Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What’s on your mind?

Clix Pix said:
I am as fond of tech as anyone, and love my computers, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, etc., and in many ways they are very convenient. However, unlike many people my iPhone is not glued to my hand and I don't actually carry it everywhere. I live in a condominium community with an outdoor swimming pool that will be opening on May 28th to kick off the Memorial Day weekend. In past years we've had paper passes, which I've always found convenient to just keep right in my swim bag and pull out to show to the guard or have him or her file into a box during the time I am at the pool. No fuss, no muss....

In the mail I received this year's application for the pass to the pool, and they're now doing things electronically, meaning that we register online (not a big deal, I don't mind that). The pool passes will be delivered electronically, too (presumably via email) and the letter instructs us cheerfully to "simply save the pass on your smartphone and show the guard when you enter. It's that easy!" UH....well, no. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or super-cautious or whatever but I never take my iPhone to the pool. Actually, I don't take anything electronic to the pool, including my hearing aids. Extreme heat is not good for them and I have no intention of frying my expensive items, rendering them unusable. I don't want to risk them being dowsed with water by some careless kid splashing and larking around, nor do I want my phone or iPad stolen, either.

I assume that the folks in charge of this have realized that perhaps not everyone has a smartphone or is computer-savvy so they did provide a paper application form for those who cannot or will not fill out the form online, but are charging a $10.00 application fee for that privilege. I also assume (and hope!) that the pass itself will be delivered in a form which can be printed out and stashed in a pocket or bag to be carried on a piece of paper to the pool to show the lifeguard, as there are probably some people like me who prefer not to take their iPhone to the pool or a few who do not have one at all.

Modern technology is really great and we are certainly taking many strides towards incorporating it into people's lives but not everyone embraces it wholeheartedly and sometimes it is just not practical.
Click to expand...

NSW (Australia) is supplying people with digital drivers licences that you can store on your phone. When somebody (i.e. Police) asks to see your licence, you can show them your digital one on your phone.
However...
In all Australian states you are not allowed to handle your phone unless you are pulled over, parked in a safe spot, parking brake on and engine off.
So...
You get pulled over for a random breath test, you are in a queue, you advance in the queue (meaning that the engine is on, and unless you are actually moving forward, the engine is idling), you get to the breath testing station, you show your digital licence and you get pinged for handling your phone because you didn't actually turn the engine off.
How good is that...
I still have my plastic licence, and it takes much longer to find my wallet, take out the licence, show it to the police, put it back, put my wallet back, but it doesn't cost me a fine.

Also eating Smiths Salt and Vinegar chips will send the breathalyser crazy.
 
Clix Pix said:
I am as fond of tech as anyone, and love my computers, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, etc., and in many ways they are very convenient. However, unlike many people my iPhone is not glued to my hand and I don't actually carry it everywhere. I live in a condominium community with an outdoor swimming pool that will be opening on May 28th to kick off the Memorial Day weekend. In past years we've had paper passes, which I've always found convenient to just keep right in my swim bag and pull out to show to the guard or have him or her file into a box during the time I am at the pool. No fuss, no muss....

In the mail I received this year's application for the pass to the pool, and they're now doing things electronically, meaning that we register online (not a big deal, I don't mind that). The pool passes will be delivered electronically, too (presumably via email) and the letter instructs us cheerfully to "simply save the pass on your smartphone and show the guard when you enter. It's that easy!" UH....well, no. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or super-cautious or whatever but I never take my iPhone to the pool. Actually, I don't take anything electronic to the pool, including my hearing aids. Extreme heat is not good for them and I have no intention of frying my expensive items, rendering them unusable. I don't want to risk them being dowsed with water by some careless kid splashing and larking around, nor do I want my phone or iPad stolen, either.

I assume that the folks in charge of this have realized that perhaps not everyone has a smartphone or is computer-savvy so they did provide a paper application form for those who cannot or will not fill out the form online, but are charging a $10.00 application fee for that privilege. I also assume (and hope!) that the pass itself will be delivered in a form which can be printed out and stashed in a pocket or bag to be carried on a piece of paper to the pool to show the lifeguard, as there are probably some people like me who prefer not to take their iPhone to the pool or a few who do not have one at all.

