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  Split a spreadsheet into multiple files with the GNU/Linux command line

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  Free e-learning software: unifying coding efforts, and admin efforts

• 

  The newsroom’s ally: Ally-Py

• 

  Die Hard--But Make Sure You Can Bequeath Your Digital Assets

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  Backup and Read your E-mails offline with Thunderbird's ImportExportTools

Split a spreadsheet into multiple files with the GNU/Linux command line

November 19, 2012

Have you ever wanted to split a spreadsheet into several spreadsheets according to the contents of a particular field? For example, you might have a music tracks spreadsheet with an 'artist name' field, and you want separate spreadsheets for each artist, with the usual field names along the top of each new spreadsheet.

You can split a spreadsheet by copying and pasting the different sections into new spreadsheets if there aren't many records. If there are lots of records, this manual approach can be pretty tiring. For splitting very large spreadsheets, most users turn to special stand-alone programs (in the Excel world) or fairly complicated macros (Excel, Open/LibreOffice Calc).

I split my spreadsheets using the GNU/Linux command line, as explained in this article. It's another of my trademark ugly hacks, but it works well and the command line steps can be combined into a script which runs fast and reliably.

Free e-learning software: unifying coding efforts, and admin efforts

November 11, 2012

In this article, I will talk about an exciting chain of events which brought several universities together: instead of buying different Learning Management Systems, they teamed up and started working on the same piece of software -- together. This led to the development of Sakai, a fantastic Learning Management System. I will also talk about the importance, for organisations like the Sakai foundation, to then merge with similar ones (which share similar goals) for the same reason: avoid work duplication.

Backup and Read your E-mails offline with Thunderbird's ImportExportTools

October 31, 2012

In a previous article on syncing and restoring your GMail account with the excellent GMVault I voiced one minor and perhaps unfair criticism. Namely, that as backed up e-mails had no recognizable titles, it was virtually impossible to identify specific messages. But, of course, that was never the intended purpose of GMVault. It would have been the icing on the cake if it was.

Split a spreadsheet into multiple files with the GNU/Linux command line

November 19, 2012

Have you ever wanted to split a spreadsheet into several spreadsheets according to the contents of a particular field? For example, you might have a music tracks spreadsheet with an 'artist name' field, and you want separate spreadsheets for each artist, with the usual field names along the top of each new spreadsheet.

You can split a spreadsheet by copying and pasting the different sections into new spreadsheets if there aren't many records. If there are lots of records, this manual approach can be pretty tiring. For splitting very large spreadsheets, most users turn to special stand-alone programs (in the Excel world) or fairly complicated macros (Excel, Open/LibreOffice Calc).

I split my spreadsheets using the GNU/Linux command line, as explained in this article. It's another of my trademark ugly hacks, but it works well and the command line steps can be combined into a script which runs fast and reliably.

MegaGlest: a fantastic, free software strategy 3D game

February 4, 2012

When the Glest team started "Glest" as a college project a few years ago, they probably didn't expect their game to go such a long way. While "Glest" stopped being developed a couple of years ago in 2009, it was forked in two different projects: GAE (Glest Advanced Engine) and MegaGlest (the game I am reviewing in this article). So, how is it? The answer is simple: this game is incredible, polished, enjoyable, addictive, smart, and plain simply fantastic.

The newsroom’s ally: Ally-Py

November 8, 2012

Software architect Gabriel Nistor talks to Trevor Parsons about Ally-Py, the new Free Software framework designed to get the most from web APIs.

Sourcefabric’s Superdesk enables news organisations to manage all of their newsroom activities, including planning, ingest, writing, publication and archiving. It is written in Python and released under GNU GPLv3. At the heart of Superdesk is the Ally-Py rapid development framework, built from the ground up to help media enterprises exploit the world of REST APIs.

The Bizarre Cathedral - 100

October 13, 2011

Latest from the Bizarre Cathedral.

QuiEdit: An Editor for Anyone Who wants a Quiet Life

May 25, 2012

Editors, like file managers and browsers, are legion. To carve out a niche for itself an editor needs to have some compelling or unique feature(s). QuiEdit is unique. No, really. It is. If you want to write, unplugged from the distractions of the digital world, it has to be a contender. How?

Packt Publishing is celebrating their 1000th book tomorrow

September 27, 2012

Packt is one of the first publishers who actively supported us back in 2005, when this mad adventure started. They were just starting up back then, and yet they invested in Free Software Magazine in several ways (including monetary).

Free Software Magazine is not the only project that benefits from them: Packt's "Believe in Open Source" campaign has already donated more than $400,000 to the projects they cover in their books.