I learnt a fair bit about JSON. Well, there's not much there there, but I don't want to just understand the data we're passing--I'd like to be sure we're not prejudicing the consuming or generating systems unduly--that context is my personal business analyst value add.

Now, though, I think I really need to get a handle on Freemarker templates, because the person we give this to is a champion of "no". Does anyone here use/understand them? I don't even know how widespread their use is, and that context would also be helpful. I know our data from the script will be parsed by the appropriately named template, but I don't understand what that data is doing hanging out waiting for a template. I assume the application we're customising takes care of that.

Anyone here use lynda.com? Quality of courses? Anywhere better for a similar range of classes? They have any particular strengths or weaknesses? Although we have a formal online learning centre, a few of our developers get subsidised memberships--if you search our learning centre, CSS returns course A part 2 and course A part 3. I can't even find enough info to see if I have the pre-reqs. And I know plenty of developers who don't.

I might either draw a little less for the next month, or draw while studying. IO9 put a bug in my ear--one of the regular posters had an 80s picture of him in front of an IBM mainframe used to illustrate "skills you can't use anymore" with a subtext of "this man's hair and job prospects are similarly poor". He contacted the writer--he's now a consultant who's built in quite a bit of professional development into his routine--more than I can fit in even at my most generous jobs. And it was the S/360 in the picture that gave him a springboard.

Why just get better at drawing? My opportunities to be exposed to many new projects at the definition stage will be so much easier to exploit if I pick the right chunks of information to understand--just this Freemarker template jobbie is going to be key in separating business logic from presentation, and let the front end guys do their magic without being hobbled by needing to deploy back end code and our mandated SDLC. Which we need, but leaves business feeling like we can't react to shit, never mind be proactive without planning it a year ahead.

Luck and my canniness and my brain still working could get me as much lateral freedom as I've ever enjoyed at any job--and this is a job I already enjoy more than most of my others. One of the guys who was on my same team 2 years ago finally moved into Architecture. It's about fucking time--I didn't want him to leave us (he is brilliant, and the best kind of yes-man you can find, because he delivers.) I miss working with someone who will go away and WORK OUT THE ANSWER. Now my primary developer is too lame to even throw me under the bus.

I tell her we have a requirement for 301 redirects. She asks why we have to do it that way (I'm not a developer, so I don't get tell her how to do IIS setup--never mind I am the closest they have to an IIS SME, though I refuse to administer it, just advise). We have a long email chain, and she comes back to me and tell me she's spoken to an Architect, and he says to redirect with DNS, not IIS. Dude, you HAD the business requirement. Where did you go wrong? Because when I check with Architecture that 301 redirects are the right way to achieve what we need to, it's a three minute conversation. Which I had in front of her to make things simple, but still.

I say the weather is clear and sunny, she grabs her umbrella and walks as close to fountains as she possibly can. Thankfully for me, sometimes she falls in.

I say "we know what information they will pass us. We know what information they want back. If they just say JSON object, you can write the code without format details?" She says "Yes."

I say "Scola" but unfortunately they do not recognise the special words of our people. I spend twenty minutes talking around "If we're dynamically giving you every field of metadata, mandatory or required, for (continued...)

( continues...) three different content models to which any of ten aspects might be added, we're going to need to dynamically generate the field names by iterating the content model of each piece of content." "So we'll write code for each field and hard code the name in JSON."

And that was the good programmer! I must have been an atrocious speaker, because it took ten minutes to explain 1. Iterate through every field 2. Parse the aspect & fieldname into something unique and legal in JSON and spit out the value, mapped if required (we have a datetime on the left, and a text on the right. You really want me to just toss it over the fence?

Insomnia venting now.

We have a push on focussing on the use cases--the why and the what and for who, as well as a new SDLC methodology that's not summarised or backed up with templates. So we need to "consider" it at every step in the lifecycle, but everyone but the people implementing it have a different idea of how.

If anyone is still reading--are you familiar with Summit methodology? I'd love to know what it looks like in the wild.

tl/dr: I got a well stacked plate. But I can make this work. I am my own value proposition.

I've taken a few Excel courses on Lynda and they were helpful. But my company pays for it so I don't have an opinion on its value as a whole.

How can I make fields mandatory in Excel 2007? I knew how to do it in 2003, but now I can't find that option. I feel like it should be under Data Validation...

Jessica, can you do it using the Custom setting in Data Validation and one of the COUNT formulas?

That isn't something I've had to do, but I am at a standstill with my chart making at the moment so I can play around with excel and maybe figure something out for you if you want.

I am my own value proposition.

I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it.

My sister might be setting up her own laptop (for the first time in ever). I go a bit OTT loading these up for her, but it's hard to think of my process when I don't even have a laptop to hand.

I'm trying to think of a low end graphics app--no need to Gimp her out or anything. And a screen cap utility that has a bit more to it than Snipping Tool might be nice.

FTR, this is what I have so far:
Browsers:

• Opera
• Firefox
• Chrome

Entertainment

• iTunes
• VLC
• Azureus

Productivity/Utility

• Evernote
• Notepad++
• WinRAR
• Dropbox
• OpenOffice
• Fences 1
• Password vault

System monitoring:

• Soluto
• AVG
• Set up Windows Firewall

Communication

• Thunderbird email client
• Skype

She should be more than good to go with that, especially after she uninstalls the crap that comes with the big box store purchases, right?

Two applications I use pretty often which aren't on that list are IrfanView and Malwarebytes.

I don't think she'd need Irfan View if I can get her something really simple on the image editing front. I doubt she'd fire up more than two apps for pics. I'm really only expecting her to rescue photographs, and although the Windows image viewer seems to go out of its way to stop you from using the pic, I think it will get her by.

What can she get from Malwarebytes that she doesn't get from AVG and the native tools? Again, she's not technical, and she's also skint. So freeware and few apps is her best bet.

Both are freeware.

I couldn't say whether Malwarebytes is better or worse than than AVG, it's just what I have, and I've found it easy to use.

Oh, I see. I didn't realise there was a lower-featured free version. Assuming that those extras aren't something to miss?

What would be the easiest way to save certain voicemails on our house phone permanently?