Visio Guy

David Parker, of bVisual Ltd, has created a really cool map of the UK's counties and boroughs, and released it for download. Have a look at the article here: UK Counties and Boroughs Map Shapes for Visio.

David's answer to my Map of Germany has just unwittingly (or wittingly) started a friendly, cross-Channel rivalry (Visio Guy is currently in Vienna) And the timing couldn't be better: since England won't be in Austria for the European Cup our Northern neighbors will have plenty of time to add features to their Visio maps. Hurray for the Visio Community!

Anyway, David's document contains not only geographical shapes, but also some very nice organizational and structural details of London boroughs, counties, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, district county areas, unitary authorities, and coucil areas. To put it in American-english: "It's a ten-page extravaganza blowout!" He's also linked the shapes to data, using the new Link Data to Shapes features in Visio 2007. Very nice indeed!

Back to the smack-talk: in 2000, I created a silly .wav-file to mock the English before their match with Germany. This wasn't entirely non-Visio-related, because it was intended to help defend a co-worker who was working at the UK Visio office, but was from Germany.

England vs. Germany is always an exciting rivlary, and the looming pending match was considerably raising the tension-level in the office. My friend had been harrassed all week long by her English co-workers (the Scottish lass was at least supportive), and needed something with which to fight back. Since English footie had been having trouble with the Germans, I put this little mix together...

Download: God Save England Mix.zip (691 KB)

...which effectively jinxed the Germans. In the 53rd minute, an excellent free-kick from David Beckham was headed into the goal by Alan Shearer to knock the Germans out, 1-0. Stand up if you love England!