Shit happens.

In this case it was because I wanted to move my domain (which I originally bought through Google) away from eNom. Unlike a lot of other DNS providers, they don’t let you just click a button to get the auth code needed for moving a domain. No, you need to send an e-mail with your login details in clear-text(!) to their support and pray for a speedy answer.

I did get the auth code in a day or so after sending them the e-mail, entered it at my new provider to start the transfer and then had to wait 2-5 days for the transfer to go through. This new electronic, lightning-fast, world is amazing, isn’t it?

Admittedly, I screwed up a little in the process. I didn’t check back for when exactly the change went through, since I was pretty sure I had entered the same DNS settings at my new provider as I had at eNom. Turns out I forgot to change the nameservers for the domain, so it was still pointing at eNom this morning. Now though  it appears the changes have gone through to most DNS-servers and the blog is back again.

Anyway, back to work.

He needed to check a long list of phrases in two different columns to see if there were any matches.
e.g. “pasta carbonara” vs “Spaghetti Carbonara” , this should be a match.

So without further ado, here’s the VBA function to do it.

Function PartialMatch(Cell1 As Range, Cell2 As Range)
    ' Convert both cells' contents to lowercase
    Dim sC1 As String: sC1 = LCase(Cell1.Value)
    Dim sC2 As String: sC2 = LCase(Cell2.Value)
    ' Split the words by space into an array
    Dim C1() As String: C1 = Split(sC1, Chr(32))
    Dim C2() As String: C2 = Split(sC2, Chr(32))

    ' Assume that there's no match
    Dim sResult As String: sResult = "No match"

    ' Loop through the words in both cells
    For Each sWord1 In C1
        For Each sWord2 In C2
            ' Compare the words to each other
            If (sWord1 = sWord2) Then
                sResult = "Match"
            End If
        Next sWord2
    Next sWord1
    ' Return the result
    PartialMatch = sResult
End Function

Say you have A1 = “pasta carbonara” and B1 = “Spaghetti Carbonara”.
Insert =PartialMatch(A1,B1) in C1 and the function will return “Match”.
Apply some conditional formatting for =”Match” and =”No match” to highlight.

It’s a shame that I never seem to have enough time over to do something really meaningful with this site. I did update the mandatory “about“-page with a little more information about myself and what I do. One of these days I need to sit down and write more, but that will have to wait until I’m finished with all the late night coding I’ve been doing lately.

Here’s how to do it:

• Add a new conditional formatting rule to the table
• Select “Use a formula to determine which cells to format”
• Enter the formula =IF(INDEX($B:$B;ROW();1)=”Misc”;TRUE;FALSE)
  Note: You might have to use a colon instead of a semi-colon as a separator, depending on your Excel version.
• Click Format and select your color of choice

What the formula does is use the INDEX-function (the arguments are: array, row, column) to lookup the value on the current row  number (as returned by the ROW-function) in the B-column (using number 1, because the array is just 1 column wide). The IF-function just makes sure TRUE or FALSE are returned so the rule knows when to apply the color.

Then you just add more rules to the table for the different categories you need to color.

Took roughly 2,5 hours to screw it all together. (Yes, yes. I know, I know. I’m really rusty.)

I already knew before hand what probably the weakest link in the new power-chain would be, and I was right. The RAM is way too slow compared to the rest of the computer. I’ll throw the experience index from Win7 up for good measure, not exactly accurate, but before I get all giddy and just have to install three billion different performance test suites, it’ll have to do.

Without further ado, here it is:

Windows 7 Experience Index Score

I’ll update the true stats a little later as well as all the parts that this little black baby has eaten.

(Assuming, of course, that the wlan interface is wlan0.)

The magic command for generating the required PSK for WPA/WPA2 is wpa_passphrase.

janne@pingu:~$ wpa_passphrase ExampleSSID DamnLongPassword
network={
  ssid="ExampleSSID"
  #psk="DamnLongPassword"
  psk=9981ece75e0eb563acbc783b1ce4250e7383d9ce7f71caa0d8406c0d1495f4bb
}

When that’s done add the information to /etc/network/interfaces:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "ExampleSSID"
wpa-psk 9981ece75e0eb563acbc783b1ce4250e7383d9ce7f71caa0d8406c0d1495f4bb

…and finally you might want to remove network-manager to avoid conflicts.

Now this combined with automatic login lets me reboot my laptop at home without having to a) login and b) connect to the wireless.

Here are the steps:

1. Run cmd.exe and cd C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox
2. VBoxManage.exe modifyhd “<full path to the vhd/vdi>” –resize <new size in MB>
   (Note: there are two dashes before resize)
3. Boot up the virtual machine from i.e. a Ubuntu live-cd .iso
4. Start gparted (if not installed run sudo apt-get install gparted and when it’s done sudo gparted)
5. Delete the swap-partition within the extended partition, move the extended to the end of the unallocated space
6. Recreate the swap within the extended partition
7. Resize the primary / partition to include all the unallocated space left over
8. Shutdown the virtual and remove the iso-image
9. Try starting up the virtual and check disk space available with df -ah in the Terminal