Wazza’s Whimsy

Check out this VBA enabled Microsoft Project Plan document that I recently developed.  It neatly solves a need of every project manager who uses Microsoft Project to track their project:  marking public holidays as non-working time in the project schedule.

My approach is to use the Outlook Holiday File that is installed on your computer when you install Microsoft Office Outlook.  It contains hundreds of religious and national holidays from countries around the world.  If you don't have Outlook installed, the wizard will take you to a page where you can learn about this file and download a copy to use as a source of holiday dates.

Best of all: its free!

Click here to visit my company website and check it out.

I have discovered a disturbing "feature" in Excel 2007 VBA in the way that the Workbooks.Open method handles xlsx format files versus the legacy xls format file.

If a file has a "workbook protection" password set, then the following statement will succeed for an xls file but will fail for an xlsx file with run time error "1004: The password you supplied is not correct."

set wkb = Application.Workbooks.Open("file.???", , , , "password")

Why supply a password in this call? I am running Excel as an unattended automation server to load data captured in workbooks submitted from a website into an Access database. Sometimes the users apply a "file open" password which will cause Excel to display a dialog box and wait for someone to supply the password if no password is supplied as an argument to the Open method - very bad! On the other hand, if the password argument is present and is incorrect then the above 1004 error is generated and I can then deal with it in code. If there isn't a "file open" password on the file, the Open method ignores the password argument.

However, all my files have a "workbook protection" password set and some users submit the files in the new xlsx format. This causes me to discard the file when it should be able to be opened. By the way, even if the "workbook protection" password is "password" it generates this error. And if there is a "workbook protection" password on an xlsx file and no password argument is provided to the Open method, it opens the file without any trouble.

So looks like Microsoft have messed up the Workbooks Open method in the case where:

1. The file has a "workbook protection" password
2. The file is in the new xlsx format
3. A password argument is supplied in the call to the Workbooks.Open method

*** UPDATE ***
Microsoft Excel MVP Ron de Bruin has confirmed that this is an error in Excel 2007 and he has notified the Microsoft Excel development group.  Hopefully that will get the issue fixed!

I saw a great quote by Albert Einstein the other day:

Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

No where more apt I suspect than in our personal lives.

I am completely in love with Guitar Hero II for the PS2 which I received for my most recent birthday - Caroline is starting to regret it already!  I am working my way through Easy and have 5 stars for most of the songs.  But the really big news is that I finally cracked my first 100% song - all notes hit perfectly - for "Woman" by "Wolf Mother".  And after only 5 days, too.

My first 100%!

For full details of my scores, see Score Hero where I am ranked 1549th in the whole sidereal universe!

I have just signed up for the Australian Canon EOS Photo5 Competition which I missed out on last year (because they had too many applicants).  They have increased the number of entrants, but get in quick because it is getting quite a bit of newspaper exposure. 

They send you a box with five objects in it which have to feature individually in five separate photos (one of each).  Last year the objects were: chalk, balloon, spots, cellophane, boxes.  Check the link above to see a movie about the 2007 competition; or here to see the finalists in each category.

If you are selected as a finalist, there is an online voting forum to decide the winners.  So if I manage to pull off a photo that appeals to the judges, I'll be letting my Vox and Facebook and RealWorld friends know so they can get their weight behind me!

I have previously mentioned that I was trialling PanoMan on my N95.  I have now licenced the software and here is an early example of about a 270 degree shot of Martin Place in Sydney outside the GPO.  Considering there were lots of people walking around, the images were stitched pretty well seamlessly.

Martin Place, Sydney

I have been fooling around with some great software on my Nokia N95 (in fact it will work with almost any Symbion 60 Series device) for taking panoramic photos, called PanoMan.  I took the following three photos using the trial version which will stitch together two shots (the paid for version will do 12 to provide near 360 degree photos) to provide a good wide-angle shot.  The trial version also adds a logo to the lower right of the photo.

As you can see, the first one was taken in a train and the guy in front moved his head so lending the shot a kind of poltergeist effect.  Similarly the second shot taken at the corner of Hunter St and Pitt St has another ghostly moving person.  But in the third one at Suncorp plaza has everyone behaving themselves and demonstrates the power of this software: I defy you to see where the two shots were stitched.

At only 9.90 Euros I will probably grab this so look forward to some really, really wide shots being posted soon.

My mate Brad and I have just brewed our 9th or 10th (lost count, basically) batch of beer out at The Beer Factory at Seven Hills in Sydney.

This is a fantastic concept oriented around brewing your own beer.  I know what you are thinking here - "I hate home brew, it tastes like heavy metal poisoning" - and I am with you 100%, I hate HOME brew as well.  But this is something different, this is OWN brew, where you utilise the recipes and equipment of a professional micro-brewery to produce clean, crisp, preservative-free beer in whatever style you want at a fraction of the price of commercial beer.

No hangovers, great tasting and costs about $1 a 355ml bottle.  And you have the pleasure of saying "I made that" when friends compliment you on the great brew you just poured for them.  As Molly Meldrum would say "do yourself a favour" and check it out.  Feel free to contact me and I'll invite you out when I next have a brew or bottling to do.  And no, I don't get any commission or benefits from their business - it is just a great concept that works and I am a very pleased customer.

The Beer Factory

The Beer Fridge

I had cause to test the speed of the ADSL connection at one of my client sites today and found The Global Broadband Speed Test very useful.

As it turns out, the result was pathetic and mainly caused by a barrage of spam hitting their mail server on Pacific Internet's network.  Contrast this with the blistering pace of my home office network on iiNet.

I bought myself a Sunbeam EM6910 and the associated grinder recently and have started to perfect my coffee making skills.  I am knocking out some great espresso shots, particularly since I discovered the Costa Rica blend from Sydney coffee roastery Velluto Nero.

The latte's great too although the micro-foam remains elusive using skim milk, although I have got close using full-cream.  Here are my early attempts that are showing some promise: