Facebook has been telling me "Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience" for 5 days. I'm getting no response from them. [more inside]
posted by nax on Oct 6, 2009 - 11 answers

Easy Windows XP question, yet hard to google: Is there anyway to set the 'select file' dialog boxes used by virtually every program to sort by Modified Date instead of Name? [more inside]
posted by ZackTM on Jun 25, 2009 - 1 answer

Has anyone ever found a source for life-like rubber slugs? I've been trying to find some for an art project and every source I've been able to think of has turned out to not to have any such thing. And by slugs I mean the slimy, slow-moving animal, not the type you try to cheat a soda machine out of it's inventory with. Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
posted by motown missile on May 5, 2009 - 6 answers

Help an application Luddite find a good system for organising recipes. [more inside]
posted by the luke parker fiasco on Mar 3, 2009 - 13 answers

Help me sort out this problem of ranking bracket winners... Thx in advance, hivemind. [more inside]
posted by mhh5 on Jan 22, 2009 - 7 answers

Do you know of a server-side script for combining RSS feeds, removing duplicates, filtering out items that match keywords, and then generating a new RSS feed as a result? [more inside]
posted by Mo Nickels on Jan 2, 2009 - 13 answers

Help me organize my 7 year olds clothing! [more inside]
posted by burhan on Dec 10, 2008 - 11 answers

How do I load and then sort a really huge (94 MB) text file list of words? Perl runs out of memory trying to load all the lines-- before I have a chance to try to sort it. [more inside]
posted by kosmonaut on Oct 8, 2008 - 25 answers

Organization, self and environmental control and time management: How do I holistically reduce chaos from my life so that I can function well? I don't just need a plan, I need follow through. [more inside]
posted by Phalene on Oct 1, 2008 - 11 answers

Can Excel 2003 sort (or filter) primarily on case? [more inside]
posted by Chrysostom on Jul 30, 2008 - 8 answers

Sorting algorithm - how would you do this? [more inside]
posted by Lokheed on Jun 7, 2008 - 16 answers

Help me find a program/web app that sorts lists by asking you to compare two items at a time. [more inside]
posted by hjo3 on May 2, 2008 - 8 answers

Any Excel gurus in the room? I have an Excel spreadsheet with over 800 rows of data. Each row begins with a number (like 0001), and some have letters after the numbers (like 0001a). The Sort function doesn’t sort the way I’d like it to. [more inside]
posted by Milkman Dan on Apr 17, 2008 - 7 answers

Thunderbird: How can I make messages 'sticky'? [more inside]
posted by cowbellemoo on Apr 8, 2008 - 2 answers

I'm having trouble sorting (or rather, unsorting) files in Outlook. [more inside]
posted by naju on Mar 14, 2008 - 5 answers

Can I alphabetize data in Excel (or elsewhere) while ignoring the articles "the", "a" and "an"? [more inside]
posted by Burns Ave. on Feb 20, 2008 - 10 answers

Is there a way to sort by "highlighted field" in Excel? [more inside]
posted by BuddhaBelly on Sep 11, 2007 - 5 answers

How do I add custom details to folders in Windows Explorer? [more inside]
posted by petsounds on Aug 8, 2007 - 7 answers

Software filter: looking for a free program to rename lots of image files... [more inside]
posted by itheearl on Jul 9, 2007 - 16 answers

I have lots of coins. And no young relatives. I need the coins sorting. [more inside]
posted by Solomon on May 23, 2007 - 18 answers

I am currently dealing with an Oracle-based application that on many of the screens returns data in what I call "hysterical order" (seemingly random to the casual observer). In fact, the application applies no ORDER BY logic to the underlying data, which ORACLE returns in an undefined order (actually the order the data was entered). This is useless in practice. I don't have the ability to change the application in any way, but I do have access to the database. I am aware that it is non-standard in relational database theory to be able to specify a default ordering for tables, but in Oracle, are there in practice, any modifications I could make to the underlying tables that will not cause the app to break, but will allow me to specify the default order of the data when there is no ORDER BY used? I can identify a column in each table which should be the default order. It is a long time since I was a DBA, so I am a little rusty on current Oracle practice and capabilities.
posted by blue_wardrobe on May 11, 2007 - 28 answers

How do I sort this array in PHP? [more inside]
posted by samstarling on Feb 25, 2007 - 3 answers

Can I get folders included in Arrange functions, in Windows? [more inside]
posted by kafziel on Dec 1, 2006 - 2 answers

Is it possible to sort a spreadsheet alphabetically by last letter or by retrograde spelling? Excel, StatView, etc.? [more inside]
posted by imposster on Nov 21, 2006 - 6 answers

I have a question about finding the longest sequence in a set of numbers. [more inside]
posted by maxwelton on Sep 2, 2006 - 13 answers

Having read this thread, I downloaded several *awesome* box sets... but then I download Itunes which resulted in this annoying problem. What can I do?! [more inside]
posted by rosswald on Jul 31, 2006 - 9 answers

How can I quickly identify blank JPG images from a set of thousands? [more inside]
posted by danblaker on Apr 27, 2006 - 12 answers

What labels do you use in Gmail? I feel like I have too many labels for my Gmail account and there is too much overlap between them. What are the best sets of labels? [more inside]
posted by pithy comment on Mar 1, 2006 - 13 answers

I've got a directory filled with the digital photos I and friends have taken over some eight years. It's a disorganised mess with no coherent, standardised naming format. I'd like to: -remove duplicates -sort, rename or place in folders images based on EXIF data or content I'm on Mac OS X but could possibly gain access to a Windows box if necessary. Any ideas?
posted by dance on Feb 20, 2006 - 14 answers

In Windows XP, is there any way to load multiple files with the same name (such as index.html, for example), but have an ending letter or number added to differentiate? [more inside]
posted by damnjezebel on Jan 7, 2006 - 4 answers

Is there a way to have the "My Music" folder in XP ignore the "the" in band names like iTunes does? [more inside]
posted by gfrobe on Aug 30, 2005 - 5 answers

Is there an easy way to create a text file of all of the folders I have in a directory? [more inside]
posted by graventy on Aug 20, 2005 - 12 answers

XML: I'm writing a Flash/Actionscript program that reads in an XML data file. The info needs to be sorted alphabetically, but people will be continually adding new data to the end of the file, so it will have to be resorted often. There's no easy way to sort XML data in Actionscript (and doing so would slow down the program too much, anway), so the data-entry folks will need to sort the data externally to the Flash app. Are there any (free?) applications that can sort XML data by a node of your choice? I need a solution that can run on a Mac or a PC -- or it could be web based.
posted by grumblebee on Aug 18, 2004 - 16 answers

Does anyone know of an online collection site like DVD Aficionado or Guzzlefish for books?
posted by Robot Johnny on Mar 9, 2004 - 4 answers