Back after a break – but found some new friends

The development cycle starts again today after a break for Easter and the school half term. I did do a little programming but nothing significant.

During the break I took time out to have a couple of relaxing days out to the coast which I thoroughly enjoyed, did some redecorating, sorted out some problems with the cars, and addressed some financial issues.

I was contacted from a customer about by previous product Painters Assistant and a problem with XP SP2 where MDAC 2.8 refused to install with XP SP2. The problem turned out to be that XP SP2 includes an MDAC refresh and the installation process for MDAC 2.8 is not very elegant in that it issues an error message saying that it is “incompatable with this version of windows”. Instead of just quitting the installation in favour of the newer version installed. The refresh is only a minor update anyway. Managed to resolve the problem by creating a new installation CD that checks the version of XP installed and if it is SP2 then it doesn’t install MDAC. Simple solution but a frustrating process to find.

Issued the update to the customer and it turns out that he is a member of the International Plastic Modellers Society (IPMS) in the UK and is a forum moderator of IPMS-UK. He has offered me a channel for advertising my program and placed a posting about the product and service on the IPMS-UK forum and the BritModeller forum. This lead to some positive feedback about Painters Assistant and new interest in Modellers Assistant.

The forum moderators made me very welcome and new interest was very incouraging. If you would like to visit either of the forums then the links are IPMS-UK (www.ipms-uk.co.uk) and BritModeller (www.britmodeller.co.uk), navigate to the forums and join in.

Well that’s about it for now, the kids are back to school, a couple of jobs to do and then back to the developing.