Review: Half-Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire

This is the third book in the In-cryptid series, which is basically about a family of people who work with "mythical" type creatures in current times - like boogeymen, yeti, gorgons, etc. Typically, that means helping them keep hidden but integrated into society, and hunting down ones that are dangerous to the general population.

Unlike the first two, this one is headlined by Alex rather than his sister, Verity. Alex specializes in reptile-like species, and works in a zoo - when one of his coworkers is found partially turned to stone, it's up to him (and his family, and his other coworker who happens to be a gorgon) to find and stop the culprit.

This series is *fun* - not gritty, not gory, and not pretentious. It's the episodic whodunit of urban fantasy (at least this one was), and it's a glorious relief after reading through so many heavier series where each book's problems escalate from the last. Oh, and the talking religious (their own religion, mind) mice, aka the best part of this series, are also in this one.

Next one is out March 2015, and I'll be watching for it.

Troubleshooting: Google Drive Spreadsheets - Sort Script

I figure if this took me more than 2 minutes to find the answers, I should write it up.

Background: After seeing a link to http://unfuckyourhabitat.tumblr.com/ , I was reminded that I was trying to set up a maintenance schedule for myself at home... I like lists, but the physical list I have just hasn't been working for me - too many different timelines for doing tasks and not enough randomness: I'd just always end up skipping the same things in favour of tasks I enjoy doing more. So, I thought I'd try making myself a spreadsheet to give me a bit more flexibility in timing & also a randomizer that would put something to the top of my list.

I was going to just set it up on one of my computers, but then I thought it'd be useful if I could grab it easily from the tablet as well... so why not try Google Drive's spreadsheet function? Yeah, it'll go down when the internet is down, which sucks, but I still thought I'd try it. Frankly, none of my computers even have the same version of open/libre office on them, so portability of scripts would have been tough if I didn't do it this way.

So, I set up my spreadsheet to do what I wanted it to do... and then realized that the click throughs for sorting were a bit of a pain. I'd have to select the right range, Data > Sort Range, select that it has headers, select the right column, select descending, select a second column. Not the end of the world, but certainly not what I'd like it to be. First search, can I set up a different default sort? Survey says... no. Alright then. What about something like recording a macro in Excel, can I do that since I know exactly what the manual steps are? Google help says... no. Fine, so I need to write a script in their language.

The script: This script should have been the simplest example in the world, but it was bloody hard to find anything in the google help. My frustration perhaps shows in the comments.

// For actually useful help files, start here: 
//    https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/spreadsheet/

function sortMaintenanceList() { 
  // Note: to call from a spreadsheet, use the function name "sortMaintenanceList()" 
  // without any reference to the file name.  To clip this to a button, make a
  // shape (Insert -> Drawing ...) - I like to use a textbox with a background
  // colour - and then right click, select the drop down arrow and Assign Script.
  //
  // I don't cotton to these "write everything in one line" ideas. Write readable 
  // code, it makes it more accessible *and* you don't hate yourself later.
  
  // This is how you select your current sheet, so that you can actually run sheet 
  // functions. You'll need to give the app permissions to access your google drive 
  // the first time.
  
  currentSheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet()
  
  // Here I'm selecting the range I want.  In this case, I'm starting at cell(2,2) 
  // in order to not select my row 1 headers or my column 1 numbers. Most times,
  // you'll probably want to start at 2,1 (ie, row 2, column 1) because normal
  // people don't want to skip column 1.
  //
  // The second half is to select to the last row and the last column, so that even
  // if I expand the sheet to add more, it'll still grab it all.  There are also
  // range versions of this sheet function.  Note: for some reason, it wanted the
  // extra brackets.  It still seemed to work, but threw an error without them.
  
  usefulRange = currentSheet.getRange(2,2,(currentSheet.getLastRow()),(currentSheet.getLastColumn()))
  
  // Now sort it.  The sort function from range works differently than the sort
  // from sheet, because apparently consistency is for chumps. Here I'm sorting
  // first by column 7 (note: this is absolute in the sheet, even though I have
  // a smaller range selected), decending, secondarily by column 8, ascending.
  
  usefulRange.sort([{column: 7, ascending: false}, {column: 8, ascending: true}])
}

This is simple enough (and yes, could all be one line of code if I hated future-me), but geez, it was not easy to find quickly via searches. -1 useability, google... the first help pages you sent me to were completely unhelpful. It wasn't even clear where to go to get the class/function definitions, let alone having any useful examples to get me situated. I would think I'd be part of the target audience (familiar with Excel macros and ready to try switching over), but it was cringe-worthy trying to get to this.

If you're curious about my document, I'm totally willing to send it along - I just didn't feel like cleaning it up for public consumption right now.

Helpful tip: Sewing with fishing line

A bit random, but just in case it helps someone else... if you're doing hand-sewing repairs to something that the thread never seems to last on, try sewing it on with fishing line instead of thread. This has been my salvation with my many buttoned-coats - not only is it stronger, it's also nigh-invisible.