Feel the Zuzz!

Exponetic’s first Ruby on Rails development project has gone live! Called Zuzzid it lets users post rants and raves about insurance products and experiences. Okay, it may not sound fascinating, but there’s no other outlet and it’s good to know who might actually pay out on a claim.

Personally, I’ve ranted about how poor breakdown cover is if you own a motorbike. Whether anyone will pay attention is another matter…

Exponetic: Ruby on Rails developers in London

Zuzzid: insurance community site

SQL Server backup and ‘operating system error 5′

Whilst trying to backup a SQL Server 2005 database on Windows 2003 I was given an error which said, amongst other things operating system error 5. That didn’t help a great deal, but the resolution was relatively simple: give the SQL user on the server access permissions to the folder I was trying to back up to. On my server the user was along the lines of SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$…..

More information can be found on Microsoft’s knowledge base.

Six Degrees of Separation Facebook application

As a bit of R&D, and to lead in to some client projects, I’ve had some Facebook applications on the go. I thought it time to hurry one through so that there’s something live rather than just vague promises of “almost finished”.

So, my first (simple) app is out there now. It’s an experiment in “six degrees of separation” as everyone who adds it gets an indicator of how many connections they are away from me, but also an average for everyone with the application installed

As it’s early days the connections are very low i.e. it’s only going to be people close to me, but as time goes on hopefully the figure will grow.

The “Six Degrees of Separation” app can be installed here

Exponetic’s Facebook application development services

SEH trip to Paris

The SEH Architects summer party went to Paris this year, and I went along with them. Some pictures below:

Michael is proud of his work on the champagne:

Michael's champagne bottles

Lots of people looked lost even before they’d reached Paris:

Mapreading on the Eurostar

Notre Dame cathedral should be a stable of any Parisian visit set of pictures:

The Eiffel Tower also looked the same as ever so Ann didn’t even need to open her eyes:

French butterflies don’t look a lot different to English ones:

This, and the next few shots, are some museum or other by someone famous. We only looked at the outside.



Although some of the shots do look a lot like the set of Buck Rogers:



It had a wall onto the road that was covered in grass and moss:

French traffic is always great. I particularly like the combination of using national monuments as roundabouts and no road markings:

A rare shot:

Bethnal Green, oh how we’ll miss your crime

It seems that someone’s stolen the entrance mat to our office over the weekend. It’s about 5 feet by 8 feet, was hard-wearing, fireproof (we know as the local kids gave it a good go) and was a kind of dark blue/grey.

If you see someone suspiciously installing a piece of slightly worn carpet in a slightly smaller office entranceway then please do give the police a call.