Modern technology is really great and we are certainly taking many strides towards incorporating it into people's lives but not everyone embraces it wholeheartedly and sometimes it is just not practical.
Click to expand...
They should offer a rubber wrist band pass option.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ericwn and Clix Pix
kazmac said:
Still hanging in. Thinking of everyone here.

Popped in to say hi and happy weekend to everyone.

Right now, real life is a bit tricky, but I'm grateful. Visualizing being employed very soon and more good things coming as a result.

Big virtual hug!
Click to expand...
I hope you are ok. You used to post frequently in various forums but have been virtually silent for the past few months. Stay positive and hope to see you posting soon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: decafjava, Clix Pix, chengengaun and 1 other person
Having to copy and paste data from one Excel spreadsheet to another Excel spreadsheet, line by line (around 73 lines), is daunting. No common denominator between the sheets to use a tool to do it. Yep, that is what's on my mind...
 
circatee said:
Unfortunately no. The items need to be matched from one sheet to another. However, the verbiage between the sheets is slightly different and has to be reviewed line by line. Seriously, the whole process is simply awful...
Click to expand...
Is anything the same (even part of a cell). For example you can do closest match or part match in an x lookup.
 
Partial match can be done using:

Code: 
"*"&[cell reference]&"*": e.g. =XLOOKUP("*"&$A1&"*", $B:$B, $C:$C, "N.A.", 0)

Sometimes it might be feasible to divide the rows into cases and handle each case accordingly. Create a temporary column with edited matching keywords (e.g. trimming/replacing/normalising strings from the original column) may also help. Good luck!
 
  • Like
Reactions: circatee
circatee said:
Having to copy and paste data from one Excel spreadsheet to another Excel spreadsheet, line by line (around 73 lines), is daunting. No common denominator between the sheets to use a tool to do it. Yep, that is what's on my mind...
Click to expand...

A long time ago I had to transform some VisiCalc data to Excel on Mac. (It was marine Lobster Catch data, originally recorded on punch cards, then translated to VisiCalc on an Apple II.)
Fortunately, it was quite easy. Each VisiCalc cell had the data, then its cell address. I wrote an Excel script that parsed each cell, separated the data, worked out what cell it went to, and let it go.
It took all night on a Mac Plus...
 
  • Like
Reactions: chengengaun
MacNerd01 said:
The fact that I have no life and spend my days on MR.

Also…

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟨⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

That was a close one. 😁
Click to expand...
Yes, it's definitely possible to spend too much time here (myself included). But I think that also applies to too much screen time on any kind, whether it's tablet, phone, computer, or TV. Good to get out and about, exercise, walk in the woods, read a book, etc. as a balance.
 
circatee said:
Having to copy and paste data from one Excel spreadsheet to another Excel spreadsheet, line by line (around 73 lines), is daunting. No common denominator between the sheets to use a tool to do it. Yep, that is what's on my mind...
Click to expand...
A lot of simple tasks like that can be handled in AWK (part of Mac OS's UNIX legacy). AWK was built by researchers for researchers as a programming language for handling data in tables, and a spreadsheet is a glorified table. However, AWK doesn't work so well if the task is complex. If the task is repetitive, AWK can be invoked by the C-shell for bbatch processing files in a folder if you don't mind doing minimal programming in a UNIX-like environment.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chengengaun
VulchR said:
A lot of simple tasks like that can be handled in AWK (part of Mac OS's UNIX legacy). AWK was built by researchers for researchers as a programming language for handling data in tables, and a spreadsheet is a glorified table. However, AWK doesn't work so well if the task is complex. If the task is repetitive, AWK can be invoked by the C-shell for bbatch processing files in a folder if you don't mind doing minimal programming in a UNIX-like environment.
Click to expand...

There is a trade-off between the time it takes to do a task manually, and how long it takes to develop, test and run an automated system.
Many, many times I, as a programmer, have spent hours creating a script to do a task that would take me tens of minutes to do manually.
 
