howto

Crystal Reports 9 provides no way to sort an array. If you want to calculate the median value for an array, it must be sorted. On the other hand, it does provide comparisons that work properly based on data type, so that for example ( "Alice" < "Bethany" ) will evaluate true. The following examples are designed to sort numerical arrays but they can as easily sort strings or any other data types in Crystal.

Among the many pieces of obvious functionality missing from Crystal is a median function that will operate on an array. The median is not horribly difficult to calculate, but in order to do so you need a sorted list of values. Another obvious thing Crystal is missing is an array sort function. The median of a list is its middle value by position such that of the set (1, 3, 3, 4, 6) the median is 3 while the average is 3.4. While it does not look very useful with a short set of only five elements, it is often useful when you have one or two hundred of them. It is often much more useful than an average when you have a lot of redundancy in your set.

(Converting a bunch of Seconds to something Useful)

A lot of databases store time elapsed as a number of seconds. This is sufficiently granular for most purposes and it is programatically a lot easier than storing day, hour, minute, second and so on values.

When it comes time to introduce a human to that data, the big number of seconds isn't going to mean diddly. The following example is from a report on Aristocrat OASIS, so otherwise you will need to assign the "Local NumberVar TP" at the top of the example from another report source.

Crystal Reports 9 allows you to create a median summary field, but not to get the median for an array. Sure, you can get an average, or a mean, but not a median. If you want the median of a list of values, they must first be in order, which is outside the scope of this document (but there are other documents on sorting arrays.)

Crystal reports is lacking a great deal of functionality which seems like an obviously desirable addition. One of these items is the ability to display report results with lines whose background colors alternate, much like the fanfold computer paper of old, or for that matter a check register or just about any other traditional method of rendering data in rows. Business Objects provides a document that tells you how to go about this (C2014182) but for some report types, especially those with nested groups, this doesn't necessarily work properly.

When writing a report, the first thing to consider is what you're trying to report on. That tells you what tables you will need to include in your report. The Second thing is to figure out what to filter. Sometimes the answer is nothing, when you want to work with all records. Usually, though, you want to filter out some records. Maybe you only want to look at records pertaining to this year - this would typically require only a single item.

Synergy is an application for OSX, Unix, and Windows that allows you to share a mouse and keyboard across any number of these systems. The Unix version uses the XTEST extension, and as such should work on any Unix system whose X server features this extension. It is licensed under the GPLv2.

Since submarine patent pilots and all-around rat bastards Eolas managed to nail Microsoft over the use of plug-in technology, which has scads and scads of very obviously applicable prior art, internet explorer is no longer permitted to simply load plugins in response to content on a static page. The lawsuit does not however prevent loading that same content dynamically.

Outlook, in typical Microsoft head-in-the-sand fashion, does not import mail from thunderbird. This is particularly pathetic because Thunderbird uses the Unix mbox format with only minor modifications which are limited to additional headers that Thunderbird uses to keep track of message status. Yes, it is a sad day when you are importing mail from an Open standards-based file (Mozilla-based mail programs have always used mbox format with an additional status header) to a proprietary Microsoft format. I had to do it, and if you are reading this, you probably have to do it too.

If you have a Bluetooth device which is not supported directly in Windows XP and which was not designed explicitly for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) then you are likely having problems. One such is the ISSC IS1002N "Horus" bluetooth module, one of the smallest bluetooth reference designs around and thus a fairly popular candidate for super-cheap bluetooth dongles.

Unfortunately, installing a unit based on the reference design (and driver) results in a failure to install the Microsoft bluetooth stack, and necessitating the use of a third-party stack. This is a highly unsatisfactory solution as many third-party stacks will not work properly with third-party applications. A little creative googling allowed me to find a working solution.