ACBOOK 7.5

Continuing the trend from last year:

First, the Bad news: ‘Update…’ menu item on AB v7.0 won’t work because Dropbox dropped the box on public folder! So, I had to re-imagine the update process to make it future-proof. That is, starting with AB v7.5, it is no longer necessary for me to stick to Dropbox (though, I have stuck to it for now) and if next year I have to use OneDrive, no one needs to worry and v7.5 will update to v7.5.1 or v9.0 or whatever via in-app(lication) menu item.

Second, the ExChanger: Many things to say here, so let me start a bullet list.

• It gains a new button ↹ to set the ‘default’ currencies shown at startup.
• The data is updated (almost) hourly now!
• User can enter one’s own API key obtainable from currencylayer.com (for free; requires signing up but it wastes less time than YouFace or InstaTwits or whatever will grab your attention in a while!).
• This is no longer a stand-alone ingredient and has been fully baked-in to the main course program. That leads us to the following.

Third, the Categories can be associated to a particular currency in addition to the existing option of specifying a currency symbol. This helps in transfer of money between categories as the exchange rate is automatically filled-in, adding up the balances of all categories (whoever thought this was not needed!), etc. [For old files (who has them frankly?), associating one category to a currency will automatically update other categories with the same symbol.]

Fourth, the Menu items under ‘Category’ & ‘Groups’ menus have been streamlined (new icons too for the two related buttons in the toolbar) owing to the introduction of new custom-made input dialog box as seen below [In fact, all usage of MATLAB’s built-in inputdlg()’s have been replaced and also the ‘Reorder…’ dialog has been updated slightly to conform to this style.]:

Fifth, the Date field now gets a Date Selector button beside it, which opens up the following GUI (a dream that has been finally realized, via ‘undocumented’ Java usage from within MATLAB, though it may be removed in future updates depending on user feedback 🤣):

Sixth, the ‘Modify’ data button has a slight change of behaviour. When the Groups drop-down menu changes due to this button, the Data display also updates now. This change of behaviour can be a bit jarring / confusing but is consistent with the fact that this is how the Group menu & Data display are supposed to be ‘connected’.

Seventh, the ‘Show Raw Data’ and ‘Graphical Data Analysis’ (noticed the name change of the latter?) menu items from the ‘Tools’ menu have been introduced to the toolbar too. Not only that,

Eighth, the GDA has been completely revamped with 3 styles of plots and all sorts of filter options for the data (compare this to last year’s simple pie chart in a popup figure! What the hell was I thinking then?). Notice that 5 more buttons appear in the toolbar in this mode. Now, bask in this mode’s full (clickable) glory:

Ninth, other minor Bug fixes, Algorithm optimizations, and GUI tweaks are definitely sprinkled all over the program (along with a slightly updated Manual.pdf file).

Finally, it is highly likely that new bugs may have been introduced in spite of / despite / due to all that so I expect, like last year, your help in catching them all!

Thanks for reading this changelog, now go download the program and start accounting (for your shi*s).

AcBook 7.5

I Don’t Say Doesn’t Mean I Don’t Say…

My Superpartner came up with a grievance few weeks ago. He thinks that I don’t talk about him with people around me. The fact though is that I don’t tell him enough what I tell about him to others. For example, the other day I told my friend that ‘There are several reasons but the primary one is: Because Dharmesh is the least judgmental person I have met’. I’m not the kind of wife who makes the husband feel good all the time or bad all the time or good and bad at different times; I’m the kind who says nothing at all and just enjoys the ‘it is what it is’.

So I’m going to share some interesting trivia about him. Some of you might already know few of this. For others, I hope it is of some entertainment value.

My side of the family thinks he and I are a mute family. They always had the impression that I don’t speak much. I was the heights of speechlessness and no opinions. When they met him, they realized that there was one more. But if you have ever walked with him, you would say something else. When he is walking with me, he doesn’t let me speak. And he speaks very strange things. When I say strange, I mean that he is talking of higher dimensional Physics.

He is ready for breads all the time. When he is fully full, when it is time for bed, when it is the middle of the night, just anytime. To completely comprehend what I mean, watch Dylan Moran here.

He thinks that nobody likes him and nobody should like him; Why should anyone like anyone anyways? What a pity, he doesn’t know some things here.

He plays Disney games! Awful & Terrible, isn’t it?! There are times when I’m talking about worldly things when he says, ‘O let me open my game’.  And for the next half an hour or so, he is playing with Mickey Mouse, Goofy and feeling sad that he is not been able to introduce Cinderella to his amusement park yet.

While he is doing nothing [read anything] he is pulling his eyebrow hairs (like now, literally now!). I wonder why he has some hair left there even now.

If there was some Guinness record to award someone who has read the most Japanese Manga and watched British shows at the same time, he would be making and breaking his own records.

He has made some excellent programs which haven’t been marketed well (not marketed at all, in fact). There are days when he comes up with some enhancement ideas and you can guess what happens after that.

He has some strange hobbies. One of them for example is to read about the upcoming Windows 10 builds. Recently, this happened too

and I think such notifications just encourage him more to keep following those hobbies. O God!

That’s all for now, If I go any further than this, I might touch upon some cheeky, funny elements which we keep for later. And after all this, here is our favourite VCM who talks about DM once in a while.

Happy April Fools’ Day!