  • Like
Reactions: VulchR
yaxomoxay said:
The Greek composer Vangelis, of Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire and 1492 Conquest of a Paradise among many many other amazing musical pieces, has died. He gave a soundtrack to many of my years. RIP.
Click to expand...
Yes, he was a gifted musician to be sure. When I was in college/med school I was working for a film production company that produced the TV ads for the Gallo Wine company. Hal Riney had the account and he was the voice over in the ads. One of them was done around the time Princess Diana got married. It showed vignettes of various wedding celebrations. The soundtrack was made by Vangelis. Beautiful music for sure for especially for a wedding. Good ol' days of using Eastman 5247, Harrison contrast filters, and Arri BL 35mm cameras. I was lucky to be the camera man, Steve Burcham did editing/lighting, and a bunch more, etc. Long live Vangelis music.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Scepticalscribe, yaxomoxay, chengengaun and 2 others
We (i.e. Aussies) get to vote in a few hours for the Federal election.
As Aussies, we take our voting seriously, with an estimated 96.8 per cent of the eligible population registered to vote.
Some think it is compulsory to vote here. It isn't. You have to turn up at a polling booth, get your name ticked off, accept a set of voting papers (upper and lower house). What you do then is up to you, but the overwhelming majority, having gotten that far, vote proper.

Many of us actually get dressed formally for the occasion

Voting1.jpg


As you can see from the right-hand voter, you can have a helper.

Up until a few years ago, ballot boxes were made of cardboard, and were stacked, unguarded, outside of polling booths overnight, ready for the election next day. Unfortunately, because of some problems overseas (yes, America, we're looking at you...) we now have to have locked, transparent boxes, which have two guards at all times.
 
  • Haha
  • Like
Reactions: AVBeatMan, Scepticalscribe, Rafterman and 4 others
DaveFromCampbelltown said:
There is a trade-off between the time it takes to do a task manually, and how long it takes to develop, test and run an automated system.
Many, many times I, as a programmer, have spent hours creating a script to do a task that would take me tens of minutes to do manually.
Click to expand...
True - and the worst thing is realising that if you had used manual operations you'd be finished but you're only halfway through coding. Mind you, coding tends to be more accuate unless you use double-entry for manual operations (which we do in my lab).

On my part I long for the days when an AI agent can handle data processing tasks, from data preperation to analysis to visualisation, by simply listening to verbal instructions....
 
DaveFromCampbelltown said:
There is a trade-off between the time it takes to do a task manually, and how long it takes to develop, test and run an automated system.
Many, many times I, as a programmer, have spent hours creating a script to do a task that would take me tens of minutes to do manually.
Click to expand...
If it's a task that has to be repeated many times, it's worth automating. I have to pull data from QuickBooks and put into Excel. I spent 20 hours creating a macro embedded spreadsheet to pull and format the QB exports. Doing it manually would take me 10-20 minutes every week. The spreadsheet does it for me in seconds and it eliminates human error. I have to pull that data every frakking week. Well worth it to automate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ericwn
VulchR said:
True - and the worst thing is realising that if you had used manual operations you'd be finished but you're only halfway through coding. Mind you, coding tends to be more accuate unless you use double-entry for manual operations (which we do in my lab).

On my part I long for the days when an AI agent can handle data processing tasks, from data preperation to analysis to visualisation, by simply listening to verbal instructions....
Click to expand...

Not neccessarily. "To err is human, but to truly stuff things up you need a computer"...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Scepticalscribe
DaveFromCampbelltown said:
We (i.e. Aussies) get to vote in a few hours for the Federal election.
As Aussies, we take our voting seriously, with an estimated 96.8 per cent of the eligible population registered to vote.
Some think it is compulsory to vote here. It isn't. You have to turn up at a polling booth, get your name ticked off, accept a set of voting papers (upper and lower house). What you do then is up to you, but the overwhelming majority, having gotten that far, vote proper.

Many of us actually get dressed formally for the occasion

View attachment 2007310

As you can see from the right-hand voter, you can have a helper.

Up until a few years ago, ballot boxes were made of cardboard, and were stacked, unguarded, outside of polling booths overnight, ready for the election next day. Unfortunately, because of some problems overseas (yes, America, we're looking at you...) we now have to have locked, transparent boxes, which have two guards at all times.
Click to expand...

Ok, so I have voted. I voted early, but apparently 'they' get cross if you vote often...

Pre-COVID, they had little pencils tied to each voting booth, but now they give you your own one. Last election they gave out ballpoint pens to vote with, but they had a lot of problems with them (I still have mine). This time they reverted to pencils.

This is mine.

VotingPencil.jpg


My official democracy pencil.

And no, for those who are familiar with the Australian voting system, I didn't get a Democracy Sausage. The school where I vote has a cake stall instead. I bought some Anzac biccys and some Rocky Road.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: decafjava, MacNerd01, chengengaun and 1 other person
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back