Sorry I’ve been too quiet and haven’t found time to keep the blog more up todate. Basically I’ve had a bad start to the year.

Firstly my laptop got trashed when my step daughter poured a glass of coke over it. The laptop is my work environment for development and updates, whilst I have a backup of the data and source code it was more the fact that it is my office. And there it was gone in a second. Anyway after much haggling the insurance company refused to replace it and so I was without a laptop until the end of March.

Secondly we’ve had a cancer scare in the family and that really made us think and take stock of our lifestyle. Luckly the all clear has been given but there is still a risk which means some drastic changes to make sure that the all clear stays just that.

Thirdly we’ve decided to start a new business which meant a lot of time ane effort in preparing the paperwork, looking to rasie capital, get the company up and running and then start producing the goods. This is still ongoing but this has taken much of my time over the past couple of months. Hopefully when things start to calm down I can get back to some development.

I’ve had to shut down the forum as some spammers have hijacked it and are running mail bombs. I won’t be bringing it back but I will be changing the website shortly to remove the forum link and add a replacement page for information that would have been placed on the forum.

On the development front I am midway to implementing a new tab page for the program. The tab page combines the Kits ‘n Bits information with the Colours information and provides a common interface. The bottom tab on the Project, Stock List, and Shopping List tabs have been replaced with just information for the selected item from the list. Also a sort feature is being added to enable the data to be sorted in a natural order in all the lists. This means a change to the data tables. Impementing these changes will take a little while longer due to the startup of the new business.

Some new manufacturers have been added to the database. Whilst I would like to have added more manufacturers time has been against me and so I shall have to make do for the present.

In light of the start of the year Modellers Assistant has suffered but once the business is running and I can get some time back then I should start to make some progress. As the business is taking a lot of my time at the moment I don’t know when that will be for now. I shall try to keep things ticking over until more time allows me to make some real progress.

That’s all for now.

Well Modellers Assistant has been out for a year now and there has been a steady up take in the program. The customer base has grown with many international orders.

The total amount of data in Modellers Assistant has nearly doubled in the past year, but the number of after sales and kits items has trebled. There are still nearly 750 more manufacturers to be sourced and added to the database so there is still a long way to go with the data.

On the program side there has been little in the way of development except for changing the code to handle international installations. In the last update a small feature was added to allow for quicker access to the paint equivelants data.

Hopefully in the next year some of the other features that I want to add into to the program will get there and of course the data will continue to expand.

Sales have slowed down in the past couple of months and this I can only attribute to the global recession as there still appears to be plenty of interest in the website with a number of downloads of the demo version.

Now I’m going to take a break during December to get my head aroud Christmas and to develop some little utilities to help make the data entry quicker.

I’ve finished the updates to Modellers Assistant with respect to the globalization and went to move on to the reports. I use Crystal Reports that is embedded with Visual Studio and came across a nasty problem. The problem may not exist in the full Crystal Reports.

The problem is because Crystal Reports obtains the data for the report directly from a database then you can’t intercept the data and change the number or date format before it hits the report. You can define the report to have a specific number or data format but then you would have to have several reports to support different local cultures.

The work around that I came up with was to read the data from the database into an ADO dataset/datatable and then make the required changes as defined by the local culture. The write the data to another datatable and pass that to Crystal Reports. It works but why should I have to spend additional CPU cycles and memory for what could have been done in Crystal Reports? why can’t I pass a parameter to Crystal Reports to use a certain culture to format the report?

May it’s a different story with the full Crystal Reports and is just a limitation of the embedded version.

Now I’m back to doing some data updates for the program before getting back to some development work.

Now I’ve sold Modellers Assistant to customers in a number of countries but one customer in Norway was giving me a big problem. Modellers Assistant just wouldn’t work on the customers PC. There was no reason why it shouldn’t and then it suddenly clicked as to what the problem was. The customers PC was running in Norwegian.

So off I went and set up a system in Norwegian and sure enough Modellers Assistant failed. The root of the problem was the decimal point character. I done some more testing and basically there are two decimal point characters used around the world either a period (.) or a comma (,). However the thousand separator can be a number of characters – period (.), comma (,), space ( ), and apostrophy (’).

How to tackle the problem was another issue. There are a number of approaches of which the most obvious one was to decode the number into a string and determine what characters are used and then translate it but that approach is not easy or reliable. The simpliest solution was to use the globalization namespace to determine the culture being used on the PC and then run the program as an invariant culture (netural) and then only use the local culture when displaying data or retrieving data input.

The change to handle the local culture is not particularly difficult but does involve going through all the controls that display or retrieve data and then change the code to handle the culture. This created what could be perceived as a culture layer on top of the program. Underneath it the programs logic has little change until I realised that I had handled a large amount of numeric data as a string. So I have to change the variables to numeric. Thankfully refactoring makes an easy job of the changes. I’m still going through the program making changes but it does make you think about how the global market needs to be considered even for the smallest of programs.

