Entries for Barry Andrew

wave - thoughts [wave - thoughts ]

Barry Andrew — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:17:33 GMT

Been using wave a few days now and it makes forums feel very flat to me. Though at least forums feel a little more organized. But man, I think wave is awesome. I can't give specific reasons as to why, there isn't one thing that's killer imo, its just the product as a whole. Its nothing new conceptually I guess, were just sharing information. But its just a new way of doing something and it does feel improved... to me anyhow... and improvement is good.

It feels like a right mess to be honest, some sort of forum engine meets wiki meets facebook meets twitter meets picasa nightmare, but it still somehow manages to feel good (and fun!).

Can get a little slow once you have a busy wave and a lot of people are interacting with it (still beta I guess), but I bet once I can invite some devs and do some collaboration, it will come into its own.

Anyone else using it want to share their experiences?

note: if you have an invite and it wont let you invite anyone else for now, Search "with:public"

in reply to wave - thoughts

The Website is Down Ep 4; [The Website is Down Ep 4; ]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:21:38 GMT

Don't know if this is old or not, but they are great :)

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/sales_demo.html

in reply to The Website is Down Ep 4;

answer me this [answer me this ]

Barry Andrew — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:02:31 GMT

VM in win 7 fine until Office Update;

[img]http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/n2hmY7U5PtzT6VQ1EpTdHg?feat=directlink[/img]

[img]http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/dE_M7yI5ifxKgEQNfqIvQg?feat=directlink[/img]

Cheers. Have to build a new machine now to support a single app.

Answers on a postcard please;

in reply to answer me this

Have I just lost my cherry? [Have I just lost my cherry?]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:13:53 GMT

Does this count?

in reply to Have I just lost my cherry?

What am I doing wrong in VS IDE? [What am I doing wrong in VS IDE?]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:31:13 GMT

Hey,

I have 2 machines.

On one machine I start a new project and it looks like this;
[IMG]http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/ww101/barryandrew/Untitled.jpg[/IMG]

On my other I do the same and I get this; (no solution) Why is that?
[IMG]http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/ww101/barryandrew/Untitled2.jpg[/IMG]

in reply to What am I doing wrong in VS IDE?

system re-write (which tech?) [system re-write (which tech?) ]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:32:17 GMT

If you had to re-write a system to get it available online.

Would you have just a vanilla asp.net app or would you go for something like silverlight?

What are the benefits / drawbacks?

Thanks,

Pace

in reply to system re-write (which tech?)

saved by a netbook! [saved by a netbook! ]

Barry Andrew — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:12:28 GMT

Hi Niners!

I have a key company meeting tomorrow off site. We have been working hard on our reports and presentations for taking the company forward. So I get in work this morning early and finish everything off nicely for lunch time. I get out my xps 1330 so I can take my files with me and have something to keep myself busy with as were in a hotel for a couple of days. I fire it up, log in and bang. Graphics card has completely gone. Blown up somehow by the demons of fate. Im quickly searching online for a replacement card I can rush and get and I learn that the card is actually soldered into the board. Disaster. Ive worked so hard and now I cant show any of my points on topics I have to cover and im stuck with nothing to do. Ive heard of these netbooks and decide to just go for it, £300 Samsung NC10. Im a touch typist and ive seen the mini dells and the keyboard is just unworkable for me.

So I get this thing back and its setup with almost no bloatware in 10 minutes. I copy all my files over and start to install office. Im thinking damn I should have bought the ram stick which is 2g but I diddnt realise you could do that until I got it back to the office. Im shocked. Office is installed lightning fast on the 160 gb hard drive and I really mean fast.

The office gets locked up and I sitll have loads to do. I get home, bang its on the wireless no problem, straight on the vpn, straight on my dev workstation and I start to do the stuff I needed to finish in sql and vs. Ok the 10.1" means you have to make some windows that little bit smaller (like immediate etc) but its flying. No lag at all.

I cant believe this. Im dying to find someway to fault it but I cant.

Saved by modern cheap computing and totally shocked by the performance and build feel. These are great days : )

Thanks!
Pace

in reply to saved by a netbook!

interesting, linux on a potatoe [interesting, linux on a potatoe]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:08:39 GMT

Some hacking group have managed to install Linux on a spud?

linux-on-a-potato

in reply to interesting, linux on a potatoe

Why is IE so bad? [Why is IE so bad? ]

Barry Andrew — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:04:49 GMT

Ive heard people bash IE before but never really understood why, however, now im developing for the web I feel differently. Ive made some skeleton code for an asp.net application for our intranet here. One of the dropdowns uses a webservice to call a stored proc which populates the dropdown with some 20,000 records. Overkill for sure, but its still in development and ive not added filtering just yet.

So I run the app in chrome, instantly populates everything I want, neat! Safari, bit of a wait but within a second its there, same with FF. This is a local lan app so im happy with those times.

