Productivity Tips, MS Excel and Inspiration

If you are a geek and can develop mobile apps, MTN is offering you a ticket to stardom in the MTN App Developer Challenge 2013.

I have taken care to copy everything word for word from Contest's Official site link .

The only ambiguity is that no mention is made of the type of app required - java app, android app, iOS app or web app. It's up to you to find out!

Hint: Android apps are accepted, checkput the MTN Nextapps link to confirm.

MTNApp Developer Challenge 2013

How To Enter:

Step 1: Register

Registration is open to individuals or teams.

Step 2: Selecting the mobile app Idea you want

1. Entry Categories

Developers will be expected to submit applications into any of the following categories:

Entertainment and Lifestyle
Productivity
Games
Education
Health and wellness
Special category for student submissions (undergraduates)

Welcome to my Nigerian Stock Exchange series!
To view the reports of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and Investment analysis reports, click NSE series.

Yesterday, I scrolled through my electronic library comprising the eBooks I bought on Kindle store and the audiobooks I bought on Audible; I was amazed.
Though I have all sorts of books in my e-library, in this post I will share with you my collection of Personal finance and self development books.

1. Securities Analysis: The classic 1940 edition by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
I bought this book solely on Warren Buffett's recommendation. He never stops recommending the book, with statements such as "No one ever became poor by reading Ben Graham", "I have read hundreds of investment books, and Securities Analysis by Graham is the best", "Graham's daughter sent me Graham's copy with annotations and that is the best gift I have ever received", "I have read the 1940 edition at least 4 times" and "It is the roadmap for investing that I have been following for 57 years"
Though I am still reading this book, I have no doubt that it is the best investment book I have.
And about the author? Graham was regarded as the Dean of Wall Street, that before him there were no Securities Analysts (full-time) and after him, Securities Analysis became a profession.
And as evidence of the effect his book is having on me, I now have a folder on my tablet containing the Annual Reports of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. I read them like I've got an exam on them to study for.

Welcome to my Nigerian Stock Exchange series!
To view the reports of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and Investment analysis reports, click NSE series.

Below is a complete list of MTN customer service centers nationwide, culled from MTN Official website

Completely culled from MTN Wow Weekend

No more boring weekend for customers on the MTN network with the new MTN WOW Weekend Offer!!!

What is MTN WOW Weekend?
MTN WoW Weekend is an exciting offer to enjoy 100% bonus airtime on every recharge you load using *888*12 digit recharge card pin#, starting from 06:00pm on Friday evening till 11:59pm on Sunday.

How does it work?

Welcome to my Nigerian Stock Exchange series!
To view the reports of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and Investment analysis reports, click NSE series.

Dangote Cement annual report 2012 from Michael Olafusi

Welcome to my Nigerian Stock Exchange series!
To view the reports of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and Investment analysis reports, click NSE series.

Hi there!
In this post I will guide you via lots of screenshots on how to make an Excel Pivot Table that is very dynamic (a dashboard indeed) and has data labels that are spread across several columns.

Allons y!

Firstly, download the sample Excel data I used via this link

Now you'll end up with an Excel sheet like this below

We are going to make a Pivot table from this.
Select the cell A1. Go to Insert, Click on Pivot Table

Hi!

In this post I will show you the amazing use of ISERROR in Microsoft Excel.

Take a look at the screenshots below

Here is the background gist.

This is the previous month sales record of a store in Nigeria. Garri being the poor man's manna: can be eaten with beans in the morning, soaked in the afternoon and eaten as Eba at night. 100 bags of it were sold, for $10,000 aggregate.

Ordinarily, this should have been my MVP #2 post but better late than never.

So, here we go!

In this post I'll show you in a personalized way, the MS Excel interface and the most important parts of the important menu Ribbons.

Below is the labeled snapshot of my Excel interface (you might have to click on it to view full size)

That is what a typical MS Excel 2010 interface looks like.

I’ll like you to note the Ribbons, Formula bar, Fill handle and Sheet tab. I’ll be referring to them a lot of times in subsequent classes.

The letters you see beside the Ribbons are called Keyboard shortcuts. Press the Alt key on your keyboard to see something similar on your Excel program. More on useful keyboard shortcuts. But I must let you know that they are a life saver, and can be the difference between a chore and a delight.

As you already know, I modded my Samsung Galaxy S2 with CyanogenMod

At the beginning of this month I noticed something very disturbing.
I got a happy new month message from a dear friend and I tried replying; no way. I tried repeatedly, I kept getting message not sent. I googled the MTN SMSC code and as expected it was still +2348030000000, I tapped that into my modded android phone and got an error. I googled all the combination of mtn + android + sms + message + error + can't send; and no suggestion found worked. I switched the phone off and on severally, no result.

So for more than 8 days I couldn't send an SMS.
Then suddenly, on Wednesday, like a flash bulb, an idea lit up in my head. I removed my Airtel SIM from my Blackberry and put the SIM in the android phone, then I went to the settings to see the SMSC number. To my surprise it was 089132420000000f8 instead of +2348020000000 that is the actual SMSC number. I tried sending an SMS and it was successful.
So I did what anyone would do.

vi editor is a very powerful text editor that comes pre-installed on all Linux OS.

vim is variant of vi editor, basically an improved version. Practically, it is more error tolerant than vi.

There are two modes –

Command mode, which is the default mode. You basically scroll through the file content or enter commands.

h moves the cursor to the left,

l moves it to the right,

k to move up, and

j to move down

dd will delete current line

:w to save (write) the changes made

:q will exit the editor

:q! will exit the editor without saving changes

Text input mode. You enter this mode by pressing the Insert key. There are some basic guidelines to note -

don’t attempt to scroll or change the cursor position in this mode, position the cursor where you want to add extra text before changing to the text input mode. The only exception is when you are using vim.

