I have been somewhere today and I have see the following quotes on two separate bill-boards, both from the Conservatives.

(Pic of Smug Looking Gordon Brown) ‘I let 80000 Criminals Out Early - Vote for Me !’

and

(Pic of Cameron) ‘I will cut Benefits for those that Refuse to Work’

Now ...

The hilarious thing is that in the town I drove through both of those phrases will have the opposite of the effect desired by the Conservative Spin Doctors and guarantee at least an 80% Labour majority



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Tags: UK Election 2010, Poster

If you ever needed an excuse to buy a Blu-Ray player or a PlayStation 3, here it is: Avatar on Blu-Ray is stunning, epic and awesome. I loved it and so did the wife. It is my film of the year by a long way. James Cameron rocks

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Some more pictures of my Les Paul Restoration Project.











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Tags: Les Paul, Guitar, REstoration Project

In 2002 I finished a two year software development project. As a reward to myself I bought a Les Paul type guitar and had the members of my project team sign the back of it. For the next five years this guitar stayed in my office and was played nearly every morning for a few minutes before I started work. Since I left that company in 2007 it has been disregarded and forgotten in my attic.

Since my accident in October 2009 however I have had a renewed interest in guitars and I had my daughter venture into the attic and retrieve this guitar as I had decided to strip it down and rebuild it as a project. I’m normally fairly useless at practical skills but I intend to take my time and make a good job.

I started by stripping all the electrics out and I decided to build this guitar back with only a neck pickup connected straight through to the jack socket, with no tone or volume controls to affect the sound. I chose a neck pickup only as I intend to use this guitar for smooth leads and also some slide playing. The pictures show the state of the guitar at the moment after the pickup and control cavities have been filled but not yet sanded. I’ll update this blog with more pictures as the project continues.







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Tags: Les Paul, Guitar, REstoration Project

The CSP (The Common Sense Party) Manifesto.

This document is a work in progress and is Copyright Steve Cholerton 2010


Defense
Maintain an effective nuclear deterrent program.
Encourage and take part in Multi-lateral disarmament.
Raise the pay for soldiers serving in combat.
Look after disabled soldiers and their families.

Immigration
Completely overhaul the immigration system.
Illegal immigrants sent back immediately.

Crime and Punishment
Prisons to be made much tougher as befits a punishment.
Buy an island off the coast of Scotland and make that into one giant prison.
Prisoners to be kept with other similar types of prisoners.
Rapists to be castrated.
Soap on a rope for the showers ...

Police
Give the police greater powers but make them accountable for their actions.
Police to focus on reducing violent crime, all other metrics are expendable.
Speed cameras to be placed only in proven accident hotspots.

Justice
Standardised, much harsher sentencing.
Life means Life.
A man should have a right to defend himself, his family and property without fear of prosecution.
Drink drivers causing death should be treated as any other manslaughter.

Education
Remove some of the measurements and metrics and allow teachers to teach.
Give the teachers the power to discipline pupils.

Health Service
UK residents to be treated ahead of immigrants.
Remove some management layers from the NHS infrastructure.
Increase nurses pay and benefits.
Regulate doctors hours.

Europe
Be part of Europe but put the interests of the UK first.
The UK is nobody’s bitch.

Home
Allow discipline in the home.
Allow parents to be parents without fear of reprisals from authorities.

***

OK, some of the above is tongue in cheek and I don’t actually believe that the problems in society can be solved quite so simply ... it does however make you think that maybe our politicians should go back to basics and re-evaluate their goals after finding out what the man in the street actually wants from his Government and society. I’m sure everybody reading this agrees with some of it at least

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Tags: CSP, Common Sense Party, Politics

If you work with SQLite at all, this is a very useful page that tells you what features of SQL (SQL92) that SQLite DOES NOT support.

http://sqlite.org/omitted.html

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The CSP (The Common Sense Party)

We have a logo - now let’s draft a Manifesto

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Tags: CSP, Common Sense Party, Politics

I have designed and written several Security and Access Control systems for various software products, for both in-house and commercial use. Each time I have done it differently and each one has been secure. For the Multi-User version of ContaxCRM I wanted to design a system that was not only secure bit also extremely simple.

The scenario I have looks like this: Each database user has available a list of actions that they can either be approved for, or not. See the screenshot below:

The question is where should I store this list of True / False fields ? For ContaxCRM what I have done is stored this data within a single VARCHAR field against the User record, in the Users table. I decided upon a format for the information as shown below:

A formal structure makes it easier for me to retrieve the data. The number following the ’s’ is the ID of the Security Question, the 0 or 1 represent False and True. You can see how this structure makes it easy for me to fill in the security list against each user with the correct True or False selection. The use of opening and closing tags just makes the list easy for me to Parse with existing ContaxCRM code, making development quicker and more reliable.

The final challenge is how to secure this data so that it cannot be seen and edited by anybody looking at the database with a query tool ... the answer of course is encryption. The above information when saved into the User record will look something like this:

Any questions or comments welcome. Cheers - Steve

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Tags: ContaXCRM , Security, Access Control

Today I released a brand new Cross Platform (Windows and Mac OSX) software product.  This product, cuteCipher, is the easiest way to Encrypt and Protect your documents and files.

Simply drag your files onto cuteCipher, enter a Shared Secret and click the Encrypt button.  Decryption is just as straightforward.

Tested on Children, Parents, Elder Relatives and Other Innocents !

cuteCipher will be officially released later today with a Press Release and an offer to existing customers to obtain cuteCipher at a discount.  

cuteCipher is based on and compatible with, the award winning Encryption and Security software R10Cipher.

Never before has encryption been this simple.  Simple By Design.

http://www.cutecipher.co.uk/

cuteCipher starts at £14 for a single user license with bulk purchase discounts dropping the price by up to 75%.

Disclaimer: No Parents, Children or OAP's were hurt during the testing of this software.



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Tags: Encryption, Cross Platform, CuteCipher

One of my customers, Tailored Marine Supplies in Malaga, Spain, are expanding their range into selected Yacht Brokers. They have designed and had manufactured a display stand to display their collection of styles and materials. It’s pretty nice, see the photo below:





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Tags: TMS, Tailored Marine Supplies