Edward's Blog

Serge has posted the first photo of the vbCity Postcard project.  If you can get past being mesmerised by the third one down on the left you'll possibly find that some of the others are quite nice.  One of the things that struck me was how many were taken at night, this is presumably because some places don't look good during the day ... hehehe.

vbCity member rock has had to resort to quantity in order to compete with the beauty that is Shropshire :-P (sorry Arnaldo, couldn't resist).

You can find out about the project on the forums.

I have been experimenting with Hotdog. Now for anyone thinking this might be a new designer drug, my apologies, you'll just have to check out Hotdog's blog.

We've been working on an experiment to reduce the amount of screen real estate our blogs take up - well to be honest, Hotdog's blog takes up ;-)

We've come up with the Eddie and Hotdog BlogBlock. The buttons can be used to hide/reveal large quantities of code.

<DIV style="border: navy 1px solid;">
  <button style="font-size:8pt;width:100px;" onclick="SEE BELOW: BUTTON 1">
    Show Code
  </button>
  <button style="font-size:8pt;width:100px;" onclick="SEE BELOW: Button 2">
    Full View
  </button> 
  <DIV style="display: none; overflow: auto;">
    *** TEXT ***
  </DIV>
</DIV>
<!--
onclick Scripts for the buttons
Button 1 Script:
onclick = 
  "var vis,sty;
  vis='';
  sty=this.nextSibling.nextSibling;
  sty=sty.nextSibling;
  sty=sty.style;
  vis=sty.display;
  vis=(vis=='')?'none':(vis=='none')?'':vis;
  sty.display=vis;
  vis=(vis=='')?'Hide Code':'Show Code';
  this.innerText=vis;"
Button 2 Script:
onclick = 
  "var vis,sty;
  vis='';
  sty=this.nextSibling.nextSibling;
  sty=sty.style;
  vis=sty.height;vis=(vis=='')?'8em':(vis=='8em')?'':vis;
  sty.height=vis;
  vis=(vis=='')?'Scroll View':'Full View';
  this.innerText=vis;"
!-->

  

Now we'd be the first to admit that we are not javascript guru's. And if any sad anorak wants to correct or comment on how appauling our scripting is, then please feel free to do so at leave-me-alone-you-irritating-yak.com or contact Hotdog.

We may also have broken some cardinal rules about blogging ... "Thou shalt not script in thy blog" and if we have we are humbly sorry and shall pop down to the "Poopsville^* Correctional Facility for Naughty Bloggers" for a quick term of imprisonment.

Edit: 19 September

I seem to have big-upped my role in this joint venture. While I've been charrier dans les bégonias with a few divs and buttons, Robert has created a great tool for creating BlogBlocks that allows you to paste code from VS.NET and create great looking HTML for your Blog. It now features options to choose the style and settings for the block and the options for the user including hidden, scrollable and copy code.  See Hotdog's RTF to HTML converter (visual studio -> internet)

EHBlock ... its in the Blog

* Poopsville is the registered trade mark of Sir Gerald of Mead, used without permission but I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

In this week's devCity Newsletter, Serge thought it would be a great idea for members of vbCity and devCity to send postcards to vbCity from where they live.  I'm fortunate to live in Shropshire and this weekend I visited the Ludlow Food and Drink Festival.  It is a great experience and is considered one of the best food festivals in Britain.  Ludlow is a small market town (population 10k) in South Shropshire that is famous for its food and drink.  The food festival promotes local produce from the Welsh Marches.

As vbCity's unofficial representative, you'll be pleased to know that I did a fine job of sampling as much as possible.  Particular highlights were:

• Roast Boar
• Welsh Oggie (a pasty made from Welsh beef, onion, leek, potato and gravy)
• Bacchus from Frome Valley Vineyard (a fruity white wine with a strong aroma of elderflower)
• Wood's Shropshire Lad (a fine local beer)

Postcard on its way.

I've recently added an update of qPrinter2 to our website.  It is nearly 2 years since I released version 2 and although I've been working on the project since, this is the first update I have put up for general distribution.

There are some new features in the project including improved Table support, repeated Table header rows on page breaks and an external module for creating previews from Flexgrids.  The project can be downloaded from the qPrinter main page.

The Premier League started this weekend bringing the English soccer season into full swing.  For those that don't know, the Football Association; presumably under pressure from the sport's governing body, Coca Cola, have decided to rename the remaining leagues.  Last year's League Divisions 1, 2 and 3, formerly known as Divisions 2, 3 and 4, have cleverly been renamed: The Championship, League One and League Two.

Anyway confusing name changes aside, the start of the new season requires me to dust off that old favourite project, the Football Predictor.  Now it doesn't really start to come into its own for about 10 weeks when it has some form to work with, so I have plans to enhance it in the meantime.

This year I aim to add a module that predicts the score of a fixture.  Some of the statistics for each team's score patterns can be quite remarkable - these are a snapshot after about 30 matches last season:

• Arsenal to win 2 - 1 at home (40 % of home matches)
• Leicester to draw 1 - 1 at home (31.25 % of home matches)
• Manchester United to win 2 - 1 away (26.67 % of away matches)

The prediction process is two fold.  Firstly making predictions (obviously) but secondly analysing how the information is interpreted to see if it can improve the quality of the predictions.  Last year I added a system where the project also rated the 'chance of success' of the prediction.  This worked okay, but I had to stop the project from trying to have a 100% success rate.  At one point I did end up where it would have only made 2 or 3 predictions in the season and these were all Arsenal to win

If you want to create an ASP game you should check out Project Rockstar.  The game gives you the opportunity to be a band Manager with up to 10 bands and the chance to create your own Record Label.  You can hire/fire musicians, instruct them to write songs, gig, practice and promote in your quest to make as much money as possible.

Created by kerb and coded by two guys (Chris and Robsa), the game has evolved since it was first released by Vizzavi (who later went bust) in 2002.  Relaunched by kerb, the game has thousands of active managers, extensive forums and an in-game email system.  The game was Reset at the beginning of August so that everyone starts from scratch, allowing new players the chance to do as well as more experienced player.  There are some very neat touches including hidden forums that require you to purchase a licence from the trading area in order to participate - and it's all ASP.