Richard Lennox
- setting rather than resetting CSS styling: http://bit.ly/drvmMK
- does anyone know if Windows 7 starter (netbook) can use an external projector?
- Why do some e-commerce platforms get Javascript so wrong? http://bit.ly/awXZvZ from @econsultancy
Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
Moving On
It is the end of my second day in my new job, and its been a couple of busy and informative couple of days.
Just over eight weeks ago now, I accepted a position at a company called Realise. With a very strong history in web development they are increasing the ASP .Net skillset in the business. The opportunity was one I thought was excellent, I have more responsibilities and a degree of process management to do. I think it will be am exciting challenge and I am ready to take the plunge, stepping outside my comfort zone.
It wasn't an easy decision to leave Ezone. They are a fantastic, if little, company with a strong skill set and some great projects. I feel I have learned a great deal in my time with them and grown both as a person and as a software developer. It is also quite difficult to pass my main project onto someone else. SK Chase have been fantastic clients and I have had the privilege of providing some quality bespoke software for them. I am proud of my achievements over the last 2 and a bit years.
In a shameless plug, as I was asked: Check out the rebranded Consumer site at: www.kisschasegifts.com.
Given that the time is right for me to move on, I am looking forward to the challenges Realise will throw at me and hope I can begin to add value through my own experience and ways of working.
Productivity Part 2: Slickrun
For the second installment in my mini series on Productivity and those tools that I use to increase mine, I am going to talk about the merits of a simple launcher program – SlickRun. You can find it at http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/. This free floating command utility for Windows launches programs, specific files or documents and folders based on magic words.
It is simplicity in itself. I hit "Windows key + Q" start typing something that makes sense to me, and hit enter. My file, program or folder launches as if I had gone through the effort of moving my cursor to the stat button, clicking it, selecting all programs, finding the right program in the list and then launching it. I have tens of "magic" key words, and I barely have to type 3 or 4 characters as the little utility auto completes for you.
It is immeasurable how much time this little tool saves me but I can say it will be a couple of seconds for every file, program or explorer location I use on a regular basis so I would expect that it adds up to quite a lot of time.
Productivity Part 1
Spending most of my days in front of computer screens I have manged to compile a list of tools (some of which I may have mentioned previously) that assist in my productivity. Many of these may only shave seconds off a task but if I was to add up all those seconds I believe I would have saved myself at least an hour a week. That may not sound a lot but is at least 52 hours a year which is (or at least should be) more than 1 working week. While in no way has this been scientifically measured, I am fairly certain about how these tools help me.
So I begin, with the first part of an unknown number of posts about the tools that increase my productivity when in front of my computer screens.
You may or may not have noticed that my last paragraph ended with the plural of screen. This was not a mistake, I have 2 per machine (1 at home and 1 in the office). I cannot equate in time the amount of effort this saves me in a day. I liken it to spreading out over a physically wider work area, allowing me to have more organised and smaller "piles" for my work.
Take a program like Photoshop. Not something I use often (not being a big designer or photographer) however it has all these floating palettes and tool bars that while aiding usability, simply take screen real estate away from what I am working on – the photograph. With my 2 monitors I can fill one whole screen with my photograph and have the palettes and toolbars on the other, giving me more room to work on the image itself. This also is reflected in my work as a Software and Web developer.Much of this requires a minimum of 2 windows open – the development environment (in which I write my code) and maybe 2 or 3 browser windows for web work. On 1 screen I would be constantly flicking between windows and it doesn't help me at all. On 2 I can have a quick glance at how my work is going without too much effort.
However, as a Windows user multiple monitors although well supported are less easy to manage. The task bar does not stretch over and you still get the piles of open windows stacked high there. Moving the windows between the 2 monitors is also a pain, they need to be resized smaller than maximum the dragged across the screen.
Ultramon sorts all of this out. It adds a task bar to the other monitors making it much easier to use. It adds buttons to the window for switching program windows between monitors. Alternatively there are the keyboard commands to do the same and also to move the mouse cursor form one monitor to the other.
I cannot stress how these two simple things increase my productivity massively, so together they come top of my list!
Busy, busy
I have been really busy at work recently, too busy to really concentrate on anything else, even during my own time. It is funny, like most things, when I take a step back from things I can often see them much clearer and is during my own time that I often have good ideas on how to do something or solve that problem that has had me in knots for several hours. This gets my head straight back in there and often I need something to pull me back! Is this a sign that I am working too hard? I'd like to think not!
