Happy Birthday Joy! (the silly edition lol)

Happy Birthday to our big girl Joy. 11 years and you are beautiful, fun and such a blessing. God bless you abundantly on your Birthday year in Jesus name.

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Anniversary ballroom dancing with Durban Dance Center…

What an amazing time ballroom dancing with my wife last night for our anniversary. We even got into some Argentine Tango. Thanks Peta Dougall and Durban Dance Center. We decided to carry on dancing at home, just the two of us, it was a very awesome and special night dancing the night away. I recommend it to anyone.

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Happy Anniversary my love!

We have been together now for 27 years and married for 16 years today, and yet you are still my most beautiful and best friend and the first and last person I want to see every day. You are the sugar in my coffee, the forth on my cappuccino, basically without you life has no flavor or excitement.

I love you and look forward to spending the rest of our lives loving each other more each day.

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Kitchen Reno Before and After…

I take my hat off to anyone who starts a renovation project in their home themselves. It is not a simple job and it is challenging. If you have not done it before there are often some hidden gems that you don’t always see on those fast simple home make over shows.

I am going to highlight some lessons learnt to hopefully help a few other people in my position.

1. I mapped out to Remove my kitchen cupboards and paint them white and then place new hinges on and reverse the doors. IT looks a lot better now and at the same time I decided to remove some items we did not like. That was actually the simple part, but I did not think about how to fill in the gaps once those cupboards were out the wall.
2. Painting sounds simple enough but I had to really work on some suborn hinges that got stripped and stuck in the wood as I was removing them.
3. Okay, first coat of paint was okay, but I quickly realized that a sponge roller is your best friend for the finish I wanted (okay it was my wife’s idea not mine). The first paint was okay but it needed work and a second coats was clearly needed on all the doors. Fortunately I shopped around a bit and found top quality brand named paint in a generic labeled tin which was almost half the price but the same quality. So don’t just settle for what the store salesman tells you, shop around and learn what goes into a quality paint, you could save yourself a heap of cash.
4. I had to remove all the tiles on our backsplash behind the sinc, and tiling was going to cost quite a bit and I did not have the tools, but I did find a single piece of galvanized metal that fitted on the wall in one go and it only cost me 1 tenth of the cost of tiling. So, look for alternatives and don’t always just accept the norm.
5. There is a MASSIVE opportunity in any renovation project and that is to declutter as you renno. I removed all the cupboard contents and found some glasses and cups or things that have not been used since we moved into our house about 15 years ago. CHUCK IT OUT or SELL IT! You don’t need that stuff and you will find that you can create a simpler cleaner look when you don’t have to set up bunches of cupboards to house all the extra junk that you are never going to use.
6. Make sure you check what you are sanding first. The cupboards over or near the stove had this sticky oily substance coated on them and when I used an electric sander it just clumped up and turned to rubber on the sander and just messed up the rest of the door as I was sanding. Leave these doors or cupboard to last and get some extra sand paper to deal with all that goo.
7. Add in some extra time for unforeseen issues and make sure you add in a few days not just hours. I bought the hinges in batches and the second batch only arrived 3 weeks later because the hardware stores supplier changed in mid order. I was prepared to wait because they did save me quite a bit based on the same hinges at other stores, so be prepared for those unforeseen issues.
8. Make sure that the area is still functional as far as possible, or you will have a very difficult time. If you cannot then plan to stay out of house for that time, it can be too much on a relationship or on kids. If however it is functional they are very forgiving and are willing stick with you because you have not compromised their environment too much.
9. Before you just start going, always stop and think twice before you accidentally screw your hinges into the front of the cupboard doors instead of the back. It may force you to start all over again. Fortunately for me this was only two doors and some wood filler saved my bacon.
10. Keep your colours to more neutral and simple colours that open the space up. Think as if you were renovating the home to resell it. This adds huge value to your home when you do eventually sell it and it keeps your options to deco very simple and focused on the items instead of on the walls or floors.

As I mentioned, I am no expert and these pointer are purely some things I learnt and hope they help you. When you start out make sure you know your plan and you have the full agreement with the family. This helps them to be patient with you a lot more than usual.

I hope you enjoy the before and after photos and am quite interested to hear your thoughts on the changes so please do drop me a message on my blog or even on my various social media and tell me about your thoughts or maybe even share your renno project before and after pictures.

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Do you want to be better organized in 2017 at the office and at home….

Your day is so busy and there are so many people and things going on and then you find an interesting article that you want to get back to but don’t know where to put it so just dump it on your desktop then you suddenly remember you have a several things to do so you need a pen and paper to make a to do list and don’t forget the bread eggs and milk and also there is a project meeting and you need to set up an agenda and task list for the team….

Sound familiar?

Stop, take a deep breathe, I have a possible solution which I have been using for years and it has helped me HUGELY. It’s called Microsoft OneNote and it is free and can be installed on ANY PC or DEVICE, it even runs on the web. I use it to manage family chores, daily life as well as handling project communications and project notes or documentation. Agendas and meeting notes are a breeze, and what makes this even better is my wife has access to view the family notebook and checklist what I need to get for groceries. The project team has access to the projects notebook which shows the tasks list which is linked to Outlook tasks assigned to them an there is an agenda for each of the meetings. The whole thing lives in the cloud and have page version which I can review if need be. I can set up a new page when I am doing research and just “clip” or “dump” the whole entire web page or email I just found onto a page which I can read later on my phone when I can. I can record voice messages on these pages as well as dump images and the system allows me to use OCR to get the text off those business cards I often get from people. It’s a great way to organise all the people I meet and helps me to have place to remember where they are from.