The internet has broken down the barriers of global marketing and it was presumptious of me to assume that Modellers Assistant would work anywhere in the world. Well it would if the PC was installed as an English language. If I had thought about this at the design phase then things would have been easier, especially as I want to add a calander function to the program at some point and that would have really caused issues in the global market.

Though I have made the changes to the numeric format there are other areas that could be handled such as right to left writting and the bigger issue of translation into other languages. The latter is probably what most of use think about having an international product but it can be something more simple as a decimal point character.

Since my last entry life has been very busy. With the increasing fuel prices and cost of living we’ve had to make some dramatic changes in our life style. First off we had one of the cars converted to LPG and the fuel costs are more than a half of that of petrol. Well worth the money.

In an effort to combate the cost of living we have just about given up shopping in supermarkets. So I’ve been busy building a poly tunnel to grow vegetables just about all year round and I’m currently extending the vegetable patch for next year to grow more vegetables. Also planned is a fruit area for the garden to grow more fruit  and we also want to get some chickens for some fresh eggs.

In the kitchen we’re making our own bread, butter, jams, preserves, and sauces. Any additional fruit, veg, meat, and fish is sourced from local farm shops, fishmongers, and butchers. The difference in the quality and taste of the food in comparison to supermarket produce is amazing. For example, cauliflower from a supermarket had no taste to it – from the farm shop it is really tasty and cruchy. My advice to anyone is try non-supermarket food for a week and see for yourselves. If you thinks it is better then grow it your self and get the cost down. You’ll feel better for the exercise and you know how your food is sourced.

After all that activity we took a short break to Legoland and it is an amazing place. We all enjoyed it despite the weather. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Anyway back to the programming. Development of the image album is coming on nicely. A custom control needed to be created for the thumbnails. This is based upon a listview and works a treat. I’m currently in the middle of developing the cataloging side of the albums so multiple albums can be created and managed. Once that is done then the Albums can be associated to projects.

I’ve been investigating the physical packaging for Modellers Assistant. Currently I’m using inkjet printable CDs and a CD cover all printed on a HP printer. Whilst the result is passable it is not of a top quality. I can’t afford to go to an external printers at the moment so I’ve invested in a colour laser printer and lightscribe DVD writer. The CD looks better done in lightscribe all be it in monochrome. The CD cover does look a little more professional on a colour laser. I’m now looking to develop the packaging as a DVD case rather than a jewel case. So I’m also looking to produce a quick start guide for the DVD case. Whilst writting the guide I noticed a few problems with Modellers Assistant which I’ve had to fix quickly. Hopfully the current users of Modellers Assistant will not come across the problems until the current development phase has finished as I can then rollout the fixes and new features in one go.

I recently ran some advertising in Modelling magazines and the adverts have given a small boost to the sales, which is steadily growing. I have the suspision that the additonal cost of living that people are having to pay out for has impacted my sales. Hopefully I can rough it out until the economy starts to improve.

That’s all for now. Back to the gardening and programming and I’ll give another update when I can.

I haven’t posted a new blog in a while because I have been busy in developing new features for Modellers Assistant. The current development is with an image album and viewer. The idea behind it is when a modeller is researching prototype references for a particular model they either gather images from the internet or photograph a prototype and store the images on a pc. The album allows the images to be gathered into convenient collection for easier finding. Each image in the album can be viewed to see it in a larger format rather than a thumbnail view that the album uses. The albums can then be attached to one or more projects so that the relevant reference images are available from the project.

I took a break from the development last week because the schools were on holiday from half term and trying to concentrate on programming with the noise in the background is difficult. I took the opportunity to start developing a modelling website for the projects that I’m building. As yet I haven’t made much progress other than creating a shell for the website. More details to come.

This week I started to get back to development as the schools have gone back. Before I got too into the programming I started to ponder the future of my program. Modellers Assistant is written in C# and uses the .NET Framework 2.0. Microsoft have .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 out aswell and I began to wonder whether to upgrade to 3.5. The problem is that I don’t want to be always updating my program to a later framework as it can become a problem for owners of a prior version of Modellers Assistant to upgrade the framework every year and I can’t maintain different versions of Modellers Assistant depending upon different versions of the framework.

This led me to think about whether I need the framework at all. In short the answer is no. Why? Because Modellers Assistant uses an Access database for the data. This is referenced via MDAC and the framework. If I use C# I have to use the framework and MDAC. If I was to use C++ and MFC then I only need MDAC. This reduces the runtime requirement of my program. The big problem is redeveloping from C# to C++. Some of the controls that I use in C# (i.e. datagrids) are just not available in MFC. This means either using a 3rd party control or developing one myself.

The philosophy I adopted when starting out with Modellers Assistant was to use (as far as possible) native controls and not 3rd party or user controls. Therefor I’ve had to investigate some alternatives. I’ve used Visual Studio for my development and this has served me well. I’m currently looking at Codegear (Borland) C++ Builder as this has the controls I need (all be it Delhi controls with a wrapper to allow C++ to use them).

