Category Archives: Uncategorized

Utility Window Detection

It seems to me understanding when an installation’s utilities run is important. Why is this? It’s because utilities can make systems behave differently from how they usually do. And some of these behaviours can represent a challenge. It’s often also valuable to reduce the utility window. What Is A Utility? There is no formal definitionContinue reading “Utility Window Detection”

Engineering – Part 9 – Perhaps Affinity Nodes Are Interesting After All

I’ve tended to think Affinity Nodes aren’t worthy of study – because there’s little you can do to influence them. However, that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t understand them. (In this post I’m going to say “processor” when I mean “logical processor” and “affnode” when I mean “affinity node”. Also “VL” for “Vertical High”, “VM” forContinue reading “Engineering – Part 9 – Perhaps Affinity Nodes Are Interesting After All”

Engineering – Part 8 – Remote Access Detection

The fact we’re up to “Part 8” illustrates there’s a lot to talk about once you take performance analysis down to the individual logical / physical processor level. Many people have talked about the need to avoid LPARs crossing processor drawer boundaries. There are good reasons for this – because access to cache or memoryContinue reading “Engineering – Part 8 – Remote Access Detection”

Engineering – Part 7 – RMF Processor Home Address Fields

I was recently asked where I was getting the home addresses for logical processors from in RMF SMF 70. I will agree the fields I use are not that easy to interpret – so here’s my go at making them more accessible. Along the way I’ll also talk about SMF 74 Subtype 4 Coupling FacilityContinue reading “Engineering – Part 7 – RMF Processor Home Address Fields”

Setting Axis Font Sizes In Excel With AppleScript

Just a short post to add another AppleScript snippet some might find useful. (There will be performance-related posts along shortly; I have some in the works.) As you know from previous posts under the tag topics, I’m automating as much of my Excel use as possible. So here’s a short snippet of AppleScript to setContinue reading “Setting Axis Font Sizes In Excel With AppleScript”

Excel – Two Types Of Transpose

In Excel – Sorted With AppleScript I mentioned I might have a go at transposing rows and columns in an Excel spreadsheet with AppleScript. I said there were two things I could try – each with a different use case: Transposing Rows And Columns In A Spreadsheet Transposing Rows And Columns In A Graph IContinue reading “Excel – Two Types Of Transpose”

Excel – Sorted With AppleScript

They say necessity is the mother of invention. But so, I’d say, are impatience and frustration. I find the sorting dialog in Excel on Mac a source of both of these. So I wrote some AppleScript to remove some of the friction. I’m sharing this because, yet again, I found nothing on the Web toContinue reading “Excel – Sorted With AppleScript”

More AppleScript And Excel

In Automating Microsoft Excel I wrote about some basic manipulation of graphs in Excel for Mac OS, using AppleScript. I’m writing about it again because of the paucity of examples on the web. Here is an example that shows how to do a number of things in that vein. tell application "Microsoft Excel" set cContinue reading “More AppleScript And Excel”

Relating Parked Time To Cores

In Drawers And More I mentioned Parking with the words One day I’ll be able to colour VL’s according to whether they are parked or not – or rather fractions of the interval they’re parked. That’s a not very difficult fix for the python code. Well, that proved as simple as I thought. So, alongContinue reading “Relating Parked Time To Cores”