Another successful Multipack meet

So Saturday was another chance to meet up with all the Multipack guys in a recently restructured Multipack -same place (The Old Joint Stock in Birmingham), same time (second Saturday of the month). Personally I think it's a good move as the numbers were well up on normal with lots of lovely new Multipackers (I'm no longer the n00bie ;)) from all sorts of interesting backgrounds.

It's great that Multipack is slowly becoming more recognised; at Saturday's meet for example Underscore veteran Darren Beale trekked up from Worcester which was nice as I could finally put a face to the name. Hopefully over the next few months, with a little more self-publication and this easy to remember location/date we'll get more new members.

If you're not sure about coming along just yet, check out the website www.multipack.co.uk and get to know a few of the guys, alternatively there's a mailing list -http://groups.google.com/group/multipack and IRC channel: IRC: irc.freenode.net, 6667, #multipack so plenty of ways to join in.

Rackspace partners with The Site Doctor

There are a lot of changes afoot at The Site Doctor at the moment -not just the new company identity, site and top secret plan but we're partnering with industry leaders to ensure we're able to offer the very best service possible.

Today I'm going to introduce our hosting provider, Rackspace. The Site Doctor has partnered with Rackspace^®, Europe’s fastest growing and most successful IT hosting company, to provide our fully managed hosting solutions.

The Site Doctor has chosen Rackspace as our trusted hosting partner as they are completely focused and experienced in managed hosting. Every system and process at Rackspace was built exclusively for delivering a reliable and secure service, with support staff highly trained for supporting complex hosting environments. Rackspace supplies the necessary superstructure - web, application and database servers, network devices, bandwidth and managed services - needed to run any outsourced hosted solution. Solutions are hosted in state-of-the-art secure data centres, watched over by certified staff.

Another reason behind The Site Doctor's decision to partner with Rackspace was Rackspace's award winning and unbeatable level of customer service -nicknamed as "Fanatical Support^®". Rackspace employees are available 24/7/365 to meet and exceed your expectations, meaning fast responses to critical issues, unlimited (free) technical phone support, access to their huge online knowledgebase, guaranteed 100% network uptime and many other business-critical support features. By outsourcing to Rackspace, we get the peace of mind that our hosting environment is being looked after by the experts.

Rackspace's commitment to its customers has won them the Unisys/Management Today Customer Service Excellence Award for 2005, in addition to being named Microsoft's Gold Certified Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year and Red Hat's first Advanced Hosting Partner in Europe.

The Site Doctor highly recommends Rackspace because, like us, they hold the highest standards in service excellence and therefore are able to ensure that mission-critical applications will remain up and running in a secure environment.

The new "The Site Doctor" website finally gets online!

Somewhat behind the original schedule we've finally launched the new company website!

There's still more refining to be done to it and there are a few errors but it's far better than the old site :)

Visit the new The Site Doctor website at www.thesitedoctor.co.uk -new customer quotes and portfolio items coming soon!

We've got some wicked new branding designs to share shortly but until it's all published it's all very hush hush I'm afraid ;)

Is this the demise of Facebook?

Facebook is many things to many people. When it first hit our shores, to me it was one of the coolest things out -mainly because I lost track with a fair number of people that I wanted to get in touch with. No doubt like many others I found looking at other people's photos fairly addictive and lost countless hours seeing what others were up to.

More recently however I've not made the time for Facebook -much to the annoyance of certain friends who still live on the website. To me Facebook has become boring and stagnant, because now I've caught up with most people I lost touch with -and I don't have enough time to play all the games-, what's left?

For quite some time now Stacey has voiced concern over the fact that Facebook encourages people to live in the past -which I agree with. It's not a bad thing catching up with friends you've lost track of but after that what value is there really in Facebook?

Her point really hit home the other day when a particularly unpleasant person from school joined, I suspect they have been a member of Facebook for quite some time but nobody bothered looking them up. I know some people consider Facebook as a competition of "who knows the most people" but to me I've only really ever added friends, admittedly there are one or two loose "friend" connections in my list of friends but I'd happily enjoy a pint with any of them. So when this particular person added me I decided not to accept, since then I've been bombarded with repeat requests and messages asking me to add them.

