Category Archives: General

Another site that annoys me – motortax.ie

Motortax.ie

My motor tax is due for renewal so I phoned them up and requested a tax renewal form with pin number so I could renew it online. It arrived but without the pin of course. I phoned them today and asked if I could have the pin over the phone – no. She said just fill it out and post it in – fair enough. The letter did however state that I could only use that form if I was renewing in January (I received it in February), she said to ignore this. A load of nonense really but I decided to fill it in and send it off. Where do I send it??? I haven’t got a clue!. It wasn’t on the form or anywhere on the site. I had to hold for another 15 minutes to find out the address. Now that’s IRISH!

Another thing that annoyed me about the site is that the session times out and you get a wonderful session timeout message

Session Timeout
Your session has been terminated due to inactivity.
If you wish to return to the Motor Tax Online homepage, please click here.

My session shouldn’t timeout like this when I’m just on the informational pages (as in not transactional)…ever. It’s very annoying.

Irish Web Technology Conference 2008

It’s now official. I am returning to Karova at the start of March. I’ll have more news later on my future role but I am excited to be going back and focussing on Karova’s projects and products.

I have a few days off in between jobs so I’ve decided to go to the Irish Web Technology Conference 2008. There are some very interesting tracks especially the e-commerce track which will be very applicable to my work @ Karova.

If anyone else is going – give me a shout.

Software I’ve paid for

Sparked by a conversation on LugRadio about what software you’ve ever purchased. It got me thinking about what I’ve paid for. It’s been recently that I’ve purchased the most

Update

  • I also bought a copy of Linspire (it might even have been called Lindows then) and a subscription to the CNR

It’s quite alot considering the ammount of Open Source software I use and quite pricey too. These are personal purchases too not related to Karova. Admittedly the Visual Studio version was the academic version bought through my Dad who is still a student.

What have you bought?

Also along the same line – I’ve purchased a new desktop and a couple more monitors. It will be the fastest machine I have ever been on let alone owned – stay tuned 🙂

EEEPC – overall thoughts

Overall – I’m really impressed.

Pros

  1. It’s tiny – meaning very portable
  2. It’s light – under one kilo
  3. It’s fast – Celeron 900MHz with 512MB Ram
  4. It runs Linux – Xandros with a very fast window manager by default
  5. Battery life is good considering the size (3-4 hours)
  6. It’s cheap as hell – I paid about 300Euro
  7. It’s got Wifi and webcam – Skype Video on the go
  8. Hibernate works brilliantly with very fast boot times too

Cons

  1. Keyboard is a little small
  2. It’s doesn’t reconnect to wifi when it comes out of hibernate
  3. The WEP WPA software has bugs – you can’t connect to a network with a key that has numbers or spaces in it
  4. The screen is a little too small for constant use – I reckon the planned 10″ models will be alot better

EEEPC in black

Overall I love and I wouln’t hesitate to recommend it considering the price.

Visual Studio 2008 upgrade

Visual Studio 2008 review - Team ExplorerWell this will be a short one………………. it’s very disappointing.

  • You can’t CTRL+F or CTRL+SHIFT+F will crash the IDE.
  • Editing any CSS file will crash your IDE….ANY CSS file.
  • Teeam explorer’s ‘Queue New Build’ doesn’t queue them at all. It’s the exact same as it used to be (see screenshot below).
  • It’s slow even on a dual core XEON with 4GB Ram

In conclusion – don’t bother upgrading, even if you do get javascript autocompletion.

New Year 2008

Philip Snacking on New Year's eveYet again – a new year has crept up on us. The christmas and New Year period was tough on the auld liver but a lot of fun was had especially the 28th in Leopardstown for Frank’s birthday and the afters of that day which will go down in history with the tags “hilarious”,”drunk” and “lol”.

I took a ton of photos on New Years eve which are all up now (http://halfviking.com/newyear07-08/). There’s some embarassing videos on there too.

Last year I had a list of resultions – How did I do??

