me.

It’s not just about turning the iPhone into a simple trackpad – it now becomes a PC peripheral with custom buttons, with infinite overlays, dual screen potential, and an accelerometer.

In short – it’s now as versatile as the intellivsion controller in the 1980’s – where you just slid in your custom plastic sheet and the keypad became a custom baseball controller or or whatever.

Oddly reminiscent of an iPhone, huh?

If Logitech succeeds in becoming the defacto standard for iPhone to PC communication as trackpad plus – there’s probably a ton of different apps that will license this underlying capability as smart handhelds become ubiquitous.

Everything from slideshow controller to media center remote control is on the table for Logitech now.

And I think that’s how Logitech is going to make some money on this.

Now Apple came very close to doing this themselves when they launched the Remote application that let you browse through your Mac music library – but they didn’t take the complete plunge.

When I first heard about Logitech’s free Touch Mouse app that turns your iPhone/iPod Touch into a wireless trackpad (and keyboard) for your computer – I had two thoughts.

First – I laughed because I was telling my dad a couple months ago that this was a natural future use of the iPod touch, after seeing him fumble with a wireless mouse, a laptop and a USB dongle.

Second – Think about what guts it took the Logitech suits to embrace this possiblity, build and support an application for it, and release it FOR FREE.

What Logitech has done is abstract the mouse (their main business, at least historically) OFF of the mouse, onto a third party device. The kicker – they’re giving it away for free!

Whenever we came up with an idea like this back in my Telecom “business unit” days, we’d get stern business advice about cannibalizing our current revenue stream, how current customers would get pissed off, and how there was no money to be made in “free”.

Then somebody else would go ahead and build and scale the same idea which have varied from Skype, to wholesaling bandwidth in a global WAN.

I’m very impressed that Logitech had the guts, and the balls to be their own “somebody else”.

I’m swimming a similar idea upstream at work at the moment…maybe someday I can tell you how it pans out.

Thought I’d share a tip we use around here that makes me happy at least once a year.

When traveling, we follow a pretty strict “no souvenirs” policy, with one exception – we try and pick up something we can hang on the Christmas tree, to remind us of the trip.

Key rules:

• It can’t be an ‘official ornament’.
• It gets stored when the tree comes down.

In the past we’ve repurposed totem keychains from Vancouver, thimbles from NYC, and a baby sock with a Cubs logo on it. There’s even a brass armadillo from Austin that’s hanging courtesy of some old twist ties.

Here’s why it works:

• It gives you something fun to look for when you’re on vacation.
• It makes you feel good when you decorate the tree every year. You think back on these fun trips, versus thinking,  “look, a shiny ball”.
• It gives visitors to your house something to talk about.
• Perhaps best of all…it gets stored away most of the time – so it’s not cluttering up your house!

Speaking of happiness in general – there’s a great book called Stumbling on Happiness that’s essentially a summary of various research studies about the kind of choices that typically make people happy – the results will almost certainly surprise you.

Here’s one tip from the book: If you have a favorite dish at a restaurant – don’t waste your time ordering other items to see if you can find a second favorite at that spot.  Odds are low.

Another tip: over the long term, you’re more likely to be happy with a purchase if you bought it from a “NO RETURN” policy…how counter-intuitive is that??

Happy 2010 Everybody!

I’ve had some people commenting on the lack of postings here. Their comments generally go something like: Your blog sucks so badly why do you even bother? These are typically the same folks who complain that my LinkedIn profile is basically the same as it was when I signed up a year ago.

Both these things are true.When it comes to new technology, I’m kind of a dabbler. Not exactly an early adopter, but close. Eventually I wound up with a Linux box, a Mac and a PC at home.

Well, when I initially bought the much sought after patboule.com domain, it was more of an experiment. We were building a micro-site for my job…and I thought it’d be fun to try it out as well.

What I discovered is that if I’m bothering to develop “content”, I like to have it relate to my professional/volunteer life versus whining about minutia like why the City isn’t picking up Christmas trees till January 18th!

In this regard – feel free to check out my 5 or 6 case studies, from circa 2008/9 etc. on the Nortel On Nortel website. Me and MJ had a hand in basically most things on there, either editing or writing. These’ll probably go away soon, as Avaya has bought that part of the business, and gotten some great folks in the deal.

More recently – here’s other stuff that’s been keeping me away from here:

• Kicking butt at the day job.
• Putting finishing touches on my first iPhone App. Hint: focused on Soccer moms and dads and beer league warriors.  And rocks, if I do say so myself.
• Studying for language testing. Who knew that those French Grammar rules from Grade 7 could be such fun – again!
• Still running the website at Common Sense Crossings to mobilize the east against the latest InterProvincial bridge charade. Also participating in the NCC’s workshop to envision the Greenbelt in 50 years.
• Managing the Racing Rabbits web page for the Nakkertok Cross Country club. A truly great place to ski, and learn to ski. And you can ski at night without the Golf Course owner getting mad at you!

However – I commit to get my LinkedIn profile up to date by end of January. Who knows – maybe somebody will be checking it out…have a great 2010!

Today  on the Inside the CBC blog, there was a posting that talked about the success of Battle of the Blades, with the premise that anything to do with hockey in Canada is bound to succeed.

I disagree -  this series had all the earmarks of a train wreck. But it has turned out to be insanely popular and I think I know some of the reasons why.

• Cross demographic and gender appeal. This is a show you can sit around with the entire family, including grandma and watch. Having a wide age range of retired players makes this happen. Grandma can wax nostalgic about Ron Duguay in the seventies, while her grandkids remember Jamie Sale and Salt Lake City.
• It’s almost live. It airs a few short hours after shooting – meaning that there’s no chance to overproduce it, or filter out the authenticity. Witness how poor Kelly Hrudey’s stumbling analysis on opening night (summary: gee I like girls and you’re a girl) was untouched. I was killing myself laughing reading Tweets that referenced Hrudey as the broadcast went on.
• The host. Is there a more universally appealing host than Ron MacLean? All that Olympic capital is put to use here.
• Location. Finally – Maple Leaf Gardens put to good use! What Canadian wouldn’t tune in to see the old lady on Carlton Street.
• There is actual talent on display. I don’t mean the hockey players. The women are phenomenal athletes – it’s incredible how they can carry a performance, and Barbara Underhill on hockey skates (Kurt Browning too) was truly amazing.

Keep it up CBC – great show! But give credit to alot of smart decisions made along the way – it wasn’t a gimme.

Greetings. Over the next year I’m going to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook. Oh, wrong project.

This is a transitional page while I move my stuff over from my old Google Sites pages – I threw those together as a sandbox for some work I was doing for a local cross country ski club – Nakkertok. The club site is moving to WordPress shortly – and I’ve been meaning to learn it anyhow…so here goes!

Chris Brogan convinced me to take the plunge and actually pay somebody to host this puppy. So far so good – despite me getting hit with the PayPal glitch that people complain about in his comments. Tech Support has been awesome getting that sorted out.

The old page is here if you want to check it out.

I’m also on Twitter as @patboule