Fashion at Bath is an event where boutiques and designer shops can exhibit their finest spring/summer collections. The event, being held in Bath on the 17th of March is in support of Sue Ryder Care.

We’d encourage you all to surf on over and see what it’s all about. If you are in the Bath area, why not grab some tickets and come along to the show.

As a show sponsor for the second year running, it’s our pleasure to continue working with the fantastic organizing team who make Fashion at Bath possible.

Here is the process which lead to my plain text password being sent (we’ve verified this by checking with a second account in the office now, so this isn’t a one off fluke!)

1) I was an old P4 users upgrading to P5.
2) I used the upgrade path link from the UK store. At the checkout phase requested the password from my P4 account.
3) The password reset page displays an error (Shown below)
4) Your plain text password arrives! (Email below)

We’ve contacted Parallels regarding this issue and will update you with any comment they make on the matter.

****************************************************************************
element 5 order number: **REMOVED**
****************************************************************************
This e-mail was generated by a mail handling system. Please do not reply
to the address listed in the “From” field.
Please read the CUSTOMER SERVICE section for answers to your questions.
****************************************************************************

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for placing an order with element 5.

We are sending you the data for your customer account at element 5 as per
your request.

User name: ****@storm-consultancy.com
Password: **!!REMOVED!!**

Please use your user ID and password for future orders as well.
https://ccc.element5.com/ccc/my_account.html?languageid=1&pid=**REMOVED**

****************************************************************************
CUSTOMER SERVICE

Questions about your order, payment, or delivery?

Answers to the most frequently asked questions / Contact:
http://ccc.element5.com/ccc/?languageid=1&pid=**REMOVED**

Your order data:
https://ccc.element5.com/ccc/my_account.html?languageid=1&pid=**REMOVED**

****************************************************************************

General terms and conditions of business:
http://esd.element5.com/termsconditions.html?p=**REMOVED**

Best regards,
Your element 5 team
_____________________________________________________________________

element 5 – a service of digital river – www.element5.com
Digital River GmbH
Vogelsanger Str. 78, D-50823 Cologne, Germany
CEO: John Strosahl
Corporate Headquarters: Cologne / HRB 56188 / Cologne Local Court
_____________________________________________________________________

Grab a copy of the excellent Web Developer Toolbar (if you don’t have it already – reviewed here) extension for Firefox.  On the far left-hand side you will find the ‘Disable’ menu.  The top option will be ‘Disable Cache’.  Tick that option and away you go – cache turned off!

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I spent a fair while Googling for a solution to this before stumbling across the answer: turn your printer off and back on. That’s it. No reinstalling drivers, adding or removing printers or playing with settings – just a good old fashioned power cycle. It’s nice to know some things never change

Hat tip to Walt-O-Matic for the answer.

I was printing from Microsoft Office Word, via a networked HP C4480 printer on Windows Server 2008 via an Airport Extreme.

Here are my top 11 reasons for buying an iPhone.

We’re big iPhone fans here at Storm – hopefully the list below will show you why!

#1 – iPod

One of my favourite iPhone features is the iPod functionality. Essentially your phone comes with an iPod touch, with all the features and performance you can expect from the Touch. The large majority of people who are put off from buying the iPhone cite higher cost as their reason, yet are happy to shell out for an iPod (or equivalent music player). With the new iPhone rumored to have a 32Gb hard drive, the potential to put all of your music and video on one device is a big iPhone plus.

#2 – Style

The iPhone is undoubtedly one of the nicest looking mobile phones on the market. Its vivid 3.5″ screen encased in a sleek chrome and black housing is not only good looking, but surprisingly durable. The iPhone screen – protected by toughened glass – is very hard to scratch!

#3 – Ease of Use / GUI

The iPhone user interface has led the way forward for touch screen devices. Its fast and responsive system makes browsing the device very intuitive. Even the touch keyboard becomes second nature within a couple of weeks of use.

#4 – Web, Wi-Fi and 3G

Prior to the iPhone, mobile Internet browsing was sluggish and very limited (WAP, GPRS and Edge). With the iPhone 3G you not only get fast browsing speed, but a well thought out browsing interface. Use of the iPhone’s multi-touch technology means that you can scale or zoom fully HTML pages.

#5 – Push Services

This is actually a feature which will come into maturity in the next software update for iPhone (3.0 – due in the next month or so). The iPhone will already ‘push’ any emails, diary dates and contacts to your mobile phone, but with the latest software release you will be able to receive further alerts, ‘pushed’ to your phone such as News alerts, Social Networking alerts etc.

