I've started attacking my lawn again: mown the front lawn twice already and the back lawn once. Sonic came to call, too, last night. Here's Sonic and then the before and after back lawn pics! Sonic, although I hideously badly typed Sonics: Back Lawn before: Back Lawn after: DW

Went to Gloucester today with the family and spent some time in Gloucester Cathedral: Harry Potter is partly filmed in its cloisters. A lovely huge cathedral it is too. Worth a visit if you collect cathedrals! Some pics of the very Harry Potter cloissters for you: DW

The laptop's doing well so far, fingers crossed. A virus got in a wreaked havoc but I sorted it in the end. It was a Trojan that mainstream anti virus programs couldn't cure: CWShredder did for it, though! DW

Guess who came back to stay? My laptop ... hurray! Cost me a small fortune which someone said I should really have avoided by buying a brand new laptop and selling this one for scrap. Had the cost of the repair been just a little bit more, that could have been sagely advice and next time will see me taking that course of action. Laptops are brilliant as they provide oceans of flexibility in a tiny package but when they go wrong: it's really difficult to find someone even prepared to look at them let alone fix them spares are hideously expensive I suppose the expense comes from the idea that most laptops are owned and run by businesses/business people so their repairs are paid for out of business funds and not private pockets. Take a look at the desktop market now where there are full PC systems with Pentium 4 technology for as little as £299 inc VAT. However, the laptop came back with software called Roxio installed and large as life on the desktop and it came along with the wuamgrd.exe laden virus. Instantly I started getting problems and I thought that they hadn't fixed the bloody machine despite having a new battery and Pentium Processor. I ran my anti virus software but it found nothing that could explain what was happening; but then I found that wuamgrd.exe was running. Now I carried out a web search and learned that it was a little known virus that most anti virus checkers don't know about. Decided that it came along with Roxio so uninstalled that software and hey presto, no more wuamgrd.exe. You definitely need your wits about you these days. Speaking of viruses I am pleased now that I have got Office 2003 back as Outlook 2003 deals with viral messages and junk mail really effectively: almost seamlessly. Now I don't even need to look at these pox ridden messages as Outlook does it all for me. Trying to get my backup done with a DVD writer in the desktop, now there's another story! Happy easter! DW

Fingers crossed, knock on wood, don't tempt fate ... the horrific error 404 hits that I was getting on my site seem to have stopped all of a sudden. No idea why but I've been clean since February according to my web stats pages over at my ISP. You should have seen the numbers. When I investigated, though, I found that they came from such things as a spacer.gif file being out of place and miniscule things such as that. I have a nice new 404 page too, by coincidence: I built a couple of nice looking, albeit amateur, graphics for the page. Worth making a mistake just to have a look see! Anyway, I fixed a few and you lot helped me to find other things so well done to anyone who helped. Aaaah the relief! Hope they don't come back, now. DW

Have you noticed, surely you can't have failed to notice, that those inadequate young boys who wear baseball caps indoors and have jeans with crotches hanging round their arses are at it again? Hundreds of viral messages are pouring into my email account every week now. As if I'm really taken in by their convincing and witty entreaties to open their pox ridden files and have my computer flooded with their own version of whatever it is that turns them on. I really don't want to have to change my email addres but I've done it before and may need to do it again. This is all in addition to the spam that tells me I needn't pay a creditor again; how Uncle Sam will provide me with free property; don't I just love Java coffee; Viagra ... it's better than viagra. And so on. They are all dumped before I even see them once I have their subject or email account in my Junk folder. Waste of time and effort I'm afraid. DW

I recently applied for some part time work at a college not a million miles away from where I live. There was a formal advertisement in newspapers and elsewhere and even though I only learned about the job about 18 hours before the deadline for applications, meet the deadline I did. After about 10 days I received a reply to the extent that Unfortunately you were not succesful at this time. What on earth did they mean at this time? Now meaningless as that sentence was, I have latterly been trained to question such decisions so I called the man at the centre of this case to be told that even though the post had been advertised and so on, they had found someone in the meantime so my application had been in vain ... in other words, the whole process had been a sham. Whilst I do not intend to make more of a fuss than I am making here, I do find such cases distasteful as we are dealing with a publicly owned organisation together with a complete waste of resources that include my own time and effort. I listened to the man as he unveiled his side of the story and thanked him for his time. Let it be a lesson to us all: Britain's public services are operated in a questionable way at times and I remember the good old days when such things were unthinkable. The trade union would not have allowed this kind of thing to happen, let alone the rules of conduct of the College and the Local Authority that manages it. Thought I should tell you that! DW

Know what this is? TaTshhhh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... It's the sound you can hear when sitting on a bus or train or walking down the street and someone in the vicinity is playing music through headphones via their MP3 player, CD player ... they MUST be making themselves deaf. Pardon? DW

I walked from the centre of Oxford to Summertown yesterday and whilst it's only around 20 minutes of a hike, my feet were killing me by the time I got back to tne centre. Just goes to show. I walk rather than drive where I can but I don't normally walk in my office shoes these days. Hence, switching from walking in trainers to my stout shoes was shock to my poor system. The strain of a 40 minute round trip was of no consequence: I'm fit enough for that and more. Hobbledehoy isn't in it! I will persevere and I will win through! DW

