Here's a hot tip: if Mike Tomlinson calls and tells you about a guaranteed way to make huge money by investing in Information Biometrics or any other such nonsense, ask him why his company Dunhill Capital is well known as a gang of criminals. He might be able to blether for 5 or 10 minutes about how your money is safe with him. Keep pressing, however, and he'll hang up on you and probably never bother you again! If you are worried about Dunhill Capital, about which I know little, for whom I have never worked and with whom I have never invested ... I can send you a couple of internet links. Alternatively go to www.google.co.uk and do a search for them and see what you find. Don't send them any money under any circumstances is my advice! DW

I wrote this to a Business/Economics discussion list that I'm a member of: Just in case it's slipped everyone's attention, the Enterprise Act that came into force beginning in April of this year contains new powers that Business Studies and Economics teachers and students need to be aware of. The Enterprise Act "works alongside the Competition Act of 1988 and various pieces of consumer legislation, largely replacing the Fair Trade Act 1973": see the PDF file link below for the source of this quotation. This page highlights the major changes to relate to: Mergers Cartels Direct Disqualification Enforcement of Consumer Law Super complaints Market investigation There are also new insolvency rules that this page chooses not to highlight for some reason; and Accountancy Age reports that at least three companies have already fallen foul of the insolvency rules contained within the Enterprise Act even though they only came into force last week: Ciro Cittero, Sentry Box (graphic designers) and MAL Holdings (Mayflower Group). There are several PDF files relating to the various parts of the Act including this general overview. As you might expect, the DTI also has pages devoted to this Act. There is an email alert service available for this Act ... when I tried to sign up, however, I was given an error message so only time will tell whether I was successful! I hope this is of use to everyone. DW

As English English slides into Americanese at an alarming rate, good news. In a report in the Business Today journal there is a small article entitled Communicating: Business bugged by buzzwords. Here are a couple of snippets: 60% of company directors feel annoyed or irritated when people use jargon or buzzwords in business conversation ... buzzwords annoy female directors more than male directors (65% and 57% respectively). The worst offender was 'let's touch base' ... followed by 'no brainer' ... 'synergy' ... 'outside the box' ... 'let's take this offline' ... 'playing hardball'. The author of the original report says that While buzzwords can create an illusion of understanding for those who use them, they often signal just the opposite to others on the receiving end ... Thankfully, good communicators are not born but made, which is good news for those that usually opt for meaningless phrases to paper over the cracks in their knowledge. DW

For disciplinarians here's a great story. I was reading a potted history of a school in the South of England and came across the fact that the headmaster of this school for part of the 18th century was known as Flogging Tom. Thought you might enjoy that! DW

Another helpful visitor pointed out where some of my 404 File Not Found Errors are coming from. Thank you Emma Dicks. Here's what I said to Emma: Thanks Emma, Not only there but in a couple of the linked pages too. Kind of you to take the time to help me out. Best wishes Some good and helpful people on this earth! DW

For only the second time in 16 years I think it was, I managed to be able to watch the Last Night of the Proms on the television last night: this programme marks the end of the Henry Wood Promenade musical concerts that have been held over the summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London for 109 years or so now. It all felt a bit flat I have to say. They had the old favourites in there with our rousing, rattling sing along tunes and songs: Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia and so on; but there was something not quite right. I think it was down to what appeared to be a lack of sponteneity in the audience and some poor camera direction. In the old days the audience at the last night always seemed to be manned (or should that be personed?) by lunatics with a love of music. Now I think that the audience comprises some of those lunatics and some people who are joiners in for the experience and they seem to lack that je ne said quoi that the old timers had. Do you remember that tall chap who always managed to get himself in the middle of the front row and who used to conduct the orchestra and chorus along with the real conductor? He never seemed to be a full shilling to me but he added character. Remember when the singer soloist was a friendly chap or chapess who had some rapport and badinage with the audience or who used to do something wacky during his or her performance? There was no soloist during the mass sing along last night. Do you remember when the conductor used to berate the audience in pantomimic style with something like "Henry can't hear you"! when he felt the sing along element could have been improved on? Leonard Slatkin simply applauded last night's audience after their efforts last night: even though there were the usual encores, there was no real pantomime. There is a new element, too, the Proms in the Park. The Proms in the Park are a good idea in that they set up stages in Hyde Park, Swansea, Belfast and Glasgow and thousands of people flock to them to join in with their own programmes and with the main event in the Albert Hall. All good stuff and there were 40,000 in Hyde park and many thousands of people elsewhere. This is a good and interesting initiative but I think it detracts from the main event. Could be that I've reached an age, a sense of detachment and a level of deafness that militates against my enjoyment of this event now. Either I have to become more intimately involved in the whole process by going to the Last Night or I have to buy a CD of the last night of 1987 or something similar. Ah nostalgia: it's not what it used to be! DW

On my main site I have a 404 (Page not found) message that says something like "If you have arrived at this page, it's because ... please let me know where you were trying to ..." A few visitors have very kindly written to me of late with guidance as to where some of my links problems are: all of a sudden I have been getting HUNDREDS of 404 errors and whilst I've found a lot myself, I obviously haven't found them all. Jennifer wrote this week and helped me to solve one problem. Jim wrote today and helped me to solve several problems. I thanked Jennifer personally of course and this is what I wrote to Jim: Thanks for taking the time to reply, Jim. I had a random look at my home page links and found a batch of problematic ones in the statistics part of the site: I’m very grateful to you for helping me to spot them. On the other hand when I create a new page I tend to copy and paste a link from place to place or use a template: hence, it always comes as a shock when there is such a problem! This is why this problem never comes alone: I must have copied and pasted the home page link in the statistics section three or four times without fully checking. Best wishes and keep reading! Thanks for your help, everyone! DW

Frank runs a web site that shows the history of the UK National Lottery. Frank has lots of interesting tables, charts and analyses on his site and I got involved. I suggested a couple of revisions to his Chi Squared analysis and last I heard he was working on my ideas. Let me point out that Frank's site is unofficial and at the end of his home page you will read this disclaimer: These pages are not in any way associated with the Camelot Group plc. The draw results on which the presented information is based has been checked thoroughly but can not be treated as an official source. Analysis methods are subject to my personal interpretation and shared with you for interest only. Past lottery results cannot predict future results and this site is intended to indicate trends only. Because this site is operated by an individual there may be occasions when information has not been updated to include the latest draw. Furthermore, I will not be held accountable for any winnings or loss of winnings or monies spent through the use of the information provided. Sensible disclaimer, Frank! DW

Cabell wrote, too, with an interesting spreadsheeting/statistical question that I am in the middle of exploring. Cabell offered me a solution to a problem and I offered her a revised solution. We're talking! This could become a page, too! DW

Looks like I've made another friend in a far flung place! Jaunita wrote again with another few questions on statistics and definitions. I worked through them line by line and turned my answers into a new page on my web site. Well worth a look! DW

Back to Yorkshire! I drove up on Friday afternoon and took it easy, enjoying the facility of cruise control. It's a breeze to take your foot off the accelerator and be able to stretch one's legs and so forth. Being so tall is a problem for me and I normally get a jippy hip on long drives. So cruise control gets rid of that then. Brother Angus has a Beemer too but he never uses his cruise control as (a) he's an erratic driver I think so (b) he never gets into a position for his speed to settle and (c) he's not that tall. Anyway arrived, had a bite to eat and then off to one of Halifax's finest hostelries wherein libations ensued and blether, swearing and gay badinage were all the rage. Back for a nightcap, more blether and then some fitful sleep as the pay back was that I caught a case of the hiccups at some unearthly hour. Woke up to a slightly thick head for some reason and feeling a bit the worse for wear. Not understandable as we didn't drink that much. Age at the root of it all, perhaps? Went for a walk round Halifax with Neville the brother in law as sister Susan went to the hairdresser's. It lashed it down as we toured the Piece Hall so we had to invest in an umbrella apiece: cost me all of £1.99 for the pleasure! Then it stopped raining and became sunny. Still, one needs about five umbrellas doesn't one? Took a walk round Ogden Water, a couple of miles out of Halifax and that's a nice place as you can see from the photographs I uploaded realier. Time pressures meant we couldn't ramble for very long but I'd liked to have. I recommend a walk there if you're ever in the area: lots of birds, trees, tranquility and the vista is more than acceptable. Tootled off to Hebden Bridge to collect son Daniel and his partner Max. Another hostelry experience ensued but as I was driving I stuck to lemonade whilst they all drank dirty beer and wine! Susan rustled up a more than adequate lasagne for supper and once we had been joined by sister Fiona and hubby Danny we went to yet another hostelry where I enjoyed only a small amount of beer due to the hangover from last night. A good loud blethering session followed as we braved a large bar in the centre of Halifax where at one stage I was afraid of being the "oldest swinger in town" but there were older!! The sight of the night was that of two young ladies squatting in doorways opposite with knickers round their knees as they partook of a micturition session ... all over the place ... in public, in full view of at least a dozen people: have they no shame? Still a good time was had by all and a little bit of red wine helped the land of Nod to beckon readily. Up and about in time to do the Tod Rag's cryptic crossword and finished it all but for one and a half clues: Susan and Neville provided the answers to those. Left Halifax at just after 1 pm and got home three hours later, allowing for a short stop half way back. I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have been caught speeding by one of those wretched cameras that they have on all our roads these days. Only one or two mph in it, mind ... I'm waiting for the postman to announce the verdict in a few days' time. Here endeth the weekend's report. DW

