Pardon?

So I went to England in March for visa and passport business and I felt cold there. It was cold and I was there for about two weeks.

Towards the end of the trip I got a sore throat: painful but it didn't seem to spread.  Or so I thought.

When I got back home my left ear became blocked and I lost a lot of hearing power in it. I got some antibiotics and took them for a week. Still infected, still deaf.

I saw a doctor who gave me more antibiotics and anti histamines for a week. Still infected, still deaf.

I went to the hospital where the doctor gave me antibiotics and pseudo ephedrine ... for two weeks. Still deaf, still infected.

I came to Brunei and my research told me that all of their doctors are highly trained in Europe,  Australia ... I went to a clinic and was given antibiotics and anti fungal drops. For three days I noticed nothing but then ... ta daa ... big improvement. As I write this,  my hearing is almost back to normal and in two days I can stop the treatment.

My question is: what kind of infection did I get and why?

Happy to be cured.

DW

You like Beetles?

Then take a look at this beauty: the Sugarcane Longhorn Stemborer, long horn borer ... in Latin, DORYSTHENES BUQUETI. Found in our garden in Notth East Thailand this afternoon. The antennae are 4.5 inches across! Which is your favourite? DW

Farewell Meow Meow

This is the cat we called Meow Meow: it came into our lives when it was about two weeks old and was wandering around the fields having been abandoned. So, the family took it in, we fed it, we played with it and looked after it. The dogs liked it and everyone got along. Nice cat. This photo is how it was resting one evening about a year or so ago ... in a funny mood! Tom cats disappear from time to time and so did Meow Meow: for three or even four weeks. We felt he was dead. Then he returned but with a large wound on its chest. Car or dog fight? Who knows but it must have hurt. The wound healed well though and the fur grew back over it. In the meantime, our Ginger tom cat arrived, also a two week old abandoned kitten and we took him in ... Ginger and Meow Meow got on really well: they played and ran and jumped like good young friends do. They both came into our house and we fed them both. After a while Meow Meow disappeared again but when he came back this time, with another wound, in the same place, something had changed. His eyes were vacant. He would wander around crying at times. We still fed him but he wasn't all there. The wound healed again nicely so most things just jogged along. Then Meow Meow and Ginger started fighting: some epic battles with fur and excrement flying: remember the day we accidentally locked them together in our house!! Ginger also disappeared for three weeks and came back very thin: whatever he was doing, eating wasn't his priority. He is home now and eating well again. Meow Meow got thinner and thinner and more and more listless. Sad to see. Such a happy cat a year ago and now, at about the age of 20 months or so he died. He died last night after a short bout of sickness and that is the end of Meow Meow. Everyone and everything who brings joy and leaves memories deserves an obituary. So hail and farewell Meow Meow: you are free now! DW

Excel Solutions for Accountants

That is the title of my new book on Excel and here is the Introduction to the three volume set: a total of about 200 pages.

Introduction to Excel Solutions for Accountants

Duncan Williamson

April 2015

This book will be published by www.bookboon.comearly in June 2015 and of course this introduction is subject to change between now and then.

This is the first in a series of three books with the title of Excel Solutions for Accountants.

The essence of the book is that we have chosen a series of topics that we believe are of direct interest and relevance to accountants: we know that from the work we do every day. That is not to say that everything an accountant ever needs or does is included in this book; rather it’s a general book aimed at the accountant who knows that Excel can be made to do a lot more than it does but he just doesn’t know what that might be.

We have taken a very hands on approach with this book and for everything we talk about there is something for you to do: there is a spreadsheet for you to work with, too, so that you can always check your work and your accuracy at every stage.

One of our over riding ambitions was to make this book both as direct and as easy to use as possible. You will not find massive files with hideously complex formulas in them, each of which might take you an hour or two just to begin to unravel. What we have done is to give you straightforward examples with non complex lists and databases so that you come to learn the techniques and functions rather than worrying about the database.

