Low Energy Background Colors

In his daily delicious, somerandomdude addresses an issue of low energy color mentioning a black google saves energy. It ends with some questions regarding web designing.

So what to do? Do we all change our vibrant ways? I would like to scale things back a tad from this site, but I am very cautious of ruining the site’s identity. Either way, this is an interesting topic in the theoretical sense. Does design on the web need to start accounting for energy efficiency for the end user? Perhaps it is just me, but it seems that with every passing day, web design becomes more and more like industrial design.
Mark Ontkush in his ecoiron shows six colors considered as low energy colors. Of course, the white color is intended to have a small proportion in a design.
Starting with the EnergyStar wattage ratings for different colors, Jon Doucette of Jonathan Design came up with the six colors at top. On average, this palette uses only about 3 or 4 watts more than a completely black screen. White is included as an accent color.


The hex codes of these colors got from somerandomdude's reply in this comment.
#822007 (rusty red), #000000 (black), #b2bbc0 (blue-grey), #19472a (forest-ish green), #3d414c (cobalt-ish), #ffffff (white)

I'm an organ donor. Is she gonna veto?


Since six years ago, I've made a commitment as an organ donor in my driving licence. In case of death in an accident, some of my organs would be passed to others who (may desperately) need. It's my genuine willingness to help others as giving my life.

As a dead person, I won't show any objection for removal of the organs. But, the question is, does my wife agree to have my organs being removed? Is she gonna veto my decision before as she may have a different perception regarding this?

We got married three years ago and I hope she understand that this was a decision made before that. Or, should I change my mind?

Blogger Hacks: direct link to permalink or post ID

The hacks below modify some codes with <a href="..."> </a> link for the purpose of style modification. Please note the bolded tags as important.

Comment

Standard "Post a Comment" code:

<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemCreate$></p>

Hacked with direct link to post ID:

<a href="https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8349815 &amp;postID=<$BlogItemNumber$>&amp;isPopup=true" title="add comment">
Add comment</a>


Backlink


Standard "Create a Link" code:

<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$></p>

Hacked with direct link to post permalink:

<a href="http://www2.blogger.com/blog-this.g?t=&amp;u=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$> ;&amp;n=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="create backlink">
Create backlink</a>


Email post

Standard "Email this post" code:

<$BlogItemControl$>

Hacked with direct link to post ID:

<a href="http://www2.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=8349815&amp; postID=<$BlogItemNumber$>" title="Email this post">
Email this post</a>


Del.icio.us

Standard "Save to Del.icio.us" code:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post" onclick="window.open('http://del.icio.us/post?v=4&noui&jump=close&amp; url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'& title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'delicious','toolbar=no,width=700,height=400'); return false;"> Save This Page</a>

Hacked with direct link to post permalink:

<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>&amp; title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Add to Del.icio.us">
Add to Del.icio.us</a>


Digg

Standard "Digg this" URL:

http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=example.com&title=TITLE& bodytext=DESCRIPTION&topic=TOPIC

Hacked with direct link to post permalink:

<a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp; url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>&amp;title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" title="Digg it">
Add to Digg</a>

Hope you can get it.

Every Step Has Dignity

We don’t go somewhere that we don’t know the way is. However, our life has spirit that can show the way where we should take our steps. If we remain in our place, staying still, our spirit will be one with our soul to understand why we should go next.

There are choices, to stop or to move on. People tend to stop after exhausted and move on after refreshing. In general, the whole process needs continuation until we find the purpose of something and reach the expectation.

We are scare to be failed, but on the other hand, we dare to fail. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we believe that faith is everything. We think to find out that our situation is affected by something in someway. Then, we assess carefully any potential threat that can jeopardise our steps.

In our view, self-consciousness gives limitation to the relationship with others. As success may come from others’ recognitions and acknowledgements, we then include others to take part in our steps. Nevertheless, we may face that our success could be taken for granted by others as their own.

Finally, the most important thing in our journey is that every step we take has dignity.

English Cricket Team


As a country where the cricket game originated, England has performed not very well since 1960. Never been the champion.

England failed to win a series against the West Indies between 1969 and 2000. England similarly failed to compete with Australia for a long period and the The Ashes stayed in Australian hands between 1989 and 2005. England struggled against other nations over this period as well and after a series loss to New Zealand in 1999 they were ranked at the bottom of the ICC Test cricket ratings. From 2000, English cricket had a resurgence and England reached the final of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2004 and regained The Ashes in 2005. The team is currently ranked second behind Australia in the Test rankings, but One Day perfomances have been very poor with England falling to 8th place in the ICC rankings.