This message just came in from a happy reader: Duncan, It's Michael ... from the States. I used the formulas you suggested in your website to create a spreadsheet in excel for my data analysis on my Dissertation. I showed my Major Professor your work and how I created a spreadsheet from what you had posted. Needless to say he was quite impressed. If you do not mind, when I publish my work, I would like to acknowledge you in the acknowledgment section of my dissertation. I do research in the area of hormonal response to stress over time. Your website has made this process much more simple. Thank you again, Michael ... B.S., M.S., CSCS, PhD. candidate Isn't that nice? See the safe hands you're in at www.duncanwil.co.uk? DW

This message speaks for itself: Dear Doug, I found my way to your page and think it’s excellent. I work in education and often come across signs on notice boards like this: PLAGIARISM No All your own work: Yes Then there may be warnings of dire consequences for the plagiarist … but with no guidance on how to work properly and effectively. Your paper takes us a long way from the notice board to a much better deal for student and assessor alike. I will be posting this message on my WeBlog at if that’s OK with you. Best wishes DW

The AQA A level Business Studies resources are selling well and comments recieved include this gem from Tim: OK, got the information and have downloaded the files. I will make a further donation in recognition of your hard work and the useful service provided. Very many thanks, Tim Sue said Chris your cases study sounds really cheap. We'll buy one in a few days. DW

Friday 26 March and I drove up to The Belfry near Birmingham. That's the golf course and hotel complex. Now you know that gold and I are incompatible bedfellows but I was there to present my Product costing system at the ACCA's Spring Update for Accountants. I attracted around 70 of the 83 delegates to the conference with the others attending parallel sessions. I think it went well and having spent ages preparing it, I was happy with the outcome. I timed the session to perfection, too, as I finished with 30 seconds to spare! That's good for me, that is! I took my camera with me but didn't take any snaps. I also stayed for the Beyond Budgeting seminar that ended the day in my stream and that was interesting too. Well done and thanks to the ACCA for inviting me! DW

If you are teaching A level Business Studies with the AQA Board in sight, take a look at this, you NEEEEED it. Duncan Williamson and Chris Sivewright's Business Studies Resources and how to get at them What's here: AQA ScrewLoose Ltd A Level Business Studies Summer 2004 Examination Detailed analysis and commentary on the case study providing you with the following resources: Duncan Williamson's analysis and commentary Chris Sivewright's analysis and commentary Vocabulary and key words Mind Map Graphics: PowerPoint Presentation file If you want to get at these resources you need to go here first and once you have paid and been given your password details, you'll be back! All proceeds from the sale of these resources are going to help people with Dystonia, look here for further details. DW

Good grief, two weeks since I last ranted and blethered here. Did you miss me? Well no one wrote and said they missed me so I asume that you didn't. Won't stop me though. The laptop's still at the mender's but today's good news is that they think it's NOT the motherboard that's causing the problem. Phew! That would have been expensive. Now they think it's a memory problem. Truth is, I bought a new memory chip myself before I sent the thing back last time and it still fell over when I put that in: is that one faulty too? I've been without this laptop so long that I don't miss it any more even though I was using Office 2003 ONLY on that, I was writing another blockbuster book on it, I use it in the evening when young Master D uses this desktop ... When it comes back in full apple pie order I'll still be happy. I now have a new web site ... I'm hosting it on this desktop but I have a non fixed IP address that has to be sorted out so just wait a while longer. I'm thinking of putting this blog on it so that I can keep full control of it. I don't control half of this blog if the truth be told. The weather's warmish for March but sunny then cloudy then chucking it down ... in circular waves! DW

Can anyone answer this for me? When did a Professor of X become a Professor in X? Just curious as it's another language annoyance that's getting my goat! DW

What are you waiting for? I have written a report in defence of the world's richest and most famous football club, Manchester United. They were the subject of a series of questions recently aimed at exposing the club's accounting practices. I looked into some of the questions and found that Man U was squeaky clean. Go to http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/finacc/manu99.html and buy my 11 page, detailed analysis for just £5. You'd be foolish not to! DW

Thanks to Alan Cosgrove, the latest duncanwil.co.uk visitor to find and report one of the site's dead links. Not only did Alan find and report the dead link but when I still couldn't find it he sent me a screen shot and further details. Well done Alan! Anyone who's tried to go to http://duncanwil.co.uk/spread.htm and then my page on Building a Trial Balance using a Pivot Table in Excel but failed, fail no more as Alan has shown the way. The link works now: if you're interested, I'd created the menu item and ended it with .html.html ... obviously only .html was needed! Thanks again Alan and to everyone who reports my dead links. DW

I am now a mega TV star! Well, I spent part of yesterday at Channel 4 Studios in central London being interviewed by the Einstein Network. The topic of my intereview was the work I did in the former Soviet Union on product cost systems development. If I say so myself it went well and I think I acquited myself well enough. I've appeared on the telly before but never in a formal setting such as this and it was an interesting experience, of course. It will be interesting to see how they turn the interview into the finished article: the interview plus a study pack. The interview was taped as if it were live; start, carry on and finish with no interrruptions and then finish. The interviewer was very good as she received her script just before I went in and although she was using a teleprompt for her questions, she put some life and soul into her performance! DW

Are you following the Disney and Dell Top Job split stories? Up until this week both companies had one person doing both Chairman and CEO jobs: Michael Eisner was forcibly ousted from one half of his portfolio earlier this week and now Dell’s founder Michael Dell has [voluntarily] announced that wef 16 July he will hand over the CEO job to someone else. Remember corporate governance? Combining the two jobs is seriously frowned on here in the UK so for students it may be worthwhile reviewing this issue as it’s still fresh: what better background than Mickey Mouse, too? DW