Part One of the book comprises the following

Accountant Specific 1Excel TablesDepreciationRatio Analysis 1Graphs 1Pivot Tables 1

You can see immediately from the titles of these chapters that the accountant is the target here!

Secondly you should see that four of the chapters have the number 1 after them: that tells you that in books 2 and/or 3 there is another chapter or chapters on the same topic. Take a look at the contents of books 2 and 3:

Part TwoPart ThreeAccountant Specific 2Accountant Specific 3Compound Interest and Discounting: the time value of moneyDashboardingData Validation and Form ControlsPivot Tables 3Ratio Analysis 2ForecastingGraphs 2BudgetingPivot Tables 2AGGREGATE, OFFSET and SOLVER

More than one way to skin a cat! We present one or more solutions to the problems we present in this book and from time to time we say: Excel provides more than one way to solve this problem. If you already know a better way to solve a problem than we are presenting, stay with it. Even if you think our method is better but are happy with your own method, stick with it if it doesn’t mean you are wasting time or being inefficient. Don’t be stubborn though: like the cost accountant who saw our solution to his problem but preferred not to follow our advice: that meant he preferred to wait 20 minutes every morning for his main Excel file to open and then wait a further 45 seconds or so every time he pressed the Enter key. Our solution meant no waiting time at all as we replaced his 30,000 volatile function workbook with a Pivot Table based solution that provided almost instant responses.

Templates: we have tried at every stage of every chapter of this book to provide templates for you to work with and/or create. After all, what’s the point of programming a spreadsheet over and over again when you shouldn’t have to? Excel deals with some of the most predictable things you can do and templates are consistent with that. Therefore, take each of our examples either as a template or as your template in the making. We stress PPP too: paper, pencil, plan. The PPP approach means, don’t just dive in to a spreadsheet problem, take you time and plan it out on paper first. Then develop your solution. Then derive your template if appropriate.

A total of 18 chapters and by the end of all three books we believe you can easily call yourself an intermediate user of Excel. We also feel that you will have unlocked so much potential in Excel that you will want more and more from it.

This book has been written with Excel 2013 for Windows: that will mean that some of the things we have done will be a little bit different sometimes from what any other version of Excel might do. We have kept such differences to a minimum, however. Nevertheless, we would encourage you to upgrade to 2013 soon anyway.

Other sources of help for Excel: there are many sources of help other than Excel itself. Here are just a few examples of where to get help: just search for these online to get there!

excelmaster.co: my own Excel BlogExcel-G: online/email based discussion list for general level questions on Excel. There are about 1,000 members of this group and they are friendly and really helpful people. Please note, this is a general level list and anything too advanced should be directed at …Excel-L: online/email based discussion list for Excel Developers. This is the more advanced list and seems to concentrate mainly on VBA problems and solutions.OzGrid: this is a free and commercial site offering some brilliant resources.chandoo.org: this is another really useful site whose founder, Chandoo, has the objective of making you awesome in Excel! A lot of the materials on this site are free but some of them are commercial. Chandoo also offers online and offline courses.Jon Peltier: Jon seems to be the world’s foremost authority on graphs and charts. Again, this is a combined free and commercial site but there are many wonderful free resources on there.Mr Excel: Bill Jelen is a prolific Excel materials developer and explanator! Bill provides a lot of free and highly commendable materials, again both free and commercial.Charley Kyd: Charley has specialised in the past in dashboarding and whilst he still does that, he offers a lot of free Excel based materials too. Well worth searching out.John Walkenbach: John has been around for ages and he writes the Excel Bibles, among other Excel based titles. John is always comprehensive and has a lot of useful things to offerYouTube: there are many thousands of videos on YouTube now and more appear every day. Some of them are really very good and others will leave you wondering what on earth they were trying to say. It’s pot luck really but once you find a good YouTube provider, stick with them!

There are many more people/organisations/lists that can help you so these are just a few of the ones we recommend.

DW

Excel Solutions for Accountants

That is the title of my new book on Excel and here is the Introduction to the three volume set: a total of about 200 pages.

