National Canoe Finals Bedford

For those of you interested, the photos from the Hastler Finals (National Canoe Finals) are now online, taken a few days but oh well that's life

Photos from the Bedford Finals - http://www.thesitedoctor.co.uk/photoalbum/default.aspx?fld=photos/Canoeing/Hastler%7EFinals%7EBedford%7E2006_09_16_17

Again it's on the old album for now so I apologise.

On the whole the race went ok, Sam paddled very well but I had to spend most of my time bracing against the incredible wash -at times the water was coming over the front of the boat and into Sam's cockpit. Pat and Paul had a bad experience with the start gun going before they managed to get to the line -despite my comments to the starter that not everyone was there. The organisation of the race was terrible, the "accomodation" (one toilet) wasn't great which was a shame but all was soon forgotten when we were off the main canal without the wash it was a nice race.

We're still awaiting the results but I'll post them here when they're online.

SQL Server a memory hog? No, not at all

Craig found an amusing dity today, he was messing around with the settings in SQL Server Express and noticed these memory settings:

For those of you who don’t want to deliminate it, that’s:

• 2,147,483,647 Megabytes
• 2,147,483 Gigabytes
• 2,147 Terabytes
• Or 2 Petabytes!!

One does have to wonder what sort of super computer Microsoft are expecting to have run the database. It's certainly future-proof that's for sure. I'd love to have 1TB of RAM, let alone 2PB! So the next time you wonder what’s taking up all the memory, best check SQL Server –you might just find that lost Petabyte…

BTW if this blog post is still around when Petabytes are as common as Mega and Gigabytes are now then feel free to lean back in your chair and recollect “the good ol’ days” when computers only had 200-300GB of disk space and a couple of Gig’s RAM.

Thailand Photos

Ok, I've just had the chance to go through the photos we sent off to the printers and organise them for the photo album. For now I've left the photos on my old photo album but it works so... :)

Enjoy these Thailand Photos

http://www.thesitedoctor.co.uk/photoalbum/default.aspx?fld=photos/Thailand~Photos~2006_07_07_22

Don't forget to read the articles about our trip, I've still got to complete the ones about Bangkok but the rest are online now :)

• Tipping
• Final Thoughts on the Hilton
• Monkey Mountain
• The World’s largest waterfall
• Birthday Celebrations
• Hua Hin Night Market
• The Hua Hin Thai Show
• Hua Hin Silk Farm and Tailored Suits
• Elephant Trekking
• Bridge over the river Kwai
• Damnoensaduak Floating Market
• Rose Garden Thai Village and Culture Show
• Phra Pathom Chedi
• First Impressions
• Here we go...

Oh and I also post-dated another article I wrote before leaving but didn't have the chance to post: The scourge of Google and public facing blogs

Over the next few weeks I'm going to get the rest of the articles I've written online so don't forget to check the archives.

Tim

Long time no blog

I wish I could say I’ve not posted anything for a while because I’ve been burning litres of fuel in the RX-8, sadly however that’s not the case, although I have done nearly 2,500miles in it and spent something silly like £600 in fuel, but I’ve not posted anything for a while because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work.

Those of you that have spoken with me recently know that not only is The Site Doctor currently going through a few alterations, but we’re also in the process of moving house, and in addition to this we’ve got a fair few projects going on -both paid and unpaid so watch this space for updates!

For those of you interested, I’m still working on the articles about SEO and eCommerce which I hope to get online soon as well as a few more updates re life the universe and just about everything else.

As for you Doug, thanks for your comments the other day, I'm working on it, but unlike you Yanks we don't all not work at work. Well, that is except for Craig...

Cisco VPN Software and Local Network conflicts

This is a post for anyone else having connectivity issues with their LAN while connected to a VPN of some sort. When setting up the Virtual Private Network (VPN) on our new server we encountered a number of issues of not being able to connect to the local network while the VPN was established. Initially it was merely an inconvenience and something that we could live with, but as time went on we needed to stay connected and access files from the local network, it grew more and more irritating.

After much searching on the internet for a solution with terms like “Cisco VPN Local Area Connection Issues”, “Cisco VPN LAN Issues”, “Cisco VPN LAN files” and various inflections of we didn’t find anything useful.

While trying to sort the issue, I noticed that the VPN was establishing itself on the subnet of 192.168.1.x, that in itself is not a problem but we were running our LAN under the same subnet. It was only then that we realised that we had a conflict as the VPN was overriding the local subnet so on trying to access 192.168.1.5 it would attempt to contact the remote server group (which didn’t exist).

If you’ve got the same issue, the fix is simple, all you need to do is change your local subnet to something else i.e. 3, this means when the VPN is connected it will connect over 1 and the LAN will remain unaffected –lovely!

Page name conflicts

I know a fair few people have come across the error which, having a page called “Login.aspx” causes the error message “CS0108: 'ASP.login_aspx.Profile' hides inherited member 'Login.Profile'. Use the new keyword if hiding was intended.” But I’ve found another when calling a page sitemap.aspx: “CS0108: 'ASP.sitemap_aspx.Profile' hides inherited member 'SiteMap.Profile'. Use the new keyword if hiding was intended.” So just be careful not to name your pages the same as the controls.

