Uncategorized Archive

For a long time now our company has been tracking where our sales come from by using special links in emails and using the http referrer to determin search engine referals and other website’s inbound links. This has been working well but has been a source of controvesy at times since some parts of our team see that we gain sales from emails and search engines primarily and yet all of our marketing speniture goes on more traditional marketing methods such as adverts in publications, printed brochures, exhibitions.

The reason we don’t just stop doing it is brand awareness. This is more difficult to measure. Essentially, someone could buy a product because they saw one of our webpages as the third result on Google and clicked on it – fine, a sale through search engine marketing. But what if they only clicked on the third link because they had heard of the company – the expensive marketing methods had raised awareness of us so that when they saw the company name, that brand was reputable enough to make them ignore the other providers.

That is what we now are going to try and track through simply asking the customers the question. Problem is that if asked, could you remember how you heard about Apple’s iPod? Probably not and this “brand awareness” problem is what I want to remove. Marketing people love it as it adds an element of mystery to what they do and can therefore gain them bigger budgets.

So due to the fact that a few people have recently handed in the resignation at our company and plus I can’t remember whether we’re still in a receission or just leaving it or something but you’d think that since one in ten are out of work there wouldn’t be much out there. I decided to look to see what jobs there are for what I was originally trained for which is PHP/MySQL Developer.

It turns out that there is a fair bit out there. There’s not so much in the Junior field – noone seems to want to get the graduates but would prefer to pay more for the experienced candidates. And the wages aren’t that low either – I’ve seen lots at pretty high salary and quite a few in this area for equal or more money than I’m on (and mine is much higher than average).

Worth keeping an eye on.

We’ve got a Bosch Exxcel WVD24520GB Washer Dryer and it’s been great – up until now! It has a supposedly “brilliant” feature called a child lock. It is a good idea because you can turn it on and then your children can’t turn the dials or push the buttons and screw up the wash cycle!

Problem is that unless you’ve got too much free time and actually sat there and read the manual from front to back – noone knows how to turn it on and so doesn’t use it. Until the child – in my case my two year old daughter – presses a few buttons and turns it on by accident!

You then got one hell of a task to turn it off. Turns out it’s this easy:

Hold down the clock/time button for five seconds

I just wish I’d been able to find that out without having to read the entire manual from front to nearly the back.

I’ve got one of 1and1 root servers and it just went tits up again and required a reinstall. After going through the Server Re-Image process the server is up and running again – with the following stupid partition setup:

• 1Gb / (on a 120Gb drive!)
• 5Gb /var
• 5Gb /usr
• 109Gb /home

Now unless you run a company creating static HTML files for 100 million small businesses, this is a really stupid setup.

Here’s how you can sort it all out into something more useful. I wanted everything on just one major / partition so I could just forget about it.

• Reboot using the Linux Rescue Mode (from the 1and1 Control Panel)
• The default setup has just enough data on it to fit on the 1GB partition. Copy it all over as follows:
  • mkdir /mnt/root
  • mkdir /mnt/var
  • mkdir /mnt/usr
  • mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/root
  • mount -t xfs /dev/sda5 /mnt/usr
  • mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /mnt/var
  • mv /mnt/var/* /mnt/root/var
  • mv /mnt/usr/* /mnt/root/usr
• Next: modify fstab for the new setup: use VI to open /mnt/root/etc/fstab and remove the lines containing /var /usr /home
• umount -a
• Next: move your swap to the end of the drive and resize your main / partition to fill the space:
  • Run: “parted”
  • “resize 2 start end” where start and end are near the end of the drive
  • “resize 1 0 near-the-end”
  • If you get errors, try doing the resize in increments
• Reboot and you’re done

All fixed

With the current political and economical climate I was wondering how much tax I actually pay every month so I spent a quick five minutes working it out. Every month we’ve got those taxes we need to pay:

• Income Tax – 20% a month
• Council Tax – £113 a month
• Road Licence Tax – £15 a month

So that’s the big ones every month but it doesn’t stop there because for everything else (except rent in my case) you pay tax on in the form of VAT at 17.5%. And then if you have any money left after paying all the bills and want to enjoy yourself, you may have to shell out more on added tax on beer or cigarettes for example.