World Cup
1975: Semi-Finals
1979: Runners up
1983: Semi-Finals
1987: Runners up
1992: Runners up
1996: Quarter-Finals
1999: First round
2003: First round

ICC Champions Trophy
1998: Quarter-Finals
2000: Quarter-Finals
2002: Second in Group Pool 2
2004: Runners up
2006: Main Round

That's okay. At least we've got a same taste.

Live-Updated Spreadsheet for Time Series Data

The purpose of this model is to provide a live-updated spreadsheet by automatically capturing the current data provided by a website via Web Query and then automatically recording the data into a master data sheet through a Bootstrapping method.

So, it's just two clicks away on our spreadsheet to update a time series graph to the current rate, automatically. It's similar when we are running a live-update for our antivirus software.



The Worksheet

To follow the technique, it's good to download the sample worksheet first (please enable macro) and follow the coding explanation by opening the visual basic editor (>Tools >Macro >Visual Basic Editor) and the corresponding cells in the worksheet.


The Sheets


There are three sheets: INDO17, Data and Graph. "INDO17" is a sheet where the web query should go and where the two updating clicks are available. "Data" is a sheet where the bootstrapping process is running. "Graph" is only for visualisation.


Cell Naming


Cell naming is an important method as explained before in the previous post. There are several cells to be named in this worksheet and used for visual basic coding: INDO, INDOrow, INDOwebquery, nodays and updatelatestINDO.

To find which range is referred by a cell name, just go to the box on the top left, scroll the box and click the name. A range or cell will be shown.


  • INDO: a range as the destination for the updated rate from 2-Mar-06 to 31-Dec-10 in "Data" sheet (B5:B1263).
  • INDOrow: a cell showing a number of rows from 2-Mar-06 to the latest date has been updated in "Data" sheet (D3).
  • INDOwebquery: a range as the source of data captured via web query in "INDO17" sheet (A2:D21).
  • nodays: a cell showing a number of days need to be updated since the last updated date in "INDO17" sheet (M14).
  • updatelatestINDO: a cell showing the next date needs to be updated in "Data" sheet (G4).

Visual Basic Coding


Web Query Update
This code is for the first button "Update INDO-17 Yield from Web Query". The webpage source used for web query is the INDO-17 yield data provided in the Central Bank of Indonesia website.

The code:

Sub dailyINDO()

Application.OnTime Now + TimeValue("12:00:00"), "updateINDO"

End Sub

Sub updateINDO()

Sheets("INDO17").Activate
Range("a1").Select
Selection.QueryTable.Refresh BackgroundQuery:=True
dailyINDO

End Sub


Recording Data through Bootstrapping
This code is for the second button "Record Yield into Data Sheet". The code is quite complicated. However, if we can follow the logic and as referring to the range names, this is a piece of cake for us.

The code:

Sub recordINDO()

For j = 1 To Range("nodays")
For i = 1 To Range("nodays")

If Sheets("Data").Range("updatelatestINDO") = Range("INDOwebquery").Cells(i, 1) Then
Range("INDOwebquery").Cells(i, 4).Copy

r = Sheets("Data").Range("INDOrow") + 1

Sheets("Data").Range("INDO").Cells(r).PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues
Calculate
End If

Next i
Next j

Sheets("Data").Select

End Sub


The meaning of the above code is:

For the loops as many as the number of days needs to be updated, Excel will copy each yield in the web query sheet and paste into the data sheet on each corresponding date. Where the corresponding date is found by referring the number of rows from the first date to the latest updated date plus 1 day after.

Piece of cake, aye?


The "INDOrow"


It seems the key problem here is to find the number of "INDOrow", a cell showing a number of rows from 2-Mar-06 to the latest date has been updated in "Data" sheet (D3).

The way is using a MATCH function to calculate the number of rows from 2-Mar-06 to the latest date as this formulae:
=MATCH("latest date",C5:C498,0)

Where the "latest date" is found by tagging a note in the column C as the latest date using IF formulae: =IF(AND(the next yield=0, the current yield >0),"latest date","").


The "updatelatestINDO
"

This is a cell showing the next date needs to be updated in "Data" sheet (G4) that can be found easily using an INDEX function:

=INDEX($A$5:$A$498,INDOrow+1)


Recommendation and Notes

The title is for updating government bond yield, but the application can be also for updating other time series data such as foreign exchange rates or share prices.

I also open for any suggestions particularly for any more simple VBA codes.

Please let 2 days lag from Bank Indonesia website for current rate. It doesn't mean they are lazy to update, they just have a lot of other things to do.

More explanation about how to get data from the internet in Excel can be viewed here in Microsoft website.
Excel supports both reading and writing of XML. Complimenting this feature is the ability to create Web queries to XML files. You can create a Web query to any XML, but if you use the XML Spreadsheet schema, then you can preserve rich spreadsheet concepts like formulas.

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