Rob's Blog

19/2: Sky Broadband - Any comments?

Do any of you use Sky Broadband in the UK?  Any comments on the service?

Sky are currently offering a deal for £26 that includes Sky TV, Sky Broadband and a Sky Talk package.  The Broadband offers up to 8MB and 40GB per month.  I think I can get 6MB where I am from BT so Sky should be able to offer the same since they'll be using the same cable and the same BT Exchange.



I currently pay £25 to BT.  They have recently offered to reduce it by £2, give me a free router and up my speed to 6MB (from 2MB).  However, it would have tied me in to another year and what they didn't tell me except in the very small print was that my monthly usage allowance would also be reduced to (I think) 6GB.  Now I was unable to determine what my current usage was and BT probably don't even measure it at the moment but I think this will change in the future - especially when people start watching BBC TV reruns over broadband.  So I didn't sign up to BT's offer which means I'm not tied in and can switch if I want to.

The TV package will come in handy since we live in a valley and don't get Freeview reception through a digibox.  I probably won't use the Sky Talk package since I use Vonage - which I'm quite happy with.

So hence the question.  Does anyone have any really bad experiences switching to Sky Broadband?  I don't want to suffer the same as people who tried to switch to the Talk Talk package and ended up waiting months with no service.  My business relies on Broadband.

15/2: SNTT: Notes Support Helper

I have been using the OpenLog database a lot recently.  It was written by Julian Robichaux over at NSF Tools and can be downloaded from Open NTF.

Well basically I use it for all my new Notes development and I'm also back fitting it into my existing applications when I get an excuse to do so.  It's a great tool and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone.

However, there are times when a user rings up with a Notes problem that hasn't triggered an error.  For example, the button they need has disappeared.  This might be access related or it might be a bug.  However, to progress you have to get all the relevant information from the user.  Ideally you'd like to be able to interogate the actual document.  Depending on the user, this sometimes takes a while and the information extracted isn't 100% reliable.

I decided to make things a bit easier.  I've created a simple shared action that can sit in the actions menu for multiple forms.  Whenever, I need to know user related information, I ask the user to select the "Write Access Details" option in the Actions menu.  This routine uses the LogEvent() function that comes with the OpenLog database and logs all I need to know.  It even adds a document link so that I can quickly get to the document and provide the support needed.



Click on the picture above to download the LotusScript source if you want to try it out.  You'll also need to get the OpenLog database from OpenNTF if you haven't done that already.

12/2: Visio and IE7 don’t play well together

I wrote a Domino Content Management System last year that is used to store Quality Management information.  Much of the content is flow charts that have been drawn in Visio 2003.  The Save As Web Page option was used within Visio to create the files that would be viewed in the browser.  This worked fine with IE6.

Along comes IE7 and this breaks.  Great this compatibility isn't it when Microsoft's new web browser won't work with their own latest Visio product.  Aparently it will be fixed with Visio 2007 but no patch to Visio 2003 has arrived yet as far as I know.

I will have to devise a fix to all the existing content prior to my client upgrading their browser -- although I'm not sure upgrading is the right verb to use.

Maybe I'm spoilt working with Lotus Notes/Domino where applications written ten years ago still work just fine.  Isn't that what customers should expect?

Anyway, here's a link with a good explanation of how to fix the data.

9/2: IsDate("13/02/2007") = False ??

Strange one which I'm about to log on the Notes.Net forum.  I hope it's not something too obvious.

A couple of users have picked a date using the date picker in the Notes client.  They chose 13th February 2007 in the date picker which put "13/02/2007" into the field.  My program took a string representation of this date (taken from the UIDocument) and then used the IsDate() function prior to converting it to a Date Variant using the CDat() function.

However, the string failed the IsDate() check!

Fair enough I thought.  They probably typed the date in and their PC is setup with an American format date or something.  No, it's not that.  The PC is setup correctly.  To be sure, I made the program get the date format from the NotesInitialization class and put this into the error message.  The users also swear that they used the date picker - and I believe them.

Here's an excerpt from the code:



and here's the resulting error message in the magnificent OpenLog database:



The error text says:  "13/02/2007" is not a valid date.  Date format should be "DD/MM/YYYY".  Use the date picker if you didn't already.

Can any of you clever people tell me what I've done wrong?  Surely this isn't a Notes bug?

6/2: ILUG 2007

I've just booked our flights to Dublin in May with Ryanair from East Midlands.  We're leaving Wednesday evening and then making a weekend of it.  Can't wait.  And what's our excuse for a trip to Dublin?  Why it's the third annual Irish Lotus User Group Conference of course.



Here's the list of speakers.  Paul Mooney and Eileen Fitzgerald are doing another amazing job organizing the event again.  It's now grown to two days and it's still free to attend.