Lock it Jobs!

Found this accidentally.

If I put my BlackBerry on top of my iPod, the BB immediately closes the desktop and locks the keyboard.

Not sure if anything bad happens but so far so good.

DW
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Mushrooms that Taste like ...

Last night, here in the airport district of Geneva I took a walk and ended up in a Pasta and Pizza place. I ordered and ate a mushroom pizza.

Guess what the mushrooms tasted of?

Yes, mushrooms!

Unlike most of the mushrooms I buy in the UK, these mushrooms really tasted like they should. Mushroomy!!

How about that?

DW


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InContext Editing

Although it's serious overkill in some ways, I use Dreamweaver CS4 to edit my web site. This week I came across and started to use what they call InContext Editing and it's marvellous. I can make a tiny amendment to any page that I choose and I can then edit that page online in real time without the need to fire up Dreamweaver, open the file, make the changes, upload the file ... so far I am just tinkering with it, but first impressions are positive.

DW

Microsoft to the Rescue and The Power of Two Monitors

Microsoft Saves the Day

Strange but true but for a reason I have yet to fathom, my OCR software has stopped working and it seems impossible to reinstall it. So, I NEEDED an OCR solution. The knight in shining armour was the Microsoft Document Scanning and Imaging software. Now, it's not the best but after a couple of trial pages I have to say that it was a breeze to use and has then allowed me to scan in and edit 16 pages of text without too much stress.

Two Monitor Solution

I told you the other week that I have been using a two monitor configuration at home and that is continuing apace. The biggest triumph so far is that I am sat here in my office working away and watching the Ashes cricket at the same time. Not a wall to wall size image but plenty big enough since it is only about two feet from my eyes.

DW

Is it Obligatory?

Do the contestants on Master Chef on the BBC really think that by repeating that they are passionate makes them automatic selections for the big prize?

Rank amateurs being given the impression they can become a master chef as a result of a competition is another one of television's nonsense ideas.

DW


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Dreamweaver and Adobe Magic

I am easily pleased! I have just edited my first page using Adobe/Dreamweaver's InContext Editing utility. Very smart and ideal for me. I am really aiming at a CMS based site but have had no luck with a PHP based version so with this I have taken one more step on the road.

My new website, the site for my new Excel 2007 book, will be up and running soon and that WILL be CMS style: put together by yours truly using Dreamweaver and the SiteAssist extension.

DW

The Lady MacDonald: what a pleasure

I have just watched a cookery programme hosted by Claire MacDonald of MacDonald: the Lady MacDonald. What a pleasure! A cook who is confident and who knows what she is doing. Although she mainly cooked non vegetarian food, it wasn't difficult to appreciate the quality of the food she was preparing.

One other feature that caught my attention was her language: excellent! A good grasp of grammar and vocabulary. Never once did she say, "Look at that" as she dragged something ghastly from a pan or the oven: she left that to the likes of James Martin and Ainsley Harriet.

She used the word amalgamate, for example and, unlike Gary Rhodes, never even hinted that some creme fraiche was "happening" in the mousse.

Well done the Lady MacDonald! A pleasure to watch.

DW

Have they come?

I had a stir fry of sorts from the Flaming Wok in the food court near to the hotel and whilst the food was tolerable, I can hardly report that the wok was flaming.

I wanted the veg combo but was told that they didn't have one of the ingredients so I had to make do with a cabbage dish and an aubergine dish together with the pretty good noodles.

Now, I have never been a fan of aubergines except inside an excellent mousaka and I have to say that I was prepared to give the stuff a go. It was ghastly! My problem with cooked aubergines is that they are slimey. Slithery and slimey. No thanks. Sorry to say they went in the bin.

As I was eating my food I sat opposite another fast food outlet and saw, to my surprise and delight, a food that I have only previously seen on sale in Kuala Lumpur outside of the UK. Now, I know these food items can be bought elsewhere but I haven't been there yet! What could it be that we love in the UK, they clearly love in Kuala Lumpur and that they can buy (not sure they love them to the same extent, you see) here in Dubai?

