excel mac:2011 "edit cell" keyboard shortcut

note-to-self: to edit the content of a cell in excel mac:2011, hit ctrl + U.
⌃U
(comment: that's the equivalent to F2 in Windows land)

SAP Passport on OS X / iOS

note to self: since it's nowhere to be found how to operate the SAP marketplace, support portal or SDN with a certificate in Safari (OS X) or an iOS device:
when receiving another of them SAP S-User, do the following to make the SAP passport (aka public & private key) work on OS X (Safari and the like) and iOS:

• use Firefox (here: 8.0.1), open the Support Portal and log in a subsequent fazillion times with your S-User-Id and password
• (sorry, German coming up) mein Profil ➔ Single-Sign-On Zertifikate verwalten
• put your password in the fazillionst time and generate your passport 
• Firefox will install your new SAP passport (aka public & private key) in the background and notify you upon completion (ignore the notifications about invalid Certificate Authorities and bla; it's all a big useless bloat of shady issuer-companies anyway)

Now in Firefox Advanced preferences, (you guessed it, German again) Zertifikate anzeigen. Locate your S-User-Id in (yep, German) Ihre Zertifikate, highlight and backup.

This will export your SAP passport (aka public & private key) in PKCS12-format - not so easy to do with any other browser, including the MS cripples. Because usually your private key remains hidden in binary wonderland somewhere in the proprietary niche of the browser. But you'll need both public and private key for use with the OS X / iOS keychain.

Launch the latter and import your newly exported .p12 file. 

Now happily browse the SAP marketplace, support portal or SDN via SSO with your browser certificate in Safari or your favorite iOS device.

q.e.d

timeline-validity Awesomeness in SLcM

One of the very first steps when both using and/or customizing SAP SLcM (Student Lifecycle Management) is to work the Academic Structure (de: Akademische Struktur). It represents the structural organization (de: Aufbauorganisation) of the entire SAP System. In SLcM, it is used to map the study programs and formal curriculums into their digital representations (de: Abbildung von Prüfungordnungen). And typically looks like this:

Academic Structure (de: Akademische Struktur)

The above shows some Bachelor Thesis that also includes a Seminar ("VS Bachelorarbeit Betriebswirtschaft", SAP object type D). Now let's say the work load/teaching activity credits for that seminar change, beginning with the upcoming Fall term (de: neue Prüfungsordnungsversion) - a common scenario in all Higher Education institutions.

In most software systems, you'd be required to create a new object of some kind that is then used from the upcoming Fall term on.

In SLcM, you can just be awesome: create an additional work load/teaching activity (SAP-terminology: additional infotype), dated with the valid time period. The previous adjust itself automatically. And this typically looks like this (relevant date here: Oct 1st, 2011):

timeline-validity awesomness

Now, whenever you work with any activity related to that seminar prior to 01.10.2011, the system calculates with 9 units. From there on, it uses the 10 units that are valid from October first.

No fuzz, no hassle, nice data model, that simple.

Oh, and did I mention that this works with any kind of objects in SLcM?
Organizational Units, Study Programs, Exams, Modules, Export- and Import-Associations (de: Verknüpfungen), ... etc ?
So you can pretty easily map all past, present and future changes in study programs (de: Prüfungsordnungs-Änderungen) at any time?
Without jeopardizing exam results, score bookings, calculations or reports (de: Auswertungen)? All audit-proof (de: revisionssicher)?
I didn't mention all this? Really?
Well, now you know ;)

excel mac:2011 freeze first line

note-to-self: mark the line below the line(s) you want to freeze.
then choose Fenster -> Bereich fixieren.

Usability revisited, baby.

retrieve X.509 certificate from LDAP

Note-to-self:
on the console, retrieve a X.590-certificate (for S/MIME signing and encrypting e-mail) from an LDAP-directory:

$> ldapsearch -T /tmp/ -v -x -h your.ldap-server.com -t -b o=DFN-Verein,c=DE -LLL "(cn=Senat*)"

If successful, this command will store the binary cert in the specified directory (here: /tmp) under a somewhat cryptic filename (eg: ldapsearch-cACertificate;binary-KxwX3w).
Your mileage should vary for:
-h your.ldap-server.com
-b searchbase

FireWire 800 vs USB 2.0

We here at MG are currently in need of running some pretty I/O-heavy apps on external storage. Additionally, it's not a small app either, but somewhere close to the half TB.
At the same time, the external storage needs to remain portable - no NAS or similar. We need to be able to take the stuff with us on the road.

Since we're an AlmostOnlyApple-Shop, the external device needs to be mucho compatible with the MacBook Pros we're carrying around. So our preferred hardware supplier HSD provided us with two 750 GB Freecom Mobile Drive Mg (5400rrpm, 8 MB) as the best trade-off between portability and performance. One disk came with a USB 3.0 Interface, the other with both USB 3.0 & FireWire 800.

So test-wise, I copied a VMWare virtual machine from the MacBook to the disks back and forth. Since the MB Pro is USB 2.0-only, the results were as expected.

Here's further specs...

• MacBook Pro6,2 ; Intel Core i7 2.66GHz ; 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3; OS X 10.6.7
• $> du -ks vm.vmwarevm
27556532 vm.vmwarevm
• $> mount
(...snip...)
/dev/disk4s2 on /Volumes/FREECOM HDD (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
• $> cp -pRv "${source}" "${target}"

... and the results:

• 753 sec - fw800 - write => ~36.6 MB/sec
• 565 sec - fw800 - read => ~48.8 MB/sec
• 1254 sec - usb 2.0 - write => ~22.0 MB/sec
• 919 sec - usb 2.0 - read => ~30.0 MB/sec

So, is the FW800 performance enough for the I/O heavy appliance we're planning to run on it?
No know yet.
Will report back ;)

Powerpoint:mac 2011 tedious thingies

This here is supposed to be about SAP higher ed in combination with the medium web.
So it seems kind of strange to open up with a post on Powerpoint:2011 for mac.
But well, I simply have to currently work with that piece of software. And found a couple of editing features not so intuitive. Or better: only found the buttons and settings I was looking for after mucho poking around. (save yourself the RTFM thought, they're not in the manual either.)
So I'm putting it in writing, as a note-to-self. And some other poor souls who seem to be clicking away blindfolded.

• "ribbons" (Menüband)
  awkward UI pitfall: the width of the ribbons don't automatically adjust with the size of the window. Meaning: if you have your Powerpoint application window smaller than the minimum width of the ribbon, the elements in the ribbon don't "word-wrap" and arrange themselves in multiple "lines". Instead, the ribbon is just cut off on the right. So you don't see all the buttons of the entire ribbon.
• "reapply master"
  in order to bring the formatting and layout of a slide back to the default settings defined in the master, there's a pretty obvious button in all other versions of Powerpoint other than 2011 for mac. Event in Apple's own keynote there is.
  
  Well, it's also there in Powerpoint:mac 2011. But not so obvious.
  Choose "Normal View" (⌘1).
  Select the slide(s).
  Click on the little layout button (2nd to the left, right next to "new slide") in the "Start" tab. This shows you all the master slides.
  Select the desired master template.
  And finally: click on "reset layout" (or similar, I'm using the German version so I don't know the exact translation) at the very bottom of the master template overview.
  voilà!
•  "syllable division" (Silbentrennung)
  good call!
  I have no clue how to set that either!
  (activating it in Word:mac 2011 (Extras -> Silbentrennung) didn't do a thing in Powerpoint:mac 2011)

I guess there's more to come. So I will most likely constantly update this post.