There are, perhaps, a couple things you might not know about me: I have a deep and lasting love of Karaoke, and Microsoft Excel. Rarely do these loves meet... until now.

My love for karaoke used to be as an observer. This changed one fateful night about 6 or 7 years ago. The pub (the best karaoke pub ever) was virtually empty and about to close and (karaoke) Pete asked if I wanted to sing... I was just drunk enough to think it was a good idea, and just sober enough to stand. Now you will find it difficult to keep me quiet (and I have sung sober!)

My love for Excel wasn't always so. My first proper job used Lotus 1-2-3 for our spreadsheet needs, and when I started my next (and current) job I was "an expert." It took a year or two to actually live up to that title, but by then I could make 1-2-3 do almost anything but sing. I could make a spreadsheet seem like a program to the point that someone thought they had a virus on their machine when they opened my "do everything" spreadsheet - and I subsequently had to spend a couple of hours in front of the boss explaining what exactly I had done.

About '97/'98 we moved from the Lotus office products to Microsoft and I was not a happy person. All the things I could do in Lotus I was unable to do in Excel - that is not to say Excel couldn't do it - just that I couldn't using Excel.

The turning point was pivots. For someone who does a lot of data manipulation and reconciliations the pivot table is a mind-blowingly powerful tool. I decided there was nothing for it but to learn this new Excel thing. I doubted I would ever reach the heady heights of my 1-2-3 days, but I would give it a go.

A decade or more later and I have used Excel to do things my younger self would not believe... you see Excel now comes with its own programming language that not only controls stuff inside Excel, but with the correct libraries can control THE WORLD other things on the PC as well.

Meanwhile my love of karaoke has meant I was first given a bunch (5-6 thousand) backing tracks with words and since collected a bunch (30ish thousand) more. One of the problems is the haphazard way people name their files. I hold no truck with the convention of lastname, firstname especially when people can't tell the difference between a band and a person (Jovi, Bon) or where to put the first name if there are a bunch of people (John & Dee, Elton & Kiki)

Now it is probably becoming apparent that I am a "little" anal about file names, and perhaps I have a little too much spare time on my hands. So it'll not surprise you that I tasked myself to "clean" my karaoke file collection.

Each track is actually two files... MP3 (audio) and cdg (graphics). So with my 33,488 karaoke tracks - I actually have to clean 66,976 files. What I really needed (apart from a new hobby) is somewhere to store the names of all the files so I could sort them... enter Excel.

It started off pretty quick and dirty. I piped a directory listing to a text file and loaded it into Excel. This is great for a one off task as the directory listing is designed for a person to view it - not a great way to get an excel table. I spent a few hours/days finding out just how badly my files where named. Once I had spent quite a bit of effort working out what the files should be called I needed a way of getting the info from Excel to use to rename the files. I decided on a quick and dirty "make a batch file and run" it approach. My files were about 50% cleaner!

I used this approach a few times more (limiting myself to a couple thousand files at a time as I didn't want to spend a whole week formatting without any progress) and slowly progress was made. When pointing winamp at the directory with all the karaoke files about 80% would pick up the correct album/track/artist/title!

There is a rule in projects work the last 20% of the project takes about 80% of the time! Formatting a piped directory listing wasn't enough! I needed automation! First I automated splitting the track/artist/title from the file name. I started using formulas, but soon ran into problems where the spreadsheet would take hours to recalc... sometimes after every key press!

I moved to a VBA solution which was fairly quick, but a one-time-only operation - if it was re-run it would break anything already fixed. I was still using the piped directory listing/created batch file approach to update the file names and this seemed to be the part that took the most time (and occasionally gave dodgy results)

I stepped up my game. Using the windows scripting library I could get excel to find the file names for me - and to rename the files as needed! I was now able to load all 67 thousand filenames and check consistency! (Beatles vs The Beatles etc)

It was about this point that I hit my first stumbling block. Spotting that there was a Denise Williams and a Deniece Williams (who would get that wrong!) I was rather shocked to find the latter spelling was the correct one. This meant I was unable to rely on judgment (or in some cases memory) to pick which of the sometime many spellings were correct. I had to check the 5000+ artists to see if they were correct. This problem was magnified when I found that iTunes, Spotify, Last.fm and lastly wikipaedia didn't always have a definitive answer to the correct spelling, as the "artist" themselves appeared to be unsure!

Having checked the majority and being about as happy as I could be with the artists I started on the song names... How many ways do you think you can write the song title "Ain't going down 'til the sun comes up" ? You may be surprised!

I was noticing that winamp isn't quite as smart as it aught to be when parsing the file names. It assumes the first "-" it comes to is the divider between the artist and the song title... so bands like a-ha were truncated to "a" and all their tracks prefixed with "ha - " - so I decided to try and write the mp3 tags whilst I was renaming the files.

After a bit of a shaky start (with online forums suggesting I download dlls from the web!) I found that I could use the dll that winamp uses to read the tags to update them from Excel.

I have built (over the last couple months) a spreadsheet that will trawl my hard disk for karaoke tracks, format the names consistently (with some manual intervention) and then update the tags!