There is a clue in the title of this post!! It's a bit cryptic but if you can crack the code I will buy you one of these if ever we meet!

DW

Hobby Horse again!

They've just been advertising Shark Month on National Geographic and I thought, hmm, that could be good.

Then they showed a silly young woman in a diving suit under water who said, "It's amazing!"

Think I'll give it a miss now, then. Otherwise I'd spend the month on some kind of "amazing" count.

Just my foible, don't worry.

DW

Foggy Skies in Dubai and Coordinated Fish

Murky Skies

It's been a bit murky here in Dubai over the last few days. In spite of the forecast for today it still is. There is a lot of dust in the atmosphere apparently so whilst it is hot outside, it appears to be overcast and a bit murky.

Coordinated fish

This is one reason why I could never be an interior designer. I went to a restaurant yesterday and not only were walls, furnishing and floorings all really attractively coordinated but so were the fish in the aquarium. Now, I would probably never have thought of that!

Brunch? Not in Yorkshire!

I just realised something the other day. Brunch is an acceptable word now, of course, but it really doesn't fit in Yorkshire.

Since Yorkshire folk have breakfast, dinner and tea, we combine breakfast and dinner into BRINNER.

You heard it here first!

By the way, did you see that dolt on one of those BBC cookery programmes who said that brunch shouldn't be too heavy or it will ruin your lunch! Where do they get these people?

DW

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Night Time's a Good Time Apparently

Corwin's Quest on Animal Planet

That TV wildlife type just said night time is the perfect time to see some of Australia's nocturnal creatures.

Really? How amazing.

DW

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Wrong Day for Someone and an Upgrade

The Wrong Day

I joined the check in queue at Manchester Airport as there was a man already checking in. Based on my history of queuing experiences I was not overly worried at the time he was taking. But he had his laptop on the counter and switched on. He had his mobile phone glued to his ear.

After a while he left with all of his bags. Apparently he isn't due to travel until tomorrow! Now, let me be unkind and ask was he too keen to escape something OR very keen to reach somewhere? Just asking!

Upgrade

When I got to the gate I became the cause of a hold up. I wasn't worried but the KLM lady scurried around quite a bit for quite a while. When she came back she told me I had been upgraded to Business Class.

I am NOT ungrateful because I got a sandwich rather than a packet of TUC biscuits. However, I am now praying for an upgrade on the next leg: considerably longer than the 50 minute flight to Amsterdam!! Praise be!

DW


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Swine Flu and BBC News

On the six o'clock news this evening the health correspondent said that the new government flu pandemic web site had opened this afternoon with hits of 2,600 per second. The reporter said that was AT THE RATE OF around 9 million an hour.

In the 8 o'clock news summary on BBC 1 they said there had been 9 million hits on the flu website in the first hour.

Where is the editorial control at the BBC I wonder?

DW


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My Spreadsheet Book

A few people are asking me about the progress of my latest book: working title is Spreadsheeting with Mr Sprite.

Good news: I have completed around 7 or 8 chapters now and have carried out my research and preparations for a few more. The book is aimed at Excel 2007 and is a comprehensive introduction to it. More than that, it includes a number of practical examples that people can use as templates for real life work. I am collaborating on part of the book with a manpower planning specialist (the world's number one, no less) and he is giving me material and ideas for what to include in that section.

I am aware that Microsoft is within a year or so of releasing Excel 2010 so I am keen to ensure I get in well ahead of that deadline!

Here is the current contents page ... subject to change. If YOU would like me to include something that you cannot see here, please write to me and I will consider all suggestions. duncan at duncanwil dot co dot uk ... please interpret that! I get enough spam in my inbox so don't want to encourage any more.

