Classic Popeye Cartoons are in Public Domain

In India, we the kids born in the mid 70s and in the 80s were the first ones to get exposure to these cartoons on the televisions. Because, in India the color television was introduced at around that time period. Very late, I know. I remember we used to have only morning cartoons and the best cartoons/serial for kids were shown only on Sundays and in out summer holidays.

My memories of that time period may not be pin point accurate, but I remember most of them correctly. The school summer holidays would bring the excitement of the two hour long cartoon and serial show on the DD2 channel. There was the Giant Robot serial, the Invisible Man, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, and other classic shows. My favorite was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Popeye the Sailor Man, Tom and Jerry, Giant Robot, and more.

Moving a little ahead, in my pre-teens and teens we had exposure to many more all-time favorite shows. Like Tailspin and Duck Tales. There was GI-Joe, Alladin, My Little Pony, Goof Troop and many more.

All those looked very real then, especially I have memories of Giant Robot to be very good. But, now when I see these on youtube and such, they seem just bland. How the technology of making movies have changed in recent times.

But, the animation shows, these were just too good in my childhood. Nowadays the animated shows just lack the fun and detail of yesteryear shows. Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and their friends were just too good. Tailspin and Ducktales were especially well made. So was GI-Joe and He-Man. I still have many of the action figures of GI-Joe and He-Man.

Too bad that GI-Joe and He-Man did not traverse that well into motion picture domain. Maybe they required the writers/thinkers of the original to succeed. Hmm, I read somewhere that He-Man itself was based on Conan the Barbarian, go figure. The sequence for He-Man was Movie (Conan) -> Action Figure -> Animated Cartoon -> Movie (He-Man) -> More Action Figures -> More Animated Cartoons, or something like that.

Coming to the topic of the post; Many (or most/all) of the Popeye Classic Toons are now in the Public Domain !!! Wow.

Of course, you could just go to youtube to view these. And, on youtube these are recolored, so better looking. But, you cannot just rip them, give these to your friends, or view without feeling guilty.

You can watch/download the originals (public domain ones) on the Archive.org website. I have made a search query on the website: just go to this address:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A"Popeye"&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A"movies"
to view all Popeye animated movies/shows.

Spyware News Websites in India?

So, as per trend against ad blockers, two of the major online news outlets have adopted the policy of showing a message to disable the ad blocker instead of showing the news content.

At least they show the steps to take for disabling the ad blocker for their websites.

They provide the steps for the AdBlock Plus ad blocker. I believe the steps would be similar for other ad blockers as well.

The main page of the news websites do open, but no other news article opens. All give the above message.

But, as they have targeted the AdBlock Plus ad blocker, I was intrigued enough to know more about this ad blocker. The AdBlock Plus website (https://adblockplus.org/) shows that the ad blocker is open source, GPLv3 license. It is available for at least 9 browsers. And, it also provides its own AdBlock Browser.

In addition, unobtrusive ads are not blocked by default. So, what kind of ads do these websites want to show?

Does an ad leave cookies? Track your activity on other websites? Is basically a spyware?
Hmm, if yes, then these news websites want us to install spyware on our systems.

So, what can we do? For me, the option was clear. Just leave these websites. There are many other news outlets that have better news articles than the tabloid type articles present on these spyware websites.

A good list of news websites available in India is given on this website: http://www.w3newspapers.com/india/

How to Create a Pareto Chart in Google Sheets

Lets try out to plot a Pareto Chart.in Google Sheets.

Why? Well see the below text for Pareto Chart from wikipedia:

A Pareto chart, named after Vilfredo Pareto, is a type of chart that contains both bars and a line graph, where individual values are represented in descending order by bars, and the cumulative total is represented by the line.
The left vertical axis is the frequency of occurrence, but it can alternatively represent cost or another important unit of measure. The right vertical axis is the cumulative percentage of the total number of occurrences, total cost, or total of the particular unit of measure. Because the reasons are in decreasing order, the cumulative function is a concave function. To take the example below, in order to lower the amount of late arrivals by 78%, it is sufficient to solve the first three issues.
The purpose of the Pareto chart is to highlight the most important among a (typically large) set of factors. In quality control, it often represents the most common sources of defects, the highest occurring type of defect, or the most frequent reasons for customer complaints, and so on. Wilkinson (2006) devised an algorithm for producing statistically based acceptance limits (similar to confidence intervals) for each bar in the Pareto chart.
These charts can be generated by simple spreadsheet programs, such as Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice Calc [1] and Microsoft Excel,[2] visualization tools such as Tableau Software,[3] specialized statistical software tools, and online quality charts generators.
The Pareto chart is one of the seven basic tools of quality control.[4]

See, no mention of Google Sheets in the above description. The author(s) has mentioned simple spreadsheet programs, and then goes on the specifically mention the spreadsheet programs. Anyways, we can also use many other spreadsheet programs, but why not try with something every Google user has access to.

