I’m off to Australia on a three week vacation from tomorrow so this is my last entry before I fly. There may be activity while I’m away from some of the other contributors, but I haven’t scheduled 15 entries (I thought about it) and I wont be writing whilst I’m down under. See you in December!
I managed to get Urchin 6 installed on my machine. The MySQL database needs to exist before you run the installation. Providing an account with enough privileges to create the database is not enough. I have now run into another problem with the Slave Scheduler service, which refuses to start. The Urchin team are aware of this problem as it has been reported by several beta testers but are currently unable to replicate the problem.
This one just came up at work. You started command prompt running under an administrator account using runas and you want to invoke Windows Explorer with these elevated privileges. I was sure I’d done this before using explorer.exe but this didn’t seem to be working. After a quick search I found that start "." works, and you can replace the "." with whatever path you want Windows Explorer to open with.
About 2 years ago I was asked to review the available analytics tools and propose one to purchase for use with a web based application. At the time I looked into the free options (like AWStats), the mid-range options (like Urchin), and the damn expensive options (like WebTrends). As cost was an issue but so was customisation I proposed Urchin, which combined impressive reports with what seemed like enough flexibility to be customised for our needs.
Something else Urchin had going for it was the (then) recent purchase by Google. I saw this as promising for future releases, and almost immediately Google introduced Google Analytics - a free version of Urchin where the statistics are gathered by javascript and hosted by Google.
My boss went ahead and purchased the base Urchin license and over the following few weeks I taught myself how to customise the reports to suit our needs. Ultimately we decided that we would produce our own log format (previously we were using Apache logs) and Urchin was also very well suited for these needs - this is just one of the reasons we needed Urchin Software over the Google Analytics approach. Learning how to configure Urchin wasn’t always easy, and the help text is fairly limited - Google seem to have adopted a model that’s growing in popularity where you can purchase support and also the expertise often needed for custom solutions.
Anyway all was going well, however while Google have been regularly improving their free online solution the software version (still called Urchin) was going stale. The improved flash reports in Google Analytics were showing up the dated SVG reports in Urchin, and several of the cool new reports were just not available.
Finally this looks like it’s about to change, with Google releasing a beta version of Urchin 6. They’ve simplified the cost structure (meaning it’s more expensive for anyone wanting the basics, but cheaper for anyone wanting all the extra modules such as load balancing, funnels, etc) but apart from that I’m yet to find out what’s changed. I have managed to get hold of the beta but it’s currently not installing - there seems to be an issue with MySQL that I can probably solve myself.
I will be sure to report my findings here once I manage to get it working!
Days like this make me wish I could draw cool cartoons because I really don’t want to post. I’m tired and I’ve just finished a project that I didn’t get paid for and it caused more stress than the stuff I do get paid for. Oh well, I’ll look back at it in time and smile. Or at least I’ll be smiling next week while I’m chillaxing down under!
This isn’t the first time (and almost certainly not the last) that a product has shown up online for an inaccurate price. Apparently a Tesco employee is responsible for the slip up, and several Xbox 360 consoles were ordered (one customer apparently ordered almost 40 of them!)
If the error goes undetected passed shipping then the company must agree to the sale at the price, however I suspect that this was noticed in time and those who ordered might be lucky enough to get (just one) Xbox. I’d say it depends on the number of people that placed an order at the incorrect price.
I remember this happening with TVs many years ago in the early days of the Internet, and in this case the company decided to make a loss. I don’t think many orders were placed and it was certainly good publicity! Tesco effectively did this (although intentionally) with the digital SLR camera I bought earlier this year, and sold it at a small loss for just 24 hours. The orders apparently took months to fill, but I managed to get a Jessops store to price match - I was in the store for around 2 hours waiting for a decision, and then Jessops quickly changed their policy!
Here’s the third (and possibly the last) in the series of posts about the TV shows I’m watching at the moment.
Bionic Woman - I started watching the new series of this because I was curious how Michelle Ryan could make the transition from EastEnders (a British soap opera) to an American prime time sci-fi drama. I have to say she’s doing well, and the story isn’t bad either.
Arrested Development - I’m waaay behind on this one, I last watched episode four of the first season. I’m watching this as it was recommended by many of my friends and so far it’s really quite funny.
Skins - This is a British series that is now approaching a second season. I would compare it to early Hollyoaks (a British soap opera that never seems to end!) It follows six teenagers, and each episode reveals more about the private life and troubles that one of the group faces. It’s very funny, and can be quite adult viewing at times. It also has some brilliant cameos from British comedy stars.
This entry is a continuation of yesterday’s post about the TV shows I’m currently hooked on. I normally post only technical stuff here but I’m a little out of my time zone, and have a fairly busy schedule so it’s easier to write about entertainment!
The Office - I doubt this one needs any explaination. The British version of the show was excellent, and the American version really came into its own during the second and third seasons. Unfortunately I’d say that the new season doesn’t match the earlier ones in the number of laughs, but the quality of the gags remains high. One thing I disliked about season 4 is that the first few episodes were double length, which really seemed to stretch the quality rather than double it.
Heroes - I’m yet to watch any of season 2 but I will be starting soon, and being in America at the moment I can hardly avoid TV spots and trailers. According to a work colleague the new season is as good as the first although I have heard a difference of opinions. The first season was almost without flaws in my mind, and the problems that I had with it are most likely to be resolved in the new shows.
Two and a Half Men - This is one of those bite sized 20-30 minute sitcoms that started out brilliant and has slowly declined in quality. Saying that however, there was an excellent episode a couple of weeks back that may even be one of the best ever. I think it was show number 100, but for some reason they really tried hard to make it good and they succeeded. For those who don’t know, this is about a layabout jingle writer named Charlie who dispite his efforts has his divorced and broke brother and distinctly dim nephew living in his Malibu home.
I watch a lot of TV! I’ll continue this post tomorrow and maybe this will become an entire week of TV posts…