Run it in IE8 and its as if the LHC has exploded. The world ends. Aha, thats what you get for running BETA software I say, yet its exactly the same in IE7. It drastically hangs before totally crashing. You could blame my code, you can blame whatever you want. It works in the other browsers and thats the fact. So im just curious as to whats wrong?

With all the fantastic platforms ms has (VS, Office, SkyDrive, LiveMesh, WPF, SharePoint etc) why does IE let the brand down? I dont like the feel of it, ive not had it as default browser for years. 90% of my users will be using it (to be fair im considering changing them all but you get the idea)

What feedback can we give to make the browser like the rest of the microsoft products? Are the IE team just concentrating on RSS features and such? I sure hope not because if you talk to home users the vast majority dont know or even care what RSS is.

I just feel considering IE has the largest share that its by far the worst browser. It doesnt feel user friendly to me, it appears crappy to develop against, its slow, its has lots of stuff in there I dont care about so whats the deal?

What are the plans for the future? In Windows 7 I would love to see a new browser, not carrying the IE brand name. Put it out to pasture please and make me a browser as great as all your other products.

Love,

Pacey x

in reply to Why is IE so bad?

IE8 Acid 3 test [IE8 Acid 3 test]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:28:05 GMT

Is it just because im running the beta that IE8 epic fails the acid 3 test?

Im getting 21/100 with ie 8 and 71/100 with ff3.

I thought msft was first to crack this?

edit: Link http://acid3.acidtests.org/

in reply to IE8 Acid 3 test

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams? [Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams?]

Barry Andrew — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:14:39 GMT

So ive almost gotten round to finish reading Code Complete 2nd Edition and its by far the most compelling book I have ever read. It really did wow me and my only regret is that I diddnt read this like 4 years ago. If you reading this thinking what is that book then dont think, just buy it, if you dont enjoy it, ill eat my hat and webcast it for your retinal pleasure.

Extending on from this book and as I now have a consultant developer working with me, I figured id read Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams however, I really cant afford $95 which is whats its going to cost me to get a copy. I was wondering, (as I have read that msft can be guilty of having a couple of copies lying around), if anyone has this and has read it, do you feel like donating it to a needy dev in the UK? >.< I promise its going to a good cause!

in reply to Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams?

excel 2007 whats going on with vlookup? [excel 2007 whats going on with vlookup? ]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:12:11 GMT

Create a new worksheet with 3 rows
a
b
c

now in a new worksheet create 3 rows with 2 colums
a 1
b 2
c 3

do a vlookup on the first sheet on the second column, =VLOOKUP(A:A,Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE)
do the plus expandy thingy that copies it down.

What do you see?

I get
a 1
b 1
c 1

in reply to excel 2007 whats going on with vlookup?

Kinetic Scultpure at BMW Museum [Kinetic Scultpure at BMW Museum]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:14:26 GMT

This is waay cool.

Would look great in your front room.

Basically an array of small steel balls on cables shifting about to make various shifting sculptures.

Powered by Windows?

Clicky

in reply to Kinetic Scultpure at BMW Museum

I have a question for the office team [I have a question for the office team]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:01:37 GMT

Well more specifically the outlook team.

I just wonder sometimes because my users unfortunately require the printing of emails. More often than not they only actually require a single page. Now our main customer base is export, particularly the middle east, therefore emails can be long winded due to lingual issues.

Now the only way to print the (single) page you want (without writing a module) is to actually edit the message, cut out what you dont want, then print what you require followed by not saving your changes. I just find it really odd you have options like being able to set the print to even or odd pages, but not actually specify a page.

The biggest thing that gets me is if you think about how many people use outlook, if people are unware of editing a message to just get the bit they want then more than likely they are just binning what isnt required.

There may be a valid reason why you cant do this, just wondering if you could enlighten me as to why or if you are planning on fixing this at all?

Many thanks,
Pace

in reply to I have a question for the office team

mobile 6 intranet help [mobile 6 intranet help]

Barry Andrew — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:58:04 GMT

Hey niners,

I have a windows mobile hp ipaq 114 device connected to my company wifi network. Now, if I try navigating to an aspx page I created on the device I am getting the error "Page cannot be found" am I missing something. Do I need an additional connection somehow to authenticate myself? Not sure really. Any help appreciated.

in reply to mobile 6 intranet help

Niner N-Gage Tags? [Niner N-Gage Tags?]

Barry Andrew — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:23:29 GMT

Well nokia finally have their n-gage platform up. Have to say its spiffy cool, you'll feel right at home being a 360 owner as the menu's are a straight copy almost if you ask me, awesome graphics too :D

Anyway if anyone is playing please add me; pace_

N-Gage

:)

in reply to Niner N-Gage Tags?

C9 Search [C9 Search]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:37:34 GMT

Hi,

When I run a search on c9, if I go to page 2, I am getting a 404 error.