I will take inspiration from the sample data provided in this chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pareto.PNG
The sample data is a hypothetical data outlining the causes of employees coming late to office.

First, create a new Google Sheet.

Then insert/collect the data:

Cause	No. of times
Child Care	25
Public Transportation	21
Weather	12
Overslept	8
Traffic	65
Emergency	4
Total	135

Now sort the 'No. of times' column in the descending order:
To do this, I started my selection from the first no. of times number to the last cause.
Now, suppose, cause is column D and no. of times is column E.
Then, after the selection, on the main menu, click Data -> Sort range by column E, Z -> A.
The result is as follows:

Cause	No. of times
Traffic	65
Child Care	25
Public Transportation	21
Weather	12
Overslept	8
Emergency	4
Total	135

Now calculate each cause's contribution in % times.
To do this calculate the percentage using the total no. of times. For example, for the cause Traffic, the percentage calculation will be: ((65*100)/135) = 48.15.

Cause	No. of times	% times
Traffic	65	48.15
Child Care	25	18.52
Public Transportation	21	15.56
Weather	12	8.89
Overslept	8	5.93
Emergency	4	2.96
Total	135	100.00

Calculate cumulative % from % times column.
This is easily done. Just add the % times. The last number in the Cumulative % column should be 100.

Cause	No. of times	% times	Cumulative %
Traffic	65	48.15	48.15
Child Care	25	18.52	66.67
Public Transportation	21	15.56	82.22
Weather	12	8.89	91.11
Overslept	8	5.93	97.04
Emergency	4	2.96	100.00
Total	135	100.00

Edit 20 Jan 2020: The values in the Cumulative % column: The first value is the same as the value in the % times column, '48.15'. The second value is '48.15 + 18.52 = 66.67', the third value is '66.67 + 15.56 = 82.22', the fourth value is '82.22 + 8.89 = 91.11', the fifth value is '91.11 + 5.93 = 97.04', and the sixth value is '97.04 + 2.96 = 100.00'.

Now, we create the chart.

Click in a blank cell that is in a row and column that have no data. Because, if you select a cell whose row/column has some data, Sheets shows some recommended charts and you are required to then customize/modify it. And, we do not what to do this in this case.
On the main menu, click Insert -> Chart
The Chart Editor is shown with the Recommendations tab selected.

In the Chart Types tab, on the left there are the chart types listed. There are a lot of chart types shown under their headings. The headings are: Line, Area, Column, Bar, Pie, Scatter, Map, and Other.

Now, on the left, there is just one box with a table like icon to its right. The table like icon is called the Select data range icon. Click this icon.
The Chart Editor is now hidden and a new dialog box, What data? is shown.
Move the What data? dialog box to a place so that you are able to view your data.
Now, select the Cause column till the last cause (do not select the 'total' text.)
Next, in the What data? dialog box, click Add another range (a new input box appears in the dialog box.)
Now, select the No. of times column till the last number (do not select the total number)
Again, in the What data? dialog box, click Add another range and select the Cumulative % column till '100'.
Now, in the What data? dialog box, click OK.
The Chart Editor is shown.

In the Chart Editor, under Line select the Combo chart (a preview of the chart is shown to the right), and click Insert.
The chart is inserted. Click and drag the chart to the viewable area.

Now, click in the chart, on the top right a down arrow icon is shown. Click this down arrow icon to reveal a menu. In the menu, click Advanced edit. The Chart Editor is shown with the Customization tab enabled.
In this Customization tab, on the right is the preview of the chart and on the left is the various options.
We have to work in the left side.
First, under Chart, enter the Title for the chart. I entered Pareto Chart of Late Arrivals by Reported Cause (the same as the image I had used to source the data.)
Scroll down, you will first see the main heading named Axis, leave this for now, we will come to this heading later. Scroll more to reveal the Series heading.