To change to this mode pressing -

a will append, move the cursor one position to the right before switching to the inserting mode

i will insert

o will insert a blank line under the current cursor position and move the cursor to that line

Vim is better, just not as pre-installed on Linux OSs as Vi.

Run vimtutor to start a recommended 30 minutes tutorial on using vim.

The following are ways to manipulate the screen/standard output of any Linux command,

Piping the output to another command using |

Redirecting output via >

Redirecting output via >> (to append)

Redirecting only errors via 2>

Redirecting standard input via <

Use tee option with | (pipe) to copy input to standard output (terminal) and more than one output files. e.g. cat original | tee copy1 copy2

Use tee –a to append to files. e.g. cat file.txt | tee -a file_all.txt

Grep: It scans output line per line, searching for matching patterns.

All lines containing the pattern will be printed to standard output. e.g. cat countriesandcapitals.txt | grep Nigeria

This can be reversed using the –v option.

Sort: It allows you to sort the output lines before displaying.

Default is in alphabetical order. e.g. cat alphabets | sort

It can also sort by file size, when sorting ls output. e.g. ls ~/ -la | sort -nk 5

And when used with uniq, it can sort and filter out double entries. e.g. sort itemlist | uniq

All files in Linux have permissions set (or unset) for user, group and other users. It’s indicated as –rwxrwxrwx or similar.

To display a file’s permission settings, type ls -l filename

The first character indicates the filetype e.g. ordinary file, directory…

The next 3 characters indicate the permission for the file owner (user), then next 3 for users in the owner’s group and the last 3 for other users.

r = Read w = Write x = Execute

Easiest way to change a file’s permission is to use chmod u/g/a +/- rwx filename e.g. chmod a+w file.txt to give everyone write permission on the file, file.txt

You can also use numeric arguments and common ones are –

chmod 400 to give only read permission to owner

chmod 600 to give read and write permission to owner

chmod 644 to give everyone read permission and the owner write permission

chmod 775 to give everyone read + execute, owner + group read write execute permission

chmod 777 to give everyone read write exceute permission

This is going to be short and straight to the point.

Use cat file.txt to display the content of file.txt on the screen

Use cat file.txt | more to display the content of file.txt one page at a time

Use cat file.txt | less to enable scrolling. Press q to exit/end.

Use tac file.txt to display the content of file.txt in reverse

Use cat file1.txt > file2.txt to copy content of file1 to file2, file duplication.

Use cat file1.txt >> file2.txt to append content of file1 to file2.

Use tail -10 file.txt to display the last 10 lines in file.txt

Use head -10 file.txt to display the first 10 lines in file.txt

Linux has become extremely easy to administer. And can be administered using GUI applications or using the Command line Interface (CLI)

As a professional Linux administrator, you’ll have to know how to administer the OS via the CLI

Linux supports multi-tasking, several users using the OS simultaneously.

By default 7 users can work simultaneously (without anyone logging out). 6 Commandline users and 1 GUI user. To switch use CTRL + ALT + F1 (F2,F3,F4,F5,F6,F7) . CTRL+ALT+F7 takes you to the GUI one

From the GUI, you can always access the command line via “Terminal”

Below are very useful command line tips

Ever wondered why you see different colors when you do ls in linux?

In this post I'll show you what each color stands for.

In the screenshot below, I did ls -l which will show extra details - file type, file permission, file owner, owner's group, date of creation/modification and file name.

'Cos I did this on my android phone which runs a stripped version of Bash shell, the colors aren't showing. If you do this on a Linux PC, the file names will be colored differently.

Want to put your Unix/Linux skills on steroid?
Checkout the presentation below

UNIX/Linux training from Michael Olafusi

I know a couple of people think I'm weird and that more than half of all I do is weird. And I know that those people are prejudiced. But to keep them company today, I will be sharing you with my weird collection of software, the ones I use regularly for work and work. I don't use my PC for play, when I'm tired of working I sleep or listen to Audible.

So here we go -

Last week I traveled to Osogbo, at the last hour of packing my luggage I decided to toss in my GTB internet banking token. I might need it to make third party bank transfers.

Unfortunately, it rained that day and manyhow the water sipped into the side of my luggage, the part I kept the token. I didn't notice until four days later, I needed to load a Cellulant bulk SMS account. Unknown to me, the payment page now requests for an OTP (one time password from the token). I smiled at myself, believing I'm covered. I brought out my GTbank token and pressed the big white rubber button, nothing showed, no digits on the display. I pressed it again and again and again, still no digits. Then, I put on my most optimistic mind, went to my bag and brought out the screwdriver I exclusively use on my laptop (yeah, my beloved Sony VAIO, a story for another post). I took apart the token, tried all my technical tricks on it - hit it like an old TV, spread it out like a dead battery, tune it slowly like an analog radio. No result.

By now you would have gotten the gist that I now have a new tablet, the amazing Microsoft Surface RT.

Below are hurry hurry pics I took with my phone camera.

I’ve finally gotten a new laptop! Well, it’s a tablet, Microsoft Surface RT. But it does everything I regularly use my laptop for. It has Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, will soon have Outlook too (already has for people who don’t mind installing the Windows 8.1 preview OS). And as a Microsoft Excel Consultant, I only use Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer on my Sony VAIO laptop (don’t ask why). So now you understand why I said I have gotten a new laptop.

In this post I will be sharing what I love about my new Microsoft Surface RT tablet.

Productivity Tips, MS Excel and Inspiration

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