It sounds silly but I find it a little hypocritical adding someone to my "friend" list who I have no affiliation with or desire to get to know. My reasoning is not that unjustified as I and a few other people I know have met up with the person in question since leaving school in the hope they've changed and sadly everyone agrees that they've not changed in the slightest. So why would I want to appease their conscious?

Why the demise of Facebook? Well for me I don't see any point in re-visiting the site other than once a month or so to check my messages etc so have they reached their visitor ceiling? I'm sure there are other untapped markets globally for them but once you've caught up with people and sent them a few messages, what other use is Facebook?

Google gets the lurve bug

We've started to use Google Docs to manage the workload of our remote workers -which I have to say works pretty well, logging on today I was really impressed to see that Google Docs had gone all out to pimp out their interface.

I think it's really nice so for those of you who don't use Google Docs click the image to see the results :)

It's little things like the heart instead of the star...

Ok, back to managing peoples time :P

Stacey's first day and the company is incorporated

Today is Stacey's second day and change is already abreast, Monday was somewhat quiet on the business front with Gym, Hair Cuts, Lunch, Shopping and numerous phone calls but today things have really started moving -the first port of call was going Ltd:

Congratulations...

We are pleased to advise you that your company, THE SITE DOCTOR LTD has been accepted for incorporation by Companies House

To my foreign readers this means that my West Midlands based web design company The Site Doctor is now officially listed with Companies House -we've got a certificate 'n everything...

Although it was a "real" company, now the main benefit is If The Site Doctor Ltd was to go bankrupt, each shareholder is responsible only for the amount they have invested in the company -so if The Site Doctor Ltd was to go bankrupt (which I hope it doesn't!) I won't lose our house!

Watch this space as The Site Doctor Ltd and it's new branding will be launched later this month...

Random images in Umbraco

Following on from a recent post of mine about how to setup changeable headers using the media picker in Umbraco a new site I have been working on required something a little extra -they wanted the headers to simply be chosen at random. from a given media folder.

First, create  a new (blank) XSLT file and add the following:

What this does is it uses the StartNode (a media folder) passed in from the macro to loop through any valid files (in this case jpg/gif/png and pull out the image if it's valid. I was thinking about replacing the for-each loop and simply using the index but I'm not sure if there would be any performance improvement except for if there were a lot of header images in the folder.

You'll then need to create a new macro and add a parameter with the name "StartNode" and select "mediaCurrent" as the Type. That's it :)

I'd like to build on this and have a "valid" headers selector which would use a Multiple Media picker and would allow for banner ads to be selected at random but that can wait for a client that needs it ;)

The turnover challenge 2008

I'm always up for a laugh and a challenge -especially where business is concerned, without pushing yourself I think your company will just shrivel up and die. This time however I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew -which may very well result in public humiliation, women's clothing and the most bizarre gym session ever!

While "playing" squash the other day with a mate of mine -Ian- who runs Avant Garde - a hair salon based in my local gym Next Generation and I jested about challenging each other to increasing our turnover to (for me anyway) ridiculous heights for the tax return 08/09 and so began the turnover challenge 2008.

The aim of the game is simple -we have to turnover more than £x00,000 in the next tax year. For a little more fun we decided to add in a forfeit for the company who earned the least. What's the forfeit I hear you cry! Well that's what's up for debate at the moment but basically it should be:

• Fun!
• Suitably humiliating to make sure you don't want to lose!
• Non-financial
• Non-harmful to us (i.e. no tattoos, piercing's etc)
• Non-harmful to the businesses
• Non-harmful to others
• Legal!

We've come up with a few ideas but I thought I'd throw it out there for other ideas as I'm sure something amusing will come up! My fav's so far:

1. A gym session in women's clothing: miniskirt, sports top and high heels (knowing Ian he'll wear the panties too!)
2. Do a parachute -though I think that's something I want to try anyhow...
3. Paragliding/Snowboarding/Other etc in the nuddy
4. (Me) -become a hairdresser (Ian) -learn to code

The thing I like about the gym session is that it's scaleable i.e. "for every £10k difference in turnover, the other has to run for another minute on the treadmill..."

If you don't think that's a hard challenge, put it this way, to meet the target we've both got to more than double our turnover. If neither of us make it I suggest you get a weeks pass at my local gym -Next Generation April 2009!

You've got until April 1st 2008 to get the forfeit ideas in...