To the right of Series is a drop down, which is named All Data series. Click this drop down list and select Cumulative %.
Scroll down and select the Square as the Point shape.
Right axis for the Axis.

Now, scroll up to the Axis heading. By default, the Horizontal axis is selected. Change its title to Reported Causes.
Now select the Left Vertical axis. Change its title to No. of Times.
Now select the Right Vertical axis. Change its title to Cumulative %. Below this title are two input boxes for Min and Max. Enter 0 in Min and 100 in Max.

In the Chart Editor click Update. The chart is now shown with the changes made.
You can now keep this cart as it is or move the chart to its separate sheet. I would prefer to move the chart to its separate sheet. To do this, click in the chart, then click the down arrow -> Move to own sheet. The chart is now moved to its separate sheet.

If you wish to show the data for the No. of Times bars: Click in a bar, a context menu is shown. In the context menu, click Data label -> Value. Now the numbers are shown on the bars.

The Pareto chart is kind of complete. But, if you want to present this you will require a little bit more information on the chart.
To do this, you can either save the chart as an image and do the steps in a different program or you can copy the chart, and paste it into the new/existing drawing/presentation in Google Drive.
Lets copy the chart into a presentation. Just below the main menu is the Copy chart button, click it.
Now, open the Google Drive presentation file (or create a new presentation.)
Make the Layout for the presentation page as Blank. Now, paste the chart. You will be shown a dialog box that will ask you to either link the chart or to not link the chart. If you link the chart, then whenever you change the chart, it will be reflected here. Its you choice.
Resize the chart to the required size.
Now insert a square from the Cumulative %'s 80 % to the point where the square would touch the line graph. Then enter the two texts as shown in the figure below:

So, we get the Pareto chart using Google Sheets and Google Slides/Google Drawings.

Making SoftMaker FreeOffice TextMaker documents look like Microsoft Word 2007 documents

Edit (15 July 2019): I have tried to make a similar document/template in LibreOffice Writer 6.1.6. Please view the post at https://aajkyakiya.blogspot.com/2019/07/making-libreoffice-documents-look-like.html to view/download the files.
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Original Article Below:

A few weeks ago I was looking at alternatives to Microsoft Office. Why? Because installations of Microsoft Office at my work place is restricted to only those who really need it. Fortunately I do have it on my workstation. But, many do not and are using a variety of other solutions. For example, the Ubuntu workstations have LibreOffice, while some Windows workstations have free WPS office. So, I was looking for an alternative that would have a consistent feature set and be as close to using Microsoft Office.

I am mostly a Word user and I have used Powerpoint intermittently. I am not an expert in using Excel, though I am able to create basic worksheets, but nothing fancy.

And, Office Online doesn't count yet. I was not able to even insert a section break in Office Online. The only benefit of Office Online is the ability to create SmartArt in the online version of Powerpoint that can be then downloaded and inserted as an image in your own presentations.
<<Okay, so why did I mention section break. For those who do not know, you can have different header and footer in sections only. A feature that I use quite frequently>>

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A popular alternative is LibreOffice which is incidentally preinstalled in most modern Linux distros. LibreOffice is free to download and use on Windows and Linux, and it offers a consistent feature set in both. While most of the features are present, LibreOffice has a very different approach to do things. A very good book that outlines this is Bruce Byfield's Designing with LibreOffice (http://designingwithlibreoffice.com) and the excellent articles on the Full Circle Magazine (http://fullcirclemagazine.org) (A link to the Full Circle Magazine's LibreOffice special edition -> http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2015/08/08/libreoffice-golden-anniversary-special-edition/)
I believe both these books/resources are free to at least download and use. So go ahead and try LibreOffice yourself to see if its way of doing things is for you.

I found LibreOffice Writer not very easy to catch on if you are used to the Microsoft Word way of doing things. For example, the sections thing that I mentioned above -> sections in LibreOffice does not do what sections in Word does. It just creates a section 'block' which can be called from another LibreOffice document or can be used within the same document. It does not create a new section pages like section does in Word 2007.

LibreOffice Impress is a good replacement for Powerpoint (according to my limited use at least.) I even found that LibreOffice Calc to be on par with Excel (again, according to my limited use.)

LibreOffice has another great application LibreOffice Draw. This app is the the best flowcharting app that I have found for the price of free. Another free app is yEd Graph Editor. I have found that yEd Graph Editor has its specific uses, like I found making an ER diagram much more easier in yEd than in Draw. But Draw is much better in making flowcharts. Just one issue of labeling arrows is there in Draw. The text just does not appear on the line and is rather placed in an imaginary box made by the arrow connector line.

