Sunday, March 17, 2013

Downloadable 2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket

The downloadable 2013 NCAA Tournament Brackets are here! It's finally time to download and print your 2013 March Madness Brackets. I’ve made my own tournament brackets for almost every other major sporting event (see them all in the downloads page) but I’ve never attempted to make my own March Madness brackets. Why? Because for the last several years I've used David Tyler's spreadsheets, which I consider to be the best NCAA Excel brackets out there and are nearly flawless in my opinion. They're free to download too!

downloadable 2013 ncaa tournament bracket

David has created two separate files: the actual tournament brackets where you predict the winners of each game and a separate bracket manager for office pools. You must use his brackets in order to use the pool manager (and make sure macros are enabled).
2013 march madness pool manager
Download the 2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket.
Download the 2013 March Madness Pool Manager

Instructions are included with the spreadsheets. To learn more about how the brackets are created read our interviews with David from 2010 and 2011. Also, be sure to visit David’s website, When the Whistle Blows.

My Buckeyes won the Big Ten Tournament and are one of the hottest teams in the nation right now. Who do you have winning the big dance? Let us know in the comments below!

If you would like to you can join my basketball pool on Yahoo's Tourney Pick'em.
 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

EXCLUSIVE: Almost Famous - Peter Frampton & Me

While surfing YouTube recently, I discovered a video of Peter Frampton in his golden prime, performing his classic Do You Feel Like We Do in 1975 on The Midnight Special, the NBC Friday late-night music show. I remember seeing that TV performance when I was a kid. It was the first time I had seen Peter perform, and it knocked me out. I became an instant fan.

Mind you, this came a year before the release of Frampton Comes Alive!, the legendary double album that catapulted Peter into the stratosphere. But when you watch the video, you can just tell that this amiable, charismatic, crowd-pleasing and impossibly gifted British guitar master was on the brink of superstardom.


In the second half of the 70's, Peter was the biggest rock star in the world. But largely because of his looks, and the fact that his toothy smile and constant barrage of shirtless photos melted girls' hearts, he was lumped in with the teen idols of that era and never got the respect he deserves.



Peter Frampton today...
Let's set the record straight once and for all: there's never been a better rock guitarist than Peter. Ever. He's also a tremendous songwriter and underrated singer. And he's a true performer who connects with and loves his audience. 

I was 15 when Frampton Comes Alive! came out, and it quickly became the soundtrack to my life. Like a lot of other 15-year-old boys in 1976, I wanted to be Peter Frampton. Who doesn't want to be a guitar God? Girls loved him, but guys also thought he was cool. 


Cameron Crowe, my favorite rock music writer and one my my favorite filmmakers, was one scribe who recognized Peter's greatness. He wrote the liner notes to Frampton Comes Alive! Nearly 25 years later Peter returned the favor by serving as a technical advisor for Crowe's poignant, autobiographical film Almost Famous. Peter co-wrote several songs for the film and appears briefly in the movie as 'Reg', a road manager for Humble Pie, the real-life band Peter co-founded. 


Meanwhile, back in the 70's - the super summer of '76, to be more specific. Remember all those Bicentennial Minutes? Anyway, there 
I was, just a skinny blonde kid who loved two things - sports and music - standing alone in my room rocking out on my guitar to Peter's Show Me the Way, the ultimate summer radio song. At that moment, how could I have even imagined that one day Peter Frampton would play lead guitar on a song that I sang and wrote?


If you would have told me this in high school, I would have told you that you'd had too many beers or too many bong hits. Or both.


Well, fast forward about 30 years to when I was recording my Survivors' Songs album. When I entered the studio to start cutting the rhythm tracks, I decided to try to recruit some of my musical heroes to play with me on these new songs.


It was an album whose purpose was to inspire my fellow cancer patients and survivors around the world to keep fighting, and I wanted to get some big music stars on board to salute all cancer patients and their loved ones.


So I reached out to Peter's management, who then relayed the message to Peter. And to my shock and joy, he agreed to listen to the track. Evidently he liked it, because he agreed to play lead guitar on the song, which is the album's title track and is my rocking anthem for survivors of all kinds. 


Peter even employed his classic wah-wah pedal sound on the song, which was a nice touch. I had a big smile on my face as I sat in the music studio of my buddy and co-producer Josquin Des Pres as we listened together to Peter's guitar tracks. He nailed it. As always.


