Juan Carlos Méndez-García

Blogging from Microsoft Office 2007 and the iPhone

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:19:16 +0000

Long time has passed since the last time I was able to post in this blog… I moved from China back to the US, changed industry – from automotive to healthcare, and have been traveling quite a bit. To get back in the blogging game I’ve set up the Word 2007 blogging functionality and downloaded the [...] No related posts.

Tornado Charts in Excel 2007 Update

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:05:26 +0000

This is an update to my previous post on tornado charts. As reader Shaun pointed out, the instructions were created under Excel 2003. Let’s refresh them to Excel 2007. There is no need for any external add-ins for making good-looking tornado charts. And it takes only 5 steps. Let’s start with data in a [...] No related posts.

The Devil’s guide to spreadsheet creation

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:23:57 +0000

From http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/prax0404.htm#Excel The Devil’s guide to spreadsheet creation Just do it. Jump in and do it. The users will have to accept whatever you produce anyway. Fire, then aim. You know what is really needed without having to ask. Never simplify (that just makes it easier for other people to get your job); just keep adding bits without removing [...] No related posts.

Tried to give some looove to this blog, found problem with Disqus

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:49:38 +0000

Missing comments in my blog No related posts.

How to fix an upsized Apple TV stuck in 1.0 software

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:41:13 +0000

Some months ago, I swapped some hard drives, and ended up upgrading my Apple TV’s 40GB hard drive. The process was the standard procedure you can find in many sites: back-up the drive, create the correct partition map on the new drive and restore the data into the new drive. When I upgraded the hard [...] No related posts.

Romantic Traveling Self-Improver?

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:01:47 +0000

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a Romantic Traveling Self-Improver No related posts.

Logistic model for the s-curve and project management cost estimation

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 04:49:18 +0000

I posted a while ago an article on Modeling market adoption with a logistic curve in Excel. It has been quite popular on this site, and even at some point was linked as a reference on Wikipedia. Shameless plug – if you find it valuable, please ask Wikipedia maintainers to keep the link. Recently [...] No related posts.

Dynamic DNS woes

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:19:33 +0000

My home network has the typical configuration NAT behind a hardware firewall with a dynamic IP address provided by the ISP. I use DynDNS to have a fixed name that I can use anywhere on the internet to access the home network. The Linksys WRT54G I use supports DynDNS updates, however, from some weeks ago, [...] No related posts.

ActiveScaffold summary fields

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:00:09 +0000

In one project I am the “gatekeeper” of a list of potential initiatives that the organization would like to explore as sources of revenue. These initiatives are cross-regional in Asia, and best practice would call for the subject matter experts on each country to “own” and maintain the initiatives. Thanks to the beauty [...] No related posts.

Connecting Mac OS X to the net through a Treo 680 GPRS

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:25:51 +0000

This is more a note to self than anything else, as there are many posts already on the internet about this. Recently I’ve needed to get mail on the road, and my employer’s policy forbids to connect a non-standard device to their network. So, a GPRS connection through the phone is an OK alternative. [...] No related posts.

Advanced presentations by Design, by Andrew Abela

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:53:05 +0000

My colleague and friend Andrew Abela recently published a book on the Extreme Presentation method. I have attended his seminars, and definitely recommend his method. For anyone interested in improving their presentation skills, and generating action out of their presentations, it is must-read. No related posts. No related posts.

Extreme Makeover: Chart Edition – July 19

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:22:28 +0000

As every week I end up receiving at lest one junkchart specimen, I’m starting the Extreme Makeover: Chart Edition series. I’ll show the old chart, the proposed improvement, and why I believe the old one doesn’t work. I’d love to hear your comments as well. Here it goes: And the makeover: Problems: Vertical labels: Even when the [...] No related posts.

El Juego de la Cerveza – Systems Dynamics

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:36:27 +0000

One of the activities conducted during the System Dynamics class in Colombia was the Beer Game – El Juego de la Cerveza It allows students to experience first-hand how structure of business organizations impact their behavior, to some extent irrespectively of how skilled their managers may be. In the game, a 3 tier distribution system [...] No related posts.