Jaunita wrote, I think from Namibia with this question, that elicited that answer! Could you please give and explain to m the arithmetic formula to work out Mean, Mode and Median. I'm study at the moment but can't understand the formula. Thanks Jaunita Hello Jaunita, The arithmetic formula for each of the mean, the median and the mode are fairly simple and with a bit of practice they will be easy for you. The mean is the same as the arithmetic mean and is what we normally use when we calculate an average figure add together all the numbers you have and divide them by the total number of numbers For example, find the arithmetic mean of 6,9,2,6,3,8,9,2,4,6: 6+9+2+6+3+8+9+2+4+6 ÷ 10 (because there are 10 numbers altogether) = 55 ÷ 10 = 5.5 The mode is the number in a set of numbers that occurs most often: that is, in a set of numbers we might find that some numbers occur more than once and the mode is the one that there are most of. For example, from the list we just saw 6,9,2,6,3,8,9,2,4,6 the frequencies of each number are 2 = 2 3 = 1 4 = 1 6 = 3 8 = 1 9 = 2 Since there are more of number 6 than any other number, the mode is number 6 The median is the middle value in a set, or list, of values. To find the median we need to put the list in order and then find the number in the middle. For example, using the list we have already used, we find: 2 2 3 4 6 6 6 8 9 9 It’s best when there is an odd number of numbers as we can see here when we have 10 numbers and really there is no number in the middle. What we do now is to take the numbers on either side of the middle, add them together and divide them by 2 … easy in this case: (6 + 6)/2 = 6 So the median number is 6. I hope that’s clear Juanita. Try finding the mean, median and mode from these lists, Juanita and confirm the answers I have given below. 6 8 5 4 8 8 3 7 7 6 mean 6.2 median 6.5 mode 8 And again: 9 6 12 9 6 7 6 12 17 20 17 mean 11 median 9 mode 6 Where in the world are you Jaunita? Just interested. DW

Another trip back up to Yorkshire over the weekend. The car behaved itself very well and a good time was had by all even though it got a bit nippy at night. I went to a place called Ogden Water with sister Susan and her husband Neville: here are a couple of snaps thereof. Notice how low the water is: hosepipe bans next year unless I'm much mistaken! There'll be more about that trip before long. DW

Forgot to tell you about Monday morning. Remember my broken sleep from last week? Well, at 5 am on Monday Mrs W's mobile phone rang and it took her yonks to answer the thing. 'twas a friend of hers from Germany who just wanted to say hello on his way to work ... thinking about coming over for a visit!! At least Mrs W was able to set off back to the land of Nod! Unlike yours truly, of course. Cursed or what? DW

Dima started back at school yesterday. A new school as I felt his old school was just too mediocre: poorly led and staffed by lazy teachers. A levels now, four of them: French, Economics, Ancient History and Government& Politics. What a mouthful! Did I tell you that daughter Fran has passed her driving test at the tender age of 18? 17 years ahead of me. Fran has an automatic car now and was fraught when her mother decided to drive it and, having set off in 1st gear, was puzzled when she couldn't find the clutch to change up to 2nd gear!! Complete lack of mechanical empathy or what?! DW

So I've driven the car around town now, I went to Southampton and back and I've been to Oxford and back. I washed it and waxed the thing too: never waxed a car before in my life! I have to say that the seats are very comfortable; the arm rest is a boon; but what I like most of all at this stage is the cruise control feature: I can just set the thing to tootle along the motorways at 70 mph and relax. Given the comfort and the cruise control, this car is a pleasure to drive. Off to Yorkshire for the weekend, after going to the shops with Mrs W! DW

Here's that long awaited picture of my car: If you have eyesight the equivalent of the Hubble Telescope you will see the reflection of a window in the rear window of the car; and if you squint a huge amount you'll see a reflection of me in it. Bonus, bonus! Can't afford to put a full frontal up here can I? After all, someone who didn't quite like my page on Zero Base Budgeting or my review of Legally Blonde could feel the need for road rage vengence! By the way, history repeated itself with this car. When I bought my first ever car, it got a puncture wiithin its first 24 hours ... so did this Beemer: a slow puncture in this case. So for the first time since goodness knows when, I changed the wheel on a car yesterday. Will get it repaired on Monday all being well. I did a bit of idle Blog surfing just now and the third Blog I looked at was called American Culture ... this is the honest truth [isn't that tautology, Ed?] is that it has daily entries but the entries I saw were all blank pages! What conclusion can we draw about American Culture then? Answers on a postcard! DW

Have you seen Mars, then? Never so close for 60,000 years they say. I saw it last night but my binoculars are only 8x40 so I couldn't see any canals, any aliens, or anything other than a slightly brighter spot in the sky than I could see with my naked eyes! That's why I'm not an astronomer: I don't have the kit! Remember the lunar eclipse of 2000 was it? It was cloudy where I was! The rest of the world saw something "brilliant" as far as I can tell. DW

It's been a bad week for sleeping this week. Wednesday morning woke up at 5:20 am for some reason. Thursday, woke up at 5:18 am; again for some unearthly reason. Friday morning I woke up at 7 am: wooohoo! Today, Dima was flicking his bedroom light on and off and then making all sorts of noises around 4:15 to 4:30 am then he went outside, into the garage ... In the meantime Mrs W, who has a nose problem, started sniffing and grunting at the same time as Dima started his peregrinations. I turned my deaf ear uppermost but to no avail: the light got me, the grunting turned into deep vibrations that penetrated my pillow; and curiosity took hold. Dima had gone to see off his friend Moh who is returning to Canada to live and just after he'd gone I got out of bed, drank a coffee, watched some news and now here we are almost ready to go and tax the car. How come no one told me that Dima was off for a pre dawn sojourn? Wonder what sort of petrol the car uses? Fancy not asking that! DW

A week ago they took away my BMW 520i to the scrap yard. Last night I took delivery of a smart looking metallic green BMW 730i ... hold your breath for the photo! Mrs W doesn't like it in the slightest. It's not a new car by any means but it's mine now and once I've taxed it and put some petrol in it, we're off. Mrs W doesn't like it but she has already planned a long trip to see one of her friends whose son brought some things back from Kazakhstan with him for her. C'est la vie! Plus ca change ... DW

Here's something to epitomise the standard of training in the UK's National Health Service. Took young Dima to the GP this evening to discuss his nose problem and his skin problem. We were duly summoned and arrived to find the GP and another chap seated in the surgery. "This is another Doctor (sic). He'll be sitting in." Now, we should have been asked if we minded if the other chap sat in; and even though we wouldn't have refused that's not the point. Still, I didn't make an issue of it. Then, Dima sat himself down in the victim's chair and I looked around for my chair. No one spoke and the Quack started his consultation. I saw a chair but it was piled with notes and books so I didn't feel like moving that lot. I then spotted a pink plastic footstool over the other side of the room so I went and got that, placed it next to the "other Doctor" (sic) and parked me bum! No one spoke, no one said, "Oh, sorry, please feel free to move the books ...". Just ill mannered people getting on with what they think is good for us. DW

Here's an entry from November 2002 On the personal front I'm nursing my back a little bit as I spent the afternoon lugging many kilogrammes of bark chippings from Garden Centre to car to garden and then all over my small garden. The chippings are the mulch for my Chrysanthemums, Roses, Peonies, Fruit Trees, Herbs and so on for the winter. Anyway, it took 750 litres of the chippings to cover the beds I needed to cover: they're heavy!! Let's hope I'm not bed ridden for a week or so and that the flowers, shrubs and trees all appreciate my hard work!! I want to report that bark chippings are a nightmare. Over the last year the birds that frequent my garden have made it their business to fling the chippings all over the place as they look under and around them for food. This means that the chippings that are generally covering a flower bed can appear overnight as covering for the lawn. Over the winter I got so sick of these antics that I left the chippings on part of the lawn for a few weeks only to find on removal that they had successfully killed all of the grass under them. Bleeders! DW

Here's the latest in the DW traffic survey for Abingdon: 26 August 2003. As I was returning the hire car that I'd been using over the weekend, I decided to carry out yet another of my world famous traffic surveys: how many occupants were in the cars driving towards me on the road that I was wlaking down? This survey took place between 0840 and 0848 today. I discounted all commercial traffic, hence what follows relates to private vehicles only: cars, that is; and I included a taxi! 1 car contained three people: 2.5% 3 cars contained two people: 7.5% 36 cars contained one person: 90.0% Another blow for traffic sodden Britain. We are a one occupant nation are we not? DW

