Electric Curtain Track

One of the latest interesting projects im working is in partnership with a company called Haywoods Contracts, trading as DiscountElectricCurtains.co.uk selling Silent Gliss electric curtain tracks.

See the website here: Electric curtains

I am learning an awful lot about increasing website conversion rate (ie how to turn visitors into customers) and starting to learn what makes people tick when they want to buy something on the Internet. This is a great site to start with...it's fairly niche yet still has some fun competition.

My business partner, Toby, is pioneering the Adwords campaign to get paid traffic to the site, and we are using the findings from this, ie the most popular converting keywords, for the traditional SEO.

I'll post back when the results start coming in!

Uncle Mike's 60th

With a guest appearance from Dave Link of Staffs Uni.

Chamon curry!

At the Selly Oak Chamon Indian restaurant with Suzis flatmates.

Snuzi in Abduls Asian Cuisine

"I can hear the papadoms coming!"

21st Birthday

Today I'm at Suzis cousin Grahams' 21st birthday party.

Full of food, full of beers from the beer bin and having a great time.
Snuzi and I also battled in the Sumo suits.

Wedding

Cousin Nicki and her husband, Rob

My cousin Nicki's wedding

Intergalactic space works

Nips!

If you get peckish... Just suck on some nips!

Colarado University

The end of the stadium at Jess, my sisters uni. What a place!

America

Well after a 24 hour day we arrived in Denver and picked up the hire
car.. A 5.3L, 16mpg V8 Chrysler..pictured here with the parentals. You
could fit a European car inside it!

Crikey Charlie!

Check out the price of the champagne!

I am now officially a geek blogging from a restaurant... And one step
closer to getting dumped by Snuzi!

Around the world in 80 dishes

Snuzi enjoys a mr whippy ice cream with chocolate sauce in the
restaurant.

Pirate night

I got got by Snu. Nice tash though. Got given a free pirate hat by a
guy who looks like Sid from Skins. Most appreciative, its an awesome
hat!

It was a great pirate night. Good tunes and friendly people. I proved
that I need a lot of space to dance though! I bumped into quite a lot
of people!

Arrrr

Snu all pirate wenched up!

Pirate party

Snuzi starts drinking before the pirate party at Carling academy Brum
begins.

Note the 2 pictures of johnny depp in potc in the background... She
says she wants to eyeliner me AGAIN to look like him. I will resist.
Once was enough.

Result!

That's a big yes people!

First post from iPhone!

This is a test to see if I can blog with pictures!

Weekend in Brum 12th April 2008

Well this weekend was another cracker! After discovering that converse shoes really aren't made for running to the train station in, I went down to Birmingham to see Snuzi and Co. On the way there on the train, randomly, someone was answering some mock paper about MRI scanners and I overheard them asking a friend about one of the questions they were stuck on. A text to Ched, who just happens to fix MRI scanners for a living, and we were able to save the day for a complete stranger!

Saturday night, between watching Doctor Who (the Pompei one) and walking the 3 minutes to Subculture at the Carling Academy (where Snuzi works as an Event Steward), I was set about by Vikki and Annie who wanted to "Style my hair like Keith from the Prodigy"... see attached picture.

I had been told by little Steve that he was having a Rave in his kitchen so we got some glow sticks from poundland... unfortunately, I later found out that he was being sarcastic and trying to impress a girl (hope it went well!) and that I am a gullible imbecile who actually thought it would be quite cool to have a rave in a kitchen!

By the time we arrived most of us were "a little tipsy" which helped ease into the "dancing", or to quote one of the others who went, "lolloping around".

Looking out the window 12 storeys up, on our return to Snuzi's flat, we saw 2 fire engines, 3 ambulances and 6 police car / riot vans. I haven't been able to find any sniff of it on the interweb but heard reports that a controlled explosion was carried out!

-----

The journey back to Stafford on the train was an interesting one. A few of us got upgraded to First Class (unfortunately for me, it was 2 minutes before having to get off at Stafford) as the train window right next to me shattered with a mighty Boom!! Still shaking, I found one of the train staff who told everyone sitting nearby to go and sit in first class! The lady said that it could have been some kids firing pellets at the train!

The train pulled up at the station as we were making our way to the front, so that darn class of travel still remains an elusive mystery!

It livened up an otherwise uneventful journey anyway.

Carling Academy Subculture Pictures form 12th April 2008

Science with pictures

I have just started reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" again, (haha thanks to Spellcheck im not reading "A Brief History of Tim"!).

I say again because I started it a long time ago but got sidetracked as usual.

I'm on page 43 and so far learned about why feathers and lead weights fall at the same speed on the moon, and all about Future Light Cones, something that I bored Tobe silly with over lunch.

I have got hold of the latest copy of the book, which literally has big pictures to help explain everything!

While on the subject of Stephen Hawking, have you seen these hilarious pictures?!

Anti-nail biting goo

Snuzi very kindly bought me some of that "nail varnish" that tastes horrible to stop me biting my nails. It's really horrific. The more I told Spanky how foul it was, the more he wanted to taste it, much to his regret when he finally did!

It is really working so thanks Snu I do appreciate it. I just have to be careful where I apply it, else I get some funny looks.

Simplify your ASP.net code by putting common bits in an external file

As you may know, in the code page or section of your asp.net page, you can use functions to re-use code over and over to save space. For example:

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load

dim Result As Integer = AddUp(2, 3) 'AddUp is the name of the function below,
'we pass it the numbers here for it to use
Response.Write(Result) 'Writes the result out at the top of
the page

End Sub

Function AddUp(ByVal firstNumber As Integer, ByVal secondNumber As Integer)

Dim Result As Integer
Result = firstNumber + secondNumber
Return Result

End Function

This is handy for individual pages, but what if you want to have a function you can call from anywhere in your site?

