Posts under ‘spreadsheets’

Yes, an Excel spreadsheet can do all kinds of magical things, and you can push it well beyond its expected limits. But, you also have to know when to quit pushing. In an article in today’s Register, the author, Kelly Fiveash, has uncovered a job advertisement for someone to manage the London 2012 Olympics “Cultural [...]

Thirty-two years ago today, on May 12, 1979, Dan Bricklin demonstrated the new spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, at the 4th West Coast Computer Faire, in San Francisco. On his Benlo Park website, Peter Jennings describes the event: We rented a special room to secretly demonstrate VisiCalc to key industry luminaries. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Adam Osborne, [...]

There’s a lot of bull in business, but if you’re actually buying a bull, this Value of a Bull spreadsheet should help with your decisions. Just like any other big purchase, apparently there are many things to consider when buying a bull. For example: How much is too much to pay for a bull? Is [...]

My cookbooks are full of comments. When I try a recipe, the cookbook gets marked with a date and rating, so I’ll remember what worked, and what didn’t. Sometimes the ingredient list is marked up too, if I substitute ingredients, or add things that aren’t in the list. Apparently some people don’t like to write [...]

When you play games on a Wii, your body movements trigger emotions, which make the experience more entertaining, according to scientists who are studying the effects these games have. Could you create a spreadsheet that works on a game console, to make that experience more enjoyable too? In the article,  How Wii and Kinect Hack [...]

Until today, I’d never heard of an artist named Agnes Martin. In a post on the All My Eyes blog, Life Imitates Art?, Martin’s work was compared to a spreadsheet, so I Googled to learn more about her, and see her work. To my surprise, she’s a Canadian artist, born in Saskatchewan in 1912, and [...]

Here’s another creative use for Excel, from Leeann Marie Golish, a wedding photographer in Pittsburgh. She tracks her sales leads in an Excel Table, and uses pivot tables to summarize the results. On her website, Leeann explains why she likes using this Excel tool: Being a trained engineer, I’m really drawn to numbers and especially [...]

At the ICT In Education blog, Terry Freedman suggests interesting ways to teach modelling and sequencing in the classroom, by using Excel. In his article, Why Teach Spreadsheets, Freedman shows that spreadsheets aren’t just for science and math classes — you can use them in other areas too. For example: you take a novel such [...]

It’s finally here — the occasion you’ve been waiting for all year — Spreadsheet Day! October 17th was voted the best day to celebrate spreadsheets, because October 17, 1979 was the release date of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet for personal computers. How will you celebrate? If you’re still looking for ideas, here are a few [...]

When you’re celebrating Spreadsheet Day on October 17th, you might want to light your office with this lovely TulipK lamp, designed in Excel by Ben Geeblen. The lamp’s six petals close and open, and the design was inspired by the tulip on his wedding invitation. Geeblen describes the design process: The holes were designed with [...]