Monitoring Javascript failure with users.

I run a very big system of javascript powering the hotelmap.  As a result it’s hard to see all the problems which can happen to users, especially as far as JavaScript is concerned.  You have so many things to consider.  Browser choice, operating system, connection speed, cookie preferences, local firewall software, filtering on the company firewall etc etc.  In effect there are 101 different things which can affect a users expierience without you realising or every knowing.  So today i added in the “try/catch/response” sequence for the program.

In effect you can try/catch around any routine or big code block and catch any errors coming off.  In the catch you simply bung the error back (via AJAX) to the server and log it to the DB to browse over!  Now, one of the better sides to this is to run this method on specific areas but also put a general try/catch around everthing or even the original parsing routine. 

 

try {
  doSomethingHere();
} catch (e) {
MyAjaxSystem.Post( “errorscript.php”, “type=SomethingHereError&message=”+e.getMessage+”&etc=foobar”);
}

I’ve sorted A LOT of issues today.

DELL’s Mini 9 Pricing

DELL’s little mini 9 is an attractive offer at £199.99 but include the VAT and postage, oh and the VAT on the postage you end up paying £251.83, almost one quarter more than they horrible carrot dangling price on the laptops page.  Also “Vostro” is a sucky name to replace the “mini 9″.

Purchasing a NAS Drive or setting up Linux with JBOD?

Someone suggested they were interested in a NAS drive and pointed to the “Drobo” product range.  Interesting bit of kit and no doubt fast, easy to use and good looking but £400+ for a bare network attached system with 4 drive bays – do me a favour.  That’s just silly when you can use an old PC knocking around, setup a JBOD disk array and give yourself a file server for £0.00 if you have an old PC lying around.  Even if you don’t have a spare PC then you can pick and old one for probably less than £50. 

You don’t need any graphics so to speak, little CPU and memory power and the disks don’t even have to be top of the range.  You could even mix newer SATA with the old PATA’s.  Frankly it seems like a no brainer, you’ve gone from an expensive NAS drive to a fully functional file server with possibilities of web and mail servers, cron jobs and pretty much anything else you can think of.  I’ve even had one which had a WinTV card connected and then streamed out recorded TV via an FLV convertor.

My preferred distribution is probably Debian and in this case maybe even the excellent Ubuntu Desktop edition.  Hey, a file server can be command line only but it’s always good to have the GUI if you want it and you can run the server in command line only mode if you want to.

After a bit of BIOS tinkering to setup up the JBOD (see links) it’s a question of setting up the Linux install which is easy these days.  Once you’re done you need to make sure you’ve got Samba running with a valid share setup and you’ve got a file server done.

One of the great things I like to do is setup a cronjob which runs rsync and maintains and offsite copy of important files.  It’s perfect and completely automated.

The thing about this kind of stuff is that buying specific hardware is always great but you eventually want to do something slightly different and having a versatile system which can accommodate it is often a better course of action – unless money is no object.

JBOD  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD#Concatenation_.28JBOD_or_SPAN.29

More snow from LondonTown

More pics of snow around London today been fun!

Innovation TAX credits

Something to consider for a lot of IT companies around.  If you’re doing work(s) which contribute to technology or science innovation then the Government has a great tax credits scheme going on.  It’s definately worth checking out to see if you could qualify.  Some great information here.  Now the submission requirements are pretty broad and it’s always worth a punt.  The returns on paid tax could make the process very worth while.

It’s snowing in Londontown

The little kid in me comes out when it snows :)  Below is a picture of my street somewhere around Kensington, London.

Why is TV advertising by net companies so bad!

I’ve got little idea about America but UK TV advertising by internet companies is terrible.  I have trouble thinking of any recent adverts which are decent with most being so bad that they are almost a joke.

Who remembers the TV adverts for elephant.co.uk, travelsupermarket, confused.com and the latest tragedy of comparethemarket.com or should I say **comparethemeerkat.com.  We all know them and we all, I think, hate them to the core.  Bright colours, terrible graphics, constant re-iterations of the domain name and probably the WORST concepts of all adverts.

If you take some time to browse around confused.com it’s actually a reasonably good site with a decent UI and good process.  I’m really “confused” as to why they devalue their brand with the kind of adverts they produce.  I only looked at the site today because I wanted to write this and it’s pretty good.  Same applies (with exception of elephant which resembles something from 1993) for the rest and it begs the question “Why can’t internet companies do TV advertising?”

My initial thoughts are that they do it themselves and don’t bring in professional companies to help them.  I can’t understand how someone like Barclays can produce one of the best adverts of the year (the guy in the swim shoots around the city) versus the comparethemarket.com advert.  The cost of placing these adverts in prime time slots in huge and you would of thought that the expense in creating the advert would be minimal in comparison and if not, totally worth the money if you’re going to put it out on prime time TV.

As a side point I’d also like to mention Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” advert.  I understand it but I’ve also read about it from various blogs and such.  I’ve sat with two different people through this advert however and the problem is that they simply don’t understand it.  Microsoft’s problem here was that they said “I’m a PC” in direct competition with Apple’s “I’m a Mac” advert which to Joe Bloggs does not mean the same thing.  They both said that a “Mac” was an Apple computer with the OSX operating system but a PC was just a general computer and they didn’t read in that actually Microsoft was saying “I use Windows” – which is what the advertising campaign should of said.

** CompareTheMeerKat.com actually exists and is a fully functional site for comparing Meer Kats.  Obviously a joke but totally crazy.  How much money did this site cost to create and surely it’s better spent on the actual advert itself.