It's easy!...

1) In your website, make a folder called 'App_Code'

2) In here, make a new 'class' file. For example, if you add it in Visual Web Developer, it will be a .vb file, eg. FrequentCode.vb (Don't worry if you don't know what a class is...i'm not completely sure!!)

At minimum, this page needs the following in:

Public Class FrequentCode

End Class

3) Now, between the above, you write the 'function' that you'll be able to use on any page...note the slightly different way you write it in here...

Public Shared Function AddUp(ByVal firstNumber As Integer, ByVal secondNumber As Integer)

Dim Result As Integer
Result = firstNumber + secondNumber
Return Result

End Function

4) Now, to use this code on any page..simply use the following...

Dim Result As Integer = FrequentCode.Addup(2, 3)

That's it!

Please comment or email with questions!

Larry

Easily Confirm Delete on Gridview

Gridview's are awesome. You can do in 2 minutes what would take you an hour in classic ASP.

If you're making a system for other people to use though, you might be concerned at the ease at which they could accidentally delete items.

Easily fixed! It's simple to get an "ok", "cancel" message box to pop up when you press delete...

• 1) Convert the "CommandField" into a template field (Click on "Edit Columns" on the "Smart Tag" at the top right of your datagrid, highlight the field in the list on the bottom right then click the blue "Convert to template field" hyperlink at the bottom right)


• 2) Go to the source view to look at the page markup and find the code containing commandname="Delete"
• 3) add the following within the tag...

OnClientClick="return confirm('Message to user'); "

So the whole piece of code looks like this...

< asp:linkbutton id="LinkButton3" text="Delete" causesvalidation="False" onclientclick="return confirm('Do you really wish to remove this Term Completely? It cannot be recovered once deleted!');" commandname="Delete" runat="server" > < /asp:linkbutton>

Done! Give it a try...here's the result when you press "Delete" on the gridview...







Please leave a comment if it helped you out!

Larry

ASP.Net Cheats!

I've been "programming" web sites with MS ASP.Net 2.0 for a couple of years now.

Not coming from a programming background, it has been hard going at times to make the magic happen. One of the best resources available to me has been the good ol' power of Google.

A lot of the time though, the answers I needed were written by much more knowledgeable people than me who used terms I didn't understand, or they glossed over some important supporting parts that a newbie like me couldn't get my head around. As a result, I would search for hours for solutions to ASP.Net problems, hitting the back button a lot of the time because the answers went straight over my head.

Through perseverance though, in most cases I eventually found that one, golden answer that stops a looooong forum dead in its tracks, because it is THE answer!

These are the answers I will share with you in upcoming posts to hopefully save you hours of trawling through irrelevant or "my 2 cents" forum posts!

Feel free to run any of your little niggles past me on larry @ digitalsick.com incase I've come across them before.

I can highly recommend starting off learning from some good books, such as SAMS Teach yourself ASP.Net in 24 hours.

Idea

Hi all,

I'm currently working on some big websites for a couple of clients. I program in ASP.NET, Microsoft's website language for doing some clever things.

Having learnt from scratch by reading a few books then getting stuck in, I have come across a few things that would have really helped to have known in the beginning; things like easily uploading and resizing images for example.

I think I'll create a new section on the blog called programming. It wont apply to the vast majority of people but hopefully it will help a few out of some sticky and annoying situations.

Stay tuned.

Podcasting

Good day good day. For my work christmas bonus this year I ordered up a Behringer PodCastudio USB podcasting kit.

Only now (27th Jan.) have I had the time to sit down and get the thing out of the box!

Check out all the stuff you get in the picture on the right, plus I'm wearing the headphones right now that are included. £86 the whole lot cost and for the quality the thing produces that's a bargain!

It will come in handy for website voiceovers, like the ones I've done for the Stafford District and Access group (www.sdag.org.uk), and generally boring any poor soul to death with my dulcet tones who cares to listen.

Prague Baby!

Hello from Prague in the Czech Republic!

Snuzi and I are currently sitting at a PC in the bar at the hostel we're staying at... GBP 1.30 per pint of stella (can't find the pound sign on the keyboard!)...and this place is apparently a "rip-off"!

Exploring tomorrow...got some things planned..and no doubt be drinking throughout the day to celebrate this as the best christmas present ever!!!! :oD

Best go drink my stella so we can get up in time for the breakfast tomorrow,

Take care all!

Happy New Year, no really...

It's a week late but I would like to wish everyone a happy new year.

My housemate and I have made more of an overall new years resolution...to be happy. We both have good jobs that provide enough money to live comfortably and pay for our great house, fantastic girlfriends, reliable cars, good health and happy, loving families and friends.

Everyone is always going on about how England is crap and that the government is useless, but at the end of the day, we can turn a tap for fresh water, go to the hospital if we are ill and people will come and put out the fire if our houses start burning down.

There are not many countries where you get all of that!

Lots of France doesn't even have clean drinking water straight form the taps.

So, in recognition of all this, when work gets stressful, an emergency dentist visit is needed, or the car gets a flat tyre, I resolve to remember that I really do have it good.

I'd still quite like a BMW though... :o)

Larry's best photographs

Here are a few select photos I've taken in the past. They've been whittled down from the mountain of crap ones. Interesting how the best looking ones are all in black and white.

Click to enlarge.