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