Red Diesel Tax Calculator for Narrowboat

The IWA has a Campaign to keep derogation on Red Diesel. Something that is close to my heart. They have on their site a nifty spreadsheet which can be used to calculate the amount that people should be paying... but I needed to calculate how much we were using for propulsion or other purposes; not being a continuous cruiser it'd not be anywhere near the 60/40% split that HMRC reckons (60% for propulsion and 40% for other purposes such as hot water and electricity generation).

Being a bit of a novice when it comes to spreadsheets I thought I'd try to work it out myself and, with a little (okay, a lot of!) help, I came up with the following schema on Google Docs:

• Column A - The date, watch out for the localization here, make sure it's British (DD/MM/YYYY).
• Column B - Purpose, if you want this to act as something of a log make sure that the non-propulsion purpose is obvious, mine is "Electricity & Water", everything else is ignored.
• Column C - Is the hours on the clock when you turn the engine off.
• Column D - This is calculated by entering something like "=CX-C(X-1)"; so it you're on line 10 the formula would be "=C10-C9".
• Column E - Is the total hours used, or "=sum(D:D)".
• Column F - Is the total hours used for non-propulsion reasons, or "=sumif(B:B, "Electricity & Water", D:D)".
• Column G - Is the percentage used for non-propulsion reasons, or "=(F1/E1)".

I started doing this ages ago (08/10/2008) and I'm now onto my second sheet so I've had to alter columns E, F and G to:

• Column E (Sheet 2) - Total hours used: "=sum(sum(D:D),Sheet1!E1)".
• Column F (Sheet 2) - Total hours used for non-propulsion reasons: "=sum(sumif(B:B, "Electricity & Water", D:D),Sheet1!F1)".
• Column G (Sheet 2) - Percentage used for non-propulsion reasons: "=(F1/E1)".

Dead easy isn't it?

Tallinn

We're back from Tallinn in Estonia where we spent 5 nights. It's a jolly good place though I was a little nervous when we got off the plane... the bus into Tallinn seemed to be full of Stag Parties and Babooshkas!

I'd spent ages looking for books on Amazon but finally downloaded and printed the TALLINN in your pocket guide which was excellent.

We went on Wednesday 9th September 2009 and came back on Monday 14th September 2009 and stopped at the Domina City Hotel, breakfast was provided at the hotel so we went out for tea usually and ended up drinking in the room reading and watching Estonian TV... which is jolly cool!

Upon arriving we were hungry and so we ate at the Schnitzel House and managed to overhear a number of people using English as a lingua franca which was funny as they were criticising the English for talking about the Second World War, most especially after their 3rd drink on an evening.

On the Thursday we went on a cycle tour which was also really rather good and got nattering to some TA guys who were on a "lads" holiday (apparently this means they can burp and fart without censure!). One was talking about the history of Estonia and for a people who've been invaded and occupied by nigh on every bugger for centuries then they're remarkably not bonkers... apart from the focus on singing.

The Saku was nice as was the A. Le Coq.

Overall a jolly good place to visit!

Ray's Jam Label

Of course - it's handy to know how to print labels using Word.

Edited on the 30th January 2010:

Flying Dog Brewery

I'm really looking forward to a bottle of Gonzo Imperial Porter tomorrow morning when I get in from work.

When I first picked it up, along with my customary bottle of Poacher's, I thought it was brewed by Brew Dog (incidentally the only site served using PHP and quite possibly the slowest one), but it is actually from the USA instead.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

1,230,939 more needed!

And what's more, I'm never not drinking again seeing as teetotallers are more likely to be depressed.

The following picture is up at the gents at The Green Dragon with "If you were around in 1919 (just before prohibition started) you might have seen the following poster." above it and "Now honestly, would you quit drinking?" below:

Dublin Core

I'm not a great fan of metadata in the context of HTML, I really am not! When it is mentioned I get all sorts of visions of seedy little SEO guys playing with the placement of words in the head of HTML pages and getting excited by a 0.0001% increase in PageRank... makes my blood run cold and makes me feel not just a little poorly that does. Metadata on the whole is okay mind, information about information is how the Semantic Web will come about, but for the sake of SEO it's just not cool and puts me in mind of Witch Doctors demanding sacrifice to ensure a fruitful harvest.

So metadata doesn't have to be evil. Just like some Evangelical Christian like Harry Potter books/films, some metadata is a cool thing and will help intelligent agents of the future parse data and produce relevant information.

I've found the Dublin Core metadata editor and the Dublin Core Assistant are invaluable when it comes to generating metadata which isn't quite so nasty and, dare I say it, unclean.

The DCMI is an independent body which is seeking to standardize metadata and seems, at its heart, to be academic in focus rather than business orientated so - while I appreciate that some people use their websites to generate sales - while a purely business orientated way of adding metadata things leads me back to thinking of those scruffy, sweaty, slightly shambolic buggers crouched over their keyboards and frantically checking their PageRank after each tiny, little, minuscule iteration... using the DCMI's Dublin Core allows my academic leanings to embrace it and, hopefully, improve PageRank as well.

Leo Laporte covered this issue in a recent episode of the Tech Guy (check for "Hour 2") and I was impressed, especially with the 1500 character limit.

Tech Support Cheat Sheet from xkcd