Introduction to Excel Solutions for Accountants

Duncan Williamson

April 2015

This book will be published by www.bookboon.com early in June 2015 and of course this introduction is subject to change between now and then.

This is the first in a series of three books with the title of Excel Solutions for Accountants.

The essence of the book is that we have chosen a series of topics that we believe are of direct interest and relevance to accountants: we know that from the work we do every day. That is not to say that everything an accountant ever needs or does is included in this book; rather it’s a general book aimed at the accountant who knows that Excel can be made to do a lot more than it does but he just doesn’t know what that might be.

We have taken a very hands on approach with this book and for everything we talk about there is something for you to do: there is a spreadsheet for you to work with, too, so that you can always check your work and your accuracy at every stage.

One of our over riding ambitions was to make this book both as direct and as easy to use as possible. You will not find massive files with hideously complex formulas in them, each of which might take you an hour or two just to begin to unravel. What we have done is to give you straightforward examples with non complex lists and databases so that you come to learn the techniques and functions rather than worrying about the database.

Part One of the book comprises the following

• Accountant Specific 1


• Excel Tables


• Depreciation


• Ratio Analysis 1


• Graphs 1


• Pivot Tables 1

You can see immediately from the titles of these chapters that the accountant is the target here!

Secondly you should see that four of the chapters have the number 1 after them: that tells you that in books 2 and/or 3 there is another chapter or chapters on the same topic. Take a look at the contents of books 2 and 3:

Part Two	Part Three
Accountant Specific 2	Accountant Specific 3
Compound Interest and Discounting: the time value of money	Dashboarding
Data Validation and Form Controls	Pivot Tables 3
Ratio Analysis 2	Forecasting
Graphs 2	Budgeting
Pivot Tables 2	AGGREGATE, OFFSET and SOLVER

More than one way to skin a cat! We present one or more solutions to the problems we present in this book and from time to time we say: Excel provides more than one way to solve this problem. If you already know a better way to solve a problem than we are presenting, stay with it. Even if you think our method is better but are happy with your own method, stick with it if it doesn’t mean you are wasting time or being inefficient. Don’t be stubborn though: like the cost accountant who saw our solution to his problem but preferred not to follow our advice: that meant he preferred to wait 20 minutes every morning for his main Excel file to open and then wait a further 45 seconds or so every time he pressed the Enter key. Our solution meant no waiting time at all as we replaced his 30,000 volatile function workbook with a Pivot Table based solution that provided almost instant responses.

Templates: we have tried at every stage of every chapter of this book to provide templates for you to work with and/or create. After all, what’s the point of programming a spreadsheet over and over again when you shouldn’t have to? Excel deals with some of the most predictable things you can do and templates are consistent with that. Therefore, take each of our examples either as a template or as your template in the making. We stress PPP too: paper, pencil, plan. The PPP approach means, don’t just dive in to a spreadsheet problem, take you time and plan it out on paper first. Then develop your solution. Then derive your template if appropriate.

A total of 18 chapters and by the end of all three books we believe you can easily call yourself an intermediate user of Excel. We also feel that you will have unlocked so much potential in Excel that you will want more and more from it.

This book has been written with Excel 2013 for Windows: that will mean that some of the things we have done will be a little bit different sometimes from what any other version of Excel might do. We have kept such differences to a minimum, however. Nevertheless, we would encourage you to upgrade to 2013 soon anyway.

Other sources of help for Excel: there are many sources of help other than Excel itself. Here are just a few examples of where to get help: just search for these online to get there!

• excelmaster.co: my own Excel Blog


• Excel-G: online/email based discussion list for general level questions on Excel. There are about 1,000 members of this group and they are friendly and really helpful people. Please note, this is a general level list and anything too advanced should be directed at …


• Excel-L: online/email based discussion list for Excel Developers. This is the more advanced list and seems to concentrate mainly on VBA problems and solutions.


• OzGrid: this is a free and commercial site offering some brilliant resources.


• chandoo.org: this is another really useful site whose founder, Chandoo, has the objective of making you awesome in Excel! A lot of the materials on this site are free but some of them are commercial. Chandoo also offers online and offline courses.