I will

  • Finish the new design of this site – as you can see, it’s still a work in progress – Done
  • Comment my code – Well, this is really an ongoing exercise but I am alot better than I used to be
  • Finish projects I have started – same as above
  • Document my code properly – same again
  • Use UML – even if it’s just in my head – I do this alot now
  • Move to Ubuntu on my home machine – Dual boot
  • Caption all my photos – all 8500 of them – No chance
  • Read all the books I bought – I had quite a few but I did read an awful lot of them
  • Read non-techy books too – many many novels read this year
  • Cook more – I cook for myself now so I cook every day
  • Eat less – Done dropping a whopping 1 stone 7 pounds so far
  • Eat healthier – Done
  • Find some way of feeling healthier that I can actually stick to (Gym is a bit too much commitment) – Gym, football and back playing GAA far exceeded this goal
  • Start to budget my outgoings properly – Due to circumstances I’ve only been able to this in the last month but it’s goiong well so far
  • Stop calling my dog “the rodent” – Bobby has a new family so goal achieved 🙁
  • Learn that Friday does not have to equal “getpissedday” – yes it does
  • Stop watching soap operas – comedy series like King of Queens and Scrubs will remain on my Sky+ planner though – I watch very little TV these days
  • Contribute to an open source project – Not time this year I’m afraid
  • Help fellow developers more – Ammado is a very open dev team so help flows freely
  • Always keep in mind that I know only a fraction of what I think I know – Definitely true
  • Be in a good mood – I try
  • Write another useful Firefox extension that uses a custom XPCOM component – No
  • Use Patterns in code more – Done
  • Stop driving like an idiot just so I can get home quicker – Not done
  • Go to Ireland to see my friends and family more – I live here now so Done
  • Go to the summer house in Norway – Done
  • Save money – Done
  • Keep this blog up to date – Kind of Done
  • Move to IMAP instead of POP email – Done
  • Backup more – Done
  • Learn how to use SVN properly – Done and I also use TFS
  • Go to LinuxWorld in London (as long as it’s not on Gill’s birthday like last year) – It was postponed but I did have it planned
  • Get a whiteboard at home – Done but in my mum’s shed at the moment

Not too bad really considering. I’ve yet to create this years list but I can assure you it will be shorter 🙂

Paha Maa (Frozen Land)

My Norwegian cousins work in film and they usually send me DVDs for christmas of birthdays. The films are usually scandinavian and are usually very good. One such DVD this christmas was “Frozen Land”. It’s a great movie with about 6 characters who all come in contact with each other during the film – each time resulting in some sort of tragedy. The film was in finnish but using my google skills I was able to track down the english subtitles for my favourite quote from the film.

Do you remember the questions we asked each other as kids?

Why am I who I am? Why was I born here?

Why can’t I scream when I feel bad?

What’s the point of living if this life is merely hell?

But we have to believe, –

that in the end things work out for the best

Otherwise, nothing makes any sense

It’s available on amazon and play.com – well worth a watch. As you can probably tell – it’s a pretty morbid film.

Silly Season

Silly season has begunSilly season has well and truly begun now. It’s the frist time I’ve been back in dublin for the whole christmas in about 5 or 6 years. Fun will be had – and lots of it.

I treated myself this year and bought myself an eeepc. It looks pretty sweet so I can’t wait to put it through it’s paces this festive season.

Also my house is now sold and the new tenants have moved in. I hope they enjoy the house as much as I did. I’m now officially off the property ladder and unless Dublin property prices take a silly nosedive – I’ll be going nowhere near an estate agent. No more money pit for me 🙂

Track my letter you planks

This blog is turning into a bitter twisted rant fest but I have one more. I have an important letter supposedly winging it’s way to me. I have a Royal Mail tracking number so I can check where it is. I enter the number on the Royal Mail website and I receive the message –

“Your item is currently progressing through our network for delivery.

To check your item’s progress please come back later.”

Now surely I should be getting more information than this. I know it’s bloody on it’s way – it was posted. Now where is it??

I have a sneaky suspicion that this situation is as a result of the letter entering the calamity that is An Post (Irish postal service) so it is probably not all Royal Mail’s fault.

So if anybody sees my letter could they please let me know.