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The second alternative to Microsoft Office I found is WPS office. This has a free version for Windows that has a limited feature set. And, a free community version for Linux. I do not know whether this community version is the full version or the crippled version. Also this community version is of alpha quality.

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The third alternative I found is FreeOffice. FreeOffice is available for Windows and Linux. FreeOffice is the free version of SoftMaker Office, a paid for office suite. Even then, the FreeOffice suite has a better feature set than what WPS free version has. One major limitation in FreeOffice is that it does not save documents in the Office XML Formats. It can read the documents but cannot save it in those formats.

Installing FreeOffice is not as simple as installing LibreOffice. To download and use FreeOffice, you are required to register and get a key for your copy. This maybe done to know the exact users of FreeOffice or to get you to buy the full version of SoftMaker Office. Anyways, the download is smaller than LibreOffice and it asks for the key only once.

FreeOffice has three apps: TextMaker (alternative for Word), PlanMaker (alternative for Excel), and Presentations (alternative for Powerpoint).

I found TextMaker to have a similar way of doing things that Word has. The section stuff works the same so does many other features that Word has. In defining/editing the styles, I found that the implementation of 'hanging indent' is not done quite right in TextMaker. You have to manually adjust the 'Indents' to get the look of 'hanging indent'.

The PlanMaker and Presentations have not quite impressed me. I find the LibreOffice alternatives a tad better for these two apps. Also, FreeOffice does not have a drawing/flowcharting app.

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The TextMaker app is quite similar to Word in its way of doing things. And, this makes me feel familiar and confident in achieving the same look of the documents in both. But, the default Word 2007 documents have unique styles and colors that are not present in any of the free alternatives.

You cannot magically transform an already created document in TextMaker to look like that of a Word 2007 document. The only real alternative is to create the exact styles and colors in a TextMaker template and then use this template to create the new document.

While you cannot create the styles for all elements (like tables, etc.), but you can create the styles for most other elements (like the paragraph styles). The character styles are more or less the same in TextMaker and Word 2007.

I have tried to create such a  template for TextMaker which has the similar styles of the default Word 2007 documents.

You can download this template from this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B95bNAog0FOgNVZhZ05kSEFoRlk/view?usp=sharing

This is an English language template. The template uses the default fonts used in Word 2007 - you may have to change the fonts if you do not have these installed on your system. For example, on modern Linux systems, the alternatives are available in the croscore fonts package. Also, the template uses the Letter page size.

You have to save this template in the templates directory. On Windows XP, this is C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\My Documents\SoftMaker\Templates 2016\English

To use this template, first open TextMaker, then on the main menu click File->New. Now, in the 'New' dialog box, under 'Template' select the new template and click OK. The new document is ready for editing.

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TextMaker is a very good alternative to Word 2007 and with the TextMaker template above, you can create documents in TextMaker that look just like they would if created in Word 2007.

Running Scratch Jr Android App in Linux Mint 17.3

I was searching for some app for android tablet that would help my kid in learning something new. I do not own an android tablet but I was thinking of getting one if it would help in enriching the learning experience for my kid. Well, my kid is still small and will begun proper schooling next year. So, I have time.

My search led me to various nursery rhymes, alphabet writing, phonics, and other painting and drawing apps. But, I would really prefer these tasks to be done by parents with their kids in a traditional way. I read somewhere that parents can inculcate a routine in a kid only till the kid reaches eight years of age. So, its time we parents allocate at least one hour per day for studies for our kids from now. If you do not have anything specific to teach, then you could just hum a nursery rhyme, do some drawings, paintings etc., in that one hour.

Ok, so I did not want these apps. These apps my become valuable at a later stage but not just now. Then after more searching I reached the page for a programming language 'Scratch'. This is a wonderful program to tech kids programming from an early age. And I think programming is very important in today's digital age. But Scratch is for little older kids, around eight plus years. But, there is another branch Scratch Jr that is available for five plus year kids.

I was very intrigued to learn a little more about Scratch Jr. So I tried to install it on my smartphone. But it gave a message that it is not compatible. Also on its website it is mentioned that Scratch Jr is for tablets with size seven inch and larger. I really wanted to try this out but it just was not possible without a proper tablet computer.

