Five thoughts on business

The humble beginnings

I was recently inspired by Lynda Harvey (@luckyharvey) to share some thoughts, Lynda posted a blog that shared her experience over the last year running her business “the wine place“, it imparted some good advice to those in a similar position or starting up in business for the first time.

I decided to take the 5 headings Lynda used and fill in the rest…. I warn you I’m by no stretch of the imagination a financial advisor, do not take anything I write here as good advice, it’s probably not! What I have to say is not for the feint hearted or the purists among you. If you know a better way then I invite you to take the 5 headings and share your thoughts too.

Continue Reading…

Tesco make my toes hurt…

Get your PC Repaired while you buy your meat & vegetables

I hear through the grape vine that Tesco are soon to be offering in house PC Repair, this is something that as a Small Business owner in the same industry, I’m sure I’m supposed to be worried about. I’m not!

You see, this time, I don’t think “they” can compete. If I had a quid for every customer that came to my shop instead of PC World, pledging they will never go back “there” again; well, I’d have more money. I suspect Tesco will suffer the same fate, whether the big guys like it or not, they can’t do personal. They are devoid of the human touch. Let’s face it, do you really think Tesco realised that people were having problems with their personal computers and then thought to themselves, “We can help these people” or is it more likely they saw a potential area to expend into, with each customer being another tick on a spread-sheet rather than a “person” with a problem to solve. I doubt it!

It’s one thing to want a competitive price on your “Granny smiths” and your “Freshly baked bread” and quite another when you have 10 years of family photos and the business accounts stuck in your failed machine. “Every little” might help but in this case you’re going to want a lot more! That’s what the independent specialists can offer, a boutique service with value, a service that “they” simply cannot replicate in store.

Thanks for reading, be good!

Combining multiple files into a single HTTP request

on twitter davelaker asked:

Question

“David Laker @ijasonwhite I have JS files tht are called separately I want to make fewer HTTP requests without actually physically combining them .”

Answer

Document uses file “combined.js.php” as javascript source, this is the file that will be HTTP requested and also the file that does the combining. Continue Reading…

HOWTO: Setup Compression in IIS6 Web Server

To enable server-wide HTTP compression

“To more efficiently use available bandwidth, enable IIS HTTP compression. HTTP compression provides faster transmission time between compression-enabled browsers and IIS, regardless of whether your content is served from local storage or a UNC resource. You can compress static files and application response files. Compressing application response files is usually called dynamic compression.” That’s great, although it’s not enabled by default! 

You could do this via the MMC IIS6 snapin, I prefer to keep things a little more simpel and efficient. The batch file below will configure IIS compression for you, simply copy and paste from below into Notepad and save as “setIISCompression.bat”. Run the batch file, done! Continue Reading…

WordPress Twitter Followers Widget

I was using a plugin form another developer that inextricably stopped working, not sure why or how. After contacting the author and getting zero response I decided to write my own twitter widget plugin for WordPress. Continue Reading…

It happens to the best of us!!!

Today i decided my laptop needed two new drives, Since i recently upgraded to 4Gb Ram and Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit just dropped through the door i was thinking 2 x 500gb would be nice too. 

 Arghhh dabs.com is down !!!

Guess it happens to us all sometimes ;)

 dabs.com.down

Create a date and time stamped folder from dos cmd prompt

ok so you need to create a directory based on the current time and date, a timestamp if you will.

its easy, type this into your cmd window …

mkdir %date:~-4,4%%date:~-7,2%%date:~0,2%-%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%

this will give you a directory named like YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS

Enjoy.

Why re-invent the wheel?

I keep hearing folk talking about not re-inventing the wheel. It got me wondering what would happen if we didnt, the image below i put together in 5 minutes to see what if…

why reinvent the wheel

It kinda looks better than i expected it to,  im guessing the traction would be shocking. Cornering would be a nightmare i imagine. How long do you think those wheels would last?

Dell Datasafe Bug

I recently had the pleasure of testing the new Dell DataSafe service specifically the client application, it has a very simple and usable interface. The only issue i could find is that the client assumes all machines are in the good old US of A, after a chat with the development team I was assured an update will be released soon, awesome.I look forward to testing the update and taking advantage of the full service.

Am I going “Screen Blind”?

I have been working on the same section of a site now for around a week including some long days of around 12-13 hours, i’m sure im not alone here but i swear the problems are getting harder and more confusing. Even more frustrating is the in point of fact they would be simple on their own at any given time, there must be a scientific way to measure this “fatigue” at how it rleates to project/ time/ complexity there must be a driect relationship to the amount of time your working on a specific project to the percieved diffculty and the increased possibility of error. I DUNNO, of course im speculating. right now im not sure this makes any sense. Cya