Contents

Part One: Introductory

1 Basics

• Introduction
• Pencil and Paper
• Basic Functionality
• The Ribbon
• Screen Resolution
• Minimise the Ribbon
• The Quick Access Toolbar: the QAT
• Basic Rules
• Add Subtract Multiply Divide
• More Complex Calculations
• Try it!
• Built in Functions: SUM ... AVERAGE ... MIN ... MAX
• Auto Fill
• Auto Fill Menu
• Formatting Cells
• Moving Around your Workbook
• Changing Column and Row Sizes
• Moving a Column or Row
• Formatting Text
• Cell Border
• Try it!
• Consolidation Exercise
• Selecting non Contiguous Ranges
• Why Select Non contiguous Ranges?
• Print Areas
• Transposing Data
• Cell and Range Addressing
• Range Names

2 Charting

• Introduction
• The Rules of Charting
• Setting up a Chart the Easy Way: the F11 key
• Default Chart Change
• Creating a Template Char
• Embedding a Chart with the Chart Wizard
• Embedding by Moving
• Titles and Axes Labels
• Copy Charts: make clones an move them
• Other Charts
• Category Axis Contains Labels from Three Columns
• Conditional Colours
• Waterfall Chart
• Create a Stacked Column Chart
• Finished Waterfall Chart
• Alternatives
• Percentage Waterfall Chart
• Radar Chart
• Self Expanding Chart
• Excel 2007 Solution 1
• Excel 2007 Solution 2a
• Excel 2007 Solution 2b
• Selecting Data from a Combo Box
• Spreadsheet Allowing the User to Highlight Alternative Scenarios
• Table and Chart Selection Including a Combobox
• Charts with Scroll Bars
• Basic Chart and Rates of Change Chart
• Ten year financial review of a company
• Double Vertical Axes
• Additional Charting Exercises
• Text to Columns
• Deriving Values from Published Charts
• Dashboards
• More Advanced Chart

3 Introduction to Pivot Tables

• Introduction
• Definition of a Pivot Table
• Why you need a Pivot Table
• Example PTs
• Copying a Pivot Table
• A Copy of a PT is a Clone of a PT
• Copying your PT
• Changing Sum of to Average of to Count of ...
• Moving a Field from Row to Column
• Drag and Move Within the PT
• Drag and move the chosen field within the Task Pane
• Filtering a Field
• Sorting a Pivot Table
• Formatting Fields
• Calculated Fields
• Drilling Down
• Calculated Item
• Other Calculated Item Features
• Adjusting the Formula
• More Complex Formulas
• Forecasting with a Calculated Item
• Values
• Show Values As
• Grouping PT Data
• Starting or Setting up a PT
• The Grouping Process
• When Grouping is a Problem
• Pivot Chart
• Formatting a Pivot Chart
• A Pivot Chart with a Data Table
• Formatting
• Page Fields
• Multiple Page Fields
• Reporting with Page Fields
• Pivot Table from an External Source
• Part Two: Data Analysis

4 Pivot Tables 2

• Expense account analysis
• Double entry bookkeeping
• Trial balance
• Final accounts/reports

5 Ratio and Other Company Analysis

• Ratio analysis of company information ranging from the simple to the complex
• Common size statements
• Growth ratios in ratio analysis
• Z Score analysis
• Using the ToolPak Add-In that comes with Excel
• Descriptive statistics
• Histograms
• Correlation analysis
• Ordinary least squares (regression) analysis
• There is a database of company data to accompany this chapter and the detail of the chapter will refer to that database throughout.

6 Statistical Analysis

• This chapter enhances the work started in chapter 5 above and includes
• t statistic
• Standard Error
• P Value
• F statistics
• Confidence intervals
• Multiple regression analysis
• The relevant range
• Chi square test
• Non parametric tests
• The Box and Whisker Plot
• More Useful functions for analysis
• INDIRECT
• INDEX
• OFFSET
• MATCH

Part Three: Decision Making

7 Behaviour of Costs

• Splitting costs into their fixed and variable elements
• MINVERSE
• MMULT
• Non linear costs
• The linear treatment of costs: true and fair?

8 Cost Volume Profit Analysis

• Building on the work of chapter 1 of this part of the book, we will now explore the practical application of the behaviour of costs under the heading of cost volume profit or break even analysis

9 Marginal Costing and Decision Making

• Continuing with the theme of the behaviour of costs and the application of it to management accounting situations, in this chapter we explore how a knowledge of marginal costs can be used in decision making.

