Yesterday was at the Annual Toastmasters International Finals for District 70.
This is where the best speakers in NSW and ACT compete to go to America.
There were two educational's as well and they were great value.
Can't wait to use them when I do my next speech.
One was done by an actress and she spoke/presented about adding presence to your speech.
Couldn't get enough as she was so fluent and practical with her advice that the following presenter had a very hard act to follow.
The Dinner was quite a formal affair.
Nearly everything to do with competitions requires you to wear a suit or business attire and the Dinner was a Gala Dinner which translates not as a Festive Dinner (which is what Gala translates to) but as a Black Tie event in some circles.
So I wore my black tie with the little grey elephants!
The Winner had tried to perfect his speech for three years!
I'd better start making up my speech now...
##
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Off to the Toastmasters Annual Conference in Sydney in two weeks time.
After just missing out in the last set of competitions, I've decided to go along and check out the one's who've made it through a few levels and also go to a few educationals.
This is in two weeks time. So watch this space for more.
My speaking needs some tweaking. A bit like what I do with software! :-)
Need to add more flourish, annecdotes, livid comparisons and more structured and focused speeches.
Oh well more work but it's all worth it.
The President of our club asked me the other day, now I've done the first lot of 10 speeches, which advanced ones will I do?
Will pick a few so I can pick and choose the most appropriate.
###
This is in two weeks time. So watch this space for more.
My speaking needs some tweaking. A bit like what I do with software! :-)
Need to add more flourish, annecdotes, livid comparisons and more structured and focused speeches.
Oh well more work but it's all worth it.
The President of our club asked me the other day, now I've done the first lot of 10 speeches, which advanced ones will I do?
Will pick a few so I can pick and choose the most appropriate.
###
Developing Word versus Excel
Had to tweak some word applications this week.
Now I know why word developers use select all the time.
It's the only way they can do things.
And what about how you cannot loop through processing pages easily unlike in Excel where you can loop through worksheets.
Now we have to come up with the ultimate document splitter.
Because there are so many massive merged documents which need splitting and renaming based on references in the first page.
Will have to publish some of my utilities soon.
Now I know why word developers use select all the time.
It's the only way they can do things.
And what about how you cannot loop through processing pages easily unlike in Excel where you can loop through worksheets.
Now we have to come up with the ultimate document splitter.
Because there are so many massive merged documents which need splitting and renaming based on references in the first page.
Will have to publish some of my utilities soon.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
How to select colours for Excel Charts in Excel 2007/2010
Microsoft Office 2007/2010 comes with the new office themes
tabs.
Charts require 6 colours to be setup and then Excel uses
this to generate charts with all 6 colours and shades thereof or as shades of
one of those 6 colours.
Most clients will setup their themes without taking into
account Excel Charts or the new data bars features.
In other words they’ll set the first or 2nd
colour or even totally miss the 6 ones required altogether.
Themes need to be stamped per workbook otherwise they start
with the standard out of the box office theme.
Most clients have between 2 to 4 main colours that their branding
guys have supplied. What this means is that you have to create other colours or
repeat the given colours to prevent non-corporate colours from being used.
In the rare cases where clients supply 7 colours, you just
use 6.
Creating the other colours is a tricky process. Some colour
wheels allow you to provide 3 colours and they’ll give you 3 blended ones.
e.g. Blue and Yellow blend to make a green colour.
This link provides a nice example
Regards,
Tom Bizannes
Excel Developer Sydney Australia
###
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
SharePoint 2010 Administration
This exam which is a requirement for many a Gold Partner to get the SharePoint Fast software included in their Partner package is an interesting one.
According to one of our guys who passed the second attempt:
It was quite scenario based is what he said.
So there are four main areas, but what is is really that we need to do to pass?
a) One needs to be able to plan therequird hardware as well as how what needs configuring inside SharePoint
b) Then there is the deployment - and there are various ways to do this
c) Then there is a maintence, monitoring and backup/restore strategies
d) Finally there is the all imortant search, content management and Business Intelligence side of things.
#
According to one of our guys who passed the second attempt:
It was quite scenario based is what he said.
So there are four main areas, but what is is really that we need to do to pass?
a) One needs to be able to plan therequird hardware as well as how what needs configuring inside SharePoint
b) Then there is the deployment - and there are various ways to do this
c) Then there is a maintence, monitoring and backup/restore strategies
d) Finally there is the all imortant search, content management and Business Intelligence side of things.
#
Excel Chart - Line Chart Marker Styles
Sometimes clients want various settings for their line charts.
The markers on their line charts can be circles, squares, crosses etc
Today we'll just focus on the four main styles
The VBA code is ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).MarkerStyle = 1
And you would loop through each series collection.
So the critical numbers are:
None --> 0
Square --> 1
Diamond --> 2
Triangle --> 3
Circle --> 8
The markers on their line charts can be circles, squares, crosses etc
Today we'll just focus on the four main styles
The VBA code is ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).MarkerStyle = 1
And you would loop through each series collection.