Next, I also saw that this app is available for Chrome OS. So I started thinking that if this can run on Chrome OS then maybe with a little bit of searching on the web, this could run on Chrome browser. So, I searched for methods for running these android and chrome os apps on the chrome browser and lo and behold I found the answer: ARChon Runtime for Chrome (http://archon-runtime.github.io/)

Let us see how to use this great piece of software to run the android app Scratch Jr: (I use Linux Mint 17.3 Xfce 64-bit version as my OS, so the instructions will be for this OS.)

1. Download ARChon from the website http://archon-runtime.github.io/
• I downloaded the 'ARChon 1.2 Stable (ARC 38.4410.120.43)' version for 64-bit chrome.
2. Use the instructions given in the 'Quick Setup' section on the ARChon website.
• The instruction is:
• Download the ARChon runtime, extract it, navigate to chrome://extensions, enable "Developer Mode", load the runtime
• The download is of nearly 96 MB
• After extracting, you will get a folder.
• On selecting the 'Developer Mode' option you are presented with a few more buttons.

• You are required to click the 'Load unpacked extension' 
• When you extract the ARChon archive you will get a folder. Select this folder to load using the 'Load unpacked extension' button.
• Some message will be shown. Just ignore these messages.
• Now, you can also try using Sample App (the 2048 game) to make sure that the runtime is working.
• It works.
• Just download from the location mentioned in the 'Quick Setup' section of the ARChon website.
• The location is https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-apk/releases/download/v3.0.0/com.uberspot.a2048.android-ARChon-runtime.zip
• Extract it, load it as an unpacked extention, click "Launch".
• 'Launch' is a link present in the extention block/page itself.
• Next, download the apk for Scratch Jr.
• I used the online apk download website: https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/
• The apk link is: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.scratchjr.android
• The downloaded apk will be 'org.scratchjr.android.apk', of around 24 MB
• Next, you are required to convert the apk to an unpacked extention form.
• You can do this in many ways as described on the ARChon page.
• I chose to use the 'chromeos-apk (CLI app conversion tool)'
• The install instuctions for this conversion tool is given on the tool's page. Here: https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-apk
• As stated on that page, on Ubuntu (Linux Mint) you should run this command:
• sudo apt-get install lib32stdc++6
• I do not know whether this is really required, but I installed this anyway.
• Next, install nodejs. I did this as follows:
• curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo -E bash -
• sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
• sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
• You can choose to use another method, but I think this one was better.
• Next, install the tool by using this command:
• sudo npm install chromeos-apk -g
• Next, convert the apk by using this command:
• First go to the directory where you have downloaded the apk, then:
• chromeos-apk org.scratchjr.android.apk --tablet
• A new folder is created as the extension
• Next, load this extension in chrome using the 'Load unpacked extension' button and then selecting this new extension folder.
• Error occurs: Some message element is missing for key extName.
• Cancel the operation.
• This error does not occur with the sample app (2048 app)
• After a quick search on the internet I found the solution at this page: https://github.com/vladikoff/chromeos-apk/issues/111
• The solution given on this page is:


• This is an easy fix.
• 
  
• $vim /path_to_com_dir/manifest.json
• Copy the "name" parameter: "name": "field text"
• 
  
• $vim /path_to_com_dir/_locale/language/message.json
• add the parameter to the "extName":
• "extName": {
• "description": "Extension name",
• "message": "field text"
• }
• 
  
• Don't forget the comma.
• I used Gedit and did the above.
• Now try again to load the unpacked extention.
• Success (with some message - ignore the message)
• Now click Launch for the extention.
• The app runs.

The app runs successfully. I have not yet tried this app to its fullest, but is works.

Scratch Jr is a good beginning for kids to learn how to give instructions and branch instructions when an event occurs. A good app for kids of five plus years. To fully use the app, I think a kid must have understanding of plus and minus and English words. My kid is underage for this app and will have to wait till next year to get hands on a tablet.

Anyways, I got some more tools to use and I will use this tool to use some interesting Android apps in Linux.

Welcome

Welcome to Aaj Kya Kiya.

Aaj Kya Kiya is Hindi written in the English alphabets. Aaj means Today, Kya means What, and Kiya means Did. Therefore, Aaj Kya Kiya would mean What did I do Today/What I did Today.

In this blog I will post about the things, randomly, that I did/do/plan on doing (past/present/future). Some things would just be hypothetical/imaginary stuff while some would be tangible.

Lets see what is next.