Welcome to Planet Dan

Planet Dan logo

I set up this website ten years ago although it was neglected for the last 5. It’s currently enjoying a revival for reasons not fully thought through…

My old site had various details about my family tree – Wardles from Kegworth in Leicestershire, and Killick (of Cheam in Surrey), and a few random pages about Ghost Hill in Taverham, Fairey Aviation, the floodlights at Crystal Palace and the oh-so 2001 homepages that showed off holiday photos and the like. I still have a couple more pages to transfer over (I’ll save you the holiday slide show :-) ).

If you like something or find it helpful please rate it (click the thumbs up icon at the bottom of the post) or leave a comment.

Thanks for visiting!
Dan

Conversion invalid for datatypes on column pair (SQL2000 Error)

If you trying to import a CSV/text or Excel file into some table on SQL Server 2000 where some of the table columns are int/numeric/float and some of the data is empty (null) – watch out that you are not trying to import a space by accident.

For my work I work with lots of data files from third parties and this morning I was getting the following sort of error message:

Error during Transformation ‘DirectCopyXform’ for Row number 1. Errors encountered so far in this task: 1.

TransformCopy ‘DirectCopyXform’ conversion error:  Conversion invalid for datatypes on column pair 134 (source column ‘q18_9′ (DBTYPE_WSTR), destination column ‘q18_9′ (DBTYPE_UI1)).

A subtle clue does present itself when previewing the data (I’m assuming you’re using the DTS import wizard) – if you are seeing empty columns instead of NULL then this is a sign there’s something there. To fix it’s just a case of opening up the data file in Excel and performing a search and replace on the ‘ ‘ (making sure that Match entire cell contents is checked of course).

Hope this helps (if anyone else out there is still using SQL Server 2000 and DTS!)

Recommended free anti-virus?

I put Windows 7 onto my laptop last week and then wanted to install anti-virus. I used to recommend AVG but it has become “bloat-ware” and using the latest version on a friend’s computer recently was a really painful experience. I tried Avast! (free edition) but found that difficult to use.

So I’m just trialling VIPRE from Sunbelt software which was recommended by a friend who runs a small IT support company. Alternatively, I do recommend ESET’s NOD32 anti-virus which I use for work but neither are free – right now I don’t know of any free solutions to recommend. That said the phrase “no such thing as a free lunch” might explain AVG’s change of direction.

What use are parallel printer cables in 2009?

None it would seem. Clearing out some shelves of old computer equipment today I was planning to put some of the more useful items up on ebay – each for a penny in case anyone out there has a use for a little network hub or a parallel printer cable and some other bits.

A quick search (of ebay) seems to indicate that there will be few if any takers though. We’ll see if freecycle is any better, but ultimately I expect to be taking some perfectly good CPU fans (never used), a 4 year old wireless print-server (which was a pain to configure), three parallel printer cables and various other old bits of kit down to the local tip/recycling centre.

Old computer equipment destined for the rubbish tip

Shame, but then it’s out-dated, slow, or just plain incompatible. It seems such a waste. Chances are another Iomega zip drive will be on its way to silicon heaven very soon.

If you’re looking for cheap Python programming books – I am trying to recycle those too. It’s probably too late for the CD’s I chucked out. If you were looking for (un-opened) Microsoft Works 2000 – sorry, the rubbish is picked up this Tuesday.

Update 25/11/09: The answer to whether parallel printer cables have any use these days is still ‘No’, but most of the other bits got picked up on Freecycle. Search for your local Freecycle group here – http://groups.yahoo.com/ (much faster to access than through www.freecycle.org)

Python Programming Books (second hand) for sale

I’m trying to tidy up my home office and I have a bunch of programming books on my shelves that I don’t need anymore so I’m hoping they’ll find a new home if I sell them on Amazon. Is that a good idea? Or would I be better off listing them on ebay?

I don’t expect to make my money back – they’re priced to just-go. I imagine they would just get pulped if they went to a charity shop…

Starting out in survey design

My work is online surveys but the questionnaire below made its way home from school on Friday. I am so proud(!)… it has yes/no buttons and a little text box for the verbatim answer too.

First SurveyThe questions are:

  1. Did you have dominoes?
  2. What was your favourite toy? Write your favourite toy’s name here:
  3. Did you only play with your toy inside?

LEGO can be work too

I should be working but I couldn’t help enjoy 10 Best LEGO Designs now which was one of those “possibly related” links (automatically generated) at the bottom of a post on Cecilia Weckstrom’s blog – some of which is work related… but also shares great stuff like this:

Examples of great ‘info-graphics’ (data visualisation)

For work, I create online surveys and analyse data. Lots of data and after a while the results charts get a little … boring. Smashing magazine’s latest post Data Visualization and Infographics Resources has lots of great examples of alternatives to the humble bar chart or pie chart.

Trânsito 3 final (2007)

Would love to create executive summaries like this one above. I imagine it takes a lot of time (and some talent). My favourite screenshot from the Smashing magazine post is this:

$400 Million Club Infographic

It’s really very simple (fundamentally it’s just a bar chart underneath with nice graphics).

How much does a farmer earn for 1 chicken?

This question was a comment that was randomly posted on planetdan by a blog spammer, but I would be interested to know.

I’d also like to know how much milk a cow produces (so I just looked it up – some jersey cows at Punchards Farm in Rattlesden produce 20 litres/day [source]), and also how much the farmer gets paid and what it costs to look after and feed a cow…

Just curious. I shall tag this Chicken economics!

How to improve your search engine ranking

I had a chat today with someone about the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). He just can’t get his two websites to show up in any of Google’s results so where is he going wrong?

If you have read on the internet (or in a book) that one of the tasks to undertake is to add META keywords to your website pages then you are reading a guide that is perhaps 15 years out of date (example below)…

<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”Mac, pc, consultancy, support, management, maintenance, installation, networking, FileMaker, Windows, SBS, Vista”>

KEYWORDS meta tags don’t help. (Don’t confuse this with the DESCRIPTION meta tag which does have some value).

The basics of SEO revolve around three things:

  1. Your content needs to contain the words you want to be ranked for,
  2. Although bear in mind that other people might be searching using different keywords,
  3. Your keywords should be in a headline or page title near the top of the page (preferably inside ‘H1′ tags) and included in the title text (that appears at the top of the browser window). They should also be in the clickable text of any links that point to this web page.

It can help a lot if other websites can link to your website using these keywords too. It’s also easier with websites that have more pages because there are more opportunities to insert links to different pages. This is why blogs are a popular SEO tactic, which is fine if you have something to say…

How to get found on Google is another post I wrote on the subject (using plumbers/carpenters/tradesmen as an example).

Places to go in Norfolk with kids

There is a superb dinosaur park at Weston Longville, about 7 or 8 miles out of Norwich. I was really impressed by the dinosaur trail where we had to track down all the dinosaurs and collect stamps to earn the medal.

Dinosaurs in Norfolk!

We spent the whole day there (we took a packed lunch) – lots to do, the maze is a lot of fun, and there’s a huge adventure play area including a good area for toddlers too. Highly recommended.

The dinosaurs at Crystal Palace don’t quite compare.