To make it cool(harder) to get to, scan this QR-Code using your mobile phone QR Reader to visit the demo website:

This demo may well be short lived, so I can’t guarantee that it’ll be there in the future, but for now, give it a go.

It was a dry start and the YMCC team arrived promptly and without orchestration got to work on the preparation. Just before 10am it started to rain (only lightly I might add) but luckily we had just finished putting up the 2nd gazebo. Guests started arriving in unison with the rain but the team re-assured them we would continue with the day unless it became a down-pour. Everybody was happy with this decision. Luckily it soon stopped raining and those small showers we had later were not even noticed, as everybody (including the Mums and Dads) was having far too much fun.

So onto the day itself. Following an introduction to the club, brief history and general welcome Ian Finch, the club chairman handed over to me to kick the days proceedings off. The new Tamiya Mini’s were then brought out and lined up on the pit tables, transponders were installed and a race number placed on the windscreen – They looked awesome with their vibrantly coloured bodies. We started with a track walk for all the Junior Racers where I talked them through the basics of RC Racing and gave some hints and tips about the tracks more difficult off-camber corners. We finished up walking the best line, hitting the ‘apex’ on every corner. While this was going on the YMMC team made final tweaks and prepped the cars ready for their first outings. Meanwhile Race control was frantically busy with the computer being set-up to accommodate this unique event and a battery station created whereby all the stick packs would be charged. Everybody was now ready!

Then it was time for teams and practice runs. There were 3 teams in total which consisted of either 4 or 5 racers. Once in their teams and given an overview of the car and controller by the team managers and engineers (YMCC Team) each racer was then taken to the rostrum to have a practice run of 2 laps. This gave everybody a chance to try the car and get the feel of RC Racing before the all important heats and even more important finals. From the off a few drivers caught the eye of many and it was clear that racing was going to very competitive. Not only that, but the cars looked in great shape being very robust and quick/easy to work on.

So then it was time for the first of 2 rounds of 3 heats. The best of the two heats would be used to determine the grids for the finals. There was some great driving throughout the qualifiers and we saw over two thirds of the drivers improve in their second run. It was great to see the progress being made especially by those that had never even driven an RC car before.

Next it was time for another track walk, but this time we stopped at the start/finish line and looked back at the grid. We talked about how and when to start and what cars would be on what position. I was then bombarded with some of the toughest RC related questions I had ever been asked – one thing was clear, they were all competitive and all wanted to get back on the sticks!

Then after a short break so the team could clean and prep the cars for the finals we were ready to go again. Everybody drove brilliantly in the finals and the gathered crowds snapped away on cameras or filmed the action whilst encouraging the drivers on. Every driver finished every race and we got to see some great close racing. The smiles on everybody’s faces (including the YMCC team) as they came down the rostrum stairs were the evidence that a good time was had by all. After the last driver was down and all the drivers had received their stickers and raffle ticket we then showcased a 1/10th scale electric touring car driven by one of our most experienced drivers Ashley. Seeing jaws drop as the car literally flew around the track was great and everybody thoroughly enjoyed the demonstration.

Ian Finch then presented the first 3 drivers in each final with a great prize while ‘Blink’ captured the moments. Next up was the raffle and some awesome prizes were given out including a brand new RC car. Final words were then shared and we closed with the YMCC team receiving a round of applause from the parents and racers.

Oh and I almost forgot to say – Thanks to all the Mums & Dads and YMCC Members for helping out with the marshalling on the day – you all did a great job…!

YMCC wishes to thanks the sponsors for this great event: Apex Models, Gamespod, MuchMore UK.

Click here to take a look at all the photos from the day
Click here to see the results

We rocked up at registration to collect our name badges and took a wander around the venue to get an understanding of where the workshops were being held, the location of the coffee and the theatre. We grabbed ourselves a seat in preparation for Richard Farleigh to take the keynote. His talk was great, far more down to earth than I was expecting. Starting out with his back-story and his childhood, realising that he could hustle people playing chess at the age of 14! Including his list of failures and successes. I was struck by his explanation “you may tick all the boxes but this does not guarantee success.”

I had a great chat to Sharon Vickery who explained her experience of dealing with website agencies and how frustrated she felt when dealing with inept companies and the lack of communication that caused her so much grief.

Then we grabbed a coffee and had a chat to GlobusHR about their questionnaires and the technology behind their website. Then we went to the first workshop of the day on social media marketing followed by a great talk from Liz Jackson.

Another few workshops – How to save TAX in 100 different ways – Top tips for branding – Using your website to grow your business.

Then on to the speed networking event. We decided to attend at the last minute as we thought by this time we’d be a bit cream-crackered, so we were rather unprepared.. Rule number one. Have a butt load of business cards.! Rule number two. Talk about yourself constantly until the bell rings! It’s an odd environment, but there’s not many opportunities in the real world to present to 30 people in the space of an hour, so I’ll definitely go again but I’ll ensure that I’m better prepared next time.