The way that second hand car salesmen answer the phone is fascinating. Here's a couple of examples: Ring ring ... Car Salesman 1: Yes Me: Is that XYZ cars? Car Salesman 1: Yes Me: Do you still have that XXX for sale? Car Salesman 1: No At this point I expect a follow up with some attempt to convince me that another car they have is well worth a look instead but I got silence! Ring ring ... Car Salesman 2: Hello Me: I see that you are selling a XXX is it still available? Car Salesman 2: Yes Me: Can I come and see it? Car Salesman 2: Yes Me: Are you open tomorrow [Sunday]? Car Salesman 2: Yes Me: What time would be best? Car Salesman 2: What time would suit you? ... Where do they get their training??? DW

Before during and after all the fuss over the SOBIG virus, I have had countless messages containing it. It started early last week with messages that were typically timed to arrive as America was crawling out of bed and booting up. Then the onslaught changed to a trickle and now they are coming in thick and fast again. They are all predictably infected and my anti virus software is catching them anyway. Was not best pleased by the behviour of SpywareNuker who offered to help me find Spyware and Adware on my computer and then behaved so badly that I wrote and told them they'd never sell their product to me even though they say they have found 284 incidents of Spyware on my system. The printer won't work from the laptop at all now. Need to investigate much further! DW

Dima got his GCSE results and he's done well, with 1 A* 4 A 5 B 1 C Perhaps the highlight in some senses was the B for Maths. His teacher had called us before they entered him for the exams and said there was no way on earth that he could succeed at the higher level exam. I said we are working on it and I want him to do it. I don't expect that teacher will call now to say, "Good lad, Dima. I was wrong!" I was disappointed at the C as it was in Geography as we put in a lot of effort to get the A his teacher had predicted ... where did it all go wrong? As a non native speaker of English, let all native speakers be aware that Dima achieved 3 A grades for English! DW

The car's gone. On Friday last at around midday I arrived home after a walk into town to find my car in the middle of the street waiting to be plonked onto a car transporter as it headed for the knacker's yard. It has served me well and the only thing it has ever really let me down on was the battery. As I was a way a lot for much of the time that I owned that car, it was standing idle; and the batteries I bought never liked that. We even used to turn the engine over every week or so but that just wasn't good enough. I was forced to write off the car and was paid what the insurance company thought it's worth. I will NOT, in any way, be able to replace a BMW 520i SE Auto for the amount of money they paid. Come on down our modern insurance companies! DW

More from my time back in Bosnia. As you probably know, I am a vegetarian (lacto ovo to be precise) and at the dinner that we had in the middle of the course I ran in Bosnia I was served, wait for it, MUSHY PEAS! I was so stunned I learned that the Bosnian for mushy peas is graashak: not the correct spelling but that's the phonetics of it all! I even found a tin of graashak in a shop later on, too; and we would tend to call them marrowfat peas. Still, eh? How about this for a poser? I noticed that a number of the cars in the streets of Neum have cardboard draped over two or more of their wheels. I asked what the cardboard was there for and Paddy replied "You can use it to carry the wheels home in it when you steal them"! Ask a silly question! Anyway, here's the picture. I did a lot of PowerPoint Presentations during the course and since I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop I needed to be able to transfer files by CD ... my translator/interpreter had an old laptop that had a floppy drive but no CD drive: that is until I happened to open the "wrong" compartment of its carrying case and found a CD drive for that very computer. Turns out that they had been looking for that drive for 9 months and had even turned the office upside down looking for it at one stage. The reason they didn't find it in the carrying case? The chap who was using the thing assured everyone that it wasn't there! Here are a couple of other views of Neum, by the way, as I think it's a lovely looking spot! Enough! DW

Take a look at my Cost and Management Accounting Home Page. See? Good isn't it? The menu's different, you clot ... isn't it obvious?! I've found out how to put together a drop down menu and experimented with that page. It works quite well although my colour communications could do with a bit of a tweak, don't you think? All advice gratefully received! I intend to do this to all my section home pages before too long. More progress! DW

Update on the manky computer situation: I RESTOREd my laptop and got back on a decent footing with Outlook. Then the printer still gave me loads of grief: just can't understand this one; but then three reboots later all was OK and this morning computer and printer found each other without a hitch! What a life! DW

Just found out that my address book has completely disappeared from MS Outlook. I'd like to thank Borland for giving me the option to mess up my version of Outlook, I'd like to thank Microsoft for being such a monopolist and for failing to provide a decent working environment and I'd like to thank BT for being complicit in their own monopolistic desires. DW

This came in yesterday Dear Sirs, We are plaesed to inform you that we have created the very first italian web site dedicated to IAS. You can visit it at the following url: http://www.iasitalia.it Our goal is to promote the IAS culture and become a focal reference point in Italy for the e-ias community, sending out a free newsletter in italian about the latest IAS events. That's why we would love to directly collaborate with you and exchange news and links in our websites. We hope that you'll agree with our initiative. We send you our best whishes. the staff of iasitalia.it email: redazione@iasitalia.it So I took a look and there's some news about Switzerland, Ireland, Europe, the UK ... here's what it said about the UK: La Gran Bretagna estende l'utilizzo degli IFRS Dal gennaio 2005 tutte le imprese, quotate e non, del Regno Unito potranno applicare gli IFRS sia ai bilanci consolidati che a quelli individuali I clicked on the link anyway and was told La pagina richiesta è riservata ai visitatori registrati. With me so far? Don't worry Registrati ora: è gratis! If anyone goes there and finds the English language button, let me know! Otherwise, I genuinely wish them well as 2005 looms large and I know that the majority of British accountants aren't ready for it ... maybe don't even know that they really need to be ready for start up in 2004 so that they can begin reporting in 2005. DW

In the middle of my network problems, MS Outlook has decided that I don't need to reply to my email messages now. Come to that, why would I want to send new messages, too? Save yourself all the bother and don't send anything. Kuh! Why didn't I think of that before? Oi, why don't we disable receiving messages for a while, too? OK, go on then! That's the current position I'm in. Last week I INNOCENTLY took a peep at something called 3DAtlas (from Borland I think) and as I click, clicked it asked if I wanted to install Outlook ... since it's already installed I said no, of course. Wrong answer. So the installation of Outlook started apace in spite of what I said. I thought I'd ride this out until I could cancel the process and was duly given my opportunity. However, it reset my Folders settings so that messages were coming into the wrong group of folders and in order to reply to messages I had to move them physically. Until Monday, yesterday, when they saved me all the bother by preventing me from being able to reply to anything wherever it is. Along the way, I talked to a couple of people, on the phone at my own expense and may have found that BT (oh glorious BT) is in on this. BT provides my broadband service and I learned that it is they who have blocked the Tesco.Net account that I have not been able to send from my desktop for MONTHS; and I had been flagellating myself for having set something the wrong way, too. So, has 3DAtlas and MS together conspired to reconfigure my laptop such that BT has got involved and will now mean that I can only receive messages and not send anything and have to go right to my ISP web mail server to communicate with the world? That's a step back around 10 years I think! Of course, if you sign up for the half dozen or so email providers that BT supports, you're fine! This computer business is tiring don't you think? By the way, Windows XP, Office XP, firewall and fully up to date anti virus software (don't worry, it's not Norton) should mean that I am in the elite band of trouble free chappies but I'm not, as you can see. DW

I knew it was coming but I just didn't know it was going to be so awful: I've been Gatesed again. That's Bill Gates: I think that the only reason that Microsoft survives is because it has managed to secure a massive monopoly position. I don't use Linux or any other operating system apart from Windows but I know that I would like to. After more than 20 years of causing major frustrations, MS is seriously getting on my nerves. Here are two reasons why I say this: I have a digital camera and no surprise that I store the images on my laptop rather than the camera itself. When I connect the camera these days, it used to be perfect, Explorer opens and I can navigate easily to the relevant sub folder where the latest images are ... then when I click on an image to preview it, whoosh, Explorer flips over to the Control Panel. It's predictable so I'm not surprised any more. Then I go back to the pictures sub folder and everything's fine. This is a new diversion after 8 months without such a problem. I have a two computer network at home, this laptop and the family desktop. I am not an expert at networking and when I set it up it caused me heartache even though both computers are running Windows XP. Then it finally settled down and we share a printer and can transfer files easily, we share the internet connection ... all good stuff. However, I knew that when I came home from my recent trip that there would be trouble. I was shocked, therefore, on Sunday to find that having connected the network again I could print, share files and share the internet connection without a hitch. Until Monday, that is, when Gates' outfit decided that my network printer should no longer be found or findable: I changed nothing from Sunday to Monday. Then the desktop disappeared from the network, then the desktop came back but the laptop disappeared, then we were all happy again. Oh, now the printer's gone again. So, I connected the printer to my laptop as I really needed to print something ... it's a USB connection so that must be easy peasy. Wrong! The laptop wouldn't find the printer even though it was connected directly to it. I had to reboot twice for it to find the thing. I wasted three and a half hours on this network problem yesterday and have often thought that if we could all get back at MS for the time they waste they would be bankrupt within 6 months. End of this rant. DW