Here are a few links from Business daily use all the way to Students and for your home life. Finally, one place where all these things can be organised and managed and shared or not shared which whoever I choose.

I STRONGLY recommend taking the time to go over these articles. If you want to be quick, start with 3,4,5,6 and then get into 1 when you have a little more time because this tool can do a HUGE amount of very cool stuff. Don’t forget you can collaborate these with people and it can be installed on any phone, tablet, pc, laptop or phablet.

1. Detailed list of what OneNote can do http://ift.tt/1fGBpYC

This is why OneNote is awesome http://ift.tt/KQ9iLL This post shows you why Microsoft OneNote is awesome and shows you some of the hidden features you didn’t know about.

2. How to use OneNote in a classroom with students (maybe a project team) http://ift.tt/1BM4ZuB

3. How to remain organized in business using OneNote http://ift.tt/1MweUT5

4. How OneNote helps us to organize the day http://ift.tt/1EOOlIU

5. 10 Tips that make OneNote more useful in everyday life http://ift.tt/1I4z0qE

6. The Family edition (can be used for teams) of how to organize your family http://ift.tt/2jAOKMn

7. The official site https://www.onenote.com

I hope that your 2017 is organised and victorious.

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@Google AI starts to to make its own language amongst iteself…

Often times we hear about AI. We often also imagine the Terminator movies or have people who say both yay and boo to the idea of AI in computers. The truth is we don’t know what AI is and we have no idea of how it will look or even work in our lives.

Enter @Google AI amongst many others. @Google created an AI Translation team of computers that were given the task of translating between languages and each other. The results were exactly as expected until they discovered something that they could not explain. The computers started creating their own more efficient language and communicating with each other in this new language. This new language and communication is a mystery to the team.

So lets go back to the start and ask again are we interested in AI? The question that should be asked now appears to have changed because we can now see the reality of the AI at work. But do we want these computers making decision and communicating with each other on their own? Now this changes things doesn’t it?

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Google’s AI translation tool seems to have invented its own secret internal language http://www.msn.com Based on how various sentences are related to one another in the memory space of the neural network, Google’s language and AI boffins think that it has.

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A Business users perspective on cloud technologies…

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@ilovedurban R50 Billion city investment into Durban…

What an awesome thing to happen right here in our city. This is going to bring some serious economic enhancements and development to our city. I love this city.

http://www.ilovedurban.co.za/r50-billion-city-for-kzn/

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Happy 21st Birthday Michal Dance

Happy 21st Birthday Michal Dance. This party was so much fun and we had such an awesome time. We pray that you are abundantly blessed in Jesus name.

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#SPSDBN Reporting and Dashboards in SharePoint presentation…

This is for all those who attended my talk at #SPSDBN this weekend about creating reports and dashboards without spending more money. The file is on my OneDrive and is around 44MB so take the throttle off your data lines and download a copy for yourself. Please note that the late slide does have sound.

If you do have any question please feel free to contact me as well.

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AsCWhdSUQ2bCmYBOM_kIc0P_Pd5MCA

SP Saturday 2016.ppsx 1drv.ms Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation

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Taking the tastes of SA far and wide #IloveDurban

This incredible article shows that Durban is not just a place of sun and surf but of flavor and style that is almost unique from around the world.

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Taking the tastes of SA far and wide | IOL http://www.iol.co.za Masterchef Australia judge George Calombaris is full of praise for local chefs. [VIDEO]

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#SPSDBN my first time speaking….

#SPSDBN Today was the first time I have spoken at this event and the people seemed to like the topic and enjoyed our time together.

My topic was about creating reports and dashboards without spending more money. The main thread in the message however was more about gaining control over your company data to bring order in a world of Excel copy paste.

After my presentation I had hidden away some gift vouchers under selected chairs and asked everyone to check if they were a winner. These four were the winners, well done.

#SPSDBN @alistairpugin @bradgcoza

Thanks for this great event and the opportunity to present.

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In the midst of #feesmustfall violence one student is being bold to share love rather than fear, hate and racism…

This guy stands alone with a blindfold on to offer hugs to students just to show that love really does not know colour or agendas. He only wanted to share a hug with whoever wanted to. the reactions and responses are amazing. I want to give a huge shout out to the boldness and to the courage this guy has showed and hope that this video break the internet. Its time to stop giving fear a platform on social media and start sharing about all those millions of people in the world who do these little things that actually show compassion. We need to start sharing more of these stories and these people in social media because they are the ones who are making a change in our daily lives with love and compassion. Well done.

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https://youtu.be/dWZRU1ruBmg

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Placed 2nd in our first Ballroom Dance Competition

Today Tracey and I stepped (pun intended) into a new world of ballroom dance competition. We entered in the social dance division, which is not competitive. However our group was combined with the Beginners competitive division nd we ended up being judged on this level from our first try. We found this out the day before the competition which meant we had to change the fox trot to a quick step and the swing to a jive literally overnight.

We just enjoyed the time together as a husband and wife doing some dancing together.

After all the excitement and some butterflies lining up, we some how managed to place second in the ballroom division (Waltz and Quick Step) and second in the latin division (Cha Cha and Jive).

Wow, what a fun time and such a diverse array of people.

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@Panasonic unveils a bendable battery….

This news alert may seem a but premature since it is only in R&D stage, however it does open the door to opportunity.
Maybe its just me but in production today there are very few advances to containing energy. So I think it is high time the energy storage market got a shake up to innovate the way energy is stored.
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