another idea

i've been trying to buy a house recently and have spent a lot of time using rightmove.co.uk as well as lots of other shite property websites. i was thinking the other day how i put in my search criteria and get a list of houses, 99% of which aren't even in an area i would consider buying in.
Would'nt it be nice to be able to view a map which showed the houses for sale (or rent for that matter) in your price range. so you could simply zoom into your preferred area and not have to look at a huge list of houses in shitty areas that just happen to be in your price range.

I've already started doing some work on this and it may end up taking precedent over noconsultant.com

more useful links for asp.net 2.0 providers

I still haven't got round to sorting the membership stuff. in fact i haven't got round tomuch site wise this week. Here are a few more useful links for when i finally pull my finger out and write some code for this site.

A microsoft bloke's blog. lots of useful links on this

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/02/24/438953.aspx


One of the links of this blog is an article on customer membership providers
http://www.devx.com/asp/Article/29256

this week i've mostly been readin

Just got this book off amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764576100/qid=1143033598/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/026-6867934-0908452

I'm normally a bit reticent to buy a programming book when a bit of googling will normally get you want you want for free. but this book gives a nice overview of asp.net 2.0 (now if only i could think of a reason to write a mobile web app).

curved boxes

I've been thinking about about the visual design of the site (as a break from the database/app design)

I've been thinking about using rounded corners on the main content boxes on the site, i've found this article that goes thru the basics of achieving this using css.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/css-round-corners-boxes-curves

useful articles

One of the main reasons i set up this blog is to provide myself with a single place to look for links to useful articles i've found whilst researching for noconsultant. Rather than have to keep my work and home bookmarks synchronised by mailing my email account every time i find something useful, so. here is a list of useful articles i've found.

I'll need to write a custom membership provider for my site, here are some useful links:

http://blogs.dotnetgerman.com/alexonasp.net/PermaLink,guid,669e2dc5-a623-4e21-bb16-63bb66cb5be9.aspx
http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?QUICKDOC=380
http://www.aspnetresources.com/blog/utility_of_provider_model.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/ASPNETProvMod_Prt5.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/ASPNETProvMod_Intro.asp
http://www.dotnetbips.com/articles/displayarticle.aspx?id=494
http://www.devx.com/asp/Article/29256/0/page/3
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/11/Membership/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/00/ASPNET20Overview/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/

I'm just in the process of finishing off the database design on a sql server 2000 server. I found this link quite useful for helping me work out what data types to use for my tables:

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.phpr/2212141

I intend to use a bit of ajax for a few of the pages cos
A) the way i'll use it will really speed up what the user has to do
and
B) Its a good excuse to learn about it.

Below are some links that i found useful when researching ajax and how i could implement it on my site:
http://adamstiles.com/2004/12/hacking_google_/
http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-suggest-dissected.html
http://www.codeproject.com/Ajax/ajaxnet_lookup_control.asp

testing testing 1 2

when have you done enough testing. at what point can you say "i have tested this completely there isn nothing left i can test" ?

The idea, the story so far

I'm a coder and i'm always coming up with (bad) business ideas that i normally start developing just as learning excercises, before getting bored/disenchanted and moving onto the next one.

A while ago i thought of creating an IT job site with a difference, one that removed the need (if there ever was one) for recruitment consultants. This idea is mainly born out of my dislike of recruitment consultants. In a skills based industry like IT i really can't see how recruitment consultant "add value" (to use wanky business speak) to the process of matching jobseekers to employers. In my experience recruitment consultant are unknowledgable (yeah they want a developer with sequel server c#.net and .net). I've also experienced them lying.

Thinking from an employers perspective i guess a good recruitment consultant should act as (for wont of a better term) shit filter, giving the employer the right candidates for the job. I guess the question is how many good recrutment consultants there are out there?. I know a lto of people who have interviewed completely unsuitable people for jobs that have been provided by recruitment consultants. so my answer to the question would be not many and not enough

dts doh!

I have found why my dts didn't work. in the copy tab of the copy object task there is a check box for use default options. i had kept that checked.
If you untick it and click the "options" button you then get a new form with a "copy database users and database roles" checkbox that is selected by default.

Oh well thats something i've learnt today (along with the existence of a goggomobile http://www.motorbase.com/vehicle/by-id/114/ )

sql server 2000 dts copy object pain

task is simple enough, copy a table (and its contents) from one database server to another.
So i create a dts copy object, uncheck "copy all", uncheck "copy related objects" select the specific table and bobs your uncle, or not. for some reason the dts is trying to copy a user over as well. so i get a "user xxx does not exist in the database" error. ok, thats fine, if i'd even selected that i wanted to copy the user. What a pain in the arse.

Luckily i have an application that updates a replica of this table, and with a quick connection string change i started updating the table (altho this will take 10 times as long as the dts would have).

I'm not saying the dts copy object is shite, obviously i'm dong somethign a bit stupid, but surely if you are allowed to select the specific database objects to copy the dts should only copy those specific database objects?

What is the point of blogging?

well, i intend to use this blog to record my progress thru developing an asp.net 2 based web site.
A by product of this will hopefully be a useful resource for me to look back on my progess (or lack of) and a place to keep all the articles/useful links that i will collect during my research. (maybe this will be useful for others who are doing similar things.) Or simply an opportunity for people to laugh at the stupid programmer making stupid mistakes (and not learning from them).

thats the primary point anyway. the secondary (for now) point will be to allow me to rant about whatever i'd like to rant about (normally idiotic work colleagues)