Diary

I have been working on a very simple web part for a long time, the actual code for the web part takes less than an hour to write and merely displays a colour coded letter based on a query from a SharePoint list taking the date as a parameter. It has taken a long time because of some strange behaviour with the SPQuery object, initially there was a problem with every row in the table being returned irrespective of the query, the odd thing was that if you ran the query in U2U CAML Query Builder it worked and the SPListItemCollection.count method would return 1 suggesting the query was working. ...

Passed the 60 hours of driving lessons milestone today, which probably equates to about 58 hours of actual driving. What with the first couple of lessons being driven to somewhere to practice, and the end of lessons going over Drivers Records from time to time. Turning round in the road was pretty much spot on, Kev wanted me to make a mistake so that he could ask me to do it again so we would be pointing the right way again. ...

Today was a very bizarre day, it seemed to me that the whole country ground to a halt (electronically too). I got a text message at 0630 this morning telling me to stay in bed as the school I work at is closed. After a slightly more gentle wake up than usual, I discovered that thelocal bus company had suspended services, twitter was going mad with snow reports from the UK, someone even came up with a Twitter & Google Maps mash up. ...

Today was not my best lesson so far, generally my driving was quite poor, I seem to have forgotten some fairly important things like using the hand break and putting the clutch down. I did change my driving position within the car as I was in quite a tense position which dosn’t give me the best view in the world, not sure if that affected it but it may have done. I am still having problems reversing round corners, despite spending some time today reading back my old notes I couldn’t really do it today either, it is a bit to analog for my digital brain. Kev had another way which might help, and was certainly a way of getting the job done. ...

Moving towards my 60th hour of driving, and I am still enjoying it. Made a couple of silly mistakes today, the first (not the first mistake just the first silly one) was not taking a right turn where I should of. It was down to my perception of how the road went, I hadn’t anticipated that the road itself went straight on, I thought it went off to the left. Kev asked me to take the next right, and I missed it and went straight on. ...

Today was a new skill, parking in a shopping center car park. Or at least an adaption of existing skills. Get yourself parallel to the line kerb equivalent, roughly a doors width from the bounding line of the parking space. Reverse until the near side bounding line of the parking space is about half way through rear window. Once at this position steer full lock to the left. Keep reversing, making corrections by straightening up then moving back to full lock. As you finally come round to parallel to the left and right bounding lines straighten up. Reverse until the front bounding line is level with the mirrors. That’s roughly it, I think. Hopefuly I will get to practice it again next week and draw you all a diagram. This week I was less hesitant than I had been in the past, I still made mistakes and got confused by the trafic but I was more decicivie. Felt conftable and confident in the car, if a little weary of being asked to do emergency stops again. ...

Today was a day for gear changes and roundabouts, some dual carriageways and national speed limit single carriageways in the pitch black freezing cold. Kev was trying to get me more confident and less slightly dangerous on roundabouts which is good as I find them shockingly confusing, particularly if I need to do a gear change coming up to them. Lifehack has an article on making decisions under preasure, which I think probably covers the broad techniques I should be using to make sure I am better at roundabouts than I am at the moment. ...

This is just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I have been wanting to post some statistics gathered through Google Analytics for some time now so here we go. The following data covers 1st January 2008 until the post time 31st December 2008, all data excludes administrator visits and search engine crawlers. Visit Statistics Visits: 3,066 Visitors: 2,708 Page Views: 4,935 Bounce Rate: 74.72% Top Visit Origins ...

It’s that Christmas time of year again, I am fortunate to be able to spend time with friends and family this Christmas. I hope my readers get to spend Christmas with those that you love too. Merry Christmas!

First lesson in two weeks, for that matter I don’t get another lesson for two weeks either. I feel a little stuck with the driving to be honest, each lesson seems similar to the previous lesson, it is possibly a mix of the law of diminishing returns and fustration at doing the same thing over and over again. Took a look at the Burgess Hill Test Center the website still says no information available, and I can’t seem to select any times or dates on the “book a test” page on direct.gov. Never mind, hopefuly will be able to book a test at some point in 2009! ...