I am building a course booking system in monorail and in the process of uploading the source to google code. This is basically a way for me to understand the MVC approach to building websites using the castle monorail project. I figured the code may be of use to others tackling similar tasks or who just want to hack around with existing code to see how it works. I am not by any means a monorail expert so some of the approaches I have taken may be wrong or ill advised but that is kind of the point learning by experience is my favourite approach. Let me know if you spot any. All help gratefully received.

This will be a system designed to help administrators organise training courses. The initial need is for it to be able to handle first aid courses run by a health clinic.

The system will be used by non-technical admin staff who are familiar with email and basic word processing on windows pc's.

The development of the project uses the .net framework 2.0 and an MVC pattern with the Monorail Castle framework. It makes use of the Active Record ORM to handle data access. SQL Server is used for the database. I have elected to use nVelocity for the view templates. I have also elected not to write tests and use tdd. I know I should it's just that my brain cannot absorb that many new things at once.

The system allows new courses to be setup, new course types to be configured. Courses can be managed with new attendees booked on to courses.

If the courses are for certification purposes if an attendee passes the course the certificate issued can be tracked so renewal notification can be sent out.

The system allows attendees to be moved from one course to another and for their booking to be cancelled.

The system will produce reports for invoicing, courses and reminders for expired certificates.

You can find the project here:

http://code.google.com/p/centro/

I was having difficulty getting to sleep last night and started wondering what happens to a persons blog when they die.

Currently this blog lives on my server at home so I wouldn't reckon on it lasting too long after my passing should I be struck down by a Bus or Psyclist in london.

Most folks who blog use a company that they pay to host or will host for free, I wonder what there policy is.

Then I got to thinking wouldn't it be nice if there was a website that offered to host blogs of the deceased.

On the face of it this would seem to be an altruistic service but I sure there is a VC out there trying to figure out the ad revenue business model.

I'm going to do some google based research and report my findings here, watch this space.....

Every now and then I have a half baked idea for a new kind of Gizmo, today I was staring at the mess of cables on my desk and thought up this.

A device that replaces the multitude of cables that inhabit the back of your desk with one single fat cable for neatness.
Could also develop a wirless version using wimax technology.
Including:
- 2 x A/C Power for monitors
- 2 x DVI / VGA for Dual screen
- 1 x USB (built in powered hub
-- Four ports for:
--- Keyboard
--- mouse
--- Other peripherals

So I am relatively new to using merge tools. I have been developing with them for about a year. Merge tools become a necessity if you are developing in a team, or working on branches in your source control system. You do have to be ultra careful when you are merging against another developers changes. The merge tool you use for this is key, a good tool will help you quickly assess the differences and let you combine them quickly and accurately.

Tools that cost $$$

At work we use Araxis Merge and it is a great tool, it is a very polished piece of software it makes merging files easy, it supports three way merges and has a fast folder comparison utility. It is relatively expensive at $79 but represents good value for money.

Jeff Attwood wrote an article on his blog about Beyond Compare, I am going to try this out as I need a tool for my dev work at home and this is only $30 according to Jeff it is every bit as good as Araxis and a lot cheaper.

Tools that are free

Scott Hansleman has written about free Diff Tools on his blog his pick of the bunch is WinMerge some of the others he mentions are KDiff3 and  DiffMerge .

I always try and avoid using these keywords when naming objects in SQL Server:

ADD	EXCEPT	PERCENT
ALL	EXEC	PLAN
ALTER	EXECUTE	PRECISION
AND	EXISTS	PRIMARY
ANY	EXIT	PRINT
AS	FETCH	PROC
ASC	FILE	PROCEDURE
AUTHORIZATION	FILLFACTOR	PUBLIC
BACKUP	FOR	RAISERROR
BEGIN	FOREIGN	READ
BETWEEN	FREETEXT	READTEXT
BREAK	FREETEXTTABLE	RECONFIGURE
BROWSE	FROM	REFERENCES
BULK	FULL	REPLICATION
BY	FUNCTION	RESTORE
CASCADE	GOTO	RESTRICT
CASE	GRANT	RETURN
CHECK	GROUP	REVOKE
CHECKPOINT	HAVING	RIGHT
CLOSE	HOLDLOCK	ROLLBACK
CLUSTERED	IDENTITY	ROWCOUNT
COALESCE	IDENTITY_INSERT	ROWGUIDCOL
COLLATE	IDENTITYCOL	RULE
COLUMN	IF	SAVE
COMMIT	IN	SCHEMA
COMPUTE	INDEX	SELECT
CONSTRAINT	INNER	SESSION_USER
CONTAINS	INSERT	SET
CONTAINSTABLE	INTERSECT	SETUSER
CONTINUE	INTO	SHUTDOWN
CONVERT	IS	SOME
CREATE	JOIN	STATISTICS
CROSS	KEY	SYSTEM_USER
CURRENT	KILL	TABLE
CURRENT_DATE	LEFT	TEXTSIZE
CURRENT_TIME	LIKE	THEN
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP	LINENO	TO
CURRENT_USER	LOAD	TOP
CURSOR	NATIONAL	TRAN
DATABASE	NOCHECK	TRANSACTION
DBCC	NONCLUSTERED	TRIGGER
DEALLOCATE	NOT	TRUNCATE
DECLARE	NULL	TSEQUAL
DEFAULT	NULLIF	UNION
DELETE	OF	UNIQUE
DENY	OFF	UPDATE
DESC	OFFSETS	UPDATETEXT
DISK	ON	USE
DISTINCT	OPEN	USER
DISTRIBUTED	OPENDATASOURCE	VALUES
DOUBLE	OPENQUERY	VARYING
DROP	OPENROWSET	VIEW
DUMMY	OPENXML	WAITFOR
DUMP	OPTION	WHEN
ELSE	OR	WHERE
END	ORDER	WHILE
ERRLVL	OUTER	WITH
ESCAPE	OVER	WRITETEXT

Model Name          : Vigor2820 series
Firmware Version   : 3.1.1
Build Date/Time     : Nov 8 2007 11:10:43
ADSL Firmware      : 211801_A Annex A

Price: £135 inc VAT

I have just bought one of these to use in a small office.

First impressions are it is good value for money in terms of the features if offers.
The web UI is uninspiring a little better than a Netgear or a DLink but nowhere near as good as a m0n0wall. It is responsive but not intuitive.
One bad point for anyone who has to administer several units the config file is backed up in binary format, a more sensible choice would have been XML to allow tweaks and roll-outs.
You can't see recent log entries in the web admin screens you have to install the syslog tool on a pc on your lan, and configure the router to send logs to it, not good if you are a remote admin.
PPTP I have failed to get this working so far, I wanted to use the windows built in PPTP client to connect to the router, so far a connection can be established but authentication fails, I haven't given up but it would be nice if this had worked straight out the box like m0n0wall. Draytek supply a Smart VPN client of their own but this too fails to authenticate.

I will update this review in about a month, if I can get PPTP working I will be pretty happy if not it may have to go back to the shop.

This has to be the funniest most original game reviewer on the web. He is also very knowledgable

The Escapist

This will r0x0r your b0x0r's!

http://lifehacker.com/357869/use-your-wii-as-a-media-center

The article explains in several easy steps how to turn your wii into a media center.

I tried it and could not believe how well it works!

Some things you will need:

• A Wii with wireless access to the internet
• The latest version for the Wii Opera Browser (You have to buy this $5/£3)
• A pc to install the Orb Software

So how does it work?
Well I don't know the detail but so far as I can tell the client software you install on your pc stream's media to the Orb server which streams it back to your browser.

I had to unblock some of the ports on my pc's windows firewall to get the streaming to work.

It's early days but so far i'm impressed with the Web UI nice big fonts for the TV and very intuitive I think I have seen the future.