• Jon Peltier: Jon seems to be the world’s foremost authority on graphs and charts. Again, this is a combined free and commercial site but there are many wonderful free resources on there.


• Mr Excel: Bill Jelen is a prolific Excel materials developer and explanator! Bill provides a lot of free and highly commendable materials, again both free and commercial.


• Charley Kyd: Charley has specialised in the past in dashboarding and whilst he still does that, he offers a lot of free Excel based materials too. Well worth searching out.


• John Walkenbach: John has been around for ages and he writes the Excel Bibles, among other Excel based titles. John is always comprehensive and has a lot of useful things to offer


• YouTube: there are many thousands of videos on YouTube now and more appear every day. Some of them are really very good and others will leave you wondering what on earth they were trying to say. It’s pot luck really but once you find a good YouTube provider, stick with them!

There are many more people/organisations/lists that can help you so these are just a few of the ones we recommend.

Cowardly Ratbag

Just before he ran away, some coward did this to my car.

Robin Red Breast

As children we sang about the Robin Red Breast at school. I never saw any anywhere. My sister and her daughter's family keep a bird feeding station and all sorts of birds appear there.

Yesterday a Robin appeared and stayed long enough for me to take photos of it. Here is one of them: taken through the double glazed window of a door!

DW

Froggie

I was looking for a cigarette lighter this morning to burn our rubbish and Mrs W said it might be somewhere on the entrance patio so I went to look. My walking books have been on the patio for months and I looked in them. aaaagghh! there was a frog in one of them. Mrs W came out to look as she is not such a creepy crawly coward and said it was no longer there. I looked again ... aaaggghh! There it was, still there! Mrs W got it out and it hopped off. I decided I was brave enough to take some photographs and here is one that I processed using Photoshop together with the original snap!

Another Book

I have been commissioned to write another book. Working title: Excel for accountants.

15 to 20 chapters of high quality explanations with loads of examples.

Will keep you informed!

DW

Buriram United AFC Champions League Game

We got here 30 minutes late but Burian already two goals up.

Playing Seongnan FC from South Korea

DW

What Happens in a Cat Fight

I left the house yesterday and, as normal, locked the door. Then Mrs W and I went on a 20 mile waste of time drive since we were going to the market but realised, a couple of miles short of our mission, that neither of us had money or cards with us.

Home!

Dogs running excitedly around our house. Sisters shouted excitedly at Mrs W. Mrs W relayed the message: our tom cat and their tom cat were both locked in our house and were fighting ... they fight two or three times a week, sadly.

I opened the door and Ginger was there surrounded by six or seven clumps of his fur. It had taken a lot of effort to do that I'm sure. Ginger calmly left and settled himself at the front of the house.

I couldn't see or hear the other cat but I caught a smell. I followed my nose and got to the dining room. All I can say is that I am glad there is no carpet in there. Excrement covered half of the floor and it was on the wall, table legs and chair legs.

I can't imagine the battle that must have taken place but it was clearly hard fought and one of the cats was more nervous than the other.

As I left the dining room to summon Mrs W for help I met the other cat, Meow Meow. As I sometimes do with the dogs,  I clapped my hands as a way to get his attention and, surprisingly, he turned tail and skittered under the settee.

After a minute Meow Meow left the house and sauntered away: Ginger saw him, arched his back and hissed the hiss of a fearful or aggressive cat. I am not sure which cat Ginger is but I have seen him running and hiding from Meow Meow before.

In conclusion,  it took us a while to clean the dining room but I was sorry that I had inadvertently locked both cats in the house. I had no idea Ginger was at home let alone Meow Meow. I'll certainly make sure I don't do that again!

DW

I passed and what does a vegetarian taste like?

I passed my MOOC: my Data Analysis course with the University of Texas at Austin. 82% overall.

In Brunei I found pot noodles: vegetarian flavour. My question is, what does a vegetarian taste like?

DW

Two New Cases

Here are two new Excel based cases I have just prepared that I know some of you will appreciate.

