Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Joseph Chirilov writes an Excel blog for the MSDN website. He often gets Excel writers to contribute.

Today I want to highlight two recent articles from Joseph’s site.

The first written by Mark Gillis is How to Create a Perpetual Yearly Calendar in Excel. The information about dates in here is very useful even if you don’t need to create a calendar. I recommend reading this if you have ever had problems managing dates in Excel.

The second one is a great example of building a complex application. Charlie Ellis, a Program Manager on the Excel team, shares a spreadsheet he built in Excel for solving Sudoku puzzles.

Building a Basic, Understandable Sudoku Solver Using Excel Iterative Calculation - Part 1/2

Building a Basic, Understandable Sudoku Solver Using Excel Iterative Calculation - Part 2/2

Enjoy.

This week we are featuring computer programmer Maria from the the USA as our GGB, her survey is below!

Name: Maria G.
Screen Name: Goldie
Person Blogs: http://curiousgoldie.blogspot.com (English)
http://the_real_goldie.livejournal.com (Russian).
Social Networks: vkontakte.ru, LinkedIn.
Current Employment: Programmer at a small company.
Location: Ohio, USA

What is your reason/motivation for blogging?

Depends on my mood really. Sometimes I blog to vent or to express my opinion about something. I lived in Russia for the first thirty years of my life, and that, I believe, offers me a fresh perspective on many things I see around me living in the US today. Other times it is to share information with my readers. Some days I use the blog as a creative outlet for my writing, and there are times when I use it as a social network. I started out as more of a mommyblogger, but that changed as my two sons became teenagers and I suddenly found it not kosher for myself to discuss their lives in public. I still share my opinions on parenting, though. I have a rather unorthodox approach to parenting and am passionate about this subject. I still do have my sons in mind as I write, but in a different sense than before. I try to write something that they can later come back to and read. By "later", I mean that distant future when their mother is not the uncool old lady anymore!

Sort of like liquorice all-sorts – only not.

NowPublic can scan keywords, heres the Drupal scan page. This article should get linked on there.

I got nominated as a Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 expert. This might prompt me to write some articles here in the future about the difficulties in establishing Enterprise 2.0 ideas in small and large business. Watch this space! Thanks John for that!

The second Geek Girl Dinner for Brisbane has been scheduled for Thursday night on the 23rd of October 2008.

The dinner will be held at Verve Cafe, Brisbane City.
Starting at 6:30pm and going till around 10:30pm or whenever.

Tickets to the dinner are free. You can claim a ticket at This Geek Link, ticket sale ends on the 20th of October. This dinner is unsponsored so you’ll have to pay for your own dinner.

You can check out the menu at http://vervecafe.com.au/.
(Note there’s an express banquet for 8 or more people).

I’m sure the night will be as enjoyable as the last.

aManda