At the end of the networking session we were asked to drop our business card into a hat and one person was drawn out for a prize of a bottle of wine.. Guess what! yup, I won the wine

Ben had a theory on why I won “It’s because your business card is so crap and lightweight that it floated to the top of the pile.” I think he’s probably right, I really need to get some business cards sorted.

All in all, a great day. Everyone there was welcoming, which was great for us as new faces in the crowd. Best of all, I bumped into a number of old colleagues. Because of this, I felt even more relaxed and will be happy to go to future events of this type.

Thanks to all at BeInspired 09.

Finishing 1st in the first qualifier after some frantic setup changes to help rectify my tail happy TC, which was as much of a shock to me as it was to the others on my heat. I met Stuart for the first time after this race as he pointed out that my car was ‘out of tweak’ so a little assistance to rectify this issue saw a good result in the second heat, although my batteries dumped I would have been on target to win that qualifier too. Stuart lent me a set of Lipo batteries to see how these compared to my second hand Nimh’s. Wow! Amazing, such a difference a decent set of cells make. I managed to qualify 1st again! This placed me in the B final in 4th place! Not too shabby for my first go!

During the 1st final I clipped a barrier and my steering arm popped off and lost me 30 seconds. I ended up finishing 3rd behind Giles and Elliott. A bit gutted as I was chasing Elliott a treat until my little ‘off’. Then the second final and starting in third place on the grid, I had a great start and followed Elliott and Giles for a good portion of the race, Elliott passed Giles, and a couple of laps later tipped a corner and lost his lead to me and Giles. I was chasing Giles down and eventually I managed to take a nice tight line onto turn 2 and passed with no contact. I then managed to gain a nice advantage. With about 3 laps to go my new Lipo’s decided to dump on me as I’d not had the time to fully charge them beforehand. I was totally on target for a 1st place in the B final on my first time racing a 10th scale touring car at Newbury!

I’d like to thank all the guys at Newbury for helping me to setup my car and a big thanks to Stuart who let me borrow a spare Lipo and set the ‘tweak’ early on in the meeting. Also to Tim and Matt for helping me with my setup.

Iain on the other hand had a foul night of ‘engineering central’, so the less said about that the better.

Upon receiving my copy of the Magento Beginners Guide I took a moment after dinner whilst my girlfriend watched some ‘Celebrity Increase My Profile’ program to absorb the first chapter.  I was presented with a nice introduction explaining the scope of the book and the conventions that are used throughout.  A nice and easy ‘in’ perfectly suited to reading on the couch.

Magento Beginners Guide - William Rice - Packt Publishing

I then began to flick through the ‘Installation’ chapter.  As I’ve installed Magento several times, the information in this section is familiar to me.  My eye is drawn to the titles ‘What Just Happened?’ this explains briefly the previous steps and if there’s something that I was not familiar with I’d flick back and take a closer look.

It’s nice to see there are a few instances of “I saw the following error message:”.  I’m glad the author has included the experience of miss-configuration and common errors.  It can be frustrating when a documented installation procedure does not go according to plan and there’s no help along the way.  This book is aimed at beginners, and it assists them from the get-go.

The book then takes you on to the planning phase of your site with explanations about the naming conventions used in Magento, although they are rather obvious it’s useful to know how Categories, Products and Attributes are related.  Take a look at this chapter extracted from the book: “Chapter 3: Categories and Attributes“.

Reading through this book it is apparent that the focus in mainly on the visitor, this is by far and away the best perspective to take.  If you were a shop owner you’d most certainly put yourself in the purchasers shoes and from the moment the shop door is opened it’s the experience that the customer has that is the most important.

Work in progress

The 'E' section in the index

Currently I’m in the process of launching our Surveillance, Display Converters and Gadgets website www.bytemart.co.uk.  The majority of the store is already configured but one job that’s on the to-do list is to change the default emails that are sent out from Magento, the order confirmation email etc.  To my dismay there is a rather sparse ‘E’ section in the index.  I was looking for ‘Email’ but here’s what you are presented with in the ‘E’ section ->

I was hoping for some information on how to modify the emails Magento sends out.  I strongly believe the emails sent to the customer from your store are very important, they must be branded with your logo and colours and the wording must be in the right context to help reflect your store.  Here’s a snippet from the default New Account template:-

If you have any questions about your account or any other matter, please feel free to contact us at dummyemail@magentocommerce.com or by phone at (555) 555-0123.

Thanks again!

This MUST be changed and it appears not to be as straight forward as one would like, so some explanation here would be really useful.  There is a section available in the Magento wiki on this topic.  I did find the following statement within the Customer Relationships section of the book “Modifying email templates is beyond the scope of this quick-start guide.” This is a shame as it does state in the Preface “This book provides guidance in the form of step-by-step approach to building a simple, effective online store.” It appears to fall short on this I’m afraid.

