Comments for Daily Dose of Excel

Comment on Charting House by Primo

Primo — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:11:55 +0000

American TV is nearly unwatchable when you’re used to channels with few or no adverts, look at how BBC now makes programmes like Doctor Who or the David Attenborough documentaries: you get a 45 minute program followed by a 15 minute ‘Making of…’ segment. Obviously those 45 minute programmes become an hour long when shown with all the ad breaks, and I guess the 15 minute segment appears as an extra on the DVD.

Some of the American shows especially on Channel 5 (eg Ice Road Truckers) seem bizarre because of all the repetition in each segment: ‘This is Joe’s first time on the ice road’ will be repeated as if it’s not been said before, time after time.

Comment on Charting House by Gordon

Gordon — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:56:35 +0000

Wow. I don’t understand how anyone can watch TV in the US with all those advert breaks. It’s nowhere near as bad here in the UK e.g. you never get breaks before the opening titles, although I have noticed things getting gradually worse in the past few years, especially on the crappier channels.

Even ‘acquired’ material off the internets can be spoiled by the very obvious need to break 40-odd minutes of TV up into about 6 or 7 segments, with all the cutaways and resumes being very obvious when they are all butted up against each other.

Comment on Using the MATCH Function for a Linear Search and a Binary Search by Mathias

Mathias — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:27:37 +0000

@Dick: thank you for clarifying my comment, this is exactly what I meant!
@Tushar: sorry if my comment came out sounding aggressive, this wasn’t my intent! I was just pointing out what I thought (and still think) is an issue with the publishing solution you were describing.
Re: the discussion about how much to post on a feed, I understand (and respect) why some authors would just post an excerpt on the feed, if driving visitors to the actual website is of value to the author. That being said, if I can’t see any part of the contents in my feed reader, which is the case with this post, you might as well kill the feed, because it serves no purpose at that point…

Comment on Charting House by Al Beech

Al Beech — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:59:27 +0000

I noticed that pattern years ago on Saturday Night Live. I don’t watch it much anymore, and definitely not all the way to the end, but I would be surprised if the pattern has changed.

Comment on Charting House by Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:37:35 +0000

This is why there are places like hulu and boxee. The commercials are limited (if at all).

DVR it and fast forward through the nonsense.

Comment on Charting House by Dan

Dan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:04:31 +0000

As Blayne mentions, would be interesting to compare multiple episodes or shows - you’re making the assumption that it’s solely the commercials which govern the break, rather than the flow of the show. Perhaps those were the appropriate points in the episode to insert a break?

Comment on Charting House by Alan Hutchins

Alan Hutchins — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:16:33 +0000

Nice post Dick.

I dont bother watching it on TV anymore - solely because the advert breaks in the UK are a PITA.

Instead I wait and buy the DVD - no breaks

Still one of the best shows around.

Comment on Importing text files in an Excel sheet by Jan Karel Pieterse

Jan Karel Pieterse — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:33:30 +0000

Thanks Ed, glad my articles has helped you out so quickly!

Comment on Charting House by Dan Maxey

Dan Maxey — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:32:26 +0000

One hour contains 3600 seconds. If you don’t count the trailing intro, 1003 seconds are spent watching non-relevant material (I count the leading intro as relevant because somebody somewhere might care who the stars / guest stars etc. are). That means that 27.9% of our time is spent watching non-relevant material. If you do count the trailing intro as also being non-relevant, then 31.2% of our time is gone. How little we value our time.

Comment on Charting House by Mathias

Mathias — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:26:49 +0000

Personally, when I hear a statement like “this value evolves as a function of this value”, the first thing which comes to mind is a scatterplot. Why not plot the length of the segments as a function of the time the segment starts? On this examples, it really works well: the first thing you see on the chart is the fairly steady reduction of the show segments duration over time - minus the last data point.