10 Traditional and Activity based costing

• Traditional overhead analysis: absorption costing
• Allocation
• Apportionment
• Re apportionment
• Overhead absorption rates
• Absorption costing
• Activity Based Costing

11 Budgeting

• This chapter concentrates on the preparation of budgets and budgeting reports that include:
• Functional budgets
• Cash budgets
• Master budget
• Budget reports
• Balanced scorecard reporting
• Activity based budgeting

12 Capital Budgeting

• Payback
• Accounting Rate of Return
• Net Present Value
• Profitability Index
• Internal Rate of Return
• Divisibility of Projects

13 Excel Techniques for Analysis and Decision Making

• Goal Seek
• Scenario Manager
• SOLVER

I'm nervous about leaving it at 13 chapters and will probably expand that to accommodate the manpower planning spreadsheet models.

DW

If I Have a Little Weakness and I Have a Little Weakness it's a Passion for a ...

Where does the quotation in the title come from and can you finish it?

Yesterday I began to prepare for my next trip by going to the supermarket and buying some odds and ends. One thing I bought, for some inexplicable reason that had lodged itself in my head a week or so ago, was a packet of Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts (see photo!).

After tea (that's dinner for those of you with ideas above your station ;-)) I ate a few of the Allsorts. Then a few more. Then some more. So I pushed the bowl they were in to the opposite side of the coffee table.

I resisted the rest of the Allsorts until around half an hour before I went to bed. Then I scoffed the lot.

Well, I haven't had any for quite a while and I won't have any more for another while I suppose. So, a little of what I fancied has probably done me good.

DW

Biodegradable

I was discussing with son Andrew over the weekend how I might knock my kitchen about a bit and create a bit of extra space for myself together with adding a breakfast bar or similar.

As I looked deep inside the cupboard under the stairs where the work could take place I found a carrier bag on a hook behind the door that I had not noticed before in spite of having lived here for two years now. I decided I didn't need that bag to be there so took hold of it and most of the bag fell away from the part I was then holding on to. Odd, I thought!

I bent down to pick up the rest of the bag and that started to fall apart too. After one more attempt, it resembled a flower that has been smashed on the floor after having been dipped in liquid Nitrogen.

Hmm! So biodegradable bags really do degrade then. Moreover, it's best to let them fall apart in the soil I think as it's a bit of a struggle to pick up the bits even with a dust pan and brush.

Fascinating science!

DW

Dual Monitors

A while ago I attached my currently redundant Asus VW202SR monitor to my laptop hoping to use two screens/monitors in tandem. The laptop found the other monitor and let me add it to extend my Desktop.

Hooray!

Boo!

It just sat there: I expected it to give me perfect functionality ... but it just sat there so I unplugged it and harumphed. Gatesed again!

I decided to try again and the same thing happened. I thought, this can't be right: I have seen loads of people using two and more screens at one time. So I did a a bit of research and now I am typing this on my laptop screen and reading an article from the McKinsey Quarterly site on "How finance departments are changing ... "

Marvellous! Did Gates get something right or am I dreaming?

DW

Irony?

I thought the following was amusing.

I got an email from amazon.co.uk: the usual marketing stuff. Here are three of the books that it said I ought to buy today:

1 Balanced Scorecard: step by step for Government and Not for profit Organisations

2 The Little Book that Builds Wealth: the knock out formula for finding great investments

and now for the punch line

3 Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: a long short story

Made me laugh anyway.

DW

Andrew's Graduation: Salford July 2009

A memorable day out in Salford yesterday as I accompanied son Andrew to his graduation ceremony with the degree of BSc from the University of Salford. Second class Honours, upper division ... can't get much better than that.

Well done!

I took over 100 photos but was so wrapped up in it all that I forgot to take a photo of the two of us together.

Well, here is Andrew, all bedecked in his academic robes ...

Here's an arty photo with added animation/life ...

Here's Andrew with his good friend and one of his lecturers: Pearl in the middle and Lei on the right as we look ...

The first of the kids to graduate: Fran next then Dima then Daniel.

DW