Long, long time no see ... been away in a marvellous little haven called Neum: take a look at the atlas to see where that is. OK, there's a bit of a clue early on but get the atlas out anyway it'll do you good! The Trip Home 16 August 2003 I was late leaving the hotel as I was saying goodbye to the boss! Then there was a bit of faffography as the driver lugged my suitcases up the stairs, we delivered a letter to another hotel and so on. The road from Neum to Dubrovnik Airport is long and winding and a just as we thought we had broken the back of the journey and estimated an arrival time of 2:20 pm, we got stuck in a queue behind a slowly moving lorry … we lost around 10 minutes and gained loads of stress as my flight was due to leave at 3:15 and I didn’t want to get there just to be told that they had closed it!. There are some shear drops on the passenger side of the road to Dubrovnik and I was horrified at some of them. As we passed above Dubrovnik itself I had an attack of vertigo as two large multi storey blocks of flats sent me into a tizz! Then there was the lunatic father with his two sons standing on the wrong side of a roadside barrier, on a ledge, overlooking a hideous drop. We arrived at the airport at around 2:30 pm and since it’s such a small airport we got inside fairly quickly. We couldn’t find the check in desk for Vienna, though, so I asked and was directed upstairs. Suitcases flailing, we dashed upstairs to find Customs, Passport Control, Duty Free Shops … Departures! Back downstairs and I said “I’ll ask at the information desk and you ask elsewhere …” As I arrived at the Information Desk a young lady just beat me to it and asked a question that seemed simple but took HOURS to answer. Well, two minutes anyway. Then my driver found the check in desk: just where the lady was whom I’d asked for directions but four minutes before. Now they had a Vienna sign up there. I wasn’t tempted by anything in Duty Free and we took off 15 – 20 minutes late and thought that making my connection would be difficult. As we were descending into Vienna they announced that people heading for Paris should run and for passengers to somewhere else, “Sheesh, you’ll be lucky!” As we were leaving the plane they said anyone for London should contact the people outside the aircraft. I was directed to a minibus where it transpired that I was the only person going to London immediately. I was given 5 star treatment as I was whisked across the airport and escorted via the service lift right to my check in desk. 5 star turned to 1 star when they very politely told me that since my flight was late they had assumed that I wouldn’t make it and so they bumped me off the flight, “You were too quick for us” they said. They held out a glimmer of hope as they had three no shows and expected that one of them would definitely not show. Otherwise, I would have to wait for the 7 pm BA flight. A five minute wait and then suddenly I was whisked away again and was the last passenger to board the London bound A321 Airbus that really was heaving with people: following the flight on the Tiny Tyrolean Twin Turboprop, this was a huge plane! As I got to my seat I found it occupied by a young lady who turned out to be American. Just as she launched into a dramatic fond farewell speech to the friend by her side, I said “Where’s your seat, I’ll sit there?” “32D” says she. As I toddled off she and her friend mouthed it large in now unmistableable cross Atlantic drawl, “Aw, that’s real kind of y’all” or similar. I felt it wasn’t appropriate to given them a syntax or grammar lesson as: • I needed to sit down • the Yanks have just paid my salary for the last two weeks, housed and fed me so praise be As the pilot had announced a small delay (I HOPE to get my bags on board) they played Austrian Airline’s signature tune … a bit too enthusiastically. Spookily, as I’d observed to myself in Dubrovnik airport that I hadn’t seen a man with a pony tail for two weeks, an elderly man with a PIG TAIL stood up and ponced his way to tell the stewardesses that it was all too loud. They turned down the volume! Well done Austrian as despite having flung me off the flight once and having significantly shanged my seat, they still brought me my veggie meal of cheese sandwich and tiny bunch of delicious grapes! The truth is that I covet the non veggie puddings that everyone else gets but would have to eat meat to get at them! Can you believe that a young lad, six or seven years old, walked past me wearing a Newscastle United shirt? He was lucky to survive! His hair was cut in a steppy way, too! Now that I was back among my own, let me record that we are a stricken breed: pig tail man Newcastle United shirt spindly legged woman of advanced years with black ankle socks, shorts, leather shoes (needing polishing) a tee shirt of yore … and wrinkles under her knees floral print dress woman wearing flip flops earring man with silver trainers: I ask you! Austrian put the television on without any sound. That was fine for “Just for Laughs” which was visual comedy but the interview with the mega surfer was lost on everyone but the lip readers among us! Then there was the couple in the queue at Vienna: she berated him for wandering off and leaving her alone for 20 minutes. He took the abuse for a while but then retorted with “I don’t know why you’re talking as if you’re the victim because when I did get back to finish me chips, they’d all gone”! Silence was the reply! Pig tail’s party at the carousel at Heathrow: one says to the other, “Don’t panic if your bags don’t arrive now, it doesn’t mean that you’ve lost them. They’ll be on the next flight. So don’t think they’re lost. No, they’ll not be lost. They send them on the next flight. That could be tonight.” I had my back to that lot when that happened so I’ve no idea why this chap repeated his message and I never heard anyone else speaking or replying … except that I turned round to see pig tail pick his nose and eat the proceeds! I sat next to two Korean girls on the London flight and they spoke to each other in English. One spoke English public school English and the other one spoke like an American. English English said “I love being back in England. (pause) You don’t have to pay to use the toilet”! Where has she been? Tried to get a drink from a vending machine at the Central Bus Stop at Heathrow having retrieved my luggage with no bother, only to find that they wanted £1 per small bottle. Anyway, both machines were empty so I went to WH Smith’s … where a bottle cost me £1.09. Modern, hideously expensive, rip off Britain, welcome home! Then my mobile phone was cut off! Home James on the X70 to Oxford to be met by my kind Italian neighbour who gave me a lift to my door! Here endeth my trip home! DW

This is priceless and true and I got it from the News Quiz programme on BBC Radio 4 last night. An amendment slip relating to a Sexual Offences Bill being tabled before the House of Lords contained this: Page 32 paragraph 3 line 3 extract genitals inset penis I wonder if anyone even thought what they were doing when they wrote that? DW

It has been very hot here over the last week or so, prompting the newspapers to declare Britain the 'new Mediterranean'. It all came crashing down over night and this morning I woke to deliciously cool temperatures and lashing rain. The good news is that the garden gets watered free of charge and effort ... and so does my Italian neighbour's garden that I am tending during his three week sojourn in and around Bologna! DW

Mrs W finally got me into Homebase to buy some garden furniture but on Sunday we had decided to buy X only to find that the desk we needed to use to get the stuff delivered was not manned ... we waited 10 minutes and as no one appeared and I said let's come back tomorrow. Tomorrow arrived and we made our final choices and went to that desk again ... no one! We went to the information desk now and I asked, rhetorically, if there should be someone at the special order desk. Young whippersnapper replied that there was 'no one there'. I didn't like his tone, especially since I was in a shop (aaaaagh!) and barked back, 'How will I place an order then?' A very tall, pale and ginger haired young chappie was pointed at and I was entreated to bide my time and wait for him. Ginger nut did the business quite well I'd say and even offered to let me keep my money off vouchers so that I could use them again but it was more than his job was worth to do that! (I did ask and he did say he'd like to help!) During the admin procedures, though, he was faced with a problem that he couldn't process my money off vouchers immediately becasue only one person at a time in the entire shop can do that so I had to wait for 5 minutes as the other person doing that logged off that part of the system. Homebase, rethink that part of your strategy. On the way out as we paid for the plant food that Mrs W said we NEEDED, the young whippersnapper who had answered my rhetorical question so badly was the cashier who was serving us and he redeemed himself by asking 'Did you get everything you wanted?' I took him off the hit list!! We now await Friday and the delivery of our furniture. I'll report back. DW

Today's massive piece of advice: don't mess with your computer's registry. It's a good job I've got a capacity for staring at a computer screen ad infinitum! On Monday I decided, with Dima away, that it was time to sort out the computer and strip out all of the stuff we didn't need. I'd already offloaded 4 Giga bytes of rubbish from the hard disk over the weekend and decided to tidy up the registry. I used some trial software to analyse the registry and it told me there was a huge amount wrong but wouldn't do anything about it until I bought the software. So, I trolled over to Microsoft and found RegMaid. I ran RegMaid, free of charge, and it showed me what I thought were my problems so I deleted the whole lot. WRONG! What RegMaid had done was to show me the whole registry and not just the problems. I was then, apparently, to take the decision as to what was problematic and what wasn't. Now rebooting was a problem. I had to reactivate my Windows XP software and then reinstall all software. I called the Microsoft help desk as I had a particular problem with Outlook and whilst the chap tried, I had called at around 5:30 pm and the problem I had was a toughie for him so come six pm he told me to run detect and repair and he would call back tomorrow ... six pm is his finishing time and he clearly wasn't up to working even one second of overtime. I did what they said but if failed so I worked through the problem myself and solved it ... with a residual error that I solved later, again alone. The MS chap did call back whilst I was at work and away from the computer so we couldn't solve my remaining Outlook problem: I can't send any messages from it! DW