Conclusion

This book is great, I would advise anyone who wants to set up a Magento store with little technical knowledge/confidence to pick up a copy.  If you’re after a helping hand along the way whilst you setup your store then this is a good companion to have.

I would advise everyone to turn to http://www.magentocommerce.com/ and search the wiki and forum for further documentation and solved problems alongside this book.

It’s step-by-step approach is really helpful for the uninitiated and also a good ‘memory jogger’ to help a more competent/confident administrator not to forget key steps of a Magento configuration.

Thanks to Jude at Packt Publishing for inviting me to write this review.

Really looking forward to Brett Welch talk about marketing for start-ups and Mark Boulton on design and frontend goodness.  I’ve seen Drew McLellan and Elliot Jay Stocks before at Oxford Geek Nights and thought that both talks were great, especially Drew’s ability to use old school childrens programs as a metaphore for current web topics.

I’m not too sure who I’ll know at the event, we will meet up with Ben and Brett from FHOKE at some point and I expect to bump into others that I’ve spent time with at recent barcamps.

It’s been a little while since we decided to go to FOWD and we’ve been chatting about it on and off for a while. Now that it’s tomorrow we’re almost ready.  Rob has managed to arrange accommodation for us in Canary Wharf with a friend, so that’s awesome! (Thanks Sheena)

Looking forward to the FOWD experience.!

Variety is the spice of life, or so I’ve been told.  After building the fencing with my neighbour, the spring weather finally arriving, continuing to develop my ecommerce shop Bytemart, my decision to start a new hobby of 12th scale radio control car racing, attending and speaking at another conference (Barcamp Bournemouth) and the pending bathroom replacement I reckon there’s much more value in doing these things alongside my ‘specialty’ of Freelance Website Designer.

I spend most of my days building websites and consulting on different aspects of the internet for my clients and occasionally contracting as a Frontend Web Developer.  I am rather privileged to find myself in this situation of being able to please myself by adding value to my life on a daily basis.  As an example, I love to cook.  This stimulates my creativity and gives me pleasure not only in the consumption but on the thought that I’ve been able to please others too.

To this end I’ve decided to change my job title to ‘handyman’ I feel that it will allow me to pick and choose what I do each and every day, maybe it will be a talking point when I hand out my business cards to perspective cilents.  The idea being that I’m willing to take on a challenge of any type.  So, if you need a creative handyman then I’m available for hire!  Feel free to get in contact if you’d like a helping hand with your current challenge.

The following day I attempted to login to the Magento admin area only to be presented with a 404 error!  Geez, what a pain.

After doing a bit of forum bashing I found the solution I was after:-

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/37202/P30/#t121336

For those with the same problem as mine… (can’t login after upgrade, and don’t have ssh capabilities,) I have found a workaround. It worked for me, but I can’t guarantee it will work for you, so proceed at your own risk. I am not the most tech-saavy guy, I just figured it out by looking at the error.

1.)The first thing to do is download the entire magento 1.3 package. Unzip it, and go into Magento->app->code->core->Mage->Adminhtml->Model->Url.php Grab the Url.php file.

2.)Go to your server, and into your directory where you have magento installed. go to app->code->core->Mage->Adminhtml->Model and replace the Url.php file.

3. Clear the cache in your browser and try logging in again.

4. At this point, if you were able to get in, I suggest that you go to magento connect and properly upgrade. Worked for me. I hope it works for you.

- T. Foteh
http://www.tfotehprints.com
http://www.tfoteh.com

After following these steps I was able to login without a problem. -phew-

Then, to top it off the dropdown menus were not working in the admin area!  Checking Firebug I found this was due to the javascripts 404-ing.  Another dose of forum searching it was apparent that this was a common problem (I had experienced it before myself) the /js folder and contents had the wrong permissions following the upgrade.

I opened FireFTP logged into the site and changed the permissions on the /js folder and all it’s contents to 755.  This has sorted that problem, so I’m happy now.

All in all it looks like these problems I encountered after the upgrade are now sorted, let’s hope that’s the last of them and the next upgrade will go smoother.

Last year I attended BathCamp which was a superb event. I got a lot from it and hopefully gave a little to the other attendees too with our ‘double act’ talk on Stu’s sfImageTransformPlugin for Symfony.

As with most barcampers (the ones that don’t do public speaking), it’s a struggle to think of a topic for your own talk. At this point in time my main idea is to discuss with a group in an open forum style about freelancing, titled “How do YOU freelance?”.

Hopefully it will be popular enough as I’d like to have a few well established freelancers and a bunch of people thinking about taking the plunge and going freelance to ask questions and discuss answers.