Ross Goodman

1000km Almost There

Fundraising, MND, Marathon, Motor Neuron Disease, Running No Responses »

Dec 162011

Thanks to Marathon-Photos.com

For those that don’t know, my eldest daughter Emma Berry Goodman passed away in September 2008 from Motor Neurone Disease. Whilst she was with us we were greatly helped by three fantastic charities: MND Scotland, Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Childrens Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS).

For the last three years I have dedicated a years fundraising to each of these charities. This year my challenge was to run 1,000km in 2011 for Marie Curie Cancer Care.
If everything goes to plan then I will achieve my 1,000th kilometer when I run in Strathclyde Parkrun - event number 86 on Saturday 17th December.

I know that this is an expensive time of year but if you could see your way to giving a donation at https://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011 or by texting “Ross70 £5″ to 70070 – feel free to adjust the amount as you see fit!
Every £20 raised helps to provide 1 hour of nursing care and I can personally vouch for how invaluable the Marie Curie are!

Thank you all for your donations and your support and encouragement in this past year!

If you would like to see just how far 1,000km actually is have a look here.

The Home Straight

Fundraising, Running No Responses »

Dec 022011

As you should know I set myself the challenge of running 1,000km in 2012 to raise money for the fabulous folks at Marie Curie Cancer Care. I have been slightly tardy with my updates but I am please to report that I’m getting close: I have just 110 km to go. i.e. I have run 89% of the planned distance with one month to go.

I had hoped to be able to raise £1000. Every £20 raise helps provide an hour’s nursing, £1,000 would equate to 50 hours care! Unfortunately I’m only at £766 or 76% of target. I am putting a big push in, I’m planning to run every day in December to guarantee that I hit my km target but I need some help from you to make sure that I hit my £ target!

I understand that these are financially trying times and December is an expensive month but this is exactly when we should be thinking of others. Any donations at all will be gratefully received at https://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011 or you can donate via your mobile phone by texting “Ross70 £5” to 70070

A Personal Manifesto / Dashboard / Scorecard

Me, Misc, Productivity, Ross No Responses »

Nov 112011

Those that know me will agree that I’m a bit of a “geek”.

Whilst I don’t always chase the latest and greatest geek toys or gadgets I do like to try and find a practical application of how technology can help me. This is a side effect of being a Business Intelligence consultant where I am striving to maximise (and measure) the benefits for my clients.

During a quiet moment I pondered – If I was to build a dashboard to measure/motivate/incentivise “ME” what would be on it?

photo credit: churl

Oracle SQL Developer and Commas

Oracle, Work No Responses »

Oct 132011

Just found an interesting feature in SQL Developer 3

I created a dataset that contained two columns of numbers that I wanted to quickly get into excel. I choose, export in CSV format to clipboard so that I could quickly paste it into an existing spreadsheet.

My dataset contained:

1234, 5678
2345, 6789
3456, 7890

The data that was exported was:

12,345,678
23,456,789
34,567,890

Have to export to an xls file, open it then copy and paste – YAWN !

Microsoft Office–VBA Editor Keeps Opening

Microsoft, Office, Windows, Work No Responses »

Oct 072011

For weeks now I have had the mild annoyance that the VBA code editor for various Excel spreadsheet’s appear to be opening at “random”. I finally tracked it down to me unlocking my PC. If I have excel running then lock my PC, when I unlock it, the VBA code editor appears.

I’m using Office 2003 SP3 on XP Pro SP3.

Turns out that there is a VERY easy fix – don’t maximise the VBA code editor.
If the editor is maximised, it appears on unlock, if it is not maximised it does not appear automatically on unlock.

Changing Excel Cell Values To Uppercase

Microsoft, Office No Responses »

Aug 232011

A nice quick tip, I had lots of cell values in a mixture of cases that should have been uppercase.

Create a macro:

sub MakeUpper()

for each myCell in Selection

myCell.Value = UCase(myCell.value)

next myCell

end sub

Add a menu item to your toolbar and then assign this macro to it.

