Category Archives: Uncategorized

(This post is about automating Excel on Mac OS. If you’re not a Mac user this probably won’t interest you.) My Process From the creation of a CSV file onwards, automation is key: Creating a CSV file is one of two things: A program on z/OS. A piece of javascript code I have that turnsContinue reading “Automating Microsoft Excel”

mdpre Markdown Preprocessor A few days ago I released md2pptx, a Markdown to Powerpoint converter on GitHub as an open source project. You can find it here. Now I’m releasing a companion program – mdpre. This is a preprocessor for Markdown. You can find it here. I would’ve released them together and why I didn’tContinue reading “mdpre Markdown Preprocessor”

It’s been a long time since I started writing md2pptx. But finally I’ve open sourced it. A Problem Statement Of Sorts I wrote md2pptx because I got tired of four things: The process of embedding graphics in PowerPoint. The fact that pasting a picture into PowerPoint made the resulting presentation file huge. The location ofContinue reading “md2pptx Markdown To PowerPoint Converter”

I just produced a new chart, which I think is worth sharing with you. I produced it for one specific use case, but I think it has slightly wider applicability. The Trouble With Outsourcers Quite often we get performance data from outsourcers, whether IBM or some other organisation. Generally they’re running LPARs from more thanContinue reading “What About The Others?”

After a long hiatus, I’m back with a new screencast. It’s about HiperDispatch. I pulled together the slides on a long flight back from the Far East last year and I’ve been fiddling with them occasionally ever since. Anyhow I hope you enjoy it. You can find it here.

I previously wrote about SMT in Born With A Measuring Spoon In It’s Mouth in 2016 – before z14 was announced. I also wrote about it again in 2016 in SMT – Some Actual Graphs. It’s been a year since z15 was announced so enough time has passed for me to want to write aboutContinue reading “Engineering – Part Five – z14 IOPs”

Back in May (2020) I published filterCSV, An Open Source Preprocessor For Mind Mapping Software. To recap a little, the premise was very simple: I wanted to create a tool that could automate colouring nodes in a mind map, based on simple filtering rules. The format I chose was iThoughts’ CSV file format. (It couldContinue reading “filterCSV – 4 Months On”

In Episode 25 I said it had been a long time since we had recorded anything. That was true for Episode 25, but it certainly wasn’t true for Episode 26. What is true is that it’s taken us a long time from start to finish on this episode, and ever so much has happened alongContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 26 “Sounding Board””

(This post follows on from Engineering – Part Two – Non-Integer Weights Are A Thing, rather than Engineering – Part Three – Whack A zIIP). I was wondering why my HiperDispatch calculations weren’t working. As usual, I started with the assumption my code was broken. My code consists of two main parts: Code to buildContinue reading “Engineering – Part Four – Activating And Deactivating LPARs Causes HiperDispatch Adjustments”

A few years ago I built a presentation on zIIP Capacity Planning. It highlighted the need for better capacity planning for zIIPs and outlined precisely why zIIPs couldn’t be run as busy as general purpose processors (GCPs). Since then a lot has changed. And I, in common with most people, have a lot more experienceContinue reading “zIIP Capacity And Performance Presentation”