I do really enjoy the work despite some frustration at times. It is sometimes a really interesting project to work on particularly when I implementing new features that are innovative and exciting. It is great to see the application moving forward and improving, ensuring good quality on which to base their business.
SK Chase [the clients!] have also been making a bit of a splash in the press recently. You can find articles in The Scotsman here and The Sunday Herald here. They have also managed to get themselves on a business promotion reel on STV (Scottish ITV) running for the next few weeks between the regional and national news programs.
To Vista or not to Vista?
This is a question facing the many, many of us over the coming days, weeks and months. Vista the all new operating system from Microsoft. Now, normally with any Microsoft product (particularly the OS!) I would wait until at least the first service pack bu there is something about Vista that has me thinking! There is an awful lot of praise out there for it.. but is it hype. I purposefully avoided the beta version but now I have my copy sitting here, what to do with it?
Any ideas?
Going Freelance…
I have made a decision, I know what I want to do in the long term future. I want to work for myself, run a company in a way that is goo practice and my own and ideally be successful at it. In the short term this is unlikely to happen but that doesn't mean I cannot start planning and improving my chances. Don't get me wrong, I love the work I am doing and am successful at it. It is just that I feel I can do more and better.
To that end and with the long term future in mind, I have spoken to Ezone with regard to doing a bit of freelance work on the side. This is not a career move as such but a way for me to look at different ways of working and trying new things. I am not going to be actively pursuing freelance work but I wouldn't turn it down out of hand. I want to keep my workload manageable and not spend all my spare time on it. I am big on quality as opposed to quantity.
www.skchase.com
It has been a long, hard slog over the last few months at work. I have put in the hours and the effort to produce something that I can happily say I am very proud of. I have been the sole developer for SK Chase since I started over a year ago now. Throughout that time there has been much functionality that I have added to their existing system that I am proud of, but nothing so visible as www.skchase.com.
When I first started working at Ezone and on SK Chase's project, I was instantly aware of the ambitions of SK Chase. They did not want to solely be a supplier of the gift voucher application to the hotel and tourism industry, but wanted to produce a site that took the vouchers loaded by the hotel clients into the gift voucher app and sell them through a single portal. Enter www.skchase.com….
The site originally a simple "About us site" was transformed into a basis for what you see now. Earlier this year SK Chase put together the design and soft launched a manual sales site. Manually controlled, with every bit of content being entered by hand, and with links to the existing gift voucher catalogues of their customers. The site was unmanageable, unwieldy and I believe it must have been difficult to use as an end user.
So over the last 2-3 months I have taken their design and rewritten it, to what you see now. It was a busy and ambitious development cycle, with not a minimal amount of stress, but the end result is what matters. And I am proud of the end result.
The site pulls in vouchers from the hotels using SK Chase's application, and categorise them. I have developed a bespoke search system that allows the categorised vouchers to be fully search-able by type, location, for who and other search aspects. This "search" might not compare with the likes of Google but it is an achievement in itself.
The site then lets you buy multiple vouchers from multiple hotels in one order and deliver them wherever you like. One thing I am really proud of is incorporating the conceptually two different sites – the hotel catalogue eg at Gleneagles and the SK Chase site – into the same application. This gives a great experience for a user who is used to purchasing vouchers from a hotel catalogue. The cart and checkout in particular look and feel and act in the same way – giving returning users the same experience, one which they are accustomed to.
I am particularly proud of my work on making the site Search Engine friendly and optimisable. Having a manually created site there first meant I was always reacting to existing search rankings. I still believe this is the wrong way round, but I developed a solution for even the most dynamic of pages, including the search results page, that allows SK Chase to maintain their positions in the rankings through an effective use of content. While I cannot go into details about the solution, it is something, I think will help SK Chase cement their strong reputation through a good set of search engine rankings.
The site itself from its soft launch at the end of October has been relatively successful, orders are coming through steadily, although not in great quantities as yet. There has been no advertising other than that of the search engine rankings and it is great news that the number of visitors and buyers is on the increase.
While I am hoping for less manic development cycles in the future I am looking forward to taking both the application and the site itself to new levels in the coming months. Please do take a look at the site, even if you are not wanting to buy anything….www.skchase.com
UPDATE: 2008/02/26
Check out their new site launched just before Christmas – www.kisschasegifts.com!