Peter even sent me a very kind letter afterward in which he said, "Jamie, I hope this is OK. I thought the wah-wah lent itself to the vibe perfectly." It did, Peter. It did. I have that letter framed and hanging here on my office wall.


I'm proud to say that tens of thousands of cancer patients, survivors and their loved ones have heard that song. We were able to send out thousands of copies of the record to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, every chapter. All thanks to Peter, who is without question the nicest person I have ever met in the music business. A true English gentleman.


And here's the best news: Peter is still wowing audiences all over the world. Lately he's been knocking fans' socks off with a three-hour show that includes a performance of Framptom Comes Alive! in its entirety, along with cuts from his Grammy Award-winning 2006 instrumental album Fingerprints. He also recently appeared on The Voice singing another of his classics, Baby, I Love Your Way, as a duet with Terry McDermott.


Recording a song with Peter was one of the highlights of my foray into the music business. Because of Peter, I guess you could say I'm almost famous. Thanks, Peter, for making one grown-up kid very happy.

How to create collapsible rows in Excel


how to group rows in excel
I was recently creating an Excel spreadsheet template for a friend and I needed to know how to create collapsible rows in Excel. I had a worksheet that listed student’s names and information. My friend wanted a +/- sign at the beginning of each row representing different groups of students that could be clicked to reveal grades for various classes. The Group function in Excel presented the perfect solution to this situation.

One method often used to collapse rows or columns in Excel is by using the Group function.

Go to the Data tab, select the rows or columns you want to group, then select the Group icon (located in the Outline are). This will result in a button being placed to the left of the row number column and allow you to instantly collapse or hide the grouped rows. To ungroup the rows simply hit the Ungroupbutton (also in the Outline area).

You can use keyboard shortcuts to improve your speed and efficiency when applying this method. First, select the Row or Column range, then;

To group:
<Shift> <Alt> <RightArrow>

To ungroup:
<Shift> <Alt> <LeftArrow>

To retain the Groups, but toggle hide/unhide the symbols:
<Ctrl> <8>
(Using the "8" that's under the function keys, *not* from the num keypad.)

Another option to group rows would be to apply Subtotals to your range.  You'll get those outlining symbols and even a subtotal row between each group. The Subtotals button is also in the Outline section of the Data tab.

I’ve created a short how to video to show you exactly how to collapse rows in Excel. Check it out below:

 

So that’s how you expand or collapse a group of cells in Excel. Pretty easy, huh?

-Nick

Easily Grouping Columns and Rows in Excel

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Printable Big Ten Tournament Bracket 2013

big ten tournament bracket 2013
I’ve never done this before but being a big fan of the Big Ten I’ve decided to create a printable Big Ten Tournament Bracket this year. The men’s basketball tournament begins on Thursday, March 14th in the heart of Big 10 country at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. The cool thing about this editable Excel bracket is it includes the complete Big Ten basketball tournament schedule including all of the game times and television channels. Currently, I only have seedings listed. I will list the actual teams once they are known and then update the spreadsheet on Sunday.
 


Download the all in one bracket and Big Ten Tourney schedule here.

I can’t wait until the Big Ten Tournament starts! There are so many questions to answer: Will Michigan have an early exit? Is Indiana fading? What Minnesota team will show up? Can Iowa or Illinois spring an upset? How far can Ohio State go? With the way each of the top five teams have dropped random games they should have won this year I’d argue there is no clear favorite to win the Big Ten Basketball Championship. What do you think? I’d love for you to share your thoughts on the Big 10 tournament!


Check back soon for the 2013 March Madness brackets and download our new Excel Spreadsheets Help Android app!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The Dark But Inspirational Story of the Cowsills, the "Real-Life" Partridge Family

The Cowsills in the late 1960s
Arguably no song better encapsulated the sunny, innocent side of the 1960's than The Rain, The Park, and Other Things by The Cowsills. Released in 1967, a year identified by both the Summer of Love and fiery protests against the Vietnam War, the song combined a bit of ethereal, organ-infused psychedelia with stunning harmonies and an unapologetically sweet, pure-pop innocence that you just don't hear in music now. It may be my favorite a.m. radio hit from that music-rich decade.

