Britain's gone nuts
Friday, December 21, 2007 11:33:37 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I don't know when Britain decided this but it seems that every time I read the papers at the moment I read yet another absurd idea from up high but this one had me laughing so I thought I'd share:
The Justice Ministry is calling for the removal of the word "prostitute" - which has been around for almost 200 years - from criminal statutes. Ministry officials argue the word carries too much social stigma and are pushing to replace it with the phrase "persons who sell sex persistently." Try saying that with a mouthful.
Ethical Christmas Presents/Cards
Thursday, December 20, 2007 10:37:17 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Last year was the first year we sent out presents to clients and it went down a storm though choosing the presents is somewhat awkward -especially when it comes to wine, what if they're a red wine drinker or a white wine drinker etc?
Anyway I digress, as usual we've started receiving gifts from companies and as usual we've had one or two "we're not sending out cards this year, instead we're donating the money to xyz" or "we've spent the money we were going to spend on you, on a goat". A little un-PC I know but -gee thanks.
What a ridiculous thing to do, it really gets my goat (pun intended) when people do this, it's so pretentious -and doesn't impress me in the slightest, they'd be better not to bother -or- donate and not tell me. Why, instead of not spending that £1.00 on a card "saving the environment" don't you pay your bills by BACS instead? That way you would avoid sending a small cheque in a huge envelope with your complement slip etc? Surely THAT would be making more of a contribution?
All these donations to me just say "We've not got the time or inclination to get you something personal so we won't bother". Further more, Stacey and I donate to charities on a monthly basis anyway -to charities that we care about. Some of you may remember the Cheshire Ring Race we did for charity for example.
As I mentioned earlier, this year we were donated a goat -ok it's supposedly gone off to a family in Africa somewhere but quite frankly they should have saved all the donations up and gone over there and helped out, now THAT would have got my attention. Having been on a charity aid project in The Gambia myself I know that would mean a lot more to the locals than (apparently) being sent a goat.
Anyway, enough ranting, if you want a nice Christmas hamper or bottle (or two) of wine for your friends, family or client this year check out the Wine and Hamper Gift website for some ideas.
Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again -yet another autobiography
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:18:00 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I don't know whether it's just I've had my head in the sand for the past few years or whether there really is an influx of autobiographies hitting the book stores, either way after finding time to read Duncan Bannatyne's book I thought I'd try another -"Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again" which I only bought out of curiosity but have found to be most interesting.
I don't know why many people read these sorts of books, I guess there are some looking for that "golden ticket to the riches" but I like to find out where someone's come from and what sort of attitudes businessmen have to life. One thing is for sure is that most of them want to write books1 ;)
I realise the book is his take on the events that passed (my mother is still insistent that he MUST have said the jewellery was crap as otherwise the press wouldn't have pursued him as ferociously) but either way what I found most interesting are the values that he learnt along the way.
One can only feel sorry for what he has been through -regardless of whether he was seen to be "flash with his cash" when he had it or not (to be fair who wouldn't be if they could be), to see that he's managed to recover from it is a real achievement.
Until recently, when asked the "If you could meet one person who's alive" type question I would probably have said Peter Jones as he always came across as an entrepreneur with a little gusto and flare about him but recently -perhaps just due to the producer's discretion I've gone off that idea and would much rather share a beer with Gerald Ratner. I wish him and geraldonline.com all the success in the future.
The book is an easy read and can easily be picked up and put down as needed so if you've not had a chance to read it, pick up a copy of "Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again" your local book store (or Amazon if you live in the sticks!).
1 For those of you interested, I have already got my book underway, it's going to be an epic -and exciting- tale of woe about my raise to fame (and hopefully without fall...). I think I'm going to name it "Coming from nowhere to go somewhere". I wish I could say you can pre-order it somewhere but you can't -if you want a copy email me and I'll add you to the list (you'll probably be the first...)
February 8th - a date for your diary!
Monday, December 03, 2007 5:13:35 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Well it's been a hectic few days what with breaking the news to everyone and getting things in place but we've finally got Stacey's management to give her a leaving date -February 8th. It's still a fair way off but a lot better than we were expecting (sometime in March) so we can't complain.
I just hope the new office is in place in time -let alone the new website (still very much in development)!
Mobile content developers Mobile Pie wins the New Mobile Game Developer Award
Friday, November 30, 2007 3:23:25 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This has taken me a while to post but kudos to our mobile content development partners Mobile Pie who have managed to win the New Mobile Game Developer awards sponsored by Channel 4 and EA Mobile.
Read more about it here: Mobile Pie Wins 4Talent Mobile Game Award
Changeable headers using the media picker
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 6:26:51 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
A project we’re currently working on needs to have interchangeable header images. The theory is to set the header image on the parent page and then unless a template is specified for the page, it should use one of it’s ancestor’s.
Umbraco as a nice control called a “Media Picker” which I felt was perfect for the job as it meant you could easily share header images across the site and it also made sense from a user perspective to have a “Header Images” folder to choose from. The issue from my point of view was how to traverse up the tree until it found a header image to use. Imagine the following site map:
-Home
-Products
-Category
-Product details (Custom header image)
If you’re on the products/category page it should display the header image from Home but when you’re on the product details page it needs to show the specified header image.
So how do you do it? It turns out it’s (fairly) simple using XSLT. The first issue I ran into was getting the URL of the media file from the media picker control, Umbraco offers a useful function to do this for you (well almost!). Using the function umbraco.library:GetMedia you are able to get the details on the file based on the media item id but it includes everything so you then need to use a little XSLT to select the attribute “umbracoFile”:
umbraco.library:GetMedia([XSLT TO SELECT THE FIELD],'false')/data [@alias = 'umbracoFile']
That should give you something along the lines of “/imgs/somefolder/somefile.jpg”
Now how can you traverse up the tree to get the data? Thanks to Morten Bock/Casey Neehouse for helping me understand this XSLT, but the following code should give you the URL of the nearest media item in the tree:
Then add a macro to your project and you’re done :). You can see it in action on the new Lucy Switchgear website if you're interested, it's currently being written so it's bound to be a little rough around the edges but do let me know what you think. Our remit was to improve the CMS they had in place making it easier to manage the site and also sort out a few major issues from a SEO perspective. Although altering the design wasn’t part of the initial brief I think you’ll agree the facelift we’ve given the site is for the better (even if it’s just from a usability point of view).
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