Category: ouch

Charles Lewinsky: Der Wille des Volkes

Exceptionally bad book. Not only the misogynistic approach to the protagonists and how they interact, but also the illogical structure, make it a pain to read.

Clearly the author didn’t think this through and forfaited everything this book could have been in favor of shipping something in tune with the zeitgeist for a quick buck quickly.

If you wonder: the story told would basically end after the first phone call, since surveillance is in effect already at this point, as is explained in the final couple of pages.

don’t read. waste of time.

Bill Bryson: Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

one of the books I just can’t finish. Full of self-centricity, misogyny and disrespect for… well, basically everything. It’s fascinating how in 1991 authors were able to publish books like this to acclaim. (and if you now consider reading it, streisand effect and all: don’t)

Google Finance: CHSPI broken

Update, 2023-12-15: investing.com rendering is super unstable – I’ve resorted to using ishares.com directly. The new snippet for CHSPI:

=SUBSTITUTE(importxml("https://www.ishares.com/ch/individual/en/products/264107/ishares-spi-ch-fund","//*[@id='fundheaderTabs']/div/div/div/ul/li[1]/span[2]"), "CHF ", "")

Update, 2023-06-19: investing.com has changed some of its html. The new snippet for CHSPI:

=importxml("https://www.investing.com/etfs/ishares-core-spi","//*[@id='__next']/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[1]/div/div[1]/div[3]/div/div[1]/div[1]")

As we all know, Google Finance and ETF (at least ishares) import* in Google Spreadsheets has been broken since December 2022:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/262157479

So if you use =GOOGLEFINANCE("CHSPI","price"), in your spreadsheet, all you’ll get is the following error message:

Error:
When evaluating GOOGLEFINANCE,
the query for the symbol: 'CHSPI' returned no data.

Since we all also know, Google Finance isn’t the fastest in fixing bugs (as evidenced by this bug, but also several others prior to this one), and their feeds (latency,..) are best-effort-at-best.

To fix this in your spreadsheet, head over to investing.com, enter whatever stock/currency/etf/.. you want to import data from, copy the url and use that combined with importxml:

Say you’re looking for SWX:CHSPI:

  1. Go to investing.com, enter CHSPI, click on the search result.
  2. This takes you to https://www.investing.com/etfs/ishares-core-spi, where you’ll copy the url ("website address").
  3. Open your spreadsheet, head to the cell you like most, enter:
    =importxml("https://www.investing.com/etfs/ishares-core-spi","//*[@data-test='instrument-price-last']") to get the latest price.
  4. Silently thank investing.com

* Note that not only importing in spreadsheets (using =googlefinance) is broken – none of the symbols show up on Google Finance itself either.

Brandon Sanderson: The Stormlight Archive

I’ve spent^Wwasted the last 150 days of my life reading The Stormlight Archive (up to, and including, part 4), and it’s been the greatest waste of time and brain cycles in a long time.

The tl;dr: whenever something inexplicable happens, the author will simply invent a new plot twist/random magic. I do expect the series to end with a “remarkable” finish, but only because it’s predictable based on the first book.

Don’t read it. Not worth it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stormlight_Archive

(and yeah, my bad for not being able to stop reading half-way through, but I always tend to think “the problem is me, not the author. this must end well, I just don’t get it yet”)

SketchUp 2017 vs Big Sur

Oh how I hate these days. Let’s start with the good stuff first: I’ve been a SketchUp user for… forever. Like pre-Google-acquisition-forever. I cried when Google sold the assets, and SketchUp was no longer free for hobby-users like me (I use it on the order of once per year…).

Then Trimble (new or newnew owner) said I’d have to have an account with them to get the basic (online) version. So I created one, hated the online version and went back to the (still free, thanks Google I guess) 2017 version. Worked perfectly fine for all I use it for.

Then Big Sur came along, and while everything still works in SketchUp, all the dimensions are flipped. OpenGL they say. Apple’s bug they say. Here’s the thread:

https://forums.sketchup.com/t/sketchup-make-2017-mac-os-big-sur-dimension-tool-text-up-side-down/142431/51

Obviously I was going to try to see how things work online today… however, after logging in, trimble greets me with a message of incompetence:

Not sure where to take it from here. I hate these days.