The Rain, The Park, and Other Things sold more than three million copies and brought quick and deserved fame to the Cowsills, a family band from Newport, Rhode Island that would later become the real-life inspiration for TV's The Partridge Family. When as a kid I first saw the clean-cut, all-American Cowsills on The Ed Sullivan Show, I remember thinking how lucky they were to be playing music together as a family, on national television. 


But the pure joy in their songs (Hair, Love American Style, Indian Lake) belied the Cowsills' private pain. The group, composed of siblings Billy, Bob, Paul, Barry, John, and Susan, plus their mom Barbara, was managed by father William "Bud" Cowsill, a domineering and abusive ex-Navy officer who beat, bullied, and alienated his children and tore the band apart.



The Cowsills today - Paul, Susan and Bob
"Our dad was a tough guy. If you didn't say 'yes sir,' you'd get smacked, simple as that," says Bob Cowsill, 63, one of the surviving members of the family and narrator of a new documentary on the Cowsills debuting tonight on Showtime. 

In an interview with The Reno Dispatch, Bob Cowsill told me that neither he nor any of his siblings ever patched things up with their father. "He ruined the band, and destroyed many of our lives," Bob says. "He wouldn't even let my twin brother Richard in the band. He and my dad had it in for each other. It was terrible that he wouldn't let Richard join in, I know it broke his heart."


The documentary, Family Band: The Cowsills Story, which was made over a seven-year period in which brothers Bill and Barry died, tells the real story of the Cowsills for the first time. Skillfully directed by Louise Palankar, a lifelong fan of the band, the film chronicles the family's raging patriarch as well as the substance abuse and other issues that have plagued the siblings over the years. 


But thankfully it isn't all gloom and doom. The documentary also includes a nice dose of redemption, plenty of fun 60's nostalgia, and some truly great music. 


The Cowsills are an eternally underrated band. They were skilled musicians who wrote many of their own songs, and their four- and five-part harmonies at times rivaled The Beach Boys. Billed as "America's First Family of Music," the Cowsills were among the most popular pop bands in America in the late 60's. They were all over television, with appearances on Ed Sullivan, The Tonight Show, American Bandstand and much more. They hosted their own NBC-TV special and even became spokespersons for the American Dairy Association, appearing in milk commercials and print ads. They also recorded the popular theme to the ABC-TV comedy anthology Love American Style.


The band even challenged their own wholesome image, and their dictatorial father, by recording the title song from the acclaimed hippie counterculture musical Hair (check out this 60s-era video of the band hamming it up in hippie wigs). The song shot to the top of the singles charts in 1969 at the same time as three other classic interpretations from that musical: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by the Fifth Dimension, Good Morning Starshine by Oliver, and Easy to be Hard by Three Dog Night.


"I met the members of The Fifth Dimension at the time, and we shared a laugh over the fact that both of our songs from Hair, as well as the Three Dog Night song and the Oliver song, were all in the top ten at that moment," Bob recalls. "It was pretty amazing. We were honored to be part of that. We were excited about the success of the song and hoping it would be the beginning of a more mature direction for the band." 


Despite that hope, Bob says everyone in the group knew it was only a matter of time before it would all come crashing down.


"The public never knew what was really going on in our family," says Bob. "For example, my dad and my brother Bill had a huge fight in a restaurant in Vegas in 1969 that involved police, and it was all kept out of the papers, never a word. Just before dad tossed Bill from the band, they just had it out. We were all victims of his abuse, mental and physical."


Bud was the one who pulled the plug on signing the Cowsill kids up for the "Partridge" TV show when it was learned that Barbara Cowsill's role would be played by someone else (Shirley Jones). 



"Yeah, dad nixed that," Bob says. "But contrary to popular belief, it wasn't bad news to us. We had just had a huge hit with Hair, and we knew that a TV show would take up all of our time. We were happy recording and touring. We wanted to do the music."

As it turned out, Hair was the family's last hit single. The band self destructed as resentment toward Bud Cowsill grew. Dropped by their record label, the group permanently disbanded in 1971. Barry and Bill went off to do solo work while Susan and three of the brothers, Bob (on guitar and organ), John (on drums) and Paul occasionally reunited on tour. The band - Bob, Susan and Paul - still tours to this day. And they can all still sing, very nicely. John Cowsill has been the drummer for The Beach Boys for years.


Barbara died of cancer in 1985 at age 56 and father Bud passed away in 1992 at age 67. Son Barry, the bassist and reported Danny Bonaduce-like prototype who battled severe depression and substance abuse, was a 2005 victim of Hurricane Katrina. Lead singer/guitarist Billy, also an alcohol and drug abuser, died from chronic health problems in 2006. Both brothers were in their 50s.