I think I am going to go sing some Depeche Mode and gloat a little.

Tags: i'm kick arse, karaoke, techy
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Stranglers - Peaches

I got an email today from a dart/dartboard website a bit like this:


The shaft at the bottom hit me in the eye like a dart!

The longer I looked at it - the more my brain started to wonder if there was an alternative spelling for "marry" - so I hit google:


I was feeling slightly better when I saw the Did you mean: marry me, but then I saw this website:


I weep for the future of mankind.

Tags: people are dumb, wtf
Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Voodoo Child - Baby Monkey

Yesterday; Big Adie and I put in our longest (and last) training walk before the big event this coming Saturday. This meant being at Romford Station before 8 o'clock... and that ended up being the least of my pains for the day.

After some confusion as to which train I should be on (I really should not be out of the house before 9 o'clock!) I successfully met up with Adrian at Shenfield Station at the correct time. We arrived at Braintree Station about 10 minutes before 9 o'clock.

We hung around the station in the off chance that any of the other walkers were going to join us... but to the 9 o'clock chimes of a local church it was just the two of us that set off.

The plan: walk the "Flitch Way" from Braintree to Bishops Stortford (15 miles), stop for a quick bite and a fresh pair of socks, then head back to Braintree station (15 miles).

The outward segment of the journey wasn't bad at all. We passed a beer festival (yup - Adrian and I *passed* a beer festival) and was in relatively good cheer. We played "The Claire Game:" My name is Adrian and I come from Aberdeen and I have brought some Apples... and so on through the alphabet. We realised if it just the two of you, the one that starts gets Q, U and Y where as the second person gets X and Z... which are easier!

The weather was playing nice... a clear sunny day - but lots of cover on the path from trees.

We got a little lost when the old railway path ended (not really ended as such - more got very very overgrown) and we had to fight back through the trees to get on the path again. We were also left scratching our heads when the trail appeared to end in a foot deep river... until Adrian remembered he'd brought the pamphlet and we found our bearings again quite quickly. Walking through Great Dunmow we made plans on popping into the fish and chip shop and what we might eat on the move on the way back.

( images here )

Tags: trailwalker 2011
Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Midge Ure - The Gift

Sometimes I hear a song and it goes straight to a part of my brain that invokes strong emotions.

After link hopping a couple of days ago I came across a band called Thermostatic who are a Swedish electronic band I misread as falling within the genre categories of "Britpop" and "Synthpop" (it was Bitpop, not Britpop). Intrigued as to how a Swedish electronic band could be classed as Britpop, I found a couple of their Youtube videos and was further intrigued enough to see if they appeared in Spotify.

They do! And so I listened to their most recent album called "Humanizer." The first track (Northern Ambulance) resonated with me in a big way - and I have been listening to it a *lot* over the last couple of days. It's a simple enough tune, building simple refrains upon simple refrains with a pleasant female vocal - but it reaches a point (at about 1:56) where it's built sufficiently to bring me to the brink of tears (of joy I imagine) while I have trouble breathing. (No - I am not on drugs or drunk, nor can I guarantee this experience to all). The rest of the album is good (in my opinion) but doesn't evoke as much as a smile.

Similar experiences have been achieved recently with other tunes... E-Gens I Can Touch the Sun, Duran Duran's The Chauffeur, Cold Play's Fix You, Elbow's New Born, and U2's With or Without You.

I'm not sure if this is the beginning of some form of mental meltdown, so I thought I might document it here before I completely loose my mind. :)

Tags: i'm going nuts, music
Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Thermostatic - Northern Ambulance

In a bid to get a few more miles training in, Adrian, Bradley and I decided on a jaunt around London town, following the Thames for the most part.

The idea was to walk along the north side of the river for about 7-8 miles, then cross and walk back. Our distance goal was 15 miles (24km)

The weather looked to be a problem at the start - but we were lucky again, after a few drops of rain at the start it was cool with a pleasant light breeze.

From the office we headed south(ish) and did a right when we hit the river:
( graphics )

To start; it was all most pleasant. The conversation was witty and there are an astonishing number of very fit young ladies who go running along the Thames! By the time we got to Chelsea my feet were feeling a little tender but our spirits were still high. Bradley was mentally pricing up all the properties in the area, looking for a "doer-upper".

It was when we considering which bridge to cross and walk back from that it dawned on me that we wasn't even half way through yet. We crossed Wandsworth Bridge and started back on the "wrong" side of the river.

The Thames Path is a great idea, but as things have been built in its way we ended up walking down less than inviting back streets in industrial looking areas. The worst of these diversions is around Battersea Power Station.

By now my feet were more than a little tender - and my legs had that "made of lead" feel. Annoyingly, Adrian was still very cheerful and Bradley was still pricing up the properties as we passed them.

As we got closer to the centre of London and as the night drew in I began to shut down and all my concentration was aimed at putting one foot in front of the other. Adrian and Bradley tried to get me to talk, but apart from a few acerbic responses I could not be coaxed. I am a miserable bugger (at times?)!

