Sparkline

So today at work I came across a really cool feature in Microsoft Excel 2013. Enter the Sparkline.

Probably more of a gimmick but they look cool. They are a little chart that is just inside a cell. It can be a line,column or win/loss. They are easy to create and could be used if you don't the all of the features and hassle of a full chart.

Here's how to create a sparkline in excel:
Start by putting you data into one column. There aren't any labels so they don't really matter for this.

Then in the Insert tab on the ribbon find the Sparkline section and choose the style you want. This time we will create a win/loss style.

This will open the Sparkline dialog.

Select the data range. Make sure you don't select any labels as this will give an error.

When the Sparkline is created it will be small, the size of your cell so you will probably want to make the cell bigger.

And there you have it.

Probably just a gimmick but might be useful eventually.

Cheers,
Rex

Step one of troubleshooting

On the weekend I spent some time volunteering at our local miniature railway club. One of the things I have worked on is the signalling system. It has been built and patched over the years and didn't have any kind of diagram in place. So before anything broke we figured it would be best to build a diagram so that when something does break down we have something to look at.

Where the power starts. 12V DC goes down that PVC pipe into the ground and appears somewhere outside, then feeds the signals.

Here we have one set of points, under one of the plates is a pneumatic motor and a switch that triggers the signals at the station.

Hmmm, I don't remember ever reading about using leaves as insulation. Perhaps we need to start cleaning this out more often.

This is where all the magic happens. The circuit under here is what ensures that all of the signals light when they should.

It looks a little less of a rats nest now that it's been pulled out of the box but still pretty confusing to begin with. The trick here is to pick a point to start from, draw a rough sketch that is only for your notes and re-draw later if you need to make anything neater. Being Methodical will help a lot here.

A little offputting, This is the door of the box and bside it is a piece of scale that came off the inside. It certainly pays to clean things up a little before trying to make sense of things. Trying to work out what wire went where would have been much more difficult. It certainly pays to spend a little more time making sure everything is in order before doing what you are in there for.

Notes mk1. These were only done for me, jotted down roughly for me to translate into something that can be understood later.

And here's the super duper accurate neat and legible drawing. No it may not look like much, but you don't need something that has been drawn by engineers with a dozen letters after their names on multi-thousand dollar computers. All that is needed is some time and care to the job being done and anyone can learn to do this sort of thing.

Remember, just because you don't have a piece of paper saying you can do something, doesn't mean that you can't do them. Conversely, having that paper doesn't mean you can do something better than anyone else.

Cheers,
Rex