The Cowsills story is chillingly similar to that of two other musical families from that era: The Beach Boy brothers Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and their sadistic, megalomaniacal father Murry Wilson, and the Jackson Five and their abusive father Joe Jackson. 


Bob is grateful the band had so much success, but he believes that had it not been for his father, "We would have had 20 more hits. We were just getting started." Bob regrets that there was never a reconciliation with any of the Cowsill siblings and their father. And he's still angry that his dad never saved any of the money the band made, and never set up any trust funds or bank accounts for any of his children.


"That would be illegal to do that today," he says. "We never get a dime from anything, and our songs are still out there. The Rain, The Park, and Other Things, our original recording, was featured in the movie Dumb and Dumber and we weren't even told about it, let alone paid for it."


Bob says he and the other surviving members have come to terms with their difficult past, and with themselves. And he notes that his dad did pay one final, unexpected visit to each of the Cowsill siblings not long before he died.


"He was living in Mexico, but he came to visit me one last time," Bob recalls. "It had been a long time since I had seen him. I didn't get to see my mother much, either, because she stayed with him. But one time he just got in his his Volkswagen bus, with his white hair and white beard like Ernest Hemingway, and showed up at my door. He said he just wanted to stop by. I didn't even know what to say."


Bud went with Bob that day to see his son play baseball, and then went with him to his wife's tennis lesson. "He didn't say much," Bob says. "But there was one thing he said that I will never forget. He asked me, 'Are you prejudiced?' I said, 'Of course not, dad.' And he said, 'At least I did something right.' Then he left."


Bob says he never saw his father again. But his father left $1,000 on Bob's table that day. "He visited all of us like that, every one of us," Bob says. "And he asked all of us the same question."


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Macro to Export Hyperlinks from Excel to Word


In this tutorial I am going to show you how to write a VBA macro to export hyperlinks from Excel to Word. I’m all about automation and efficiency and this is another real world example. I used this macro to quickly create a table of the world’s observation wheels for my latest website.

What you will learn by reading through this tutorial:

  • How to create a VBA macro to send data from Excel to Word
  • How to export hyperlinks from Excel
  • How to find the last row of data in an Excel sheet using a macro
  • How to paste hyperlink into Word using a macro
  • How to make a webpage from an Excel file

To begin, we have an Excel sheet with names in column A, some of them are hyperlinks to webpages and some of them are not. Hit Alt + F8 and create a new macro, I named mined Tables. It’s time to begin coding.
 
export hyperlinks from excel to word

 

The first thing we need to do is create a new instance of Microsoft Word and make it visible:

 

Dim appWD As Word.Application

Set appWD = CreateObject("Word.Application")

appWD.Visible = True

 

Next, let’s find the last row that contains data within our active Excel spreadsheet (my sheet is called “Data”):

 

Sheets("Data").Select

            Dim FinalRow As Integer

 

            FinalRow = Range("A9999").End(xlUp).Row

 

Now we add some error handling - if there is no data then quit the program, otherwise continue on:

If FinalRow = 0 Then

            Exit Sub

 

            Else

 

As a check, I like to have a message box pop-up displaying the total number of rows with data:

 

            MsgBox "Number of rows is " & FinalRow

 

Now it’s time to tell Word to create a new document. We’ll also add our header text by using TypeText. TypeParagraph inserts a new paragraph by going to the next line:

 

            appWD.Documents.Add

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="[table caption= List of Observation Wheels]"

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="Name,Height(m)"

Next, we’ll create a For...Next loop to cycle through every row and look to see if there is a hyperlink in column A. If there is a hyperlink, we want to copy it, if not then we still want to copy any text in the cell.

 

Dim hyperlink1 As String

Dim i As Integer

 

            For i = 2 To FinalRow

 

            If Range("A" & i).Hyperlinks.Count > 0 Then

 
 

            'if there is a hyperlink

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            hyperlink1 = Range("A" & i).Hyperlinks(1).Address

 

            appWD.ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=appWD.Selection.Range,          Address:=hyperlink1, SubAddress:="", ScreenTip:="", TextToDisplay:=Range("A" & i)

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="," & Range("B" & i)

 
 

            Else

 
 

            'If no hyperlink

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

 

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:=Range("A" & i) & "," & Range("B" & i)

 
 

            End If

 

            Next 'i

 

Finally, we can add any text at the bottom of the document and close the if and sub statements.

