When geographically mapping data, for business or (unlikely) pleasure, a common file format used is the ESRI “shapefile”, typically recognised by ending with .shp. This file format allows one to specify custom polygons, with associated data. For instance, the counties of the United Kingdon, the territories of your business, or the areas covered by sales reps - anything effectively 2-dimensional. Alongisde the polygon spec you can store data – an obvious example being the name of the county in case 1 above.

What is less joyous though is generally the packages that handle these files with any form of style and grace are not free, or even cheap. There are some freeish viewers of various quality out there but if you wish to automate any sort of activity on these often gigantic files then usually it doesn’t come cheap. However, the Poorhouse did discover a free GIS program called MapWindow which is probably not a bad program in itself, but most usefully it contains a free GIS ActiveX control complete with API. This means you can link to it with any application that can interact programmatically with such things, not least the Microsoft Office applications suite.

It has been a particularly geeky day for the Poorhouse today as it happens. Ugh. So let's celebrate with the latest of his Excel discoveries designed to allow an optimum amount of user laziness in between the awful clicking between cells, formulae that make sense only to Stephen Hawking and charts formatted so horrifically that it must have been intentional.

This one's a macro to solve the insanely annoying "Number stored as text" error, which usually occurs when copying and pasting data from elsewhere, or when an idiotic, deserves-to-be-spat-on colleague sends you something that is either exhibiting a remarkable level of stupidity or a deliberate wind-up.

The Poorhouse's discovery of the day: DocTranslate - A heavenly, and free, treat for those of us poor info-workers who deal with several countries, not all of which are polite enough to speak English as their first language.

Using the mighty power of Google Translate, this downloadable program takes as input a Microsoft Word or Powerpoint document and translates it to/from any combination of languages that Google knows. It comes out with some oddities due to the limitations of computer translation at the best of times (although if you’re good at languages you can apparently improve it further), but even so it rather beats one’s random guesses at what any of a particularly dull looking document might mean. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Cash machines, aka ATMs, never the funnest of things are they? Useful, yes, when they're being friendly. Offensive, also, when they're not. And goddamned annoying whenever anyone except you yourself are using them. It should be nigh-on illegal for anyone to perform any transaction longer than a simply enter pin, select cash, no receipt, OK, take card, take money, go. Why they built such inane options in as print statement, or the ability to put your card in twice in a row without receiving a fatal electric shot, only Lord Banker knows.

Anyway, in recent times, they've become more "fun". They speak Cockney, some of them.

The ingenuity of mankind knows no limit. Even in these recessionary economically disastery times of crime-ridden misery, nothing is getting in the way of the human urge to push the boundaries of knowledge and explore the mysteries of unknown. For just last week, we saw the first of a new kind of space mission; a voyage to the heavens the like of which had never been seen before.

Yes, humanity has just managed, kind of, to create the first space flight by a piece of cheese.

Crikey, this has to be one of the most annoying things that corporate businesses has introduced in a while, and that's saying quite a lot with the amounts of business BS that goes on. Better yet, it involves the Poorhouse's most loved form of Geneva-convention breaking public transport (in the UK, at least) - trains. Check this:

A Japanese rail firm has introduced a system to check that staff are smiling enough at all times.

Joys! Another post on the intricate un-wonders of Microsoft Excel. As all those who are unlucky enough to be Excel fiends know, there is enough about it that is a right royal pain in the ass. Anything that can make working with it a little easier has surely got to be welcome. Especially if it's free, given it's not always easy to get employers to actually give you anything involving £, and it feels morally wrong to make a personal investment into the mysterious lands of numbers in squares.

With that in mind, here's the Poorhouse's current top 3 free downloadable addons for others who spend double-digit hours a day inside this most gridular of programs. All guaranteed working for at least Excel 2003, and probably other versions too.

Killer swine! Yes, those notoriously filthy beasts have been at it again, only unfortunately this time they've been mixing it up and cavorting with pigs would you believe? Hence, mutated viruses, yada yada, resulting in a human-contagious swine flu sweeping the world. To an extent at least. As yet, the World Health Organisation isn't declaring it a proper pandemic, but it has caused 6497 cases of illness including 65 confirmed deaths, spread between 33 countries as of yesterday apparently.

The UK Government even made a little booklet about it to send to every citizen, so it must be pretty much as serious as terrorism no less. And yes, the book is not all that far off being as pointless and patronising as the terrorism handbook was – suggesting such wacky concepts as not sneezing a nose full of infected bogies into your dearly beloved's face. Still, the previous Governmental advice to walk away from, not towards, a roaring fire in a building has kept the Poorhouse alive so far, so can't complain.

The Poorhouse is a big fan of acronyms, and here's a new one that surely is about to take the world by storm: WILB. Researchers (well, a researcher) use it to mean "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing". You might have heard of it under other guises - perhaps "skiving", or "taking another break", or "squandering company resources, you're fired."

Only perhaps you shouldn't be. In fact, maybe you should be promoted. Raw hard science (kind of) proves it. Thank you Dr Coker, and your University of Melbourne study.

Darryl C: legitimately smugTo some, the Poorhouse has something of a reputation for miser-like tendencies on certain items, allegedly. Or let's put it nicely: frugality. Anyhow, despite having a brother with the same name, he has been wholly outdone in the awkward realm of birthday cards (good? pointless? appropriate? silly pre-written message?) by these guys: Darryl and Dan Culberson.

The brothers have been saving money every year...exchanging the same birthday card since 1973

And no, not one with the same picture on the front. The exact same physical piece of (yellowing) card has been swapped between them, twice a year, for significantly longer than the Poorhouse has even been alive. Why didn't we think of that one?