Anyone else?

in reply to C9 Search

have you ever wondered [have you ever wondered]

Barry Andrew — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:48:00 GMT

Why people add sugar to coffee in the middle of the cup and stir round the edge??? I keep noticing it sitting here reading c9 with my coffee in the morning, I always end up with sugar unused in the bottom [C]

Sorry for the rather random post, I have upgraded our production db's to sql server 2005 and the phone hasn't rung since ;)

Now, my coffee...

in reply to have you ever wondered

Re: So what's the plan for the 19th? (UKers) [So what's the plan for the 19th? (UKers)]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:42:49 GMT

What time are you planning on passing Manchester?

in reply to So what's the plan for the 19th? (UKers)

well its the 27th has this been discussed? [well its the 27th has this been discussed?]

Barry Andrew — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:12:49 GMT

Or was it just predicted that the earth would move in the uk :P Im sure that wouldnt bring a tear to scobles eye.

Or is the earth really going to move? Ive been dying to know whats going on.

in reply to well its the 27th has this been discussed?

can I get the sack? [can I get the sack?]

Barry Andrew — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:38:54 GMT

Hey Niners, I really need some advice on past experiences if possible.

A project came up a work which was a massive change of product codes. Everyone in the system. Now a developer friend and I worked at this for 6 months solid. When the demo came the higher management were shocked. "the customers arent going to see the codes right?" errr, in 10 meeting there were no notes of customers NOT seeing these codes, after all, these are NEW product codes. So we work out a that they want to change codes but show model numbers. Why egh. Anyway, on with the story, after the review and the knock back on the first attempt, my developer third party threw the towel in, "it will never work the way they want" now I have the original author of the system who also wont touch it with a barge pole. Now my dilema, after 12 months on this thing, twice going in and saying it cant be done and twice foolishly getting talked into thinking I can do it. Im now at a loose end. I just cant get it to work, I can get it to do what they want, but there are massive implications that they just arent thinking of and I now when it gets used to problems will be huge!

So, ive had enough. Ive been stressed, lost a lot of sleep and had my confidence knocked for too long now. I have a meeting with the main guy tomorrow and while we are on the road im just going to have to tell him that I physically and menatally can no longer carry on. Its taking too mcuh time and too much resource. Ive spoken to all users and everyone is scared of the idea, they are all just nodding dogs.

Anyway enough is enough im not doing it anymore. The architecture and db schema's will simply not allow it without an extensive re-write. The guy who originally made it when asked "what level is the system normalised to" to my sheer terror replies "What is normilisation?" and thats about it. Now I have worked on the system for 5 years so I can keep it going, I can make mods easily I can make new functions and routines for it easily. What I havent been able to do for 12 month is get these new codes to work.

So when I throw the towel in tomorrow and I really am washing my hands of it, its not fair to keep forcing me to do something which just isnt possible. 3 companies have abandoned it now leaving just me.

Can I get the sack for refusing to carry on with it anymore?

in reply to can I get the sack?

I have a new favourite app! [I have a new favourite app!]

Barry Andrew — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:07:46 GMT

And its spiffy cool!

http://winmerge.org

If you develop anything at all in Access especially < 2007 version, you'll really love this one ;)

in reply to I have a new favourite app!

sql error will not be supported until you upgrade [sql error will not be supported until you upgrade]

Barry Andrew — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:53:51 GMT

Error will not be patched

Quote;

"Thanks for filing this issue. The problem won't meet the next service pack bar but we will look into fixing this error message in the next version of SQL Server."

Posted by Microsoft on 02/05/2006 at 10:12

in reply to sql error will not be supported until you upgrade

excel 2007 stinks. [excel 2007 stinks.]

Barry Andrew — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:40:18 GMT

Classic, im at an event this afternoon when the poop hits the fan. I need to do some quick formatting to an excel sheet.

So you use the new conditional formatting tool. You try making a simple if statement there. Doesnt work what so ever. For example, make a sheet, A1 = 1, A2 = 2, A3 = conditional formatting, make your own rule. If(A1>A2) set your format red. Wont do it. I understand the value isnt in the cell im trying to change, but why does that matter? If thats the case, dont let me make my own rule.

So im stuggling to get the colors. So I sort by val, sack it im in a rush, I need to get all Negative numbers green and positive red. So I have about 2000 values ranging from -£4,000 ish to +£1000 so I sort on the value and expand the selection. Why o why, does it not sort? Negatives are in with the positives and vice versa. Its quite close, but they are still mashed in together.

So conditional formatting you cant make your own rule, so why add that feature. If you sort on currency lowest to highest, it just doesn't sort correctly.

YES I could go in the code and code all of this nicely within half hour or so to get it perfect. But my point is you have given me the tools so that I dont have to do that. They dont work lol

in reply to excel 2007 stinks.

desktop remote control software in vista? [desktop remote control software in vista?]

Barry Andrew — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:44:54 GMT

Hi All,

Im about to try Vista again, I use an app in XP named PC-Duo, it lets me look at a users screen but i can take control of the keyboard and mouse etc to help them while they can still see.

Can anyone reccommend a similar app that runs in Vista? I know my app doesnt work in Vista. I know you can use RDC, but I like to let the user see what I am doing.

in reply to desktop remote control software in vista?