SonicTumbl

I have written some posts, but not published them. My issue is I worry that  I am going to upset anyone. There isn't an intention to upset anyone in any of the drafted posts, but I can see that i am writing and not saying exactly what i am thinking. 

I have to applogise for losing all the references, in anger I closed them all but they all kinda play a part.

The only window I have open is woodygems article which reviews the Revo 3700, which is a good read, but doesn't highlight the problem which I have been experiancing.

So, USB win7 install created - a ha, I found the link - following "into windows" article to get a bootable win7 install disk. Stick that in, alter the boot order (hit escape to enter the bios) then ace, win7 install screen. but the mouse and keyboard has stopped. :( Wha? I dunno.

Couple of reboots and the usb keyboard I have connected works. Select the relevant options and the install starts. Then I am propted with a "select the device driver to be installed" and nothing is going anywhere. browse, scan. nothing. Couple more reboots nothing. It seems that the install is looking for CD/DVD item.

A few articles - which sorry these are the links I lost - seemed to suddenly have success after a number of reboots, then some said that the USB port seems to loose the usb drive, so just put it in another port and you'll be fine. I try this and nothing new and no success.

I edited some BIOS items, disabling things, ensuring legency USB is on, but nothing. restore to default - then change boot order again.

So I'll continue. Few more reboots, copy all the files again from the DVD to the USB - some people believed that to be the answer - and maybe a few moves of the USB key during the installation... maybe we'll get there.

[to be continued...]

A new day ... most of it wasted .. and after more of the same, there is a bit of a breakthrough. Chatting to a friend (sam) he suggested a usb DVD drive. I dismiss the idea of paying for a new external dvd drive to get this working.

HOLD ON, sitting next to the Revo is my XBOX, yes the one with the external HDDVD drive.... WHICH IS USB!

Plugged that bad boy in, put the disk (which was being put onto the USB) in it and adjusted the boot order and HEY-PRESTO!

Smooth install.

A little while ago I wrote a post saying how a free version of Quickbooks was a good place to start with accounts. Well, I have been introduced to Brightbook.

Now, it doesn't have a little diagram to help remind you of the process - which I think is good when you start up and accounts are really foreign - but it doesn't use too much alien accounting lingo to scare you off. 

You can download bank statements as a CSV and upload them to the site, which you can then log against clients etc.

I've communicated with the guys behind it a few times about possible bugs & suggestions, and they are really responsive and friendly.

Finally, and most importantly, it's free.

I started writing this in anger, then left it to settle. Maybe I'd get some real prospective on the whole thing. I've return and deleted all the ranting and hopefully this will be a little more focused - although this will be written in the same stream of conciousness as usual, and could be just a long rant.

So, what's so disappointing? What is sour?

Well, we have (soon to be had) a client who upon presenting the invoice for work we completed decided they would tell us they would pay us less AND want some work done on their website. Hold your horses! Pay us less? and MORE work?

Maybe we forgot to do what was agreed in the spec? erm. no. So what's the reasoning for being told we weren't going to be paid what had been agreed???  ...

Because the marketing wasn't as successful as they had hoped.

Let's just tidy up any assumptions here. I'm apart of a digital agency that designs and builds things (sites, apps, dreams ;] ). We do our best not to be involved in black magic such as marketing/PR as we're not good at it. We design and build. simple.

So maybe we are responsible? but how?  Product developed, tested, client accepted the work, published - to apple store. all good.

Maybe as the client they thought they could try and hold the payment back as leverage to get extras on the website? Maybe this is just a business approach we don't understand? Well we don't appreciate it.

We're a small business. Our approach is to be open, honest and try to build solid relationships with the client. The clients are our marketing, they are the people who win us new business, we currently live off the referrals we get. So our relationships are important to us and these "business approaches" to hold back money (for the reasons given) just isn't on. We are good people, if they had asked if we could drop the price as they are struggling, then we might have been able to help, but, but, but, for the marketing not going as well as expected? no way.

In this situation we stood firm (and fair) and requested full payment within the terms that we agreed in the beginning. 

The client turned extremely sour, unreasonably and irrationaly.  

Out of nowhere, they were claiming that by not being "flexible" and not trying to build relationships with our clients we would regret it. Mystical potential clients were mentioned and that we would not be introduced to them.

Just writing this is making my blood boil. Why did they need to make up stories of new clients and act like we were in a school playground?

They just want to pull a fast one. They wanted more work done. They couldn't be responsible for the (in their eyes) disappointing marketing. They wanted to be in control?

I can't help but feel they were treating us as if we were a big company which would have just accepted it all to keep the client "happy". We can't afford to kill our own company, giving away work to make someone feel they "won" and got more for their money.

Makes me wonder why we bother working so hard to produce good work if they don't care, and they only care about feeling in control.

Drums, I love them. It could have been the moment that I was told my granddad played and could have his kit, maybe seeing animal on the muppets, or it could be my natural rhythm... I Just dunno, but you might notice that the Sonic Trio logo is as you might find on an drum kit ;)

I'm not a great drummer, I got the basics down when having lessons as a "youth", but as with any art form it should be practiced regually and as often as you can. I don't practice enough and that's one of the reasons I am not a great drummer.

I was asked by a good friend about drums and I sent him a bundle of emails with some bits and pieces, so I thought I would share the drummers that were referenced.

