Tag Archives: rants

Oct 21

Crystal Reports vs PHP

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“Crystal Reports – oh dear God I’d forgotten about that – the last time I used it was in 1998 when I worked with Deverill in Poole. Horrible piece of software.”

And now I’m getting it to talk to PHP via the Crystal Reports web service. *shudder*

Sep 23

Facebook’s Redesign Killing Applications?

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The Tim just pointed me at an article entitled Is The Redesign Killing Facebook Apps?

While every man and his dog have been predicting “the end of Facebook” as a result of the whole Facebook Apps thing, this is the first time I’ve seen some good hard figures. Looking at the Fotopic facebook app I wrote and the stats, this would seem to ring true.

(Me, I like the redesign. It would be nice if the damn thing stopped crashing or just chucking out zero-length pages as much though.)

Sep 28

Suggestions To Recruitment Agencies

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Some handy hints if you’re a recruitment agent…

  1. When recruiting, do not engage in lying about the role. If I have to interview in person for a role 200 miles away, I want to be sure I’ll get it. If I get there and discover that instead of the PHP role I was promised, it’s doing ASP, I will be very annoyed. I will be even more annoyed if you then try and talk me into the role knowing that I’ve done sod all ASP, and tell me the rate they’re prepared to pay is a tenner an hour less than I have been getting 2 miles down the road from where I live.
  2. Again: where, I mean where for the love of God does it say on my CV that I’m an ASP.Net programmer? Where? WHERE? It doesn’t does it! No! It doesn’t! So stop forwarding me roles where it’s mandatory!
  3. When I say I’m not interested in a permanent role, stop emailing me them. I am especially not interested in your £14k permanent job in the Outer Hebrides cutting up HTML for some webmonkey design firm who think they’re ace because they got an assignment from the newspaper shop down the road. The only thing which would persuade me into a permanent job would be a vast pantechnicon of money and all the peace-of-mind I could eat.
  4. When setting up a contract, don’t expect me to be on-site before you’ve sent me the paperwork – period. Once bitten twice shy.
  5. Likewise when you do send me the paperwork, tell me what I’m meant to do with it – do I email it back? Or fax it? Or post it?
  6. If you’re going to implement an e-Timesheeting thing on the Web or use someone else’s, make sure it can deal with Saturday and Sunday work. You might also want to note that some of us work out of hours or late at client request, so limiting your times to 8am-6pm is a bit stupid. Contractors also occasionally work more than two shifts a day – so having a ‘morning’ and an ‘afternoon’ session in your application is rather pointless.
  7. Fax machines are becoming less and less common. Requiring timesheets faxed weekly is becoming a pain in the arse, especially since you don’t get confirmation anyone’s doing anything with them. Having an e-timesheet system on t’Internet is also pointless if you then require the timesheets to be printed out and faxed (duh).
  8. Answer the fucking phone. At least one agency I have had the misfortune to work with can’t be reached at all on Friday afternoon – and they’re a PLC which should really have an open office during working hours. The same idiots felt it good to get me out of bed on Sunday morning, so at least sodding advertise your hours if they’re irregular.
  9. When both myself and the client are asking you for a contract extension, don’t take a fortnight and endless nagging to do it – we’re trying to give you money for goodness sake!
  10. Payment weekly is good. Payment monthly is fine as long as you don’t take 45 bloody days to remit. Just decide how regularly you want to pay and be done with it – especially don’t lie about it and then try and change it sneakily on the schedule.

I could name and shame the agencies involved but frankly I can’t be arsed – in most cases the end clients have been absolutely lovely. One of these days I’ll write a guide to contracting/freelancing (I’ve been doing it for many, many years) but it’s a matter of getting time to do it.

Postscript: There are also some lovely agencies out there (Huxley were one of them I was more than pleased to work with because they got it right on time every time), so YMMV.

Anyone got any more horror stories?

