I’m currently reviewing a few invoicing, expenses and account management tools for dealing with company accounts. I’ve started work as an IT freelancer so I need to be able to manage all my expenses and invoicing. There are plenty of tools out there but the majority are US based apps and have fairly limited support for the UK. You can change the currency on all of them but as yet i’ve only found that Xero supports everything including UK vat returns and general tax goodness.
It’s a tricky subject for a startup. I have an accountant so I don’t really want to duplicate work which he will do, so i’m not sure that xero ticks the right boxes. It will allow me to do everything BUT will it allow me to do too much? One of the main issues I have is that xero doesn’t allow importing of expense claims. I use an app called iXpenseIt for recording all of my expenses which could be 3-4 a day. Over a month this can be a lot of data input.
Maybe I should just use speadsheets and a dedicated invoicing solution such as Harvest. Only time will tell but i’ll keep you updated since I know this can be a confusing area. Especially knowing what your accountant needs and how to keep on top of it.
I’ve always been a fan of tower defence games of which there are many on the iPhone App Store. Star Defence was release last week and it’s flippin’ awesome. I’m totally addicted to it. You have a large variety of worlds and 5 weapon types to use. It does crash occasionally when you receive text messages but generally it’s great. Get it now.
I have recently spent quite a bit of time in the wordpress codebase trying to solve a problem with the visual editor. The problem is related to the tinymce javascript editor used in the new/edit post. The editor doesn’t send any content on submitting a draft or post. It affects all versions of firefox and safari and only seems to function correctly on Internet Explorer.
I’d rather not go poking around in the tinymce code so for now i’d recommend people use IE if they wish to use the visual editor in 2.8 however my first recommendation is to downgrade your wordpress version until they come up with a fix for the problem. Anything to not use IE!
Many of us love to go walking in the hills, whether that be a bimble around the countryside or a 3 day walk over the Cullin Ridge. Or maybe for you it’s discovering your new favourite climbing or fishing venue. Grid is an attractive and useful application which will display your current Ordnance Survey grid reference (OSGB36) and how long you have before the sun goes down or rises again.
Use grid to work out where you are on the map and how many daylight hours you have left. Now you’ll know how long you have to get to that amazing vantage point to watch the setting sun. Features:
Calculation of a standard Ordnance survey 8 figure Grid Reference based on your current location.
OS Grid reference accuracy will change with GPS lock accuracy to give you the most accurate grid reference result.
Sunset/Sunrise calculation with time remaining.
Accuracy meter displaying the current GPS accuracy in metres.
According to Macworld UK existing iPhone contract holders will be required to cancel their existing
iPhone contracts and purchase a brand new one when the iPhone 3G S is released.
O2 really aren’t going to make a lot of friends with this move. It seems apparent to me that O2 consider the iPhone 3G S a minor upgrade in terms of features which is a really dangerous position to be in. Either that or we can expect this trend to continue when a new iPhone with significant improvements is released in the future.
Having just spoken to o2 i have 3 options with regards to getting my hands on a iPhone 3G S. Considering i renewed my contract on the iPhone 3G release date. There is no free upgrade as everyone knows.
- Purchase the iPhone on Pay as You Go which is £440.40
- Buy out your existing contract which for me would cost £315 (7 months) and then the subsequent new phone price of £96.98. This would be a total of £411.98
- Or wait 4 months which then i would be entitled to o2’s 3 month early upgrade which would just cost the price of the new handset under their current contract deals. £96.98
As you can see o2 have us over a barrel with being the only provider of the iPhone in the UK. Seems to me that the best option would probably be Pay as You Go. Yeah it’ll cost £30 more but save the hassle of canceling.
If you have had the problem where your computer won’t unlock from the screensaver or log in from the login window you are not alone. I have experienced this many times.
If your computer is able to resolve the hostname of your server outside of the network but not able to connect to it’s authentication service then the loginwindow process will just hang. This will cause the screensaver login window or main login window to also hang. There could be a number of reasons this would happen. For example firewall issues connecting to your server or just that the server hostname resolves to another server outside of the network.
My particular problem was that godaddy’s wildcard DNS was resolving all addresses *.hostname.com to it’s advertising pages. So even though i had no entry for my server in global dns it would still resolve and attempt to connect. Removing the wildcard DNS in my godaddy settings fixed this instantly.
Why do people keep asking me why I go walking? They ask what the point of walking in a circle over inhospitable terrain when they can just drive there or look at pictures?
I had somewhat of an epiphany at 2120m in the Alps. It took me maybe 30 minutes to get from our lovely heated chalet at 1100m with all the mod cons. Stood on the top of Téte des saix at 2120m I’m at the highest point on land i’ve ever been on our planet. I should be feeling complete elation looking at the amazing vista which stood before me but i just didn’t. Surrounded by the alps, looking at peaks which barley drop below 3000m, why don’t I have the same feeling as crawling out of my tent in the Langdales? Why do the peaks of Scafell pike, Helvellyn and Skiddaw at less than 1000m hold so much power? People! Thats what it is people and the struggle. I look around me and the vista is obscured by people of all ages who have all expended very little effort to get here. Many of which probably don’t even notice where they are. “Ooh there’s a lovely restaurant where i can eat my steak!”
Don’t get me wrong, the thrill of snowboarding from this height is exhilarating (especially in a white out where you can’t see the 200ft drop to one side ) . But i just wish people could learn to appreciate our planet rather just what you can get from it. Sometimes you don’t just want unrestricted views of Mont Blanc, maybe you just want to sometimes be on top of Mont Blanc looking back.
) . But i just wish people could learn to appreciate our planet rather just what you can get from it. Sometimes you don’t just want unrestricted views of Mont Blanc, maybe you just want to sometimes be on top of Mont Blanc looking back.
