Excel – Removing the last Character

On By AndyIn ExcelLeave a comment

Let’s say you have a long list of websites, and you need to remove the trailing slash from the end of each of them…you can use this formula to do it:

 

=LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-1)

 

Trim

This works a lot better than find and replace – especially if you have https:// in the URL still – as find and replace “/” will get rid of the all the “/”

Top Tips After 1 Year of Reading Self-Development Books

On By AndyIn Parenting, Random2 Comments

I’m guessing some of this stuff will help as a parent at some point, hopefully.

Here’s a list of the best bits I’ve read about:

  • Self Serving Bias is a massive influence on all of us.  Build the emotional intelligence to prevent you acting on it.  It’s got a long history too, apparently Buddha said something about it, and so did Matthew in the Bible:
    “Never mind the black spec in my eye, first remove the log from your own”
    Meaning, don’t be a hypocrite.
  • Some people suffer from feelings of inferiority and low self esteem, depression etc, whilst many others suffer from feelings of superiority, resulting in anger, having no-patience and a low-frustration-tolerance
  • Avoid comparing yourself with others
  • Avoid ‘What if’ statements, verbally and as thoughts. They make you anxious
  • Avoid ‘should’ statements, they will make you angry and unhappy.  E.g. “This should have happened” (or shouldn’t)
  • Acceptance. Accept what you can’t change – e.g. having a crap night’s sleep
  • Flexibility. Those who are flexible with their mindset, and with their plans, are generally the happiest people.
  • Aggressive opinions of right and wrong cause all sorts of unnecessary conflicts. I’m sure many of the members of terrorist organisations feel what they are doing is morally right.  The best way to avoid such strict views, is by spending time with a range of people with different thoughts, political affiliations etc.
  • Have a flexible mindset not a fixed mindset in terms of learning, using statements such as “I can’t do it yet”, rather than “I can’t do it”

Josh

  • The best way to stop caring about what others think, is to stop complaining about and judging them yourself
  • Have a preference for the way others behave, but don’t demand it.  For example, don’t demand that people drive how you deem appropriate, or you’ll just spend every commute being angry.
  • Practice gratitude, or you’re likely to want more and more, when you don’t actually need anything

Things to do for Free – Night Walks

On By AndyIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I think it’s important to find things that are fun, that you can do for free.

If you don’t mind the risk of getting arrested, or attacked by a bear, then night-walking is awesome. Especially in the woods, on a clear night.  Unfortunately, on the video, I couldn’t get the sky to ‘show up’ nor the moon-light that was on the river.

Trust me though, it’s amazingly peaceful and a cool thing to do. It’s help if you have a dog so that you don’t look like a complete weirdo, and a head-torch.  Picking up poo in the dark can be a bit of a challenge too!

You can make it a cool meditation-esk practice too, by focusing on the sounds you can hear for 10 seconds, then focus on what you can see, and finally what you can feel – e.g. the wind on your face, breathing, feet on the floor etc.

 

 

Underfloor Heating?

On By AndyIn Home, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Underfloor heating, always makes me think of Arsenal football club for some reason – I think, they were one of the first clubs to have under-soil heating; avoiding postponed matches during the winter.

Under-soil heating, may be a bit expensive and not massively practical in terms of the domestic market, however, under-floor heating is becoming quite trendy.

But is it worth it?

Some of the advantages of under-floor heating include:

Pros
1. The floor is actually warm, not the radiator on one side of the room.
2. The heat is more evenly dispersed throughout a given room, rather than heating an isolated area
3. It adds more space to a room, assuming radiators are ‘the other’ heating option being considered.
4. Underfloor heating can work at a lower temperature than radiators
5. It might; might enhance the home’s selling price
6. You don’t get dust mites gathering around and on the radiator, because you probably won’t have a radiator

Cons
1. Difficult to ‘retro-fit’
2. It can take longer to warm up (but you can just use a timer to get it going by the time it’s cold)
3. A cheaper system might not provide enough warmth, so you might end up fitting radiators anyway!
Underfloor Heating Options
Two main types of underfloor heating systems exist – electric and water ones. Water based systems are more expensive to fit, but are cheaper to run than electric ones.

 

I think I’ll stick to my wood-burner for now…but here’s an interesting infographic if you are a bit of a heating-engineer-geek or general nerd that enjoys sciencey images:

Energy Saver 101: Home Heating

by sarahgerrity.

From Visually.

15 minute workouts for knackered dads

On By AndyIn FitnessLeave a comment

Equipment:
Chin up bar
Strength bands
Caffeine tablets

Tabata intervals, done once every other day, are a great time-efficient way of gaining many of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise, in a much shorter space of time – 4 minutes.

Choose any exercise, for example squats with bodyweight.
Find a Tabata Timer on Youtube or download an app.
Do 20 seconds of squats, rest 10 seconds, then repeat 8 times.
This gives 4 minutes of high intensity exercise.
I like to do these with MMA specific exercises like sit-throughs.

If you can spare another 10-15 minutes, here are a couple of workouts you can do at home for muscle-mass or just muscle-maintainence.

Remember that ‘return on investment’ in terms of exercise and ‘gains’ in strength and muscle mass is not proportional.  In fact, there are a lot of fitness professionals who argue that 1 set of exercise to failure, is all that is required per body part.  See Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates’ training philosophies (not 1-set training, but certainly an in-and-out of the gym mentality)

 

 

 

Most importantly, do something, and form the habit of exercising whenever possible. Even if it’s just doing squats whilst the kettle is boiling!

Home Birth ‘Review’

On By AndyIn Home, ParentingLeave a comment

For your first child, I seriously would not bother.

We hired our birthing pool for 5 weeks for £90 which isn’t bad to be fair. Although it is basically a paddling pool (in fact my mate’s wife gave birth in a paddling pool rather than a ‘birthing’ one)

 

Everything was going great, until it came to the final stages – the bit where you have to do all that pushing…

Nothing was happening, so the midwives phoned an ambulance, which took well over an hour to arrive.

All the neighbours came out (even though most of them have never spoken to us) to see what was going on, and my wife was taken out on a chair in the middle of the road, which couldn’t have been the best experience ever.

She was exhausted, and in lots of pain by the time we got to hospital. What the home-birth groups and Daisy Foundation didn’t, apparently mention was the fact that once you are at a certain stage in labour, you can’t have any extra pain relief. Considering that 45% of home-births, for the first child, end up in hospital, it’s an important thing to consider.

So without any pain-relief (wasn’t allowed gas and air even, perhaps because of her shallow breathing) my wife was ‘cut’, and the baby was taken out with forceps.  She was in so much pain, it’s borderline traumatised me, so I’ve no idea how bad she must feel.

Anyway, all is well, that ends well. We did have to go back into hospital because baby lost a bit too much weight, and Jo had to feed her every 3 hours, but all okay now.  Thank God.