Oh, nearly forgot. Yesterday, Saturday, was another driving special: Abingdon Wembley Abingdon in the morning to take my laptop to be repaired. I went to www.rac.co.uk and got them to provide me with directions to my destination ... for the first time ever they let me down and sent me down a route that turned out to be daft! Two and a half hours that was mainly plain sailing but was too circuitous but I had accepted their directions without question. For the return journey I consulted my road atlas and found my own extremely direct route that took us just one and a half hours. Just goes to show, what? Dima was able to sleep for the last half hour or so! Then to get Dima and his companion Florance to France Abingdon Heathrow Airport Abingdon in the evening. I've done this journey many times now and usually go through Henley on Thames but be advised that last week they had the Regatta that caused some snarl ups and yesterday they were in the middle of another extravaganza and that caused a major snarl: that was me snarling, by the way. So, an hour and 20 minutes to get there and 50 minutes to get home, via the M40 this time as we gave Henley a large swerve for the return journey. Mrs W was able to sleep on the return journey this time! DW

It's gloriously hot here now. We took a detour from our weekly shop this morning to go to Homebase as Mrs W feels that we NEED a barbecue and a garden furniture set. We haggled over the furniture as she wants something vast whereas our patio is ten quid short of vast! I am absolutely indifferent to the barbecue since I'm a vegetarian, too. In the end, we agreed on a course of action but then Homebase played a blinder by failing to have their special order desk manned. So, they may well have lost our order. Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer and they are unable to organise their staff. Shareholders and management take note. They won't, of course. This message will have no impact whatsoever! DW

What's happening? I've lost the will to Blog by the look of it. All of a sudden I've gone from being someone who keeps a diary religiously on a daily basis to being someone who writes a catch up diary. Anyway, last weekend we drove many miles. On Saturday 5 July we drove from Abingdon to Bath then on to Cheddar Gorge, to Wells, to Stonehenge and finally back to Abingdon: a total of around 230 miles. A lot to take in in one day. Non drivers please note, for your edification and entertainment, you lot can sleep whilst your driver has to stay awake and alert: for hours and hours on end at times. The following day we took a spin to Windsor and Eton. Had a picnic in Windsor Great Park: well, the bits down the edge where they let the likes of us to sit on roughly hewn logs and look on admiringly at the vast expense of exceptionally expensive land that our glorious Royal family inherits for its sole usage from generation to generation. Don't let that comment stop them from bestowing a Knighthood or Peerage on me as and when they see fit! We arrived too late to take a tour round Eton College but we saw bits from outside. Good wheeze that, by the way. Set up a school hundreds of years ago and then wait for society to feel the need to have expensively educated children wherein the schools they attend are private and exclusive. Then allow the likes of you and me to wander round at £3 a head. Good business as lots of people are prepared to pay for the privilege of gawping in that manner on that pile of bricks. How about this: Dima has trolled off to France for a spell and I told him as he was leaving that if he didn't tidy up his section of the hard drive on family computer before he left, I'd kindly do it for him. So a couple of hours this morning were dedicated to that task: I deleted over 3 Gigabytes of games software. I also got rid of a shed load of programs that were just clogging up the system: media players, dating software ... what young lads get up to these days! In the middle of it all I wanted to uninstall the Office XP Media Content package that I'd installed ... all 610 Mb of it. I have used it but not for a while and I can always reinstall it from my pukkah disks if needs be. Anyway, I let the dratted machine whirr and click for around 10 minutes as it told me it was looking for components ... I stopped it ... it then took five more minutes to stop looking for those wretched components. It's still there, then!! In the middle of all of that, the computer hung and wouldn't do anything but make me wait. Thank you and come on down Bill Gates III. DW

Modise from South Africa asked me a question I'd never thought much about before: Hi, Can you send information on conducting a due diligence review. Regards, Modise Here is what I found: Juniper from the UK works on due diligence too: take a look as they give a few examples of what they have done in this area. SRK (UK) Ltd carries out due diligence work and the link here takes us to a fairly comprehensive opening page. The Miller Law Firm in the USA gives a checklist of what they do in their due diligence reviews. Schneider Downs provides a similar listing. ICF Consulting offers environmental due diligence that might help us to broaden our views of what the process involves. From Russia, Russaudit to be precise, there's a similar introduction to the due diligence process. That looks like a good start to me, Modise. DW

A follow up from Alvaro about Parameter Queries in Excel shows that we have settled this issue amicably! Thank you. I just realized that on Saturday. I had never worked with this command before. I do know how to solve my problem now. Your mail is giving me the certainty of it. I'll tell you just a little bit of what I'm doing. I'm the Maintenance chief at a microcomponents facility. One of my technicians is programming a database to control and manage the preventive and corrective issues. Because that database is just in the first stage, I don't want to make it hard for him, so I decided not to include yet the reporting module in the database, instead I'm consulting it with Excel. You know it is nice for charts. Well, friend, thank you very much for your help. Keep in contact. Well done! DW

George wrote to me from Texas as follows: I had a question regarding financial statement preparation in the UK - Are there separate books kept in the UK a la the US? US companies file financial statements for the tax authorities and outside investors and account with line items for the difference. I was wondering how similar circumstances are handled in the U.K. Thanks for your help. It's possible to answer this question in several ways, so I answered as follows in the first instance: Hi George, Whilst British Accounting Standards have many similarities to the FASB’s pronouncements, there are significant differences between them. However, to help you to get to grips with what is required of a British company and its accounting requirements, let me send you to the UK’s Companies House web site. Search through this site, asking for accounting, returns, filing and so on and see if that answers your question. If not, let me know what your remaining problem is and I’ll do what I can to help. Best wishes DW

Nikolai has written to me from Denmark to tell me something I didn't know. He wrote: Hi D, Excellent method for making box and whisker diagrams (boxplots) in Excel. Regarding the missing cross, it’s no big deal really since the dash is preferable to the cross as a median symbol. Anyway, in order to see the cross and other ‘missing’ symbols, background colour has to be set to ‘no colour’ and voilà, all missing markers are now available. The diagrams will look more professional if the markers for Q1 and Q3 are omitted, that is set marker to none. And to make the box plot statistically correct the whiskers should not extend to the minimum and maximum values but to the smallest and largest observations within 1,5*IQR (interquartile range, Q3-Q1). Observations between 1,5*IQR and 3*IQR are termed mild outliers and are marked with a circle (for example), whereas observations that fall outside of 3*IQR are termed extreme outliers and are marked with a cross. Creating a box plot that reflects true IQR, mild and extreme outliers will demand a bit more manual work as min and max observations will have to be compared to <1,5*IQR and then set as the range of the whiskers, and if there are observations >1,5 and 3*IQR, they will have to be included in the data table used for the box plots. Regards, Nikolai Graae I checked my work and found that all of my sources agreed with my method and I with theirs. Then I found a book that I have that agrees with Nikolai. So, very soon there will be a BoxPlots Revisions Page that will explain what Nikolai has shown me, how to use his knowledge and what it all means. Watch this space ... DW

For anyone who's hanging on with bated breath to see my revised palm tree photograph, wait no more! It's here, well, scroll down anyway and see a much better version than was here until today. Any plam tree experts who come to call, let me know what you think I should do with the thing. DW

Every now and again I get a question that I can't fully answer. This one came in from Costa Rica of all places and is as follows: Dear D, I'm an engineer trying to get a query from one of our maintenance system databases. I need to use the Parameters option of the Excel's External Data toolbar but it isn't active and I can't find the way of making it active. Can you help me? Thanks in advance. Alvaro Why did Alvaro ask me that question? Well, take a look at this page to see: Download Data from the Internet Using Microsoft Excel XP/2002 What did I say in reply? Here you are: Dear Alvaro, Here is what I think you are facing. Firstly, the parameter query option is a DATABASE option and will not work in an ‘ordinary’ Excel External Data Query. Take a look at this Help page from Microsoft and make sure that you are following all of the rules to do with setting up a Get External Data query properly: I know you probably are; but just in case. For more advanced, Parameter Query, work, you need to do the following:

• Data
• Import External Data
• New Database Query

You might be told that you have to install this feature but it should do so automatically. However, once this is up and running I am sorry to tell you that I have never used it and a quick look tells me that it would take me a while to get used to it! Finally, I THINK this is the answer to your question but if not, let me know and I’ll ask someone who does know. Anyway, I hope this has been of some use at least. Best wishes DW

UPDATED ON MONDAY 30 JUNE I scanned the diseased palm photo again and have posted it here: much better and anyone who knows about these things and can help, I'd be very grateful. I've got a couple of photographs to tantalise and inform! The first one is a palm tree that resides in my living room and it has some kind of disease. The spots are partly spots within the leaves and partly hard, compacted dust type things. No idea what it is but it grows healthily! Sorry for the HUGE gap that appears between the photo and the next line of text ... no idea what causes that but it has to be caused by the Blogging software: it doesn't like tables either. The second pic is of the side of my car now that Mr M drove into and along it. The latest is that the car may have to be written off as it could cst more to repair than it's worth. Oh the inconvenience of it all! What a bloody day that was. DW

