I produced a basic website for a group company and included a Google Map on the contact page. It was reported to me this morning that the map points to the wrong area. I obviously thought I’d made a mistake so went to correct it. However, the fault seems to lie with Google Maps embedding of it’s own maps. In this case I wanted a map for post code OL10 4HP in Lancashire and on Google Maps website it gives me the correct location. However if I then click ‘Link’ then ‘Customize and preview embedded map’ it changes it’s location to over a mile away. Now I’m sure it’s possible to somehow manually edit the embedded code to give me the original and correct map, but it’s a strange error on Google’s part.
Anyone else had this problem?
Yes, I know I’m way behind the curve here but I don’t normally used SQL Server as wherever possible I use MySQL instead. However, we have one application which uses an old SQL Server 7.0 installation which is installed on a slowly failing server. Since this application has become low traffic, I’m being tight and setting up a new server on a basic HP ML115 with SQL Server 2005 Express as it suits these specific demands easily and cheaply.
Anyway, I was having trouble connecting to the SQL Server 2005 service from a client machine and couldn’t see a reason. No log files were being created on the server so I did a bit of research. I came across Rick Strahl’s blog entry from 2006 (I did say I was working well behind the curve!) which explains that by default, SQL Server 2005 does not allow remote connections, which is fine if the setting is easy to find. Unfortunately it’s in a completely different application called the SQL Server Surface Area Configuration Tool (what a great name, very intuitive). Activate remote connections and away you go.
In my case, no actually. I still couldn’t connect remotely and, as it turned out, I couldn’t connect through ODBC on the server either. Finally, I discovered the solution which was to set the connection to server_name\sql_instance_name not just the server_name. For example, whereas on SQL Server 7 you can just connect to SERVER1, using SQL Server 2005 Express you need to connect to SERVER1\SQLEXPRESS because SQLEXPRESS is the default instance created during installation. A simple difference but confusing at first!
The enquiry into Bloody Sunday has cost the UK taxpayer £195m over 12 years. Half of this has gone directly into lawyers pockets. What an utter waste of money for an enquiry which will be worthless. Everyone will have lied and covered-up to make their version of events the way they want it to be seen and the truth will be buried under layer upon layer of half-truths, opinion and hearsay. They spent £34m on IT when even at the peak of the enquiry there were only 38 staff. Just to put that into perspective, it’s enough to buy each of those staff 75 new £1000 laptops EVERY YEAR! What kind of IT infrastructure did they blow all that money on?
People moan about the wealth of bankers but these public enquiries and quangos are squandering huge amounts of public money without any real controls being placed on them. This should be the last of them, a lesson learned once and for all.
OK, that’s an OTT headline and it comes a day after me spending a stupid amount of time getting a friends iPod Touch to accept some video files which it wouldn’t because the piece of crap can only play a miniscule amount of file formats which most computers take in their stride, and not helped by iTunes trashing my secondary Atom-based PC in the living room which happily manages to do everything else I need but now, thanks to iTunes won’t even open Windows Explorer to browse files!
However, on top of my growing feeling that nothing really works the way it’s supposed to, from Phones to iPods to software to Sky+, the latest edition of PC Pro landed on my desk this morning, which I’ve subscribed to for years and for the first time I skimmed through it in two minutes and it went in the bin. There’s just nothing really new any more, new laptops and desktops and monitors and digital cameras are ten a penny and Office 2010 looks again like Office 2007 with a couple of bells and whistles bolted on. I’m supposed to get excited about this stuff?
It seems these days that the media only get excited about new Apple products which are produced for and bought by those for who eye candy is the most important thing. These people would rather have a 5 carat cubic Zirconia than a 1/2 carat diamond. Just give me stuff that works please and works the way I want it to instead of making me a slave to the manufacturer, and don’t tell me you’ll fix it in in the next model because you told me that three models ago and it still doesn’t work!
That’s my Monday morning moan finished with, better get some work done I suppose!
Why is it that whenever we try to fix something, we always break at least one other? I setup a DMZ on my Netgear FVX538 Firewall at home to put my PS3 into so that I could reduce lag as much as possible by opening the NAT to it. No problem, configured the PS3, configured the DMZ, activated it, checked that web and email incoming were still working. Great.
Errrr, yeah, except that I get to work this morning and the VPN from my desk via the work FVX538 to home isn’t working. I suspect that the VPN requires some WAN-LAN rules setting up so that it knows that the VPN needs routing to the LAN, instead of the DMZ becoming the default. I think I need to open UDP port 500 for the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) traffic and UDP port 1701 for L2TP traffic (not sure if I need that one). Question is, what address do I forward them to? The router itself?
Of course, I could configure this and test it from work, except that my VPN is working and remote access to the router isn’t working either, so it’ll have to wait until tonight.
All this just so I don’t suck quite as much at COD: MW2!
Update 29/04/10 09:52
Not so easy, it seems. Setting up forwarding for the VPN ports gave me a connection which showed as connected at both ends but unable to route any traffic through at all. Traceroute from either end only got as far the local firewall. I have the inbound VPN ports forwarded to the firewall LAN address, maybe it has to be forwarded to somewhere else? For now, I’ll have to undo the DMZ configuration to get my VPN working again for now and play with it some more when I have more time.
My fiancee and I are getting pretty pissed off with the antics at a neighboring property. When we moved into our home, there was an empty shop next door which had been empty for years and had plans submitted for conversion back to a 4 bedroom detached house. The recession came along and the developer was over-ambitious with his plans and ended up withdrawing them. A year and a half later, a guy decided, with immense stupidity that it would make a good convenience store and off-license. Bearing in mind that the shop was formerly a co-op, a Dillons and a One-Stop, none of which were able to make it work, this new venture was and is destined for failure. The list of errors he has made and underhand tactics he has used is huge:
Continue reading ‘Home Hassles.’
I’ve been so busy in recent weeks with work that I’ve had little chance to post here. The finance side of my job is taking front seat at the moment with financial and tax year ends to sort out, financial account audits being carried out and general cashflow pressures as the businesses show some signs of improvement. I have some IT-related projects coming up which will be some relief as I find accounting extremely tedious. It justifies a chunk of my salary but I have no passion for it at all. Every accountant I have met is great at providing figures and they’re very accurate, but they are incapable of making a practical decision. I would much rather have less tedious accuracy and more business and market acumen.
Still, onwards and upwards! The UK should have a nice weekend this week so nice time at home with my fiancee. I don’t care what your attitude to work is but you should always work to live not live to work. If you’re living to work, you have something missing from your life!
Just made a few minor tweaks to the layout and design. I’ve given the sections on the right-hand side some more prominent headings and moved the Twitter section nearer the top instead of the bottom.
I’ve always taken issue with “social networking” sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitter seems to be full of useless posts about people taking their dogs for a walk or telling us what they had for dinner and Facebook is for people desperate to be in a group of any kind and is mostly used for self-promotion and ego-stroking.
Whilst I maintain my stance that I will never have a facebook account, I have decided to dabble with Twitter a little to see if I can make any use out of it at all. You can see my latest tweets at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar or on twitter under the name AMindLost. It may be a short-lived experiment and be either deleted or left to slowly rot into oblivion but I’ll try to post some meaningful content to it which is not substantial enough to warrant a full blog post.
We will see…… 
I’ve noticed a big spike today in traffic to my earlier post regarding a connection failure on the Playstation network. The cause appears to be a large number of older-style PS3 consoles being shut off the network due to a calendar problem. The problem is global and widespread it seems. More details here.
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