If like me however you like to keep some sort of consistency in the page names across your sites, you can easily get around it by renaming the page’s partial class name to something which doesn’t conflict and then updating the page’s codebehind reference i.e. for sitemap.aspx:

Processes without a username in Task Manager

I wasn’t sure if I’d broken something today when on opening Task Manager just after Windows booted all processes were missing a username. I still don’t know how I managed it but all seems ok again now, I guess I just opened it too early…

Icons, Icons, Icons *yawn*

Tired of having to work out how many icon sets I’ve got I decided I would write a list here and update it, anyone that wants them let me know :) -ones that are 0 mail me for the zip…

Anaheim Alert (8 vigilantly informative icons)
5 deliveries remaining

Blinksale (25 invoicing-made-easy icons)
3 deliveries remaining

Farewell Snow (10 snowy creations)
4 deliveries remaining

Manhattan Metroplex (8 icons with a very short commute)
5 deliveries remaining

Manhattan Night Life (10 icons living it up.)
5 deliveries remaining

Manhattan Smilies 1 (8 dramatic mood swings)
5 deliveries remaining

Manhattan Veggie (7 farm-fresh icons)
5 deliveries remaining

Marseilles Breakfast (8 icons fortified with vitamins and iron)
5 deliveries remaining

Marseilles Cafe (7 freshly-ground icons)
4 deliveries remaining

Modena Alfanumerico Molten (39 letters and numbers, camerata!)
5 deliveries remaining

Modena Simbolo (45 metallic symbolic frolics)
0 deliveries remaining

Oslo Atmosphere (9 happy weather icons)
1 delivery remaining

Oslo Easter (12 icons for Pascha Resurrectionis)
5 deliveries remaining

Oslo Finance (Get your Euro on! 12 icons)
0 deliveries remaining

Shanghai Tech (Get it? 15 icons...)
2 deliveries remaining

Shanghai Tech Smilies (Whoa! 36 smilies?)
1 delivery remaining

Taipei Night Market (14 Asian-esque icons)
3 deliveries remaining

Taipei Plastic Primates (18 days in the life of a plastic monkey)
1 delivery remaining

Tower Grove Elementalist (8 icons conjured up to do your bidding)
5 deliveries remaining

Tower Grove Promenade (11 iconic park fixtures)
4 deliveries remaining

For those of you not familiar with Icon Buffet, they offer free sets of icons at www.iconbuffet.com

Ones I'm missing:

• Alexandria Architecture
• Alexandria Atmosphere
• Dresden Tournament
• Durango Research
• Helsinki Hi-Fi
• Mallow Buzz 1
• Mallow Buzz 2
• Manhattan Finance
• Manhattan Smilies 2
• Manhattan Symbol
• Modena Alfanumerico Cold
• Modena Alfanumerico Cool
• Shanghai Tech Vector
• Shanghai Toolbox
• Taipei Buddies 1
• Taipei Buddies 2
• Taipei Monkey
• Tower Grove Melee
• Tower Grove Wedding

3 years of wanting one, 3 months till we got it and totally worth it!!

So after nearly 3months of waiting (or it may have been over 3 months actually), we finally picked up the RX-8 (referred to as "the 8") yesterday. Having waited this long I had everything planned and ready to go.

After sorting out the final payments etc and having a quick look around the car, we were off! I can’t even begin to describe how pleased I am with the car, it’s so much fun to drive and not only that, I don’t think the fuel efficiency is too bad. I’ve done 440miles so far and on my first full tank I managed 277.5miles (mostly motorways but there were a couple of hours pottering around town) that works out at 22.2mpg which baring in mind this is the break-in period that uses more fuel than after around 4k miles...

I really can’t fault the car so far, because you’re meant to “break the car in” for the first 600 miles or so, I’m being very careful not to push it too much but boy what fun, without taking it over 5k ish revs I’ve been getting out every time with a massive smile! Don’t get me started on the looks Stacey and I have been getting from clearly very envious pedestrians…

If I had to pick a fault with it I’d be hard pushed to, the price was great, insurance less than I was paying for a 1.2l Corsa 3 years ago (though I do have 1years NCD now!!), fuel efficiency not bad for a 231bhp, the drive’s so much fun, the look is incredible and build feels quality and solid. Top marks for Mazda me thinks! 3 years of wanting one, 3 months till I got it and totally worth it!!

You’re all more than welcome to come and have a play in it sometime, I don’t think I’ll be needing an excuse to take her out! For now though, here are some photos.

The first time I had to park it and leave it ;)

Proof the mpg aren't really THAT bad...

These are more for the 8 guys, but it shows the new Air Conditioner grill fitted by Mazda, it’s only covering 1/3rd of the intake and not at all on the oil cooler so I think I’ll be adding the vents :)