About Christopher

So I jacked in my job, and I am off travelling - don't know where, don't know for how long. Follow my footsteps, check out where I am...

Grease that monkey script for Kiva countries

After creating a better way to analyse the loans I make through Kiva, which led me to seriously start bagging countries to fill up my map of loans, I was looking for a way to highlight new countries so I could pounce on loans before they got fully funded.

I created my first Greasemonkey Script (Kiva Country Highlighter) to do just that – it looks at a list of countries I am interested in and will highlight them in the list of loans on the Kiva website. It has allowed me to bag a couple of rare countries so far, though there are still a few more I am keeping a lookout for…

Kiva Export analysis spreadsheet

So with the development made by Kiva it is now possible to export an Excel Spreadsheet with all you loans – a great step forward but it did leave a little to be desired, and the format made it hard to analyse…

I have created a spreadsheet (in Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc formats) which will analyse the data further, splitting fields to allow better sorting, and fields that contain numeric information are now formatted as proper currency or date fields.

Basically you just copy a fresh download of your Kiva Export into a ‘My loans’ tab in the spreadsheet – it does all the necessary using functions, formulas and calculations. No macros are used for those worried about security risks.

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V for Victoria

After a good walk yesterday in the Low Weald it was off to stretch out legs on the South Downs at Ditchling. The weather was superb, and the visibility improved all day to the extent that in the afternoon we could see across over the High Weald and Ashdown Forest to see the tops of the North Downs.

The walk was nice, but not that remarkable – though that could have been because I have been here a number of times walking and cycling in recent times.

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Piltdown Perambulation

I had been given a copy of a short circular walk (that goes right past the house) when I got the Ouse Valley Way Walk from Per-rambulations. I had been keen to do the walk and when Tim and Helen came down to Sussex for the weekend it was the perfect excuse for a leisurely ramble.

The walk takes in 3 villages (Piltdown, Fletching and Newick) and passes 6 pubs – perhaps I should have chosen a ‘dryer’ walk as it could take a while with Tim and Helen around…

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Maiden Castle

Went with Maureen (and Rosie) to walk around Maiden Castle. Thankfully we had the best of the day, it was totally still on the plateau though it did start to rain gently as we headed back. On the way round we spotted a rather large raptor sitting on a fence post – we think it is probably a buzzard.

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Sherborne, Chantmarle and a Giant

Went to Sherborne to visit David for a few days, and went on a little tour round Sherborne and Chantmarle (which is now a very upmarket hotel and restaurant but was a Police Training College in David’s day where he learnt all his policeman’s stuff).

On the way back from Chantmarle we came back through Cerne Abbas, with its chalk figure – one of the more famous (and perhaps controversial) chalk figures.

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