Take another tip from me: if you are sharing your living space with at least one other person, eg wife, children, Marley's ghost (that's Jacob, not Bob!), it's well worth your while rummaging around those apparently inaccessible places from time to time. A year ago I heard from Mrs W that she was so sad that whilst she was packing to go to Almaty she inadvertently threw out Dima's NEW mobile phone. They realised too late what she'd done, tried to call the number just to check ... all was lost. At the turn of the year, Dima got a new mobile from O2 and all was calm. On Wednesday evening of this week I was spreading myself all over the settee when my hand drifted South and connected with an interesting object ... Dima's lost mobile phone. Far from having been chucked out, it had simply slid down the back of the settee and remained there, silent, ever since. Since Mrs W is a hoarder of some things, we had kept that phone's battery charger and within half an hour or so had revived the thing. I have now told the two that I intend to sell one of the two phones that Dima has ... find out what's for sale and make me an offer by writing to me at duncan@duncanwil.co.uk! Seriously, I mean it. I'm waiting. DW

Take a tip from me: never wait four years to catch up on your bookkeeping! I have just decided that since I have returned to the UK on more of a permanent basis than not that I ought to get my profit and loss account and balance sheets up to date ... the tax man will want to get to know me better! I have operated a parallel filing system that has kept all of my documents, statements and such like together (Mrs W has done her best to keep the system randomly distributed around the house, of course) so it's not been a massive nightmare, just time consuming. Anyway, after a day and a half, I am about to use PIVOT TABLES to get my accounts drafted. Then I intend to use Sage Line 50 to archive them and then use that as my ongoing bookkeeping and accounting supremo! I'll let you know how I get on! DW

Happy Birthday Fran our national and international swimming champion is 18 years old today, 16 June 2003. Lots of love and many congratulations from all at www.duncanwil.co.uk! DW

I get messages from all sorts of people from all sorts of locations about all sorts of things. Over the weekend I got two unconnected messages about two of my book reviews: Firstly, Hello, This will sound weird considering I don't know you. But, I am halfway through reading "The Partner" by John Grisham and have a report due Monday (!!!) and I just need help around the last half of the book. I saw that you wrote a review for amazon.com and thought you might help? thanks in advance!! WMK Secondly, Hi there Duncan, I just came across your minor tribute website to Robert Tressell, and thought I would first of all say congratulations, and that you've created an interesting site on an extremely good book, and an extremely interesting man. Secondly, I am doing a brief university paper on a novel of my choice, in which I am required to apply a traditional literary criticism, a history of the book, and a history of the reading of the book. I have chosen the RTP as the case study for the paper. (for a number of different reasons). Although I have most of the information that I need to complete it, I would like to somehow find out a little more about the original publishers...how they marketed the book, what group of people they targeted in order to sell the book etc etc... As well as this, I would like to find out more about what type of people read it, how much it cost them to buy it, how many copies were originally sold etc etc. I have managed to come across a copy of 'one of the damned' by Fred Ball, but unfortunately it is located in a reference library here in Brisbane and I can't borrow it out. I'm not sure if you've read this book yourself, but if you haven't, I would highly recommend it. It really is an extremely interesting read. Finally, any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated, even if it is a link to a website, or any books that you could recommend to me. As I said earlier, I've got nearly all the information that I need (and the paper is nearly due), but anymore information that you think would help would be great. Thanks very much in advance DL Brisbane, Australia As far as WMK was concerned, I had to say I read the book over a year ago but can't remember the full details except that the twist in the tail at the end of the book is ... well, you wouldn't want me to reveal that, now, would you? I was happy to hear WMK reply, though, as follows: You'll be surprised because that actually did help.. Quite a bit really. Thank you so much! I'd be screwed if not for that, now I'm only partially screwed, but I'll find a way. ;) Thanks again!! WMK HTH as they say! For DL of Brisbane I said that I'd put him in touch with Reg Johnson, the widower of Robert Tressell's grand daughter. Reg maintains the Tressell family papers ... Reg replied, as I couldn't give his email without permission: Many thanks for your message of this morning. It was a pleasure to hear from you. I appreciate your passing on the message from Declan Law of Brisbane. The world of Tressell never stands still and we never know where the next enquiry will come from. I will of course be pleased to help Declan in any way possible to research his material. If you could let me have his e_mail I will write to introduce myself and welcome him to the world of Tressell. Currently, I am in contact with six other students who et their sights on attaining their PhDs. Interestingly, some of the info DL seeks will be answered in the new book 'Tressell'. This goes to the printers tomorrow and should be in the bookshops later in he month. It will be an interesting and informative addition to the Tressell story. Your own website is a valuable contribution to spreading a greater understanding of Robert and the RTP. ... Another interesting devlopment is that tomorrow a new website is to be launched. This is presented by the London Metropolitan University, custodians of the TUC archives. A major part of this will be the complete Robert's original manuscript together with much other information. It has been a pleasure to help them with research material for the site. This will lead you to other pages on the site. I have mentioned your site to Alex Bromley, the Project Manager, and suggested that he has a look at your site. It is possible that he may want to mention your site as a 'link'. You may hear from him. Time to stop chattering on, looking forward to keeping in touch, best wishes, Reg So I put Reg and DL in touch with each other and hope it helps: good of DL to write anyway as it helped us to learn more from Reg about movements on the Robert Tressell front. DW

At last, rubbishEnglish has a result! I was rummaging around the Public Records Office web site this morning and the following copy of an email I sent to them lets you know what I found. I am delighted to say that if you go to that page now you will see that the error has been corrected. On this page, at the point at which you suggest forms of identification for presentation at the PRO you include the phrase 'drivers licence'. There are two mistakes here that you will want to correct. Firstly, in this context, drivers is possessive and should be written driver's. Secondly, and much more importantly, the UK has a system of driving licences and it is the USA that has a system of drivers' licences. Please change the phrase to read 'driving licence' and you will solve both of the problems that I have highlighted in one fell swoop. DW Here's a fascinating thing, though. When you look at that page at the PRO you might realise the uncertainties of modern life. The Domesday Book to which that page refers is now over 920 years old and we can still read it, see it, copy it ... the laser disks that were produced in the mid 1980s have already had to be rescued as the pace of technological change almost meant that they were lost in an obsolete technology. Paper and parchment can survive thousands of years even when it is mistreated. Laser disks can survive millennia no doubt but reading them in a thousand years will definitely be a massive problem. Think of the Rosetta Stone, too, and how that has proven to be both primitive and advanced at one and the same time! DW

Ever heard of Tax Freedom Day? Apparently tax freedom day is an estimate of the day in the year when we all stop working for the taxman and start working for ourselves. For example, if we pay, say, a total of 30% of our income to the tax man in terms of income tax, VAT, customs duties and the like, then tax freedom day starts just after 30% of the year has passed: that would be around 21 April. If we pay 50% of our earnings in tax then tax freedom day starts on 1 July. Apparently, despite all her promised, tax freedom day started latest of all recent Government Administrations under Margaret Thatcher's leadership! Well, well, well. Never liked her! Thanks to Accountancy Age for that riveting information. DW

Ever been innocently driving along from A to B when all of a sudden a car comes towards you in which the driver is facing backwards as he winds up the rear window of his car such that he not only doesn't see you coming round the tight bend in front of him but as he is going in a more or less straight line, ploughs right into the side of you? That's what happened to yours truly yesterday. He sustained a bruised bumper and a smashed side light. I sustained major denting and scraping of the driver's door and the passenger's door on the same side. When I get the photo's developed I'll let you see. He admitted liability immediately since we were driving down a narrow lane that both of us know very well and I was being ever cautious: it's narrow, blind and dangerous. I just hope he does the decent thing now and doesn't claim something spurious in his defence. DW

I wasn't sure until I just checked but, steady yourself, I sat opposite Boris Johnson MP in a restaurant in London on Tuesday evening. An Indian restaurant. He dined alone and so did I. He had just about finished his meal by the time I arrived and as he let his dinner settle he read a serious looking tome on market economics. You'll know Boris Johnson as that clottish MP for Henley on Thames who can string very few coherent sentences together in a row despite his Eton College and Balliol College Oxford background. Thought I'd throw that in! DW

Andrew wrote as follows: hello again! I have been struggling to make sense of the college lectures on variance analysis, & am trying to revise for the costing paper of the central assessments for my AAT intermediate module. now I have found your variance trees for materials, labour & variable overheads analysis, & fortunately it is now beginning to make sense! best wishes Isn't that nice to know? The answer should be yes! By the way, the page Andrew was looking at is this one: well worth a look! DW

Well, is this the first casualty of the move from one web host to another. The files are in place somewhere but the last post in this Blog is dated December 2002 ... keep watching! DW

I'm back ... did you miss me? I've been off line for much of this week. Changed Web Host and took a trip to a seminar in London and then decided not to upload the site again until I had broadband installed at home ... broadband arrived today and here we are again! Welcome back! DW

