"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hiring A Home Inspector

Should You Trust Your Real-Estate Recommended Home Inspector

Are you buying a new home? If you are like most people, this is probably the largest investment you will ever make. Most likely, one of the purchase conditions will be that you have a home inspection performed, usually within a few days, and are satisfied with the results. An analysis of the property, conducted by a specially trained and completely objective home inspector, will often identify non-functioning systems, damaged building components, safety issues and poor-quality installations. But how do you go about finding a good, objective home inspector?

Finding A Good Home Inspector
Most people don’t have the foggiest idea about where to start looking and simply ask their real estate agent to recommend someone. Though this is certainly easiest method, it may not provide the best inspector for you. Many home buyers look in the phone book for an inspector. Or do a search on the Internet. Or ask their friends and family for the name of an inspector they have used in the past. Which approach is best?

Chances are you will not get to meet the person you hire before he or she shows up to the inspection. Before this, your first contact will be on the phone. Here is your chance to ask questions and see if he or she is a good fit for you. For most people, the first questions usually centers around price. How much do you charge for a home inspection? Let me say, if you want a thorough inspection done on the property expect to pay at least $250.00, and maybe up to $600.00 or more, depending on where you live. If you pay anything less than this, plan to be disappointed. You probably didn’t buy the least expensive house available, so why would you consider the cheapest inspection?

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Thursday, March 4, 2010

SpringPad

How do you capture all the stuff that you want to remember?

Just found this great new site. It's called SpringPad. In short, Springpad is a free personal organizer to save and use just about anything — recipes, products, restaurants, ideas, notes, articles, and more.

Some of the things you might want to use SpringPad for:

Organization
Put your to-do lists in springpad and get rid of paper notes. Keep notes on anything. Set alarms to text or email reminders to you.

Food
Collect recipes from any website. Create meal plans with a full list of ingredients. Make lists of restaurants you love or want to try.

Home
Keep track of weekly chores and events. Track receipts and budgets, home remodeling projects, and your pet's medical history.

Travel
Put your packing lists, hotel/rental car confirmation numbers, and Google Maps in one place. Keep track of places you want to visit.

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

AddThis

Your content. Everywhere.

AddThis is a free way to boost traffic back to your site by making it easier for visitors to share your content. I haven't added this to my website yet, but plan to do so shortly.

Help your users share your content everywhere. Generate traffic back to your site and increase your site's search engine ranking. It only takes seconds to get AddThis, and it's free! Here are just a few great AddThis features:

• Smartest sharing tool
• Largest collection of services
• Supports over 50 languages
• Faster performance
• Highly customizable
• Powerful analytics
• Private and secure
• Share Flash widgets

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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Home Inspection Report Template

Never buy home inspection software again!

Home inspectors need to create accurate reports quickly and easily. Reporting software is often difficult to learn and use properly, and you never know what you might have missed. For most, it would be a lot easier to work in a familiar program like Microsoft Word. And now you can. A complete Home Inspection Template (HIT) is available for Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. The basic template is 40+ pages long, and can be easily modified to suit your company's needs and business image. Cut your report writing time in half. Generate your home inspection reports immediately.

The Home Inspection Template (HIT) is priced at only $39.95. This one-time, affordable purchase allows you to generate as many reports as you need without any additional expense. After purchase, the template package can be downloaded immediately and modified inside Microsoft Word. Customize the template with your company information, print it out to use as a checklist, or make all your notations directly in Microsoft Word and then print out the final report. Print as many reports as you like, and never have to pay for any piece of software, support program or upgrade again!

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Friday, February 26, 2010

Orianthi Panagaris

Guitarist for Michael Jackson

If you thought that rock guitar was a thing of the past, think again. Orianthi Panagaris, or just Orianth as she is known, is one of the best guitarist playing today. Probably best known for her performance in Michael Jackson's tribute movie, "This Is It", Orianthi is a force to be reckoned with. And she has some big names behind her.

At 24 years old, Orianthi has already experienced what most aspiring musicians only dream of. She's opened for her hero (Steve Vai), backed an Idol (Carrie Underwood), traded solos with a legend (Carlos Santana) and shared the stage with the King of Pop (Michael Jackson). What's left to conquer? The world stage, for one, and this guitar wunderkind has her sights clearly set on the road ahead.

After a performance with Carrie Underwood on stage at the 2009 Grammy Awards the blogosphere was buzzing with news of this little-known guitar prodigy. It prompted Michael Jackson to call with an offer for her to be his guitarist for his dates at the O2 Arena in London. When offered the gig in Michael Jackson’s live band, Orianthi joined a prestigious line of guitar players including Eddie Van Halen, Santana, Slash, Steve Stevens, Jennifer Batten and Larry Carlton. Sadly the tour was not to be and music lost an icon. “Working with Michael was a life-changing experience,” Orianthi reflects, “One I will never forget.”