 

            'end the table

            appWD.Selection.TypeParagraph

            appWD.Selection.TypeText Text:="[/table]"

            End If

            End Sub

create webpage from excel with macro
 

You may have noticed I began and ended with [table] and [/table]. I installed a Wordpress plugin on my website that enables me to easily insert sortable tables into my webpage without any major html coding involved. So now I can run my macro on my spreadsheet, copy the result it spits out into Word, and paste the text into my website. Here is the end result, a sortable table of all large observation wheels found throughout the world! Pretty cool huh?

Monday, March 4, 2013

Fart Jokes, Anyone? The Best Book Ever Written About Comedy



And now for something completely different: a Reno Dispatch exclusive on a terrific new book on comedy. But how best to kick off such a story? How about with something like this: A funny thing happened to me on the way to the book store. No? OK, how's this: Take my book... please! Still no good? Alright, alright, put that tomato down! Here's one that's sure to grab you: I never forget a book, but in your case I'll make an exception! Don't like that one, either? Sheesh. You're a tough room. 

All seriousness aside, ladies and germs, I've just finished reading this delightful new book titled Funny: The Book / Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy, by David Misch, and I can die happy now. 

Of course, I don't really wanna die or anything. It's just a joke. And so is this book. That is, it made me laugh, sometimes so hard that I scared the cat. But it also made me think. I thought I was a student of comedy, but I learned a lot from Misch's tome - and not just the great fart jokes. This is easily the best book on comedy I've ever read.


It's always a danger to try to analyze humor. As soon as you do it can become, uh, humorless. Like when you try to explain a joke to your accountant. But this book, which covers everything from comedy's ancient origins to Mark Twain to vaudeville to the modern worlds of movies, TV and stand-up, is the happy exception. Like Monty Python, Misch's book is that rare combination of silly and smart. 

If anyone is qualified to write such a book, it's Misch, a former comic folk singer and stand-up comedian who has taught comedy at USC and UCLA. He's best known for his impressive writing credits, which include Saturday Night Live, Mork and Mindy, Duckman, Police Squad!, and The Muppets Take Manhattan. 

A personable, unpretentious guy who refreshingly lacks the self-loathing angst and insecurity that curiously afflicts so many great comic minds, Misch lives, eats and breathes comedy. Instead of hearing voices in his head, he undoubtedly hears rim shots and slide whistles. 
Misch tells me he wrote the book because of an "insatiable thirst for knowledge" and the belief that "a first-time book on an unlikely subject by an unknown writer would be a slam-dunk best-seller. Lucky I had that insatiable thirst stuff."

Misch notes that like all artistic forms, comedy depends on the principles of tension-and-resolution, pattern recognition, misdirection, and surprise. 

"As a joke’s being told, you expect something to surprise you but, if it’s a good joke, you don’t know what or how or even exactly when," he says. "Sometimes, to let out the tension, you even start laughing before the end, a phenomenon known as premature ejokeulation."

Misch goes on to say that one of comedy’s more distinguished performers was a Frenchman named Joseph Pujol, who a century ago "presented a program of musical odorless farts which, according to contemporary accounts, caused women to swoon - although historians disagree about whether that was due to the beauty of his farting or the deadly combination of helpless laughter and tight corsets."

Misch, who shares my passion for Monty Python, George Carlin, Lauren & Hardy, Woody Allen, Buster Keaton, Robert Benchley, the Marx Brothers and Richard Pryor, among other comic icons, says a 1992 study of humor and health found that adults have around 15 or 20 laughs a day, while children have almost 300. "This explains why young people live so much longer than old people," he quips.

This Wednesday, you'll have an opportunity to hear Misch talk in person about all things comedy when he invades the appropriately stuffy confines of the San Diego County Library (Encinitas branch). Misch’s whirlwind San Diego tour schedule Wednesday takes him to the following stops: “Good Morning San Diego” (KUSI News/ABC), 6-7 a.m., “San Diego Living” (San Diego 6-The CW), 9-10 a.m., and the library gig, 5-6 p.m.


Meantime, check out Funny: The Book (you can purchase it here). After all, where else can you find both rare tidbits of ancient history... and fart jokes?! 
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