David Eedle

How to Set Consultancy Fees

Came across this fantastic nugget the other day:

Some consultants set their rates by the project. They estimate the number of hours they expect to spend on a project, then multiply by their hourly rate.

However, some consultants set their project fees using the value the client derives from the consultant’s advice. There’s an old joke about physicist Niels Bohr that illustrate this principle.

A company’s machine breaks down. The company’s owner, an old school chum of Niels Bohr, calls in the physicist for help in fixing it.

Bohr examines the machine. He draws an X on the side and says, "Hit it right here with a hammer."

The company’s mechanic hits the machine with a hammer. It springs into action. The company’s owner thanks Niels Bohr profusely and sends him on his way.

A few days later, the owner receives an invoice from Bohr for $10,000. Shocked, the owner phones Bohr!

"Niels! What’s this $10,000 invoice? You were only here for 10 minutes! Send me a detailed invoice."

Bohr agrees to send the invoice. A few days later, the company’s owner opens a new invoice.

INVOICE
Drawing X on the side of your machine                             $       1
Knowing where to put the X                                             $ 9,999
———————————————————————————————–
Total                                                                             $10,000

The Disappearing Google Toolbar

My Google Toolbar (on Mac FireFox) went AWOL overnight - the bar was there at the top of the browser window but completely blank, no buttons. I tried the usual right click on the bar and Google Toolbar was ticked. I went to Google and downloaded and installed the Toolbar again, still nothing.

Then tried clicking Tools > Add Ons > Google Toolbar > Preferences and the Preference window was slightly bizarre with a number of buttons duplicated:

A quick Google Search found this page, and this piece of advice:

I removed everything in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile dir>/GoogleToolbarData

I followed the instructions, restarted Firefox and my Google Toolbar reappeared.

Firebug 1.5

Having problems with the latest version of Firebug, it doesn't like the SACK ajax library that I use a great deal (it's the same AJAX library included in Wordpress).

The issue only just started, basically Firebug doesn't like the way the SACK script prepares for an AJAX call.

I found something about this in another blog post that appears to explain the issue. Firebug And The Mysterious “Components Is Not Defined”.

A commenter named Svan seems to have found the issue and a simple workaround that I'm going to try.

It seems that every plugin that wants to use the “sack” function of wordpress (for fetching ajax data), will trigger a firebug bug, due to the attempt to create ActiveXObject.

But as Firebug only is made for Firefox, I tried to switch the logic of the createAJAX inner function.
So normally, the javascript function would try to make the xmlhttp object with ActiveXObject (MS Stuff), and when that doesn’t succeed it does it the Mozilla way with XMLHttpRequest.

I changed the order:

if (typeof XMLHttpRequest != “undefined”)
this.xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();

if (! this.xmlhttp) {
try {
this.xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Msxml2.XMLHTTP”);
} catch (e1) {
try {
this.xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
} catch (e2) {
this.xmlhttp = null;
this.failed = true;
}
}
}

Entries in iCal not syncing to Google Calendar

I have iCal set up attached to my Google Calendar, and thus events entered into iCal, Google Calendar or my iPhone all happily sync up. Except today new events entered into iCal stopped appearing in Google or iPhone.

Found a quick and easy solution.

1. Exit iCal

2. Find the file [youruser]/library/calendars/calendar cache and delete it

3. Restart iCal

And hey presto entries added to iCal are syncing again.

Missing Formula Bar in Excel (for Mac)

My Formula bar was missing in Excel (Mac). Click on View > Formula Bar and the option was ticked. Tried on untick - but stayed ticked.

Closed all other tool bars, no help.

Found solution: hold down CONTROL and SHIFT keys and start Excel. Resets the tool bars and the Formula bar magically reappeared.

Javascript Frustration - Spaces in Window Names

It's the little things that drive us to an early grave. Was working on a page this morning, it had a Javascript call along the lines of:

function openPage(myPage,myTitle,settings) {

win = window.open(myPage,myTitle, settings);

}

Then I had a link on the page:

<a href="javascript:openPage('demo.asp','document view','width=600,height=400,scrollbars=yes');">Click This</a>

Works in FireFox. Get error in Internet Explorer.

Of course took me 30 minutes of messing around to realise the problem - the space in the window title. Has to be 'documentview' with no space. You'd think I'd know better after all these years, but it's the little typos that cause us the most grief most often I reckon. FireFox is more adaptable and figured out that a space didn't make the blindest difference and let it through to the keeper. IE, of course, gave a useless indefinite error and wouldn't work.

HP All in One Printer and Snow Leopard

Went to scan a document yesterday on the HP Photosmart 3310, but my Mac couldn't see the scanner - the pop up scan window kept saying scanner not found.

Played with it for ages, using the HP Device Manager thingy, but apparently the scanner was gone. But could print fine.

Finally found this document on the HP site. What do you know. The Snow Leopard upgrade breaks the HP scanner system.

But not to worry - because now it's all built into Mac, you can scan direct from Preview (very handy, straight to PDF which was what I wanted in the first place); Image Capture; or just from the Print and Fax settings.

You'll need to delete the printer from System Preferences > Print and Fax, and add it again, but that's the work of a moment.

Despite the initial frustration, actually very happy. But damn it's annoying when something simply disappears after an update and you have to go hunting for a solution. I did check for updates on the HP software and it said it was the latest version. What would be nice was if HP pushed an update that alerted you to these changes.

Check dates are valid in sql

Tearing my hair out over a query that involves manipulating and querying dates from SQL. Amongst various stuff I came across was this useful little snippet, if you have stored dates in a text field (eg nvarchar) it can tell you if the dates are valid:

set dateformat mdy

select *
from t
where isdate(startdate) = 1
    and convert(datetime, startdate) not between '19000101' and '20790606'

Keeping this one in the toolbox for another day.

Blocking Spammy IPs

A few months ago I found our little web server at home was being constantly wacked by people trying to find a way in. As is now unfortunately the case, the vast majority of the IPs were Chinese or Korean.

I found a neat little utility called IISIP - a free download, that enables you to load a big bunch of IP numbers into IIS to block. You could add them one by one in IIS of course. But they give you block lists for most China and Korean ranges and it adds up to 50,000 IPs. Not a list you want to manually add.

Am reminded because a VPS box for one of my clients seems to be attracting an inordinate amount of interest from those two countries, and given the client does no business there, I'm going to ask their OK to load IISIP and just turn off access from those countries.

Copying iTunes library from one to Mac to another Mac

Fiona has a new MacBook Pro, and I wanted to copy her iTunes library from her old iMac to the new MacBook Pro. She's got around 60gig of music and video in the library, and I was trying to figure out how to shift all that data easily. I found various ideas on line to do with shifting the library index file, importing, consolidating etc. And was a little phased by the idea of copying 60gig over the wireless network.

In the end found the perfect solution:

1. Hook the two machines together with a Firewire cable
2. Restart the iMac (source machine) while holding down the 'T' key. This starts the Mac in Firewire mode
3. The source machine appears as a drive on the destination Mac
4. Delete the iTunes library folder on the destination Mac
5. Drag the iTunes library folder from the source Mac

It took about an hour for the 60gig to move over, which isn't too bad.

Started up iTunes on the new Mac and the library was there and available with no fuss. Synced up her iPod to the MacBook Pro and she was off and running.