Kent

Getting a cracking hotel deal yesterday I headed down to Kent last night aiming for an early start this morning. Of course I managed to forget to charge my camera so had to rely on the camera phone. Actually the results aren’t too bad as long as you don’t expand them too much!.

Kent is a county which you drive through a lot to get to the continent but based on the few times I’ve stopped it’s well worth a closer look. In the past I’ve been to Canterbury Cathedral but I was looking for a car charger for my camera so couldn’t really miss the opportunity to have another look. Given the timing with the Pope’s funeral yesterday it was good to see the spot where the Pope and the Archbishop prayed together in 1982, there was a book of condolence there with a queue of extremely well behaved French students waiting to sign it which was a nice thing to see.

The actual plan for the day (as I am meant to see places I have never been to before) was to go to the North coast of Kent so i drove up to Herne Bay and Whitstable. Both are typical English seaside towns and given the temperature this morning I didn’t stay long but from what I saw they’ll be nice in the summer.

Ever onwards I finally got to see Leeds Castle which is just off the M20. The grounds are huge and very well kept and, on a day like today in the bright spring sunshine, are absolutely stunning. The castle itself isn’t lived in these days, it’s owned by a charitable trust and is used for conferences and the such like. But it dates back to the 12th century so there’s real history to look at.

All in all a very enjoyable, if brief, trip down south.

April 9, 2005 by 0

Manual labour not for me

Just got back from removing the winter cover from Mum and Dads swimming pool. Unfortunately Dad has put his back out at the moment so he could only offer encouragement from the sidelines while Mum, Judith, Matt and I laboured away. Every time I do this it just makes me glad that I work in a nice, cosy office environment and don’t have to do manual labour for a living as, apart from being totally unfit, I am just an incompetent fool when it comes to anything practical. Still the pool is now open, hopefully we’ll have a summer good enough to appreciate it this year.

April 3, 2005 by 3

11TMR is 3 today

It was back in the salad days of March 2002 that I started 11TMR. I had no idea that it would still be going 3 years later at the time. And I am still stunned at the number of hits the site gets, with an average of about 1,200 hits from 300 distinct users a day.


Thanks for stopping by so often to look at my life! I have no idea where this will go over the next 3 years, or even 3 months but please keep on coming back to say Hi.

March 30, 2005 by 2

OLE LotusScript Class to read and write to Excel

A very simple little LotusScript class which will open an existing spreadsheet and allow you to read and set individual cells, save and close the spreadsheet.

Class ExcelReport
  Private xlApp As Variant
  Private xlSheet1 As Variant
  Private xlSheet2 As Variant
  Private xlSheet3 As Variant
  Private strFilePath As String
  Sub new( xlFilename , isVisable )
  
    Set xlApp = CreateObject(“Excel.application”)
    xlApp.Workbooks.Open xlFilename
    xlApp.Visible = isVisable
    strFilePath = xlFilename
  End Sub
  Function saveFile
    xlApp.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs( strFilePath )
  End Function
  Function insertData( intSheet As Integer , row As Integer , column As Integer , value As String )
    xlApp.Workbooks(1).Worksheets( intSheet ).Cells( row , column ).Value = value
  End Function
  Function getData( intSheet As Integer , row As Integer , column As Integer ) As String
    On Error Goto err_hdl
    getData = xlApp.Workbooks(1).Worksheets( intSheet ).Cells( row , column ).Value
    Exit Function
err_hdl:
    Print Error$ + “in cls: ExcelReport , method: getData , at line ” + Cstr( Erl )
    getData = “”
    Exit Function
  End Function
  Function doQuit
    xlApp.Quit
    Set xlApp = Nothing
  End Function
  Function makeVisable
    xlApp.Visible = True
  End Function
End Class

An example of how this can be used follows:

Sub Initialize
  Dim report as ExcelReport
  Dim iCol As Integer
  Dim iRow as Integer
  Dim strData as String

  Set report = New ExcelReport(“C:\mysheet.xls” , True )

  
  For iRow = 1 To 10
    strData = report.getData(1, iRow , 1)
    If strData = “” Then
      report.insertData(1, iRow, 2, “Null”)
    Else
      report.insertData(1, iRow, 2, “Not Null”)
    End If
  Next iRow
  report.saveFile
  report.doQuit
End Sub

Update Fixed thanks to Matthias.

March 27, 2005 by 3

Northamptonshire

The next leg of the County Challenge was to Northamptonshire. A county of two halves, if you like. The countryside itself is lovely – rolling hils, lots of old farms and houses. In the morning I went to Althorp, the home of the Spencer family. The house itself was closed but the village was really nice. Realising that Silverstone was close by I thought I should take a look. Nothing much was really happening but it was good to see the track and a few people driving round in saloon cars.

Onto the downside. Northampton itself is not a nice town, it covers everything that’s bad about sixties town planning and architecture. Still it was a nice drive and a relaxing couple of days, not all the counties are going to be great.

March 27, 2005 by 0

Belated Lotusphere '05 Review

Reading the May ’05 PC Pro (UK version) I was surprised to see a full page devoted to Lotusphere. A generally positive article, if a little belated, with a couple of good quotes…

For Bruce

The sheer breadth of products at this one show was astonishing… [including] the guys from www.openntf.org who are still reeling from the huge uptake of their alternative public-domain templates.


And one for Ed:
…if I were taking long bets on the comparative futures of Notes and Exchange, I’d be gently backing away from Mr Gates’ offering.
I can’t find the article online so these will have to do for the moment, but if you want a copy then I’ll be happy to scan it and mail it to you.

March 24, 2005 by 1

Another Release

An early start this morning to get into the office for a maintenance release of one of my applications. So far all seems to be going well but I never relax until it’s all finished as things have a habit of going wrong when you aren’t concentrating.

 

I forgot to post at the weekend after the first cards night in a long time. Lack of sleep will do that for you. No luck in the cards themselves, I lost almost every hand but the evenings have turned into more of a catch up session. We all used to work together but now, other than email, rarely see each other. Anyway a good evening all round even if a couple of people were missing.

March 22, 2005 by 0

A minor ambition

For a long time I have looked longingly at “proper” bespoke suits worn by the banker-types I work with. It’s very difficult to justify getting one as I rarely wear a suit these days (it’s rare for common sense to overtake my spending so be impressed). But now the temptation has increased after Scoble linked to English Cut, a blog by a Saville Row tailor who is making a very good job of introducing the novice like me to the sorts of things which you need to be aware of. Excellent blog.

March 18, 2005 by 2

Busy Busy Busy

Wow, 8 interviews in 2 days is hard going. Still they are done now, although the politics surrounding who gets hired and when has started up in earnest.

The upside of all this is that Domino is in the ascendancy, partly due to the realisation that moving legacy applications to a new platform is a bigger task than it may at first appear. More importantly, in my view at least, is that we can respond quicker than other development teams to new application requests and given the nature of the business there is never time to plan ahead.

Now, tomorrow I just have to catch up on three days work.

March 17, 2005 by 0