Free Bet Comparison Website

If, like me, you enjoy the occasional weekend bet on the football, you might be interested in this!

In the past, I've usually got a free bet offer with a bookmaker (in my case bet365) and stayed with them ever since.

It occured to me the other evening that we shop around and compare everything these days (credit cards, car insurance, electric, everything!) so why isn't there a place to find a comparison of free bet offers?

A quick search around google and I found www.onestopbetshop.co.uk !  It's really useful and can save you quite a bit of money.  Once you're done with the free bet, simply close the account or keep it for a rainy day.

Hope this helps some of you!

www.onestopbetshop.co.uk

Ian

Workaround for a broken 'Home' button on iPhone

My iPhone has been subject to some rather hefty treatment over the past 2 years and today I went about giving it a bit of a face-lift.  This included purchasing a new LCD display, back cover and volume switch from ebay for a total of around £25.  Not bad!

However, for the last 6 months (after dropping the phone in the sea) the 'Home' button has completely stopped working.  This has meant that each time I want to switch application I need to reboot the entire phone.  Nightmare!  If your phone is jail broken, have a search for mQuickDo in Cydia which will allow you to swipe across the favourite buttons to mimic the home button functionality.  This didn't work for me, my Cydia is broken.

So.. Here is the workaround which I am happy with.  Not ideal but MUCH better than a full reboot each time!

1. Ensure you have your phone set to require a pin each time you swipe to log in

2. Lock the phone using the top button

3. When prompted for you pin, make an emergency call and quickly press cancel.

4. Log in and you will be taken to the home screen.

A phone near enough destroyed - now pretty usable!

Automatically Refreshing an XPage

I've been working on a dashboard style application recently for which users will typically open an XPage and leave it sitting in the background until they flick it open for an update.

The problem with this is that the screen does not automatically refresh and it isn't always easy to our poor users to remember to hit F9 when they want to update.

Therefore, I have made use of the following 2 solutions.  One to reload and entire page and another to reload a particular panel / ID on the XPage via a partial refresh.  Both of these are on a timer setting.

Full Update

<

script type="text/javascript">

setTimeout(function() { window.location.reload(); }, 180000);

</script>
Partial Refresh

<

xp:scriptBlock id="scriptBlock2">

<xp:this.value>

<![CDATA[

setInterval(function() {

XSP.partialRefreshPost("#{id:<ID of panel / ID>}", {

onStart: null,

onComplete: null,

onError: null

})

}, 180000)

]]>

</xp:this.value></xp:scriptBlock>

The Most Incredible Chilli Con Carne

This is really amazing and freezes perfectly for lunches during the week.  I guarantee you will love it!

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

3 garlic cloves, crushed

500g lean beef mince

250ml water

2 x 400g chopped tomatoes

6 tbsp tomato puree

1 x scotch bonnet chilli

1 x mild red chilli

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 beef stock cube

sea salt

freshly ground pepper

1 x 400g kidney beans

1 small bunch basil, stalks finely chopped

1 small bunch coriander

1 green pepper finely sliced

1 tsp chilli power

1 tsp paprika

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion and garlic with a little salt.  Cook slowly for 10 minutes or until soft.

2. Add all of the dried spices, chilli, tomato puree, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar and stock cube and cook for a few minutes.

3. Add the pepper and the finely chopped stalks from the basil and cook for a couple of minutes

4. Add the water, vinegar, tomatoes and cook for 45 minutes

5. Drain the kidney beans and add along with the coriander and basil leaves

6. Check the seasoning and get it tasting perfect adding any of salt, pepper, vinegar to get it perfect.

7. Serve with a jacket potato and sour cream.

Amazing.

Getting the best out of Lotus Notes users

Over the last 3 days, I've been visiting a few offices with a primary focus of helping users install multiple language packs for spellchecking.  It was this individual help which lead me to learning a very important lesson.

My day-to-day, high level role is to develop and maintain applications to improve the business.  Most of my time is spent these days developing XPages applications.  This is great and welcomed by the customers but during all this time some of the most powerful, fundamental features of Lotus Notes have been overlooked.  I'm not talking from a design point-of-view but more so the way users use Lotus Notes and especially what they are missing.

I've held several training sessions, sometimes with only groups of 3 but nothing can compare with taking 5 / 10 minutes with a user one on one.  Over the last couple of days, I've listened to their problems and have been able to solve and introduce different ways of working which has proved more rewarding for the user than any of the greatest XPage features.  As a developer, I have been guilty of assuming users are familiar with all of the basic features.  I've realised, they are not!

Understanding XPages | CSS

If, like myself, you have arrived at XPages after being a sole client developer, the whole world of Javascript and CSS may be a bit of a challenge.  Thankfully, pre-written scripts slot in nicely and with a little digging and trial and error you can normally work out how to change a couple of colours.

The other week, I wanted to create an XPage application from scratch.  No OneUI, no frameworks, just me and a blank canvas. I found myself creating panels and tables in order to get the design to look almost exactly the same as it does in designer.  This worked to an extend but got more and more tricky as the design developed.

Time to learn some CSS!

I've read a couple of posts, started to read one or two books but nothing else on the web captured my attention as well as the following tutorial.  I strongly recommend it for beginners

CSS Tutorial for Complete Beginners
Good luck!

Starting Out...

I've always found blogs in and around the Lotus Community very useful in my day-to-day development and felt that it was about time I gave a little back.

One thing I've found frustrating about some blogs is that a certain level of pre-understanding is required or the author has not taken the time to fully explain what he/she is sharing. I'm a firm believer than a picture paints a thousand words so I'll be working my screenshot grabber to the limits..

I hope my posts will be useful!