Sep 27

Public Transport To Work (Or, Why My Carbon Footprint Won’t Reduce)

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I’ve been working in Sheffield this week at a company who are just off West Street (near the University). Driving through the rush-hour central Sheffield traffic on a morning is a pain in the bum, and last night I spent an hour coming through Hillsborough ‘cos Sheffield Wednesday were playing at home and the traffic was gridlock. Thus, this morning I thought I’d try it via public transport instead.

Despite the shit Javascript and attempted web2.0 feel, yorkshiretravel.net furnished me with a route which involved leaving the house at about 8:15am – about 45 minutes before I normally leave for a 10am start at $contract. That’s not too bad, since I can work on public transport anyway and I worked out it’d be a bit cheaper.

So, stage 1: getting the bus into Wakefield. The bus is meant to arrive at 8:14am, so I was out there at 8:10am waiting patiently. This is meant to arrive in Wakefield at about 8:20am giving me ample time to go down to the train station and get the 8:33am train. Not so! The bus eventually loped round the corner at about 8:35am, whereupon it got stuck in traffic – honestly, it would have been quicker to walk. I got to Westgate at around 8:50am, just in time to get the 9:03am slow service to Sheffield (I’d have got a cuppa, but there was only one ticket office open, a woman who was faffing with her handbag in front of me, and a bugger of a queue at the buffet where the old dear behind the counter didn’t seem in touch with reality).

Stage 2: the train to Sheffield. Because I’d missed the MML service (which takes about 20 minutes) I’d had to get on the Northern service: this goes at the speed of a stoned slug and stops everywhere. Got into Sheffield on-time.

Stage 3: because I was running late I got the tram, which was OK.

Final score: left home at 8:10am, got to work at 10:25am. 2h15m, and a loss of 30 minutes of contract fees.

So onto costs. The National Rail website told me a price of £6 return for my ticket – at least that’s how I read it. The train ticket was £8.80, the bus to Wakefield (each way) was £1.10. Tram each way is £1.10. Sum total of using public transport is £13.20 – plus the inconvenience of late buses and having to leave earlier. If I take the car it will cost me £4 for the day in parking, plus let’s say £2 petrol (and let’s allow £2 for wear-and-tear on the car too) – I can go when I want, I can come back when I want, and it’s quicker. And being paid by the hour, I’ll probably end up getting an extra half an hour in because I’ll be there earlier.

I think I’ll take the car next week.

Jul 13

Hello, Customer Care: Oracle Bar in Leeds

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Just got back from lunch after a totally and utterly failed trip to Oracle Bar in Leeds, and I felt that I should document our experience because it was utter bollocks. They actually take quite a bit of money off us in this company – we had the MD’s birthday lunch there last week, and I’ve visited there with other staff as well.

So, we arrived and sat at a table. And waited. And waited. And after waiting for a waitress for a while, one of us goes to the bar and gets beers ‘cos it’s quicker – and find out the reason we’ve not been served is that we’re not “in a food area”. Ok – the food area’s not delineated and there’s no indication but never mind, we move. And wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually we manage to flag a waitress.

“We’ve got 15 minutes – can you feed us two burgers and chips?”
“Sure.” she answers. “Let me just check with the kitchen.”
That’s fair, so off she potters.

Then we get pounced on by another waitress carrying a clipboard – looks like the manager or something asking if we’d been served – yes we have thankyou, at which point she just… ‘hovers’. Then the original woman comes back and says “No, we can’t – waiting time of 20 minutes on burgers.”

So (only having a short time for lunch) we think “never mind” and start finishing our beers so we can grab sandwiches elsewhere (from Yum Yum in fact, highly recommended), and not two minutes later Clipboard-Waitress (who knows we’re about to leave anyway) comes back to say “oh you can’t sit here, you’re not having food.” Mention no fact that there’s another 9 empty tables around us.

There’s an epilogue: while leaving, we got chased by Clipboard-Waitress who attempted to return us somebody else’s credit card. Not sure we’ll be going back there. Anyone got any other suggestions for lunchtime beer-n-burgers?