Author : Admin

Esprit de Lune website launched

Posted by Paul at 9:44 pm

Website launched for Esprit de Lune, offering reflexology in Kent. The website was built using Wordpress and a customised professional theme. Nathalie is a VTCT-qualified Reflexologist, and a member of the Federation of Holistic Therapists (FHT).

Thanet Athletics Club website launched

Posted by Paul at 9:21 pm

East Kent’s newest athletics club will launch on April 20th, and their website is available from today (9th March). Thanet Athletics Club will offer coaching and competition in a range of athletics events for all abilities and ages from eight years upwards. They will train at The Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate, Kent. The catchment area will be the main Thanet towns of Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs, and the surrounding villages and rural areas.

Inline styles in ODS PRINTER output

Posted by Paul at 10:33 pm

Controlling formatting of ODS PRINTER (PDF/RTF) outputs has always seemed like a bit of a black art to me, but there are usually ways of getting around potential issues if you know where to look. With SAS V9.2, there are some new and probably unknown features, including the use of ‘inline styles’.

For a good introduction to this I recommend having a look at this SAS document “How to Add a Little Spice to Your PDF Output“.

As a quick example, you need to specify an escape character eg. “^” or “¬”.
ods escapechar="^" ;
Then, you can use that escape character “^” in a number of elements such as a title or PROC REPORT ‘LINE’ statement:
title1 "Colour ^{style [color=red] red} and ^{style [color=blue] blue}";
There are a couple of useful new functions NBSPACE and NEWLINE.
Example:
title1 "First line^{newline 2}and this line after 2 blank lines";

Other useful ODS PRINTER/ODS PDF documents:

• Creating RTF-Output Using ODS and PROC TEMPLATE (Marcel Hoevenaars and Machteld Baljet, Blue Gum Data Analysis, Blackheath, NSW)
• SAS(R) 9.2 Output Delivery System: User’s Guide, TEMPLATE Procedure: Creating a Style Template (Definition) (SAS Institute Inc)
• ODS for PRINT, REPORT and TABULATE (Lauren Haworth, Genentech, Inc., San Francisco)

Thanet Squash Club website updated

Posted by Paul at 10:18 pm

The website for Thanet Squash Club has been updated to use our Sports Club Design system.

The original website was designed by ourselves back in the days when most people had dial-up internet access, and was thus written with short download times and an information led design. It was a bespoke system which included a database driven members area.

Modern websites have more freedom graphically and of course there is a greater emphasis on social interaction. The new Thanet Squash Club website carries across the previous features, but now allows greater flexibility for administrators to add and edit pages, and to post news items which appear automatically on the home page. Documents and news for members only are contained in the Members Area which requires members to log in to view.

As a large Kent squash club with nearly 300 members, the new website should allow the committee to interact with it’s membership and keep them informed.

New website to be created for Biometric Society

Posted by Paul at 8:46 pm

A website is under development for the British and Irish Region of the Biometric Society. The new website will include a custom built content management system (CMS), a forum, and payment integration for new member sign ups. More details to follow soon.

Windows Boot CD

Posted by Paul at 9:58 pm

If your Windows XP or Windows Vista computer becomes totally ‘messed up’ then it is sometimes necessary to find an alternative way to log in to your computer to right the problem or in some cases to actually delete Windows and start from fresh.

Recently my laptop has been freezing and despite numerous updates and tests I was unable to trace the problem. As I always have all my data backed up in three places, I decided to create a fresh install of Windows Vista (this often cures problems and reduces the risk of having long running virus infestations). Unfortunately the new install still had the freezing/crash issue and it did this whilst in the middle of a Windows Update download which totally prevented Windows from starting at all. Windows would not even start in ’safe’ mode or in ‘last good configuration’ mode.

I tried to run a new Windows install but again this failed, probably because the Master Boot Record (MBR) was corrupted.

No problem I thought, just download a ‘boot disc’ from the internet using my desktop machine.

This proved to be a tedious and frustrating task, with solutions such as BCD and BFD not working for me out of the box, and proving a bit too technical even for myself.

So, to save other people the same frustrations I will jump straight to the solution (note: if you only have one computer then make sure you do this BEFORE your computer goes wrong!).

1. Download Hiren’s BootCD from here: http://www.hirensbootcd.net/ (This is not the official Hiren’s site but I couldn’t actually find a download link on the official site!).
2. Extract the files in the ZIP file to a suitable folder (doesn’t matter where).
3. Put a blank writeable CD into your CD burner.
4. Start up some ISO burning software. I downloaded this free program: http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm
5. Burn from your ’suitable folder’ to CD.
6. On your ‘messed up’ computer, switch on, go into the BIOS setup screen (F2 on my laptop).
7. Make sure that CD/DVD drive is enabled and first in the list of Bootable devices.
8. Re-boot, select Boot from CD.
9. You will then have a choice of ‘Mini XP’ or command prompt, both of which will allow you to view your devices/drives.
10. My solution was then to format the C: using the Disk Management utility, and then reinstall Windows ‘as normal’.

WARNING: If you are unsure about ‘playing around’ with computers then seek advice at an early stage – you could lose all your data….  Always make sure you backup your important data BEFORE something goes wrong, and always keep at least two copies. It is worth investing in online backup facilities as an extra precaution.