#6 – Social Networking

The iPhones 3G Internet capability means that you can stay connected to your social networks (Twitter, Facebook etc) on the go. You are able to catch up with your friends and post photos and updates straight from the phone. Without devices such as the iPhone, services like Twitter would almost certainly not be as popular as they are today.

#7 – Games

Who doesn’t love a few fun games on their mobile to aid with procrastination? The iPhone is the first mobile phone to truly provide high quality games – some of which are more than capable of competing with hand held gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS or PSP. And whats more, the games for iPhone are generally much cheaper and receive frequent updates for free.

#8 – GPS and Google Maps

The iPhone has the benefit of having a GPS receiver built in. Unlike many other phones which merely triangulate their position via telephone masts, the iPhone can actually pin your location on a Google Map, plan a route and feed you instructions as you walk or drive the route.  The GPS functionality also allows for a host of location aware applications – being able to find the nearest.. Train Station, Bus Route, Bar, Hospital etc, or finding out which of your friends are near you.

#9 – App Store

The app store has really set the iPhone apart from pretty much any other mobile device. You can grab any number of fantastic applications that extend the native functionality of the iPhone. There are plenty of free apps to get stuck into, along side the reasonably priced ‘paid’ apps. Even these are usually under £2! Some of my favourites include: Facebook, Tweetie & Skype for keeping in touch with the world; Shazam for finding the names of songs by holding your phone to a speaker, Pocket God (clue is in the name) and BounceOn (hours of fun!)

#10 – Software updates

Another feature that Apple brought forward with the iPhone is software updating. Apple are constantly improving your iPhone, for free! – bringing you new and improved features.  You also have the option of purchasing major upgrades for a nominal fee, normally under £10 – giving you access to a whole host of new toys to play with.

#11 – All in your palm

What I love the most about the iPhone is that you get all of the above, and much much more, in the palm of you hand. That’s a mobile phone, a games console, an iPod, a GPS navigation device and a portable computer running Skype, email and documents. Anyone who complains about the extra few ££ or $$ for that level of functionality really is missing out!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the iPhone below! What do you love the most? Or what do you hate! What would you like to see in the next iPhone?

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Often under used, it is one of the most powerful tools available to you in Photoshop and has been getting better and better with every new Photoshop release. Not only is it extraordinarily powerful, its extremely simple to use (as you are about to find out).

Grab a photo that requires airbrushing or touching up

The photo that I will be using for this tutorial is available at Stock Xchange. So if you want to download a copy and see the heal brush in action for yourself – please do!

As mentioned in the intro, this airbrushing and healing technique works on all damaged surfaces. It  can be use to remove scratches from tables or walls right down to removing a spot or blemish from a holiday snap. Heres the image that I will be working with..

Select a clean area of the photo

The first step is to identify an area of the photo that is unblemished. Concentrate on picking an area with the correct texture rather than one that has a colour match. Photoshop will modify and blend colours for you.

As you can see below, I have selected the heal tool from the left hand menu. Holding ALT brings up the sample selection cross hairs – click the clean area to sample and this will be stored.

Brush away the blemishes

Next, go to the area of your photo that requires healing. You can either click or brush the texture from your selected ‘clean’ area over the top of the blemish.

You will notice that the brush area contains a preview of the texture you will be clicking or brushing into place. Don’t worry about the colour mismatch at the moment!

Note that if brushing, to keep the texture fresh Photoshop will sample texture using your selected clean area as a start point – this means you could pick up another blemish if you pick a ‘clean’ area which has blemishes surrounding it.

Notice that under my brush stroke looks discolored – not at all a fit with the surroundings. Well don’t worry! As soon as you release that brush click Photoshop will look at surrounding pixel colours and light levels and auto-magically recolour it. It does this so well that you cant even see where the brush was!

As you can see the colours have matched, and the deep scar has been removed.

Keep on brushing

Now carry on brushing away those blemishes. Keep adjusting your brush size to match the area you want to heal, and try picking different ‘clean’ areas for different textured finnishes.

The below image took around 2 minutes from start to finish! That’s how powerful the heal tool is.

So why not have a go!

If you’ve found this tutorial helpful why not consider leaving a comment, or even sharing it with your friends via Digg, Twitter etc! Happy Airbrushing!

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I’m about to show you one of the simplest – but most fun techniques for creating amazing photographic effect.

There isn’t even any need for computer editing!

Equipment you’ll need

To start playing you’ll need 4 things;

1. A camera which allows slow shutter speed, giving a very long exposure (all DSLR cameras will allow this). I will be using my old Nikon D40, which is a basic ’start of the line’ DSLR.
2. A small maglite (or equivalent). We’ll need to use either the AAA or AA battery powered maglite as they have a suitability small bulb for our purpose.
3. An object to be photographed. I’ll be using my beloved Ibanez SA Guitar in this tutorial!
4. A dark backdrop. A dark curtain or sheet would be perfect.