Can you imagine a 6 foot 2 and a half inch 93 kilogramme frame slithering across the dance floor in a meaningful way to the Salsa rhythm? Neither could the young lady who tried to learn the basics of Salsa from me following on from my own one hour lesson of earlier in the evening! Went to a very entertaining Salsa evening at Oxford Town Hall last night. It started with a lesson for the uninitiated like me. Of course, I thought I did well and was ready to do a John Tavolta all over the knot end. My prospective partner had always been prepared (warned seems the operative word with hindsight) to learn from me but when we hit the floor it took her the length of time it takes light to travel one metre to decide that my Salsa skills were already worse than hers and she knew nothing. We then stood and admired the rest of the people on the dance floor for a while then made our excuses and left! Dima is a natural dancer and with his partner Joanne he did a lot better than me: at least Jo was prepared to stay on the dance floor with him for the entire evening! Mrs W can't dance at the moment because of a sharp pain in her hips. Dima is ballroom trained and was inspired by the end of the evening to ask Jo is she wanted to take Salsa and other dancing lessons with him and she gave him a tentative yes: hope it works out for them. Isn't it sickening to see people with such rhythm and talent only for yourself to realise that God didn't bless everyone with the same genetic complement?? It was hot and sticky there too so when we got home, at just after 12:30 am Mrs W ordered : showers for EVERYONE! Sir, yes sir!! Son Andrew answered the call and provided the solution to a sticky maths problem for us: all to do with circles, tangents and isosceles triangles. Here's the solution ... you can imagine the question! Myanswer is... (2y - x - 90)/2 Triangle AOC is a isocoles triangle, as line OA and OB are equal to the radius, therefore angle OBA must be (180 - x)/2. Angle CBO must then be 180 - ((180-x)/2 + y ), giving (180+x-2y)/2. Triangle OCB is also isocoles as line OC is equal to the radius, so angle OCB also equals (180+x-2y)/2. Angle OCT is also a right angle as line CT is tangential to the circumference. BCT must then equal 90-OCB, which is 90 - ((180+x-2y)/2), which equates to (2y-x-90)/2 DW

Went for a drive on Monday evening, Bank Holiday Monday: took Mrs W and Dima to a place on the Thames called Goring. Nice place with an excellent riverside set of pubs and restaurants. We parked the car and started legging it towards a pub for a drink and a meal. As we neared the place Mrs W said she couldn't stand the smoke ... what smoke? It sounded too lively, too! So we moved on and found a very quiet place on the river that served excellent food for carnivores. The food for veggies consisted of what seems to be the statutory veggie dish of the day PASTA. Everywhere I go these days there is often only one veggie starter, one veggie main course and the main course veggie alternative is just about always pasta. So I had that then: passable. Mrs W and Dima were delighted by theirs. The puddings were fine, though! DW

A friend of mine from the good old US of A has sent me a news clipping that had slipped my net: Know this chap?? Apparently a teacher has been arrested in the UK for possession of compasses, protractors, and straight edges. It is claimed he is a member of the Al Gebra movement, bearing weapons of maths instruction. DW

This is a first for me. Dima came home from his successful French Oral exam today to regale us with the story of the young lad, clearly not so well prepared, who decided to try to 'Allo! Allo!' his way through his own French Oral exam by ... speaking English with a strong but assumed French accent! He heard that another young lad did the same last week but in his German Oral exam. Five years and what have they learned? Andrew Hooper sent me a gift this week: some Handkerchief Tree seeds. Andrew read my page on this topic last week and got in touch. Apparently they are a bit difficult to germinate but I will give it a go and then wait the required 10 years for the flowers to appear! Good one Andrew! I wrote to the 'Friends of duncanwil.co.uk' this week and got an encouraging set of replies: these are the people who have received direct help from www.duncanwil.co.uk over the last 6 months or so. There are lots of them and their messages and my replies run into hundreds. DW

Ever needed to do some eMarketing? Here's one man's review of how he did it and the trials and tribulations he went through: an interesting read. This is redolent of what I'm going through at the moment, too! DW

Do you like Jerome K Jerome? I do and I always have. Rereading Jerome's Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow reminded me of this from the chapter On the Weather: It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government: always in the wrong. In summer time we say it is stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it would make up its mind. If it is fine we say the country is being ruined for want of rain; if it does rain we pray for fine weather. If December passes without snow, we indignantly demand to know what has become of our good old fashioned winters, and talk as if we had been cheated out of something we had bought and paid for; and when it does snow, our language is a disgrace to a Christian nation. We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself. Bearing in mind that this book was first published in 1889, isn't it strange that we still think and talk the same way today about our glorious old British climate!? Then we have our own, still prevalent, view of ourselves, our habits and our expertise: Our next door neighbour comes out in the back garden every now and then and says it’s doing the country a world of good: not his coming out into the back garden, but the weather. He doesn’t understand anything about it, but ever since he started a cucumber frame last summer he has regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist and talks in this absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terrace with the notion that he is a retired farmer. Sound like anyone you know? By the way, you can download this book free of charge from the Gutenberg Project: a fantastic resource for anyone looking into old and classic texts. Search for the book or author you are interested in and if it's there, it could be stored on your hard disk within minutes or even seconds. DW

I have no particular axe to grind over the war with Iraq but this report from the BBC left me feeling cold: working on the assumption that it's all true. I have always been suspicious of military types who want to rule the world and this doesn't help to assuage any of those feelings. End of social comment! DW

Dima took his first GCSE exam of the summer yesterday: he had to deliver a couple of speeches in German to the examiner! He's good at languages so it went well enough. He was "working" with his mother for the last few hours before the exam and they had some interesting exchanges of opinion! I found out the other day that network hardware has fallen in price by a factor of 12 or even 20 since I last looked and for the princely sum of GBP9 I bought an Ethernet network card for the desktop and hooked it up to the laptop: we now have an all singing and dancing home network that has already begun to show its worth. The reason for the fall in price is that they are now promoting wireless networks and they cost up to and over GBP100 a set. Now we can share the printer, files and even internet access so that whatever we do, there is no switching cables around, waiting for someone else to finish what they're doing to log on ... There was a pantomime attached to all of this however! I bought the box for GBP9 and installed the card ... went through the Windows routine of setting up the network protocols and so on. Wouldn't work. Spent an hour with Dima and still we couldn't get it to work. After a break went back to it and I found that since I was just connecting two computers without a hub, don't need it, I did need a Crossover Cable. I thought, I bet the cable I got with the £9 kit isn't Crossover. The following day I tried to call PCWorld where I bought the kit: first time their automated answering service was no help to me as I ended up in a department that had nothing to offer me. Then called again and was told to call their premium help line at GBP1 a minute. They told me that I needed someone else as they themselves know nothing about networking. I got through to someone who ASSURED me that I did indeed have a Crossover cable. Called the company that sold me my laptop and despite being barely able to understand what he was saying as he seemed completely preoccupied with something else, he did convince me that my cable was not Crossover. Went back to PCWorld and bought a Crossover cable having checked in person with them that the cable they previously supplied was NOT Crossover. Another GBP9 I should add. Connected the two computers with the new cable and IMMEDIATELY the network kicked in. What a palaver! DW

Part 2 of Tony's requests: Economic Growth this time Slightly unusual home page but it promises much You are promised a lot on the ins and out of growth, data sets, surveys, references, events, networks. It looks good but MAYBE not a 1st level resource. Biz/ed is a brilliant resource and you should find some very useful links here: they are not all relevant, however! How about this? In this analytical article, we examine the relationship between economic growth and the ability to travel - and how "virtual mobility" is changing the equation. There’s a massive resource of links and references from SOSIG The Centre for Growth … might be able to help The Bank of England must have something useful to say! There you are Tony: two excellent sets of links I think. DW

Tony bounced back with two requests: links on inflation and growth ... to help him with his end of 1st year University exams. Inflation A very basic introduction The Bank of England knows a thing or two about inflation: take a look some of the ways that the BoE uses probabilities in its inflation work including fan charts MoneyWorld gives you a database of inflation stats and a couple of basic definitions The ONS’s latest view of inflation plus a few useful links on the right hand side of the page From the UK Parliament is a pdf file on the value of the Pound from 1750 1998 Along the same lines but much more varied and comprehensive is Here you can find costs and values from Ancient Rome via medieval England to modern Britain … Norway, the USA and more. The Economist has an excellent glossary that includes inflation lots of links in the inflation section, too. Samuel Brittan says that Inflation Can be Too Low A slide based view of inflation, unemployment and expectations looks as if it aimed at MBA students from City University Under the heading of Revision Notes: Government Finances from learnDirect with related links on the left hand side of the page From the House of Lords: Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England - Report a LOT to read through, with the inflation control aspects to scroll for! An exam paper from the University of Exeter Principles of Economics ... no answers of course! From the Oxford School of Learning: generally aimed at A level but will apply to 1st year Undergraduate: Outline the Monetarist and non-Monetarist approaches to inflation This might be useful: an essay on Control of the Monetary Environment from the University of Essex Happy reading Tony! DW

Made a custard layer cake on Saturday and you can only imagine how good it is! DW

On Thursday evening I baked a coffee cake and finished it off with butter cream and a dusting of cocoa powder ... then I called it a Cappuccino cake. Marvellous! DW

I just spent 20 minutes telling you all about Dima's Leaver's Ball at which he looked very smart as did his partner Charlotte. I told you about the 6 month long saga of the evening suit. Then I pressed the wrong button and lost the lot. In the end, we have to say that Marks and Spencer came out of the process with their ceridbility dented and we ended up with a decent suit with just 4 hours to spare. DW

