joeblogs.ie

Recently got this on DVD and was blown away by Caravaggio...Here is a compilation on YouTube of some of his work to the music of Boards of Canada.

Art art

Music

Great article on 4guysfromrolla explaining how to create a tag cloud in ASP.net. Read it here

.NET asp.net

There are some useful instructions on the eHow website on how to set up a small business in Ireland.

Entrepreneurs who want to start a business in Ireland will find that, although the process can be lengthy, there are a plethora of resources available to them to make the start-up stage go smoother. Enterprise Ireland and BASIS are two organizations that can both be found online and provide both new and experienced business owners with information, resources and advice on starting and growing a business in Ireland.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Step 1

   Decide whether you want to operate as a sole trader or you want to start a partnership, a limited liability company or a co-operative, the four business structures available in Ireland. Carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of each business structure when determining which is best for your business.

2. Step 2

   Settle on a business name. You cannot use a business name in Ireland if it is already being used by another business, if another business has the same name but the name is spelled differently or if the name is deemed undesirable by the Enterprise, Trade and Employment Minister.

3. Step 3

   Go to the Companies Registration Office website, at cro.ie, where you can download the form you will need to complete to register your business name in Ireland. Once you have filled out the registration form, mail it to Companies Registration Office, the Registrar of Companies, 14 Parnell Square, Parnell House, Dublin 1.

4. Step 4

   Register with the Revenue Commissioners for tax purposes by going to revenue.ie, where you will find the required forms. The form you will be responsible for completing depends on the type of business structure you have chosen.

5. Step 5

   Determine whether you need to obtain registration or a business license to legally run your business in Ireland by consulting with your solicitor. Those businesses that are required to obtain a business license to operate legally in Ireland include pubs, driving schools and employment agencies.

6. Step 6

   Find funding to start your business by beginning your search at the government website BASIS.ie. If your small business offers a service or is in manufacturing and you have ten or fewer employees, you may be eligible for a capital grant, an employment grant or a feasibility grant from the County and City Enterprise Boards Services (CEB).

7. Step 7

   Take advantage of the programs offered to new business owners in Ireland. For example, Enterprise Ireland offers business owners the opportunity to consult for free with business mentors from their Mentor Network while their Research and Development Management program helps entrepreneurs hone their management and research skills.

8. Step 8

   Have a thorough understanding of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act of 2005, which is essential to follow if you hire employees. You can download a PDF copy of the act at the House of Oireachtas website at oireachtas.ie.

• Consider purchasing business insurance to ensure that your business equipment, company vehicles and property are protected. If you require expensive insurance to protect your business, talk with the insurance company to determine if you can make payments throughout the year rather than paying the full premiums upfront. Even if you are operating as a sole trader, you should open a separate business bank account. Opening a bank account is a complicated process if you run a limited liability company, so talk with your desired bank to determine all of the steps you must take to get your bank account up and running.

Business start-up stuff

Raymond Loewy, the father of industrial design, is celebrated in this article in Wired magazine. He had some interesting quotes that seem to be very applicable to Apple, in particular his motto: "Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other."He originated the concept of MAYA: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. Here are some of the very recognisable logo's he designed:

QI qi

Photography photography

The last day I had the unenviable task of rolling back to XP from Vista. It wasn’t as painful as I expected :) Here are some steps you can follow if you need to do it. This was performed on a Dell Inspiron 1545.

1. Enter the BIOS (F2 on boot up) and change the boot sequence to boot from CD

2. Then boot up from CD

3. You may get the STOP 0x0000007B(0xF78DA63C,0x0000034,0X x0000000,0x0000000 error message…follow this link to fix it

4. Let XP install which should take some time….

5. XP should be installed now so run Windows Update to get all of the patches.

6. If there is no wifi option available or you cannot connect to Wifi get this driver from Dell

…and you’re done! 

Windows windows

Much to my chagrin, discovered that the collation of the TempDB and user databases in an instance of SQL Server I am working on are different. The TempDB is   Latin1_General_CI_AS and the user databases are SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. This causes a problem when joining a table copied in from one of the user databases to TempDB and a table created in TempDB.

One solution is to change all user databases to Latin1_General_CI_AS, but I am not sure what implication this will have? Kimberly L. Tripp has an excellent post explaining the implications in more detail so will have to consult this for more info

SQL Server collation

I received the STOP 0x0000007B(0xF78DA63C,0x0000034,0X x0000000,0x0000000 error message if I booted with Windows XP. I resolved the issue by the following actions
1. On start up (Dell logo), press F2 to enter BIOS
2. Expand the "Drives" section
3. Go to "SATA Operation"
4. Change this from "RAID Auto/AHCI" to "RAID Auto/ATA"

Windows windows

Here are some Visual Studio shortcuts compiled by Shawn Wildermuth>>

Keyboard ShortCuts

• Ctrl-Shift-B: Build Solution
• Ctrl-. (period): Show "Add Using/Imports" dropdown for unknown types.
• Ctrl-K, C: Comment Selection
• Ctrl-K, U: Uncomment Selection
• Ctrl-K, F: Format Section
• Ctrl-K, D: Format Document
• Ctrl-Space: Show Intellisense List
• Ctrl-Shift-V: Paste Loop - Hit Multiple Times to paste through the list of recent 'copies'
• Ctrl-F: Simple Find
• Ctrl-Shift-F: Find in Files
• Ctrl-H: Simple Replace
• Ctrl-Shift-H: Replace in Files
• Ctrl-N: New->Project Item
• Ctrl-Shift-N; New Project
• F9: Set Breakpoint
• Ctrl-Shift-R: Start/End Temporary Macro Recording
• Ctrl-Shift-P: Play Temporary Macro Recording
• F12; Navigate to Type (or metadata for Type) under the cursor

Visual Studio visual studio