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Friday, February 19, 2010

NetUpdate 2.05

Quickly and Easily Distribute Your Application Updates

Now keep ALL your applications up-to-date, literally overnight. Software development is an evolutionary process. As soon as a new application is launched, developers start creating updates. Managing the update process can be overwhelming at the best of times. NetUpdate provides a flexible, easy solution to manage all your update requirements.

NetUpdate is a simple, yet comprehensive software update system ideally suited to support IT professionals, network administrators, software developers, kiosk vendors and technical service departments. Whether you need to keep the software on a fleet of computers up-to-date, or simply provide an update mechanism for software you are developing, NetUpdate is the only product you need.

NetUpdate uses a flexible, secure, and reliable client/server infrastructure to determine if an update is available, and downloads and installs all required files using trusted, industry-safe Internet or LAN protocols. Optionally, end users can be directed to a URL where more information about the update is available, and files can be downloaded from there.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

AJAX Style File Upload

Easily Upload Files Without Refressing The Page

Ever wanted to upload files using AJAX without reloading the page? There are a number of sites that describe how this can be achieved. For the most part, the effect is achieved using iframes and javascript. This tutorial will go through the process of creating a file upload AJAX form and a PHP script which will return a status of 'success' or 'error', as well as, a few other details about the upload. To simplify the whole process, I found that using jQuery and the jQuery Form Plugin is the easiest and best solution for getting this done quickly.

Try the DEMO for this tutorial.

This exurb from the jQuery website provides a good starting point and overview of what we want to achieve.

The jQuery Form Plugin allows you to easily and unobtrusively upgrade HTML forms to use AJAX. The main methods, ajaxForm and ajaxSubmit, gather information from the form element to determine how to manage the submit process. Both of these methods support numerous options which allows you to have full control over how the data is submitted. Submitting a form with AJAX doesn’t get any easier than this!

Basically, we are going to create a form that lets us gather some basic information and select a file for upload. If any of the fields are left blank, we will receive an error message. If the file is not an image file, we will also receive an error message. If everything goes right, the file is uploaded and the file name, ext are returned. While uploading, the screen will display a message box advising that a file is being uploaded and we should wait.

So, let's get right to it.

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Monday, February 15, 2010

Google Messing Up Website Links

For those of you who don't know, I also have a home inspection service called Seacliff Inspections. I got an interesting (and angry) phone call from a competing home inspector a couple of days ago. Apparently, Google has messed up our website links somehow. Or, at least that is what I have figured out. Seems that if a Google search is done for "windsor home inspector" a number of websites are displayed on a Google map, which is normal. However, three of the inspection companies listed have all their right contact information except for the website. It lists my website.

The home inspector that called me seems to think that I have done something to make Google list my website instead of his. At this point I should state that I have not, nor ever, created any links to my site with any competitor's name. The closest I can figure out what has happened is this. In order to assure visitors to my site that I offer the best home inspection service available, I created a page listing all my competitors in the area. The page lists their name, physical address, phone number and website address. Here's what I think is happening.

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Free Delphi Components

Over the years I have developed a number of components just to make life easier when programming. Some of you may find these components useful. Depending on the version of Delphi you are using, the components may or may not be useful at all. If still using Delphi 6 or 7 and Windows XP, I'm sure you would find some use for them. Anyway, they are presented here as freeware. Enjoy!

Absolutely free VCL components for Delphi 6, 7 and 2005. Can be easily ported to other versions of Delphi.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

PHP File Upload

Easy File Upload Funtion for PHP

Recently, I needed to create a script to upload and parse a file using ajax. As is well known, you cannot upload files using javascript or ajax. However, there are ways to make it appear to be done using ajax. Anyway, in the course of trying to find something I could use effectively, I came across a small script that manages the upload part. For the most part it did everything I wanted, but found there could be some improvements. The original script was written by Binny V A and found on this website: http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/upload_function/

Here I am just going to present this function. Soon I will present a full ajaxform script to upload files using this upload function.

Uploading a file is usually not just a one-line function. There are a number of elements that need to be checked and verified before a file can be successfully uploaded. I have made a number of improvements to the original function. Some deprecated code has been updated. Some functions that did not work have been updated. If the upload destination folder does not exist, it will now be created. You can now choose to overwrite an existing file with the same name or create a unique name for the file (appends a numerical to the file name).

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