Naming conventions for Umbraco
Monday, November 26, 2007 10:30:56 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Having only recently started to use Umbraco I've taken a couple of days to familiarise myself with the way it works and try and get a few best practices in place, I expect these will be updated over time but you've got to start somewhere ;)
As with any code, I think it's very important to follow a consistent naming convention -whether it's the same one everyone else follows or not, you need to be able to pickup code you wrote months/years/decades ago and still understand it. Your styles will no doubt change over the years but you get the idea.
I've chosen to follow the following "style":
- Document Types: Lowercase the first letter of the aliases followed by capitals for the new words (similar to Hungarian Notation). Use descriptive names i.e. Home Page for the document type as it'll be client facing. Suffix with "Page" if it is a page document type (as opposed to i.e. a screen shot)
- Templates: If the template is specifically for a document type, use the same name for the template, if it relates to multiple document types name it logically i.e. "Master Template" or "Left Menu"
- Macros: Prefix the macro alias with uppercase TSD to avoid conflicts with other macros. Prefix the name with [Source of the macro] i.e. [XSLT] or [User Control]. This is something I picked up from the sample package created by Warren Buckley that I think makes it easier to understand what's going on
- XSLT Files: Prefix the name with the site's abbreviation i.e. for www.thesitedoctor.co.uk it would be TSD or for www.wineandhampergifts.co.uk WAHG if it's a site specific XSLT file otherwise name conventionally i.e. CamelCase
Let us entertain you! Our new cinema room
Sunday, November 25, 2007 6:44:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Stacey's been wanting to decorate the house, when we did we swapped the two rooms around which seemed logical at the time, but when we did, even though it was only a 32" the TV took up most of the room and seeing as we didn't watch it that much it seemed to be a bit of a waste. After some discussion (and using my powers of negotiation) we came to the conclusion that having a projector really would be a good idea...
...honest!
The main advantage of having a projector is it'll be up on the roof and the screen out of the way when we're not watching it saving a load of floor space. Knowing that they can be somewhat of a ball ache to get working so the brief was simple -it has to be as simple as using a TV.
A while ago I helped a mate buy a projector for his gaming system so with his help I started looking around at our options. We set a budget of £2,000 for the entire setup but I was adamant I would get a full HD projector, screen and something to play the videos.
I figured I'd need to spend something around £1,500 for the projector to get something half decent and after a fair amount of looking around settled on Epson's (then) new TW-1000 but that was nearly my entire budget so I got shopping some more. After a while I found a website called Price Japan which imports electronics from Japan for a small fee. I managed to get it imported for around £1,200 including all taxes etc. I'll write another post about buying from them but if you're thinking about buying electronics they're worth a look.
Gladiator Computers supplied the hardware (specs below) which is more powerful than my dev machine but still fits in the room as the case (a Antec Fusion Case Media Center Case) looks like a standard separate -though it's a little deeper).
The player and projector were sorted, all that's left now I thought was the screen. Not having a lot of space I followed the instructions and worked out that the biggest I should have the screen was 2.2m wide. It's actually quite difficult finding a screen that "small" but to make things easier for Stacey I wanted an electric screen -it would also make it a little cooler ;) Looking around I found they ranged from £100 to well over £1,000. In the end I found one from Germany that had received a number of good reviews so thought I'd give them a chance. As I saved a few quid importing the screen I was able to spend out on the MASL unit which makes the screen automatically drop when power goes to the projector (or other power consuming unit) -gadget-tastic!
The only thing I hadn't sorted was the mount, on testing the roof for joists I couldn't locate any where I wanted so I ended up going for a wall mountable projector mount by VivoMounts so I could fix it wherever I wanted. It came in a somewhat broken cardboard box but the build quality is excellent for the money.
It took a few weeks to source everything but last weekend I got it all up and running. I have to admit, I didn't think about it at the time but because of the position of the projector/media PC I had to buy a 10m HDMI cable. It wasn't an expensive one in comparison to some but boy is the quality impressive.
Luckily you can't really see the cables (though they're a little more obvious atm than I'd like) because they were wound and need a little time to stretch out, but I've lain them across the top of the picture rail. I've screwed the speakers onto the wall at the bottom of the screen and hidden the cables along the underside of the windowsill/door frame.
And that's there all to it! So what's it like? As I said, we don't watch a great deal of TV but watching HD films on it is awesome, even playing the Wii is a whole new experience. The thing I really like about it all is that Stacey can use it (it all runs using a remote control). The screen is pretty big admittedly but it's not too big for the room and when it's all turned off we've got the use of the entire room...