It was as Tower Bridge came into view (our "end point") that Adrian got this strange notion in his head that we needed to walk 20 miles. We had done just over 18 by then - at least a couple more than originally planned!

It was due to his craziness that we ended up walking around the block near Liverpool Street just to get in an extra half a mile to top it off. We finished at Liverpool Street McD's having completed 20.01 miles. To make up for his squirrel-shit nuttiness he did buy me a chicken burger... so I forgive him.

Tags: trailwalker 2011
Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Moby - Wait for Me

On the 16th June (I know it's a bit late) Adrian, Claire, Khan, Peter and I planned to walk stages 5 and 6. Things did not go smoothly.

Peter was in a meeting and couldn't get away in time. Adrian, Claire, Khan and I left work in good time to get to Victoria and get our tickets (including Peters so he could get straight on the train.) This was a good plan except I ended up on the train (just!) with Peter's ticket. He called us just after we'd pulled out of the station.

We agreed that we (the four on the train) would set off at a reasonable pace and Peter would "catch us up". This was a heroic undertaking on Peter's part as the next train was an hour later!

The train journey south was through the most horrific of weather! There were many worried looks and talk of getting the next train back.

When we finally arrived at Amberley the rain had stopped and the sky was bright. We found the footpath to connect to the South Downs Way and I called Peter with instructions that were obviously sub-par.

( More GPS graphics under the cut )

Tags: trailwalker 2011
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: La Roux – Bulletproof

Bradley and I got up at "0:TooEarly" last Sunday to get another training walk in for the fast approaching 100km hike for Oxfam. This one would start from where we ended last time, and go all the way to the end of the course (stages 9, 10 and 11 - about 30km.)

We met at London Bridge at 09:00 to chaos on the ticket machines... but managed to get everything sorted and a bacon butty breakfast before boarding the train.

We arrived in Hassocks (that still amuses me) at about twenty to eleven and set off.

We took the non lethal route to Check Point 8 (no walking along busy A-roads with no pavements and blind corners this time!) which was most pleasant... until the first hill.
( lots of graphics under the cut )

Tags: trailwalker 2011
Current Mood: sore

I'll be participating in the 100km hike in July this year in aid of Oxfam/The Gurkhas. To make sure I don't die after the first stage, some practice walks were arranged - and last Friday I walked stage 7 and 8. I also finally got to play with a gadget I'd been wanting to test for a while: The Garmin GPSmap 60CSx.

I was walking with four of my work colleagues; Bradley, Khan, Seb, and Simon. We got to Shoreham-by-Sea just after 15:00 and after a short taxi ride we were at the start point.

We kitted up; Bradley broke out his walking tights and I switched on the GPS.

We set off at a steady pace but it was just minutes before we came to our first hill... which was much more impressive than this photo seems to show!
( big pictures under the cuts )
(left to right: Khan, Seb, Bradley, Me, Simon)

After the first hill (in which we climbed about 200m or over 650ft) I was ready to give up... but I struggled on. The scenery was beautiful, the sun was peeping through the clouds which stopped it getting too cold or too warm, and thankfully there was no rain.

We managed to lose the trail just the once (I had yet to load any maps on my GPS and the maps we had with us were not detailed enough) but over all it was good first go!

I've grabbed some data from the gadget and that's all under the next cut.
( more big pictures )

Tags: trailwalker 2011
Current Mood: accomplished

I foolishly reposted something I saw (repeated) on twitter as a Facebook status update. When will I learn?

The copy/pasta was as follows:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

My excuse(s) is that it really was repeated all over the twittersphere - by minds immeasurably superior to mine - and it was late.

After doing a little research (google) I have gathered the following "facts":
The quote comes from a larger Facebook post by a J. Dovey that went like this:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even as an enemy.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." -MLK Jr.

The quote (that is - the bit in quotes!) has been confirmed as a Martin Luther King quote (Strength to Love, Pg 37)... but it appears that twitters limit of 140 characters and the general punctuation blindness of "teh intarwebs" meant the original posters feelings was first attached to the MJK quote, and then shortened.

Thing is: it doesn't matter (to me) who said it... the sentiment resonated with me which is why I felt the need to repost it. It appears to have done so with a number of people which is why there are over 40,000 hits if you google the phrase (yeah - some of those are posts correcting the MLK attribution but that's still a lot of hits for something that was first written yesterday.) I think the actual MLK quote is also relevant (and so very true), and perhaps that too needs to be reposted a little.

So the moral of this story... I'll leave that to another quote:
"Just because it's repeated on the internet - doesn't make it the truth" - W.Shakespeare.

ETA:
A more coherent version of the story can be found here

Tags: i'm stupid
Current Mood: reflective

Story ganked from Bart's journal

This just blows my mind.

There should be a law against:
1) Pulling numbers out of your ass in a debate.
2) Purposely making numbers up to further your debate.

There should also be added jail time for the spinelessness that is the following statement:
"...was not intended to be a factual statement."

What's the opposite of a factual statement? Yes kids, you're right, it's a lie

World politics is taking us all to hell, in the proverbial hand-basket.

Tags: douche-bag politicians