Transmilenio – a world-class example of appropriate technology

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:56:51 +0000

It is refreshing to see when developed countries take note and learn from the success stories of developing countries. In particular, Transmilenio, Bogota’s Rapid Transit System, is an example of what E.F. Schumacher called “Appropriate Technology” Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor writes on The Economist …we drew on the experiences of Berlin for our renewable-energy [...] No related posts.

Harmonic Averages

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:16:23 +0000

This is a short note to talk about Harmonic Averages. Most people are familiar with Weighted Averages, as they are a valuable tool for aggregation. For instance, with the data below, the average profitability (~1735) can be easily calculated using weighted averages. Avg_Profit = (1000*1200 + 200*300 + 500*2500 + 10*600 + 100*300) / [...] No related posts.

Gearing up for summer classes in Colombia

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:14:38 +0000

I’m very excited about the invitation I received by Universidad de los Andes to talk about policy and decision making using a systems dynamics perspective. I haven’t been back to Bogota since 1999, except a quick stop-over during our honeymoon. This is also exciting as I will add more content to this website in preparation for the [...] No related posts.

System dynamics interpretation of the logistic and Bass models

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:42:11 +0000

I have received a number of comments regarding the Simplified Excel Model for market adoption published a few months ago. Reader Vince asked how to extend the math behind it to comprehend effects like cross-segment interactions. There is no simple answer, and this post is an attempt to point readers to ways to think about [...] No related posts.

Two neat small things in Leopard

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:45:45 +0000

Yesterday I upgraded my Macs to Leopard. The main reasons for the upgrade were XCode 3.0, Time Machine and BootCamp. I had been using the latter very robustly on my machines. I read rumors a while ago about the BootCamp beta program ending for previous OS versions once Leopard was released, and I haven’t had [...] No related posts.

Recover lost pictures from a memory card on Mac OS X

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:52:48 +0000

Lifehacker posts this article about recovering lost pictures on memory cards. Mac OS X owners may want to try these two commands before purchasing additional software: dd and fsck. Linux users most likely already know what to do — if not, the instructions below are 98% the same… Find the device id: [...] No related posts.

Relationship between the Bass and the logistic market adoption models

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:09:24 +0000

The simplified market adoption model I described on previous postings (1,2) is an Excel implementation of a kind of logistic function. The Bass model is one of the most popular models used in marketing, and management of technology to think about product introductions. (See Wikipedia article). From a mathematical perspective, when the [...] No related posts.

Market partition – Mekko chart in Excel, no add-ins

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:28:05 +0000

Mekko charts are two dimensional graphs that analyze how data is partitioned against two variables, the X and Y axes. The width of the columns is proportional to data represented by the columns. Individual segment height is a percentage of the respective bar total value. No related posts. No related posts.

Yet another in-cell Excel bar chart technique

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:30:21 +0000

Two improvements over the technique described by Juice Analytics and posted in Lifehacker: better resolution and solid-looking bars that show better at different font sizes. If your values are integers in a range 0-9 or so, you can use the REPT formula as presented there, and perhaps you like the dashed type bars, so the formula [...] No related posts.

Math on the simplified market adoption s-curve for Excel

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:22:13 +0000

I’ve got a number of questions on the simplified Excel s-curve formula I published some time ago, so here are more details for those interested in the math behind it. The previous posting focused on how business analysts sometimes need to model market adoption, and provided a simple and easy to maintain formula to [...] No related posts.

Wireless access on my Macbook Pro

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:54:59 +0000

This weekend I set up a backup wireless connection using my Bluetooth cell phone (Motorola RAZR v3xx). Pretty painless, thanks to Ross Barkman’s scripts, and Ed Thomson’s post. More or less standard modem configuration. I had almost forgotten about such old good times when you had to deal with modem connection strings and those [...] No related posts.

Webcam tips

Juan Carlos Méndez-García — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:06:13 +0000

The guys at Strobist posted today a series of tips on how to get the most out of your webcam. Very interesting. One thing that still is puzzling me is why after I installed Windows XP on our 17 inch iMac with BootCamp 1.2, the quality of the webcam image on Windows is [...] No related posts.