Wow, Rediff actually published this article on how hairstyles make successful CEOs

So much fuzz over a complait fluff is sTRESSing me…

PS: do read the comments on that page for additional entertainment

• 2 Comments

A significant amount of my job work involves drinking copious amount of coffee while looking out the window. Ok, I am kidding I wish my job involved all that, but I still drink a cup of coffee every workday (Weekends are obviously reserved for good old Filter Kaapi). Unfortunately I am forced to buy and drink 355 ml (google tells me that is all of 12 Oz.) of coffee because that is the minimum size available. As you can see on the left, the cup looks like a small cauldron. Every sip makes me feel guilty (well, may be because I wasnt looking out of window but actually working on a spreadsheet).

So here is a free idea for Starbucks and all other coffee makers. Why dont you introduce small cup sizes, something around 8 oz? It promotes healthy life style, gives customers a choice to be indulgent without guilt and makes reasonable business sense.

• 5 Comments

clone_s, originally uploaded by Chandoo.

Shot this as an experiment, what do you think?

• 3 Comments

Ever since writing the create in-cell pie charts in excel, I have been itching to find a simple enough method to do incell bar graphs. An in-cell bar would probably be more useful and cuter than an in-cell pie as it can instantly provide trending details. What more, these would probably look gorgeous when printed out.

My first challenge was that there was no font readily available for bar graphs. Thankfully this is when I noticed Font Struct, an online font creator / editor. I quickly created a bar graph font using their wonderful editor. When you use bargraph font, 0 through 9 will show bars of increasing heights, as shown below.

You should download bargraph font if you want to use incell bar graphing technique mentioned here.

Once you have downloaded the font, the rest is simple process. For this example, lets use fictitious sales data of various beverages over the last 12 months. The initial data table is something like this:

1. First we will insert a column next to the total sales column and call it “last 12 months”. We will use this column to fill up the in-cell bar graph for the last 12 month sales.
2. Next we need to normalize the sales values for each month to a value between 0 to 9. I have used linear normalization, ie the maximum value across the 12 months would be 9 and everything else will be normalized according this. The formula for one month looked something like this: =ROUND(jan_sales/MAX(all_sales)*9,0). Remember, we need to round the data make it one digit instead of a decimal.
3. Once we have normalized values for each of 12 sales figures for each row, we just need to concatenate them to create a 12 character long string of numbers and place this values in our newly inserted column
4. Finally, we will change the font of this column to “bargraph” (just select all the cells under the “last 12 months” and change the font)

   When we are finally done, our table should look something like this:
   

5. Thats all, we now have a charming data table with cute little incell bar graphs to insert your project report / sales memo or news letter.

Remember, you need to have the bargraph font installed first.

Do you like this? share your feedback.

• 3 Comments

We went to Hocking hills state park during the weekend, hiked a few miles, had tons of fun watching waterfalls, caves, cliffs, rare plants and infinite greenery. The trip has been thoroughly grinding with almost every place looking spectacular and lengthy. We couldn’t really visit all the attractions as both of us were feeling totally tired after what felt like 10 miles of hiking.

I had great time testing our new
Nikon D40 though, some of the shots came really well, at least thats what I thought. Share your feedback so that I can become a better clicker.

Spotted this while hiking, any idea what they call this?

flowers and a bee

Sharp and a wood block

Happy week ahead!

• 0 Comments

Spotted these two rather well done ads starring Dhoni. The ads glorify lungi-clad, wild-dancing, movie-loving Tamil spirit while promoting carbonated sweetened beverages and mechanized time indicators.

Dhoni Pepsi ad:

Dhoni Sonata ad:

However well done these ads are, I must admit that you will never probably see anything close to what is depicted in the ads anywhere in Chennai or Tamilnadu. Its time advertisers and brand managers took notice of the way people actually are.

• 0 Comments

Here is a ridiculously easy trick to do nice incell pie charts in excel, what more, they will make you look like a charting wizard.

1. Download free pie chart font from here (direct download link). The font has 21 pie chart codes starting with empty circle (character ‘a’) and ending with full circle (character ‘u’)
2. Install the font (just extract the zip file, copy the font file to your fonts folder, click here to learn how to install a font in windows)
3. Open excel, go to your data table and insert a column where you want incell pie charts
4. Enter a formula like =CHAR(CODE("a") + ROUND(data cell*21,1)), just replace the data cell with actual cell code.
5. Finally change the font to “pie charts for maps” from font dialog.
6. There is no step 6, so go ahead and show off this cool table to your colleagues, make their jaws drop in awe.

You can add some conditional formatting to the pie charts like I did to make it nice.

• 6 Comments