What I forgot to mention is that while this was all going on, I managed to talk Stacey into letting me get a bean bag. I'm not talking the sort you had when you were 10 (though I was winding her up that I was seriously tempted by Spiderman beanbag!). I've had my eye on the Fatboy bean bags for a while but then heard about an alternative to the Fatboy bean bags the Sumo Omni. It's unbelievably comfortable and is a great place to sit and write long blog posts ;). At under half the price forget the Fatboy bean bags and go for the Sumo Omni instead! I ordered it on the Sunday and it arrived on the Wednesday -from the states! Pretty impressive if you ask me...
Photos of our new home cinema
The gritty details of the system
Florame organic aromatherapy hits the press
Saturday, November 24, 2007 11:23:50 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Having one of the business owners work in PR can't be a too much of a bad thing for a company, especially not when you manage to get your name into Sunday Times. I'm not sure whether this is something they pushed for themselves or whether it was just the editor happened to come across it but I thought I should share :)
The response from getting into something like the Sunday Times is quite phenomenal, there was a very noticeable shift in the number of sales put through the website and searches performed so if you ever have the chance of a mention, jump at it!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2657685.ece
Fasthosts fail to amaze again
Friday, November 23, 2007 9:22:41 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I don't know if any of my readers are familiar with Fasthosts' recent security problems that hit the press a couple of weeks ago but I couldn't help but laugh at a conversation I had with them the other day. Baring in mind they had a breach in their security which meant that all passwords had to be reset I was astonished to get this email about an FTP login issue.
Is it just me or is that a little nuts asking a user to send their username and password in clear text just after a major breach in security? I thought my response was very measured:
The office to end all offices
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 6:31:46 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Some of you have already heard about my miss fortune with the office flooding. It's thrown things up in the air somewhat at a time when I could really do without it.
The bonus however is that I get to have a nice new office fitted (hopefully on the insurance) but that's turning out to be a saga in itself. As with any large expenditure we've gone out and got a few quotes from companies such as Sharps, Neville Johnson and some other smaller companies to get an idea of costs etc. To say there is a wide range in the price is an understatement -they range from £1,000 to over £16,000! The office is only 9ft x 9ft which means it'd be £1,777 per square foot! How nuts is that!!
Anyway, I thought people might like to see what I'm thinking about having fitted atm.
Now that Stacey is soon going to be working with me we ideally I need to cram (and it is a matter of cramming) two people into the office space and I think the solution of having the two terminals sitting back to back but offset like this will work nicely. The other problem I have is the size of my screens, at the moment they measure 115cm wide and my old desk meant I was sitting too close to them and would end up with screen burn but this design should allow me to sit far enough away.
I'll probably remove it shortly but the program that I used to layout the room has a 3D export that you can checkout at: www.thesitedoctor.co.uk/office/
25% discount at Florame organic aromatherapy
Monday, November 19, 2007 10:53:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Ahh Christmas is fast approaching again -and for once I've actually got a few presents (I usually buy them all on the 24th of December) -not that I can take any credit for that, it's all down to Stacey. Anyway I wanted to share this 25% discount for www.florame.co.uk with you all just in case you were in the market for organic aromatherapy gifts this Christmas :)
And if you're thinking about treating someone to a hamper full of luxury food and wine why not check out www.WineAndHamperGifts.co.uk. Oh and don't forget Miss Mays for some festive fun ;) haha, ok that's all the pimping I'm going to do this year.
Well perhaps not!
Yey 2007's first snow has fallen!
Sunday, November 18, 2007 10:53:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This is one for Cyan over at FreelanceSwitch more than anything else but I thought I'd share Birmingham's first snow with the world :)
Doesn't look like much there but it started this afternoon
Slowly but surely it fell over a few hours until there was this...
It's only November and it's snowing...
...I think it's going to be a cold one this year. That and the Russian swans are already over ;)
The morning after the day before
Saturday, November 17, 2007 10:53:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
So it's done :) Stacey's out, though it wasn't easy. Her boss made her explain her reasons for leaving to the Finance Director and basically justify herself for leaving.
After talking about it we think that's because there's more to this than they're letting on as it seems really odd she needs to justify leaving but that's not for discussion here :) so YEY the clocks ticking! We're waiting for a leaving date at the moment but be sure there'll be a ticker at the bottom of my blog soon!
Good on Stacey for sticking up for her cause! Now to tell the friends and family who'll be more than discouraging I'm sure.