My car overheated on the way to work this morning. There was a blockage in the coolant system and the cylinder heads could be damaged. This has pissed me off, if the damage is serious this is going to cost a small fortune.

I was looking for a new car anyway, looks like I might have to put that on hold. Maybe it knew and broke down just to spite me.

Anyway I’ve borrowed my Mum’s Fiesta for the time being. I’ve gone from a 20V 1.8 litre Turbo with 150bhp to an 8V 1.0 litre that couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. Hopefully my car won’t be out of commission for too long. I really miss that power steering and a radio that actually works.

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I needed a way to convert several pipe delimited text files to an Excel spreadsheet and came across this novel solution using PEAR.

As the name suggests Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer is a package to generate Excel spreadsheets using PHP code.

Installation of PEAR is dead simple, assuming it’s not already installed and you’re running Linux simply type the following at the command line.

links -source http://go-pear.org/ | php

Next install the required PEAR modules.

pear install -fn OLE
pear install -fn Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer

To use the package simply include the following in your code.

// Include PEAR::Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer
require_once "Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer.php";
// Create an instance
$xls =& new Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer();
// Send HTTP header
$xls->send($filename);
// Add a worksheet to the file, return object to add data to
$sheet =& $xls->addWorksheet($worksheet);
//write some data
$sheet->writeString($row,$col,$record);
//close
$xls->close();


Excel spreadsheets without the need to use the painful Text Import Wizard. Fantastic.

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My new headphones have finally arrived. I decided on the SR60 from Gradolabs. They do look a bit crappy (although the retro look is growing on me). But most importantly they sound great and are comfortable to wear.

For once the good reviews in the hi-fi press are fully justified.

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I was aware that Tadpole Computer’s have been making SPARC based laptops for ages, but now Sun Microsystems have announced their first ever laptop.

According to ZDNet

“The laptops come in 15-inch and 17-inch versions running either a 550 MHz or 650 MHz UltraSPARC IIi processor or a 1.28 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processor. The Ultra 3 laptops will also sport up to 2 GB of memory installed, 512MB of RAM, a 40GB disk drive, and 2D graphics with an option to upgrade. The computers also come with 802.11b wireless networking so you can take it far away from the server room.”

They are expected to be available in July 2005 but at $3,400 for the entry-level model I don’t think I’ll be getting one.

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