So the critical numbers are:
None --> 0
Square --> 1
Diamond --> 2
Triangle --> 3
Circle --> 8
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
PowerPoint 2007 add-in issues
Created a PowerPoint 2007 Add-in for a client to add buttons in the ribbon to paste in excel objects and also to break the linked objects.
But it didn't run on my tst pc!
After some muckign around, found these worked fine in the addins directory.
So was it hte d: drive area that was causing issues?
Tried d:\temp and it worked. But the d:\!Clients didn't.
They all were in trusted locations so the only difference was the exclamation in the file name.
Why would this cause issues?
Another case of finding a workaround for some Microsoft Office Product.
###
Tom Bizannes is a Microsoft Developer who can talk the language of Business Users.
He works best with a good cup of coffee.
But it didn't run on my tst pc!
After some muckign around, found these worked fine in the addins directory.
So was it hte d: drive area that was causing issues?
Tried d:\temp and it worked. But the d:\!Clients didn't.
They all were in trusted locations so the only difference was the exclamation in the file name.
Why would this cause issues?
Another case of finding a workaround for some Microsoft Office Product.
###
Tom Bizannes is a Microsoft Developer who can talk the language of Business Users.
He works best with a good cup of coffee.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Studying for the SharePoint Administrator Exam 70-668
There are 4 main areas one nees to know very well to pass this:
It looks like I know the first 3 areas quite well and the 4ths ok except for some of the new stuff or should I say, the marketing fluff that Microsoft outputs as some of what they are asking for seems a little ambigous.
Will now go over tehir learning plan and do a few step by step SharePoint installs and configuration.
This is going to mean a little work over the next week or so.
Here's to my painful journey to dichipher and study for an exam with no real studfy book or course material except what one can glean from the requirements.
Found out that there are hundreds if not thousands of links to mini articles at technet and msdn.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ff627858.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256%28v=office.12%29.aspx
So will go through these, plus hte help, and one of the wrox books and this will hopefully be what is required.
- Designing a SharePoint 2010 Farm Topology (27 percent)
- Planning SharePoint 2010 Deployment (26 percent)
- Defining a SharePoint 2010 Operations Strategy and Business Continuity (25 percent)
- Planning for Search and Business Solutions (22 percent)
It looks like I know the first 3 areas quite well and the 4ths ok except for some of the new stuff or should I say, the marketing fluff that Microsoft outputs as some of what they are asking for seems a little ambigous.
Will now go over tehir learning plan and do a few step by step SharePoint installs and configuration.
This is going to mean a little work over the next week or so.
Here's to my painful journey to dichipher and study for an exam with no real studfy book or course material except what one can glean from the requirements.
Found out that there are hundreds if not thousands of links to mini articles at technet and msdn.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ff627858.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256%28v=office.12%29.aspx
So will go through these, plus hte help, and one of the wrox books and this will hopefully be what is required.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Marketing XMas email
Interesting discussion was had when I drafted up an emai lto go to all consulting clients in nsw.
The big question was, why are you mentioning New stuff we don't do yet?
Why don't people get it?
This is the draft as below...but need to tweak it with even more "New" stuff....
Some of the new stuff allow one to put in a picture of a parrot....better than web photos eh?
###
The big question was, why are you mentioning New stuff we don't do yet?
Why don't people get it?
This is the draft as below...but need to tweak it with even more "New" stuff....
Some of the new stuff allow one to put in a picture of a parrot....better than web photos eh?
Merry Christmas ….,
We hope you’ve had a good year.
This year has been an interesting one for ###’s
consulting services in the following three areas and
we do thank our clients who have worked with our consulting
and development teams in the following areas.
aa) Microsoft
Office Conversions and Upgrades
bb) Document
Management (Quality Office Add-ins)
cc) Content
Management (WebSite Development)
Microsoft is bringing out some exciting new solutions next
including Parrot for CRM (note you need SharePoint for CRM) and the new
versions of Exchange and Sql Server.
So you’ll hear new terms such as ”Social
Marketing” and “Digital Marketing” in
a lot of their communication.
If you have any Microsoft Consulting or Development
requirements call us on 02-9249-2700 or email us.
The top three points
of consulting/development work above include:
a) Office Conversions:
·
The Speed testers to prevent locking and
slowness issues with Excel and Access when you upgrade Microsoft Office
·
Rebranding and updating Templates and Macros in
Word is always busy
·
New Charting and Reporting Solutions that use
the new Excel format to output professional graphics and numbers
b) Document Management
·
MacroView DMF leading the way with more useful
functionality than most traditional DM systems
·
ClauseBank enabling you to squirt in word
snippets into your emails and corporate documents
·
Saving Messages to SharePoint – the hottest
add-in for SharePoint world-wide.
c) Content Management (Web Site Development):
·
The SharePoint Standardiser – to bring all
document libraries into a standard configuration
·
Using the new DotNetNuke Content Management
System with it’s nice new editor and SmartPhone Templates
·
ASP.Net and the old Classic ASP Web Development
has also kept us busy this year with clients’ websites and intranets
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