Complex Math for Office

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | Stuff | No Comments

If you were ever wanting to use Complex Math in Microsoft Office, don’t fear, it’s actually supported!

To enable complex math functions, enable the Analysis ToolPak add-in.  To do this, go to:

  • For Office 2007: (Big office button, top left), Options, Add-ins, at the bottom press “Go” next to Manage (Add-ins), and check “ANALYSIS TOOLPAK”.
  • For earlier versions: Tools, Add-ins, enable “ANALYSIS TOOLPAK”

Great!  Now where’s your function reference?  Turns out you boot up Help, and type “Engineering Functions.”  There will be an item called “Engineering Functions (Reference)” which contains all your new functions.  Most complex functions are prefixed with IM.

For some Excel examples:

  • Add two numbers together:
    =IMSUM(”2 + 3i”, “5 + 7i”)
  • Divide a real number by the conjugate of something else:
    =IMDIV(5,IMCONJUGATE(A1))
  • Subtract a number from a complex number defined by two fields (F1 ~ real component, G1 ~ imaginary component)
    =IMSUB(COMPLEX(F1,G1), “2 - 4i”)

The possibilities are endless!

Have fun!

~

Tags: , , , , , , ,

I Can Speak English

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | Stuff | 1 Comment

If you didn’t know already, I’m studying (cough) to get my Private Pilots’ License.  This involves many exams, flying hours and bucks.  Basically, I go in a few times a week and fly a light aircraft doing all sorts of manevours and navigations — I even learn to fly the plane without ANY engines and get to land without an engine :D.

A few months ago, I was ready to go for my first solo flight, when the lovely folks at CASA decided to mandate an English speaking test — even for native speakers! I went to book my test, but it was booked up for months on end!  Basically, I had to stop flying for a few months to wait for this stupid exam.  When the time came to do it, I walked into the room, sat down, and spoke about what I liked for 10 minutes.  Grade: 6/6.  Well done Shane.

Hopefully, I should get the damn license before the end of the year to go flying over Christmas :).

Here are some shots from the sky.

Cessna 172 Controls

View from the left

View from the left

Morning Pilot Shane

Morning Pilot Shane

That’s all!

Have fun!

Shane.

Tags: , , , , ,

LyX

Sunday, September 7th, 2008 | Stuff | No Comments

If anyone’s looking for a good LaTeX WYSIWYM editor, look no further, LyX is here.

Take a look!

~

Tags: , ,

Columbia STS-107 - Cover up?

Sunday, August 31st, 2008 | Miscellaneous | No Comments

After some extensive reading (procrastinating doing assignments), I bumped into a rather interesting website about Columbia (space shuttle that recently was destroyed upon re-entry).  Rather than the official story of heat tile damage causing the space shuttle to be destroyed, this site attempts to establish that it was actually complete failure of the onboard guidance computer and all four backups.  It then links the failure to the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) research institute in Alaska.  Read for yourself:

Due to the enourmous amount of content on the site, you might just want to skip to “Final Conclusions.”

Peace out.

Tags: , , , ,

Hello Weblog-World

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | Stuff | No Comments

I had two options today: perform much needed studying; or create a blog.  I don’t think I need to go further into this.

In this blog, I plan to write about things of interest.  Perhaps I will post some software, write about orbital mechanics or let you know about some cool projects that I (half) finish.  Or, perhaps this will be the only post.

Time will tell.

Tags: ,