I am happy to announce that there are quite a few cherries on our old cherry tree this year and the apple tree looks as if it might be festooned with apples. The plum tree didn't blossom at all this year and the second cherry tree blossomed but it doesn't look as if there is going to be any fruit this year: we moved the plum tree and the second cherry tree is new this year. The pear tree has fruit on it, more than last year too by the look of it. There are birds in my garden that have taken a dislike to the marigolds I transplanted at the weekend: they've eaten or destroyed them, the bleeders! As a matter of interest, bark chippings are a great way of keeping the weeds down and keeping the soil most. They are also a great way for birds to want to throw them all over the place as they move them around in search of insects and larvae. Messy bleeders they are! DW

Paul wrote this over at AccountingWeb I have created an Excel file, but everytime I open it, 2 identical files are opened. They are shown as .xls:1 and .xls:2. Why is this happening, and how do I stop it? In Explorer, only one file is shown, as .xls Paul Sanderson Jim added I think that you have managed to set up two different views of the sames files (hence, why only one file in Explorer). I have accidently done that before and never been able to figure out how to get back to just one view. Mark told Paul and Jim how to get rid of it: You've opened a new window within a spreadsheet. Easiest way to get rid of the extra window is to open the file and close one of the windows by clicking on the "x" box on the top right hand side. Not the "x" to close Excel but the one below that. This closes the extra window. Then save the file. This will get rid of the extra window permanantly. I piled right in with how they got it in the first place and then confirmed how to get rid of it: One really useful feature of Excel is that it allows us to take a file, any file, and open two or even more views of it and have those two or more views on screen at the same time. This is useful where you are working with a large and/or complex file and need to see what is happening here and there at the same time. It's also useful when developing complex formulae and so on. However, you don't want it so here's how to get it and here's how to get rid of it: to get it: Open a file in Excel click Window in the menu bar at the top of the screen select New Window click Window again select Arrange choose Tiled (choose any of them but just choose Tiled for now!) hey presto what do you see but TWO views of the same file: one called book1:1 and book1:2 to get rid of it: close the one you don't want, and it doesn't matter which one, by clicking on the X in the top left of its screen and it will disappear like magic and you will be left with little old book1 on its own. So there you are! DW

Yesterday in Oxford I came across a sign in Longwall Lane (or is it Street?) that announced, appropriately for this august city I felt: Advanced Warning ... this road will be closed ... Now, plebs like you and I have to make do with Advance Warnings but in the city of dreaming spires they are just that cut above! In the consulting room of one of Oxford's hospitals was a measuring scale for measuring people's heights ... vertical, attached to the wall ... but at the top, the slidey down bit was a child's plastic rule that was hanging on to the thing by a scabby piece of sellotape (Scotch tape if you must). I wish I'd had my camera. More seriously, the doctor began the consultation by having us sit in silence as he read Mrs W's notes (for the first time by the look of it) and then announced he'd like to have seen Mrs W's X ray plates to help with his consultation but they were "lost in the system" somewhere: she'd never seen this man before and since she's only weeks away from a major operation, we felt it was laughable that he tried to make such light work of such a major omission. That's Modern Britain for you and yet people are fighting Tony Blair's NHS reforms! DW

Nick asked about an update to my easyJet case study and whether there is one. There isn't yet but following on from today's annojncement from the company of their pre and post tax loss for the 6 months to 31 March 2003, there soon will be. Here is what I said to Nick: Dear Nick, Whilst I am intrigued to review easyJet again since they are about to post a LOSS this morning for the first time ever, I don’t have anything in the pipeline today but could well have within the week. I said in my original assessment, or when I was introducing it, that I didn’t like the way that easyJet’s pricing policy was really just a scam and having researched some of their prices recently I have been proven correct! From their web site this morning: easyJet plc generated a loss before tax, goodwill and non-recurring items for the six month period [to 31 March 2003] of £24m which compares to a reported profit of £8.3m for the same period in the prior year. The loss after tax for the period was £46.9m, which compares to a reported profit of £0.8 million in the same period of the prior year. They have posted a PDF file of their interim results and a very quick look through them shows that their Operating Costs are all drifting upwards, contributing significantly to their loss. I really don’t like the way this company operates and never have. They sacked their founder Stelios a while ago and my prediction is that this company with either close relatively shortly or they will have to revise their mode of operation despite their Chairman’s claim in their latest review that easyJet continues to demonstrate that its business model is robust and that there continues to be strong demand for low fare, point-to-point services between major European airports. Their model may be robust; but their ability to manage that model is open to doubt! Anyway, go and take a look at the ratio analysis section that I recently wrote for Biz/ed: there as you will see that I use easyJet together with British Airways for some of my analysis. Then click on this and scroll down the list of companies in the database that I put together and you can do lots of calculations on the data relatively easily from there … for some reason easyJet is out of alphabetical order in that list. Do you know www.tutor2u.net? They recently put together a couple of case studies in PDF format and the report on the European Airline Industry although rather weak could be useful for you. Best wishes DW

I have now finished a new section for my commercial arm: introduction to bookkeeping and accounting: four PDF files, four Excel files. This is a general introduction that assumes some knowledge of bookkeeping but takes you through the ideas step by step with loads of exmples and the Excel files help to confirm uour learning and provide you with infinite practise: honest, you've got to see it to believe it. Only £10 ... designed to help you with your ACCA exams (Paper 1.1 eg), CIMA exams, University exams, A level exams ... and real life! Go to my eShop Window and see what it's all about. The best on the web at the price: you really would pay a vast amount more elsewhere. DW

Katie wanted to know where she could find out about absorption and marginal costing. Yours truly provided the following listing: Dear Katie, Here are a few links to get you started on absorption and marginal costing. This page compares process costing and absorption and marginal costing Here's an article from the examiner of ACCA Paper 1.2 that's worth a look A PowerPoint Presentation ... it starts with a spelling mistake! Rather a childish look at the topic, from Cambridge University, surprisingly: it's a PowerPoint Presentation. Test your knowledge with Drury on line ... an MCQ test on this topic A very short overview The ever brilliant Biz/ed has a worksheet with links to their virtual factory that might be of use A reasonably extensive and useful looking introduction An exam paper from the University of Teesside that will help you with your revision at least! I have a page on this topic, of course! Finally, this looks useful There you are Katie, a review of some of the basic sites that can help with absorption and marginal costing. Best wishes DW

Is all ecommerce this difficult? Trying to get a client up and running with PayPal has turned into a challenge for her! ecommerce is based on brilliant and simple ideas but I have found the reality to be a real struggle. Everything's click, click but the final hurdles are sometimes so huge! I've been in the ecommerce game for around 6 weeks now and already I have stories to make your hair curl!! DW

Mario's a deep thinking lad from Italy and this is what we talked about. Dear Mr. Duncan I am an Italian student from Rome university and I am doing my final dissertation on cost of capital for telecoms and on the different approaches in calculating WACC. I was wondering if it was possible to have some research on the differences between the different CAPM's models (linear, non-linear and multifactors models). I found a study done by Wright, Mason and Miles on the subject but it seems to have a very statistic view about the CAPM's models. Could you please, if possible send me any presentation (power point) or study that explains in a more economic way why we should use a model rather then an other to better calculate the cost of capital for telecoms? Thank you in advance for all your patience and help Best Regards Mario I asked for a bit of time! Dear Duncan, I think that the only parameters that can vary are beta, risk free and ERP. What evidence can I use to make these parameters vary? Is it possible? Which are the latest methods for estimating the risk-free rate and ERP? There's some debate on-going as to what both have been doing recently, after a long period over which the ERP appeared to be stable. There's considerable room for disagreement about betas, related to the standard criticisms of the CAPM, and also disagreements about what frequency of data to use, whether to include parts of firms that are overseas or regulated, and so on. In contrast to all this, the debt-based component of the WACC is relatively straightforward to calculate; although regulators are suggesting that optimal rather than actual capital structure should be used for calculating the WACC for regulatory purposes. Thank you again Best Regards Mario Here's what I found: Dear Mario, I am sorry to be late but I have had a web site crisis! Anyway, I don’t know how much I can help but here are a few resources I have found on the CAPM: Revisiting The Capital Asset Pricing Model by Jonathan Burton looks non statistical at least but it is a bit old now! Aimed at investors so it is general but it has some graphs and basic formulae. Again for investors but with some additional links to people who seem to be important in this area business.com has a fair number of articles that you can access and I think at least some of them will be useful. Here’s a rather cheesy CAPM calculator but take a look at the links on the right hand side of the page! This is probably too basic for you but ... A mighty PDF file from Canada called The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Equity Risk Premiums and the Privately held Business. Another one from Canada This might be a useful link for you: to someone’s Blog! Worth a try: strike up a conversation with him at least! Specifically for telecoms, I found one, two (this is just a summary, though), three (79 pages from London!), four (Australian) and five , a whopping 154 pages from OFTEL in the UK I hope that’s enough to get you started, Mario. Let me know if you think I can help in any other way. Best wishes DW

Wow! A week has flown since I last communicated! Had a problem with my very first online payment via PayPal that is as yet unresolved and that could scupper everything I'm trying to do to earn a living. Bleeders! DW