Preparation

Next you’ll need to prepare yourself for the shot. Unless  you have a room / studio that you can totally black out, I recommend waiting until night time to take your shots – to achieve best effect.

First, place your object (e.g. guitar) against a dark / black background. I propped my guitar against a black amplifier so that it was stood up, with a black sheet behind it and running along the floor.

Next, mount your camera on a tripod if you have one, with the object in shot. If you don’t have a tripod, find a stable surface for your camera.

It’s a good idea to put on a dark top at this point – and if you have any dark gloves they will help keep you ‘out of shot’. Now your ready to shoot!

Camera and Torch Settings

To achieve the lighting effect we need to set the camera to take a very long photograph. To do this you need to set your camera to have a very slow shutter speed / set a long exposure time. If your unsure of how to do this, consult your camera manual. I set mine to 30 seconds, but you may want to try 45 – 60 seconds if you don’t achieve the effect you desire, or simply don’t have time to complete the shot in 30 seconds.

Finally, before taking the photo, remove the front part of your maglite by unscrewing it (as shown below) this will expose the bright white bulb.

Click!

We’re ready to go!

With the torch on and bulb exposed, switch off all other lights, hit shoot button on the camera. You should hear the shutter click open.

Now you can play! Draw sweeping arcs or trace detail of your object. Try going over areas of an object more than once to light it differently. The closer to the object you are, the more you will pick up the reflections.

Below are a few examples of my photos… Happy snapping!

We’d love to see some of your attempts so please feel free to link to them below in the comments area. If you’ve enjoyed this blog please consider sharing it with your friends through Twitter, Digg, Delicious or any other method you feel fitting!

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We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil
- C. A. R. Hoare

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen
- Edward V Berard

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
- Hofstadter’s Law

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems
- Jamie Zawinski

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
- Brian Kernighan

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
- Bill Gates

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.
- Jon Ribbens

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
- Charles Babbage

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
- Rick Osborne

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
- Rich Cook

I don’t care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!
- Ovidiu Platon

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.
- Bjarne Stroustrup

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
- Mitch Ratcliffe

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
- E. W. Dijkstra

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
- E. W. Dijkstra

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not.
- Yoggi Berra

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
- Albert Einstein

Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
- Keith Bostic

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders
- Unknown

XML is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.
- Unknown

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
- Fred Brooks

Do you know any other classics?  Please share them with us in the comments, we’d love to hear them! If you enoyed this post, please consider sharing it with your friends on Digg, Twitter, Facebook or Delicious!  Thanks for reading!

Follow Storm on Twitter | Become a Fan on Facebook

The script will run when you enter a Google Analytics report and redirect you to the new date range, provided no custom date range has been selected.  This is achieved by appending the pdr querystring parameter to the URL.  Here’s the code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Google Analytics - Include Today
// @author      Storm Consultancy
// @description    Include today in Google Analytic's default date
// @include        https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting*
// ==/UserScript==

// Function to add days to a date, use negative number to subtract
function addDays(myDate,days) {
  return new Date(myDate.getTime() + days*24*60*60*1000);
}

// Redirect the user to the new URL
function Redirect(newDateRange){
    //Only inject the new param is it's not in the querystring already 
    if(window.location.href.indexOf('&pdr') < 0){
        window.location.href += '&pdr=' + newDateRange;
    }
    else if(document.referrer.indexOf('google.com/analytics/settings/') >= 0){
	// If the referrer is the main page, then it already sets the date
	// range we dont want. so we need to replace it
	var url = window.location.href.replace(/pdr=[0-9]{8}\-[0-9]{8}/,
                                        'pdr=' + newDateRange)
	window.location.href = url;
    }
}

// Build an array of the date components, formatted for the querystring
function BuildDates(date){
    var array = new Array();
    array['day'] = (date.getDate() < 10) ?
                        '0' + date.getDate().toString() :
                        date.getDate().toString();

    array['month'] = (date.getMonth() < 9) ?
                        '0' + (date.getMonth()+1).toString() :
                        (date.getMonth()+1).toString();

    array['year'] = date.getFullYear().toString();
    return array;
}

var dateToday = new Date();
var today = BuildDates(dateToday);
var past  = BuildDates(addDays(dateToday, -30));

var dateRange = past['year'] + past['month'] + past['day'] + '-' +
                  today['year'] + today['month'] + today['day'];  

Redirect(dateRange);

You can download the user script from here: google_analytics_date_range.user.js

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