So now comes the crunch – redevelop now to C++ or later. Given that I am in the middle of developing new features it makes sense to continue with that in C#. When that section of work is finished split my time between updating the data and redeveloping into C++. In truth I wanted to have Modellers Assistant a native Windows app from the start but C# gave me a quicker development cycle and with access to the Access database it was very straight forward. I do like C# but I do wish it wasn’t tied so closely to the .NET Framework and allowed for a native Windows application, such as MFC does.

The new website is up and running. Basically it’s the same content with a refreshed view. I’ve added a forum for the support and comments on Modellers Assistant. Now I’m not expecting this to be a very active forum as it is specific to Modellers Assistant, but it does provide an additional support line for customers.

Now it’s time to get back to development of Modellers Assistant. The last update was done in January to fix a small problem with the tables. This time some new features will be added, just what I haven’t decided yet. I need to have a look at my hit list of features to see what is the most useful.

One thing I would like to do is to make some internal changes to the table formats. There is an amount of duplicated data that can be consolidated. The problem with this kind of change is that it can take a long time to make the changes with very little advantage from the customers point of view as they don’t see the benefit from the change, i.e. nothing new. I shall have a quick investigation into the impact of the change and then take a call as to whether it is worth it at the moment.

My last blog post was back in September 2007. So what has been happening since September?

Modellers Assistant is completed and has gone to market. Todate the vast majority of sales have been upgrades from Painters Assistant but I am hopeful that sales will pick up as the product matures.

Since the release 2 data updates have been released. The initial release saw 49 manufacturers in the database – the last update that figure was increased to 74. More importantly the number of Aftersales items listed was 3533 in the original release – the lats update this increased to 5476. It’s similar story with the number of kits listed – the original release had 3668 kits listed, the last update this was increased to 10178. Hopefully this shows the potential customers that Modellers Assistant is not a static product but continues to grow.

All the data statistics are on the website www.modellersassistant.co.uk which itself gets an average of 70 hits a week.

So what’s next? Currently I am rebuilding the website. I want to incorporate a forum and access to this blog. The forum is to provide support and interaction for the customers interested or owing Modellers Assistant. It won’t be a modelling forum as there are a number of these already on the internet and they do a wonderful job. The blog link is to provide a less formal update on the progress of Modellers Assistant and the data. When a new set of data is released or some program updates are done then the news page on the website will give all the information as well as a prosting in the forum.

Once the new website is up and running then my attention will turn back to the program to add some new features. What features will appear depends upon how I get on with the logic so there is no detail for now other than there will be some new features appearing soon.

Whilst I’m doing the coding there won’t be any major data updates. I may be able to find time to update or add a few manufacturers but it won’t be a large update.

That’s all for now. Hopefully I can get a blog update written at least once a week.

Well I have been quiet for a few weeks because I have been hard at work trying to get Modellers Asistant finished. The news is that I’m nearly there. With any luck it should be ready in the next few weeks.

Since my last post I have managed to complete some new features – Project of Projects, new reports and a report viewer, Web Links has been revamped.

Project of Projects gives the ability for the modeller to break down a large project into several smaller ones. Each has it’s own project list (paints, kits, etc.) but also has a link to other projects that it is related to. The relationships are managed on their own tab. The project tab also has a sub-tab for projects of projects to show it’s position in the family.

The old reports left a lot to be desired so these have been reworked into a new set that are easier to read. The reports use Crystal Reports for the creation of the reports. The Crystal Reports Viewer has been added to the program under it’s own tab. The chosen report can be viewed prior to printing or exporting to other applications. Reports are available for all the lists (project, stock, and shopping). Three reports are available for each list – simple report as it appears in the program datagridviews, and two grouped reports by product and manufacturer. More detailed reports may appear in future updates.

The Internet Links tab has been given a face lift with the ability to create collections of internet links. This allows the modeller to create various collections to suite there needs. For example, a collection can be created for model shop sites, another collection for reference sites, another for forums, etc.. The collections can be associated with one or more projects as a reference link. This builds the projects to have not just the products for the project, but also associates relevant collections to the project. The same ability has been added to the PDF catalogues allowing them to be associated with one or more projects.

Currently I’m working on the help system for Modellers Assistant. This will be in two forms – a PDF of the documentation and an online help with context links for the relevant help section for the current sction focus.

Once this has finished there are just a couple more jobs to be done and then Modellers Assistant should be ready for the market. 

Some real progress has really been made in the past couple of weeks. The kits and bits tab page has been completed and added to the stock, shopping, and project lists. This means that a major new component has been added to the program. This is what the program is really about – the model kits, after sales items, paints, and tools to make the kit.  The database for the kits and after sales items is a matrix of what kit has what after sale item and visa versa.

Also added to the program is a feature that allows the block addition of items to any list. This is in response to feedback of some people that purchased Painters Assistant. The block addition feature makes adding many items to the projects, stock and shopping lists a lot easier. In essence any item from any category can be added to any list.

All in all it has been a busy couple of weeks but there has been some major advancements that take me closer to the final product.