First of all check out this guy, Stanton Moore, I saw him at a drum exhibition in London a few years ago and he was REALLY good. Seemed like a nice guy and he was all about the New Orleans Second Line... he had a real groove. Here is a quick video on "falling in love with the process" which I totally agree with and another video talking about the Second Line.  I'm not so much of a fan of his bands music, but as a drummer I am a fan.

Now for someone completely different. Jojo Mayer, he has an incredible technique the speed it incredible. I'm not really a fan of drumming at speed, I rather it had more feel, but you have to appreciate his technique is impressive.

Then you have some greats. Don't judge my appreciation for these because of the amount written about them. They are the guys everyone should know about and I shouldn't need to be the one to tell you about them, but, it would be rude not to mention a couple of them. Yes, I might missed out many greats like John Bonham.

Bernard "Pretty" Perdy, who'll "splain to ya" everything you'll need to know, and that's how much fun playing the drums can be. He's recorded with everyone and is still touring.

A tasteful performance from Animal on the muppet show playing a Paul Simon number which had Steve Gadd at the kit.

Then you have a legend Joe Morello who you would know from that classic Dave Brubeck number Take 5

Then you have some new kids Tony Royston Jr (that incredible kid that now plays for Jay Z),  Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys (and has recently drummed for P Diddy), and Steve White who I used to drum along to when he was playing with Paul Weller and I was just starting out.

Finally, one for the girls. Forget Beyoncé's drummer, or princes, check out this french philli, Emmanuelle Caplette. From what I have seen, she is tight and complements a track, it's not all about her.

Tonight I went to see Daniel Kitson's current run of performances, of his 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival show "It's Always Right Now Until It's Later". I'd never seen Daniel live before, but I had seen the limited amount of material that is online.  If you check out videos that have made it online, you'll find some examples of stand up and story telling. The show this evening was a story.

He'd been recommend to me by good people - you know the ones who rarely share the good shows, but when they do, you know it's gonna be really good - so i signed up to his mailing list, hoping to find out about his next gigs. His website is rarely updated. I find mailing lists very dull, factual to help sell something, but always lacking any human element to remind you why you signed up (if you did sign up) in the first place. Well not Daniel Kitson, they are better than any emails I get from anyone. Eventually, after a bit of a world tour, Daniel Kitson set up some london shows at the National Theatre and I was straight in to purchase. £12 / ticket. unreal. £12! Was so pleased I got tickets for my girlfriend and myself, as they sold out within an hour!

So, my expectations were pretty high, but he blew me away. He was incredible. I don't know what else to say really. I've been lucky enough to see some good live performances in terms of music, dancey movement kinda things and comdey, but never a story like what was told tonight.

Following on from my previous tool recommendations for small business ("Task Management" + "Getting started with an accounts package"), I thought I had missed a key tool, Mailchimp has been apart of my set-up for some time.

It is a wonderful tool, and at a great price.  Simple to use, and if you have the skills, you can integrate into your own systems.

For me, I have helped set up a number of small businesses enabling them to communicate with customers and get quality information back about the campaign. Who opened, who bounced and where in the world all this happened.

Accounts are something that really "grind my gears". I don't dislike accountants, but because I don't totally understand what they do, I then don't totally trust them.... and it is with my money and all.

So, I need a good package to handle a "small business" amount of activity to try and get a grips with the accounting voodoo. Finding something to enter the mundane figures into that isn't sage has been pretty hard.

I'd like a web-based tool, just so I can give a log-on to the accountant, but i don't really want to fork out whilst I am a small business. Call me cheap, I know, but as the business grows they can charge. I just need to save the pennies now.

Anyway, until I find that solution, I have been using QuickBooks' Simple Start (UK) Edition. It has limited functionality, but - and this is the best bit - it has a simple diagram of the company flow. So you know where to click to create your invoices, but more importantly a bundle of other icons that remind you of other things you should be doing - checking if a client has paid ;)

I've been looking at a range of task management tools and out of the blue someone retweets something about Trello so I investigate.

It's a nice tool, let's you set up "boards", which to me are projects, then get members involved, assigning them to stories and working them through panels - like "to-do", "Doing", "done" - which are customisable :)

It's not like a agile package with itterations or a bigger company management tool, which is fine by men (at the moment), but it is more than just a checklist... which is ace.

... maybe i will follow Jeff Atwood's Coding horror post

What's Your Backup Strategy?

I've had a fairly neat day working with the WP7 development kit. Having previously tinkered with the development kit sometime ago (back in January), I hadn't spent any time really making it do much more than a poncy "hello world". So I thought it was about time (with mango being released soon) to see what it is all really about and start getting my hands dirty.

Starting with a simple goal of using the phones location data to fetch some JSON of some places, that I could then mark on a map and then if selected show some information.

First of all I got to grips with binding data to the controls by doing some simple demos, then I went through the Bing's maps tutorial from Microsoft. Equipped with the basics in hand I build upon the maps example and called a service POSTing some values (long/lat location) and then binding the result to the map.

All pretty straight forward and not too unreasonable. The point that I seemed to get stuck on was displaying the data relative the pins selected (MouseLeftButtonUp event). I just wasn't sure how I could get to all my PlaceModel information that had been bound to pins, but here is the answer...

var placeModel =(PlaceModel)((Pushpin)sender).DataContext;

I found this on a pretty good post on code project by Jan Fajfr to sum up everything I had cobbled together from a range of locations in one place. It might have been easier if I had stumbled across this at the beginning of the day, but I wouldn't remember as much.