UK Petrol Prices

I downloaded a file of all retail petrol and diesel prices for the UK from 2003 to 2014. The task is to prepare an interactive table so that the user just enters a date in one cell and the table then shows the

• retail pump price per litre


• duty per litre


• VAT percentage


• calculation of the cost of the petrol net of duty and VAT

This case involves the use of a variety of techniques including

• VLOOKUP()


• Data Validation


• IFERROR()


• Paste Special Multiply

Here's an example of my output:



 

This video summarises the case:

[wpvideo nw5NNOOh]

Sleep Requirements.

In today's Borneo Bulletin newspaper there is an article on the sleep requirements of people of all ages. They give the requirements such as, a new born baby needs from 14 to 17 hours a day ... someone over 65 years of age needs from 7 to 8 hours sleep a day.

The task is to turn a photo of the data into a table and a chart that communicates as effectively as possible: I prepared the following:





 

Please feel free to write to me at any time to ask for the spreadsheets that accompany these cases. At the moment they are live cases and I won't release them generally until the course has finished in a week's time..

Duncan Williamson

 

Wat Lan Kuat

Wat Lan Kuat, a temple near Sisaket in Thailand. Made of bottles. Take a look at these few snaps I took there today.

DW

New Video! - Mean, Median and Mode in this Introductory Presentation

An introduction to measures of central tendency: mean, median and mode. We use Excel to discuss this topic and there are three exercises in this presentation. http://ift.tt/1xS5gnV

New Video! - find & replace

The Find&Replace menu in Excel contains some hidden gems. Things that you might never have seen before. Take a look here to see what you've been missing. http://ift.tt/1JrisW3

New Video! - ctrl+enter with the correlation function in excel

This video shows you how to use the =CORREL() function in Excel with the Ctrl+Enter technique. This is especially useful for Mac users who do not have access to the Data Analysis Toolpak http://ift.tt/1yWlzFO

Death of a Tree

We call it a shelf tree because we don't know its real name. It's a shelf tree because its branches stick out like shelves! Anyway, we bought a nice shelf tree and planted it. We cared for it. The cat learned to climb up it. Then the insects moved in. The tree lost a lot of leaves over a few days we we found the cause: insects. We bought insect spray and the tree revived. Then we noticed a top branch was looking a bit sick but we couldn't get at it. Today I was watering the garden and noticed a lower branch had weakened in the middle and was hanging loose. I told Mrs W and by the time it was time for a break she'd dug around the root and the tree had to go. We huffed and puffed a little bit and got the tree out. Dead branches allright. Sticky blobs on the bark. Holes in the trunk. I investigated one piece and found a lot of 2 mm sized ants inside. two MILLIMETRE ants had killed our 4 - 5 metre tree. When humans have been wiped out, I am sure that ants will rule the world. Here's what's left of our big shelf tree ... there are two smaller ones in the garden and I hope they grow and survive. DW

Hasselback Garlic Potatoes

Ever heard of Hasselback Garlic Potatoes? I just made them ... see my photo. They are very good.

I got the recipe from a friend on Facebook.

DW

Stewart ... Stewart!

Stewart is part of the family and has been since is birth.  He lives with his mother and although his father and brother met untimely deaths,  he seems happy and lively, if a little shy.

Stewart is young but is fully grown: that means he is fit and slim given his adequate diet.

I have to say that I have had misgivings about Stewart for a while now.  You know, when something happens and it's a bit off key. Or someone does something and you wonder,  did they really do that?

It all came to a head this morning for Stewart.  I was just looking out through the dining room window when I saw him and another young lad. They were engaged in the kind of activity that no one should see but between members of the same sex: well, it's just not right.

I didn't feel to be in a position to intervene in any way and the matter was over rather quickly. I did discuss what I saw with Mrs W but she was not so concerned as I was.

After all, Mrs W has been around dogs all her life and Stewart is just another dog as far as she is concerned, gay or straight!

Still, you don't see many gay dogs do you!

DW