Then there’s the issue with fuel – as well as VAT, there’s also Fuel Duty Tax – an extra 43% per litre.

I’ve worked this out and for my wages it works out that by paying my bills and going to work every day, about 36% of my money goes straight in the governments pockets. And then they piss it all away building big wheels in London instead of using it productively to improve the conditions of living in the country.

Something to think about.

Happy Birthday DevBlog. You’re 3 today.

Carry on…

As a web developer for a SME I try to use automation as much as possible to reduce the staff workload. This is generally the run of the mill stuff:

• Sending out an automated email when someone registers
• Creating a PDF receipt when a payment is made
• Checking the database for irregularities and fixing where possible

The one problem with the last one is that the functions I create are never going to be as good at fixing problems as a real live human would because the computer is incapible of making complex decisions: they don’t like too much variation, cannot improvise and are bound by the rules of the system. So what is the cut-off point for using automation?

I think that it is a good idea to try and use automation as long as it is thoroughly planned out. This was brought to my attention yesterday when I had to kill some time in the new shopping center (mall for those of you over the pond) near work and went to use the loo. They’re brand new and quite good: everything is automated. The hand dryers and taps are all motion activated.

The problem is that so are the flushes on the toilets. This is all very good and hygenic and will save the world, etc, etc but the problem is that they put the sensor right next to the toilet roll so when you lean over, you brush the sensor with your arm and get a freezing cold, wet arse. Brilliant. Nice one whoever planned that one.

I’ve been a fan of the Need for Speed series since the first game came out and it’s always been my favourite racing game – until now. I’ve just been playing the new Need for Speed: ProStreet and it’s pretty much the worst racing game in world, ever! The original ones were great, pure racing games with good (for the time) graphics and great gameplay. The more recent ones (since they started being jointly developed for the consoles) have been even better with more options, gameplay and things to work for and the graphics are even better. This latest one though is absolutely shit!

Before I really start having a go, here’s a few brief points for anyone at EA who might come across this:

• Not everyone likes hip-hop and R&B – enough of the DJ, rapper shit!
• The new ones should have better graphics than the last one if nothing else

As for the game, the concept is similar to the other recent NFS outings where you start out at a low level and build up your collection of cars by winning races. This is a tried and tested formula that although being un-original, works very well. The only problem is that this time they seem to have taken a step back in the development of the idea. This also goes for the actual racing.

This is supposed to be a racing game. It’s not supposed to have nice green arrows on the track showing the racing line that turn red if you’re going too fast. Why, why, why? There might be a way to turn these off but I’ll never know because I got so pissed off with this game after playing it for 30 minutes that I uninstalled it and stuck it on Amazon.

I think it might be time for you people over there to put away the Mims album, bin the Fast and the Furious series and head over here to Europe where we have corners and then have another crack at making a decent racing game!

I’m going to find my Carbon disc and have another go until they sort their acts out.

I got into work after yet another week off (September has been great – only in the office for about a week) and after the usual messing about of rebooting everything that had been turned off or crashed and not booted up again because they thought that not doing any work was a better option than telling me it was broke maybe?

Anyway, after that, checking emails and making coffee, I needed number 1. Our building is being renovated and before I was off they were just finishing the corridor leading to the toilets and the toilets themselves. I walked out into the corridor and all the lights turned on straight away. “Spooky cooincidence someone getting in the other end at the same time as me” I thought and wandered into the toilets where the lights turned on by themselves…

Turns out they’ve fitted motion detectors to the lights. They’re just a little sensor that looks like a smoke detector. Think I’m gonna have a look on eBay and see if I can get some for home. Let the laziness begin.

Note: Probably not advisable if you’ve got a cat….