Select the cells you want to upper case then press the button!

Edinburgh Marathon Festival 2011

Fundraising, Marathon, Ross, Running 2 Responses »

May 312011

OK it’s been a week since I finished my second marathon:

This was the first “big” race in my year long 1,000km in 2011 for Marie Curie.

To just add an extra element to the marathon my friend Andy from Reynard Nursery asked me to tweet every mile. I knew every mile would be very offputtingbut I thought I would give it a go. My marathon day tweets start here. I had experimented with VLingo for my BlackBerry which I was carrying anyway. My pre race day tests were all fine – press a button – speak – translated into text – press a button to confirm sending it to Twitter – easy. On the day, being a little breathless and having a howling gale (more of that later) things didn’t go quite to plan. “Four Miles” was translated as “F******* Hell” and “Five Miles and Feeling Good” was translated as “Hi Smiles and Feeling Good”. I reverted to typing after that.

Continue reading »

Follow Me For 26.2 Miles

Fitness, Marathon, Me, Running No Responses »

May 222011

Edinburgh Marathon 2011

As you should know by now I’m running the Edinburgh Marathon to raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care. This event is part of my challenge of running 1,000km in 2011. Every £20 raised for Marie Curie helps provide one hour of nursing care. Marie Curie were a fantastic help with my daughter Emma before we lost her to MND.

If you are feeling generous I will be accepting donations until the end of the year at http://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011

If you would like to follow me during my marathon I have set up my phone so you can track my progress:

Another way you can track my progress is via Twitter: https://twitter.com/rossgoodman

I will be attempting to live tweet during the run using VLingo on my phone which should tweet whatever I speak to it. Who knows how well it will work when I’m a bit “breathless”.

Update All Fields In MS Word

Microsoft, Office, Work No Responses »

Apr 192011

Sometimes you find a feature in a product that is just blatantly missing. One of those in Microsoft Word is the ability to update all the fields in the document with the latest value in a field.

I use both the built in fields e.g. Author, Version, Title and custom fields e.g. Project Code. I set the values once in the document properties and then insert the field codes in the document rather than the text. All is well. If you change the value of a field you can press F9 and all of the fields update to the latest value EXCEPT if you have used the fields in the document header or footer, these do not get updated for some reason. I would classify this as a bug, why would I not want all instances of the same field to be in sync throughout my document.

The solution is remarkably simple. Create the following macro:

Sub UpdateAll()
Dim oStory As Range
Dim oField As Field
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
For Each oField In oStory.Fields
oField.Update
Next oField
Next oStory
End Sub

This can be saved in your normal.dot file and will be available in all your word documents.

Scottish Football – My Solution

Misc No Responses »

Mar 082011

Today the Scottish government, police, SFA and the old firm are having a summit to address the problems following last weeks match.

The problem is, the football clubs are a business and unless everyone is involved, shareholders included, then this will go nowhere. There is also the problem as to how to make this fair and equitable for smaller clubs as well as the very top tier.

My Solution:

The Players
Any player recieves a yellow card they forfeit 1 weeks pay.
A red card – forfeit two weeks pay.
i.e. two yellows and a red is four weeks pay forfeited.
Even if a player recieves a red and then continues to protest the ref can issue another yellow or red as he sees fit.

The Management
The referee or another official has the ability to issue yellow and red cards to the touchline management staff with the same forfeit as above.
Now the management will loose their pay if their behaviour is not up to scratch.

The Team
A yellow card equates to one point, a red gives two points. If a team (players and management) accrue over 5 points in a single game, they forfeit their share of the gate money for the match. If the team accrue over 8 points in a single match they loose all income from the match gate, TV, food etc.

Who Benefits
The teams do not get to choose, the SFA or public can choose a charity every week or month and all fines get paid to them. This way the team is still out of pocket as they have to pay the player’s wage even though the player will not recieve it.

Lets see how long it takes for the teams to get their act together and play in a responsibe, respectful and sportsman like manner.