SSH to the Cisco 7970G and set the date/time

As everything so far with getting the Cisco's 7970G to work on a SIP provider has been a nightmare, I thought I would share a few of my experiences. Sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest difference so this is how you correct the date and time!

Setting the Cisco 7970G's time is actually pretty simple:

1. Download putty.exe and puttygen.exe from the putty download page
2. Generate a key using puttygen.exe
3. Update the "Key Comment" value to default@cisco
4. Save the public key in a text file called authorized_keys and save it in your TFTP file folder
5. Save the private key in your TFTP file folder
6. Run putty.exe
7. Enter your phone's IP in the "Host Name" box
8. Go to Connection --> SSH --> Auth and click the "Browse" button and select your private key file (in your TFTP folder)
9. Go to Connection --> Data and enter default under the "Auto-login username"
10. (Optional) Save the settings in case you want to login again
11. Click "Open" at the bottom of putty.exe to start the session
12. Login using the username default and password user
13. At the command prompt, type: /bin/date yyyyMMddhhmm (replacing the letters for the respective values)

Dependant on which firmware version your phone is running, the date/time might need to be in CST. If you're like me and in GMT this time website is pretty useful to keep in touch with things time wise.

When I moved the phone to 8.3.4 SR1 I found that the phone was (finally) pulling through the date/time setting correctly so I didn't need to use CST anymore. I've also set the NTP values which should automatically set the date/time which seems to be working on my phones but I've heard reports that it's not on others...

The Site Doctor stressballs have arrived!

Exciting times as all our hard work is finally coming to fruition -our branded stressballs have arrived and they look AWESOME! I really couldn't have hoped for a better looking outcome if I had tried, they're unbelievably cool (that or I'm unbelievably sad!) but take a look for yourself and see what you think! (You'll have to excuse the photography)

They were delivered in a massive box -I don't think I've seen so many pills before! All exciting...

Taking the stress out of web design with The Site Doctor's new marketing "gimmick"

So the logo and new website was complete, next we needed a marketing gimmick and a way to promote our services. We already had an idea of how we were going to promote ourselves but we needed a way of making it stand out.

We needed something that fitted with our new pill shaped logo but what? A label on some wine? Coloured TicTacs? Pens, Badges, Stickers...? They'd all been done before 101 times and we wanted to be different.

After banging heads together for a while it struck me, the perfect "gimmick" to go with our new brand identity had been around for years -in fact I got the inspiration from my mum who was a GP in Plymouth for many years. As a kid, I remember when she came home after a medical convention with hundreds of freebies including pens, post-its and calculators, but the one that got me thinking was the stressballs. She used to get pill shaped stress balls... What could be more perfect I ask you?

It sounds silly but getting a Red and White coloured stressball wasn't easy, I called around tens if not hundreds of suppliers, all of whom were able to supply us with Orange/White or Blue/White or All White stressballs but Red/White would take weeks to manufacture. The problem it turns out is that nearly all stressballs are made in China and there is only a single UK importer who all agents buy off. That combined with the Chinese new year made lead times grow exponentially.

Thanks to the wonderful power of Google, we did manage to find a supplier (in the UK no less) that was able to custom print the stressballs so watch this space for the outcome!

Has the apprentice been nailed to the floor?

I've watched pretty much every series of The Apprentice (the UK version with Sir Alan Sugar) and to an extent have enjoyed them all. I've got a horrible feeling that The Apprentice is going down the same route that Dragons Den and Big Brother seemed to take -that is getting contestants that are more interested in controversy and fame than anything else.

What I don't like about this current series is that there doesn't seem to be any form of comradery among the contestants, all of whom seem to be overly cut-throat and self-absorbed, this is of course to be expected in any competition but at times it's a little OTT.

I can't remember which episode it was but recently I was amazed that ?Claire refused to help the project manager with the pitch. Ok I completely agree that he should have asked her to do it in the first place but that could easily be put down to big headedness or stubbornness, surely she wants the team to have the best chance at winning?

What's worse is that seems to be playing the TV game not the business game, not firing clearly incompetent candidates and instead keeping them in and teaming them up with their nemesis'. that was clear from almost the first episode which IMNSHO detracts massively from what the show is about.

Putting the rivalry aside for a moment, what's even more concerning is the quality of the candidates. I know a few people have blogged about how stupid some of them are and mocked how they're surely not Britain's best business minds (ignoring the fact that if they were Britain's best then why on earth are they going for a job only paying £100k) but come on! I'm not the sharpest tool in the toolbox but even I know that sending cards to "save the environment" is a ludicrous idea and don't even get me started on getting some guy down the market to "bless" a chicken...

Personally, I feel that Sir Alan (who appears to have come the government's entrepreneur advisor) is setting an extremely bad example for how to do business (and I've felt that from previous episodes where he criticises the losing team for not blagging something for free -ok you can do it a couple of times, but blagging won't really create a sustainable business). Sadly, this mix of candidates really doesn't do anything to improve that opinion, it'll be interesting to see how things pan out...

Native client cannot be found while installing SQL Server 64

We're having fun and games with the new internal dev server. We've got for Windows Server 2008 x64 for a laugh and today was a corker, while trying to install SQL Server 2005 x64 onto the box we repeatedly got an error along the lines of "native client cannot be found sqlncli_x64.msi".

Searching around the install DVD/files didn't reveal anything useful, turns out (after a little Googeling) that Microsoft install the wrong version of the SQL Server Native client tools as part of the prerequisites -instead of the 64bit version you'd expect, they go and install the 32bit which then makes the rest of the installer complain...

Classic! Anyway, thanks to Eric Falsken for the heads up on that error...

The Site Doctor site is featured on CSS Mania

Perhaps not a big thing to shout about for some but our new company site has been featured on CSS Mania!

Check the site out and leave your rating :)

http://cssmania.com/galleries/2008/05/08/the-site-doctor.php

And if you've not already seen it, check out the updated website design process full of jQuery loveliness: http://www.thesitedoctor.co.uk/services/website-design-and-development

How to apply Heading Tags in Umbraco

I've seen a couple of posts recently about how to apply headings to text within Umbraco and the main suggestion is that you apply them by hacking about with the StyleSheets that just doesn't sit right with me.

We use a different method -that is to enable the format drop down list. To me it just seems cleaner but I get the feeling I'm about to start a big debate. The method we use was originally discussed here but in short download this zip file with the updated DLLs in and instructions.

6291-leftinymce.zip (241KB)

The Site Doctor is hiring!

Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the pending credit crunch, we're hiring as work is piling in and we need help :). So if you're a developer, designer, sales person, marketing guru -or you're just plain bored check out The Site Doctor's vacancies page for the great posts currently up for grabs!

Not sure why you should come and work with us? There are way too many reasons to list in one go but here are my top 5:

• You'll have a great boss (ok I'm a touch biased)
• We have 20% time (every Friday we down tools and do something cool -that doesn't relate to the main projects you're working on at the time -more about that another day)
• We're committed to your development and will fund courses etc
• There are bonuses to be had for referrals and working hard!
• You get your Birthday as an additional bank holiday so you never need to worry about booking it off again!

Oh and there's free Tea and Coffee -so I guess that's 6 reasons to get in touch.

For more information about the posts available (more being added later this week) check out The Site Doctor vacancies page.