Poem

Talking to a colleague today and was reminded about my favourite poem, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Rather than posting it again here, follow this link. I also think that Lorenna McKennitt did a very good job in putting it to music.

Larkrise to Candleford

Well, Fringford to Juniper Hill and back via Cottisford. The walk for today was inspired by the current TV series "From Larkrise to Candleford", which is based on a series of books by Flora Thompson. Larkrise is suposedly Juniper Hill and Candleford is really Cottisford, both small villages to the north east of Bicester.

 

Here are some photos:

 Some inquisitive sheep

 

 

A close up of a cabbage, just because I could and it was there.

 

 An arty shot of a ploughed field

 

 

 Its a root, honest guv 

 

 

 

And now some arty sunset photos.

 

                    

Sharepoint Blogs

Websites like this are great for sharing ideas with other people around the world, but for a more focussed approach within an organisation many companies are turning to SharePoint.

 

This link describes how to use a sharepoint blog to create a sense of community.

Great example of using One Note

For a great example of how to use OneNote, follow this link, which describes how Jeff Raikes, the President of the Microsoft Business Division uses OneNote to manage his busy life.

One Note

Introduction

In the continuing saga of getting my work computer rebuilt and having Office 2007 re installed, I have realised that I have had Office 2007 Professional Installed rather than the ultimate edition that I started with. One of the consequences of this is that I no longer have OneNote installed on my machine.

 

For those that don’t know, OneNote looks, at first glance, to be an electronic version of a pad of paper. In a previous role I played with a tablet PC which had OneNote installed. At the time I thought that OneNote was just somewhere fancy to “write” notes using the tablet PC’s stylus. However, it turns out that OneNote is so much more than this.

Notebooks

Essentially you can have as many “notebooks” as you like. So for example you may have notebooks for

• Work stuff
• Home stuff
• Mobile (it will sync with your Smartphone or PDA)

Tabs

However, since these are usually all displayed down the right hand side of the screen I think it is a good idea to keep it to a maximum of three or four books.

Especially when each book can then be divided into a number of tabs (which appear across the top of the screen).  So in your “Work” notebook you can have tabs for:

• Each Project you are working on
• General admin stuff like to do lists
• Notes you take during the day

Pages and sub Pages

Each tab can then have one or more pages, that appear down the right hand side of the screen.

Cool things to do with OneNote

Online shopping receipts

You know when you order stuff online, you invariably see a page giving you details of your order number and confirmation. What do you do?Rather than printing it out and risk losing it, or ignoring it and not being able to refer back to it if something goes wrong with your order, you can capture it to One Note. Press the windows key and S to show a cross hair. Drag the cross hair over your online receipt and it will immediately be captured to OneNote. You can then move it to a Notebook tab used to store all such online receipts.

Print documents

With OneNote installed your Print dialogue boxes will now include a “Send to OneNote” option, enabling you to capture a range of documents to a Notebook.

Integrate with Outlook

Anything in OneNote can be tagged as an outlook task, ensuring that you are reminded about it.

 

Hopefully all this has encouraged you to look more closely at OneNote. I will try to update this with more details soon.

For now though, back to work.

 

 

 

Theme for my space

As you might have gathered I am just playing with this space thing at the moment. I hope that the blog will continue to grow, with a variety of categories. So I have changed the theme. Matilda commented that the previous black and white one was too busy and the photos were not of me. So I changed it to this one, for no other reason that that Matilda likes penguins.

And I must admit they do look kinda cute

 

 

Did I really say that, no not me, definitely not roughty toughty Sir Geoffrey

 

 

Hurrah

Finally – its all fixed. Both my desktop and laptop are back up and running. With Windows XP and both versions of Office.

And so far it seems to have been worth it as the desktop is certainly running a lot faster.

 

Also hurrah because my new personal laptop arrived from Dell yesterday – now we just need to set it up.

Next on the menu:

• Windows media home server
• Central NAS box
• Network printer

Well, we shall see…

Ggggrrrrr….

The saga of the desktop continues. I now have my desktop back, but I need to re install all thesoftware that I used to use, including all those really useful little utilities that you just take for granted but are not part of a standard install (like Core FTP, and Edit Plus).

Since my job entails delivering training and support on Office 2003 and 2007 I need both installed on my machine. However, it seems that we have run out of licences for 2007! Aaargh

I also need Visual Studio .Net 2003 – but we seem to have so many versions I don’t know which one to install.

Blooming Windows

This is going to be a shorter blog than I thought. I have had my desktop rebuilt and have just started to install all the apps I need to get back to work.

 

Hence why I am still here at 5.45 on a Friday instead of leaving at 5.

 

But I am on my way now, so more later.

MS Office Themes

Apply Consistent Look to Word, Excel and PowerPoint

You might guess from the title that it is possible to achieve a consistent look to the documents that you create in Word, the workbooks that you create in Excel and the presentation that you create in PowerPoint. And indeed this is the case. This is achieved through the use of themes.

 

Word

In Word go to the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon and click on Themes (the first button on the left of the Ribbon). Select a theme from the list of default themes.

Excel

In Excel go to the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon and click on Themes (the first button on the left of the Ribbon). Select the same theme as you selected in Word.

PowerPoint

In PowerPoint go to the Design tab of the Ribbon and select the required Theme from the Theme section. Note that if required you can expand the theme selection by clicking on the down pointing black triangle below the scroll buttons of the themes list.

 

Creating your own theme

Although Microsoft have created a variety of themes that are available by default you may not be able to find one that matches your requirements, for example you may want one that uses the same colour scheme as your company. In this case you will have to create your own theme. But do not worry, you will only have to do this once. If you create a theme in one application then it is available for use in all the other applications.

 

To create your own theme:

1. From the Colors drop down click on “Create new theme colors” and specify your required colours for each aspect of your new theme
2. From the Fonts drop down click on “Create new theme fonts” and specify fonts for headers and content.
3. Although you can not specify your own fill effects for your custom theme you can choose the existing theme from which you want to apply fill effects.
4. Once you have chosen your colours, fonts and effects you need to save your theme by selecting Save current theme from the Themes drop down.

Your new theme will now be available in other applications, ensuring that you have a consistent look and feel across all applications.