draw pushpins with description boxes
draw lines/paths
draw polygons
draw circles of a set radius around a pushpin

my biggest achievement with goodle earth is plotting data in a colour changing line, where the colour related to some data value in excel.

here’s a few snippets for writing KML in VB (assuming you have a file open with a handle #intKMLFile)

I am not a programmer.

I had managed to “do the job” after a fashion but had not properly understood how I got there.

Metaphorically I found myself halfway up a mountain when my programming skills would barely see me through the foothills in reality.

Your page has helped and encouraged me tremendously – Everest here I come!

Thank you

Thanks!

@gruff999: John Seddon should be knighted! Cheers for the link, I know his work but I’ve not visited his site. Looks like a good resource.

J-Walk got me interested in learning more about Excel after visiting his site. Then I saw this blog and decided to really go for it.

I read the Dummies book, then I read Power Programming. I recommend both, the latter is in my desk drawer and I refer to it often.

Absolutely agree the best way to learn is hands on, there’s heaps of resources to help get started.

Here’s to a new generation of Excel dudes!

I bought his book “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector” after reading about his work on the popular U.K. “Inspector Gadget” police blog (http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/). In Britain everything seems to be run the same way, and it’s NOT the TPS way!.

The alternatives, though straightforward and logical, have fallen from living memory and from the cultural landscape. Everyone seemingly accepting that there isn’t a better way to do things.

He makes some painful (eye-watering!) observations about how systems are simply set up and designed to fail and be more costly, usually in the name of efficiency savings. I found it difficult to challenge his logic or evidence.

But the alternatives are maybe more scary than doing the ‘wrong thing for the right reasons’?

I did HTML, leading to a brief dabble with JavaScript then to web VBScript, ASP, Excel VBA along the way (recorded macros to edited macros to direct coding), batch files, standlone VBScripts (Windows Script Host). Word macros and a dip into Outlook macros. After a while you start to learn important skills that cross-over the technologies.

To be completely honest there was a second motivation for the Excel VBA. A guy at work who, though not exactly the ‘go to’ guy, was known as someone who got things done. I started to suspect there was more brute force trial and error than skillful insight at play in his solutions. They worked, but he didn’t know exactly why or how, but was happy to let people think he knew. That didn’t sit well with me and I reckoned I could do better, and I would then know if his rep was well founded or not.

Sad but true.