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32bit WebChange for RISC OS Now Available

Jun 292010

I am pleased to announce that, as planned, to coincide with Soft Rock Software’s 21st birthday, a 32bit version of WebChange is available for RISC OS users to download, free of charge from the WebChange website.

The software is technically still a beta version – the last of the main functions having been added over the last few days – but most of what is there has been stable for some time; in house testing hasn’t shown up any significant problems, and any that have been reported by people using the development versions have been dealt with. Provided no new problems are found, the version now available will eventually have its version number bumped up to 3.00.00.

The one thing missing is a user manual and, barring any other problems, that is the next thing to be done. In the meantime, the manual for the old 26bit version is available from the WebChange site, and further information can be found by looking at the mailing list archives. I hope that anything not covered (or which has changed) in the old manual or through the archives should be reasonably self explanatory. Anything else, along with any support queries, should be raised on the mailing list.

The full announcement, as posted to comp.sys.acorn.announce, is available here.

Midlands Midsummer Mugshow 2010

Jun 022010

I am pleased to announce that Soft Rock Software will be in attendance at the Midlands Midsummer Mugshow, which this year takes place on Saturday 10th July at St John’s Church Hall, 205 Warwick Road, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, CV8 1HY (full details on the website). This event is the closest one to Soft Rock Software‘s 21st Birthday and will, in effect, be the official launch of the 32bit version of WebChange as a free download, with WebChange Pro (the chargeable upgrade) to come later.

WebChange and WebChange Pro

Apr 202010

Soft Rock Software’s flagship product, WebChange, is to become two products – WebChange and WebChange Pro. The first of these, to be released later this year, will be WebChange. This will be a free download, to replace the 26bit version which is currently free to download from the WebChange website. This free release will provide most of the capabilities found in the WebChange of old, but unlike that version it will run on 32bit hardware such as the IyonixPC and A9Home, as well as RiscPCs and other 26bit hardware.

Once WebChange is complete and available focus will then switch to the development of WebChange Pro, which will be the version users will get when they purchase the software, and will be available to those who have purchased it in the past.  This version will include all of the features of WebChange as well as enhanced facilities and new features, such as a new and more versatile script language.

If you are attending the 2010 Wakefield Show on April 24th, please pop by stand 9 for a chat about WebChange and other items, such as an adventure game cunningly titled It’s No Game!

Soft Rock Software's 21st Birthday

Mar 062010

It’s VAT time at Soft Rock Software HQ and while sorting that out, I’ve become distracted by some old files. Amongst other things, I’ve just found my earliest file of statements for the business bank account.

Missing is sheet number 1, but the statements are monthly and sheet 2 runs from April 20th 1989 to May 19th 1989, sheet 3 from May 20th 1989 to June 19th 1989, and so on. Logically, then, if sheet 1 was produced one month after opening the account, it must have been opened on or very close to 20th March 1989. This means the 21st anniversary of opening that bank account will be on the 20th March 2010 – which is two weeks from today. That date is, therefore, arguably the 21st birthday of the business.

However, since the outset, I have always operated a trading year that ends on 30th June: My first set of accounts were for the year ending 30th June 1990, and I’ve continued on that basis ever since. Knowing this, and being unable to remember the details of when the account was opened, I had previously assumed I’d opened it in or around June 1989. I now know this to be wrong – but at the same time, I now know why I adopted that trading year.

The very first transaction on the account took place on 30th June 1989. This does, of course, mean that first trading year was actually a year and one day, but that first transaction was my own money being put into the account to fund the expenditure that was about to start.

On that basis, then, it’s reasonable to declare Soft Rock Software’s official date of birth as 30th June 1989. So, on 30th June 2010, Soft Rock Software will be 21 years of age.

Wakefield RISC OS Show 2010

Feb 252010

I am pleased to announce that Soft Rock Software has booked a stand at the 2010 Wakefield Acorn and RISC OS Show, which this year takes place on Saturday 24th April at the Wakefield Cedar Court Hotel, where I will be again showing off WebChange Pro.

Temporary problem with riscository.co.uk domain and mailing lists

Jan 262010

Unfortunately, the riscository.co.uk domain is currently unavailable, and therefore the mailing lists provided at that domain are not at this time functioning.

The problem was called by a renewal issue with the domain registration; specifically that I was blissfully unaware it was due for renewal, having received no notifications or requests for payment from the registrars. As a result, the domain has been suspended.

Steps have now been taken to rectify this and, provided nothing else goes wrong, things should return to normal soon.

Your suppliers (and staff) need to know what you are paying

Dec 172009

On Wednesday 16th December 2009, the UK Payments Council came to a decision regarding cheque payments, as explained in this press release. It’s important to note that the situation isn’t quite as simple as some places have reported; it’s not just a case of “cheque payments to end by 2018, full stop” – there’s slightly more to it than that; the goal is to phase out cheque payments while encouraging the use of other methods, but there’s a possibility that it might not be feasible to do so, hence the “go/no go” decision scheduled for 2016.

However, that isn’t the topic of this item – just the inspiration; when reading about the decision to try to phase out cheques it set me to thinking about some of the problems I see when companies make payments to suppliers (some of which apply to cheque payments as much as to any other form of payments). The general problem is that of a lack of identification and clarity – while I see many payments clearly identified in terms of who they are from (or for) and what they are paying, I do see some which lack that information and this leads to time wasted establishing that information. The most common problems I see tend to be one of three: Continue reading »

Quicksand: Diary of a RISC OS game

Dec 152009

While tidying up some old files I discovered the following text, which I had written in late 2007. It’s some notes I wrote up about how Quicksand (a text adventure game for RISC OS) came about, and a broad outline of how it was written. I think I was intending to finish it and publish it on the main Soft Rock Software website – and since the reason I more recently decided to set up WordPress was for that kind of thing it seems sensible to publish it here, albeit a couple of years later.

Earlier this year I booked a stand at the 2007 Wakefield Show in the hope that I would have the new version of WebChange developed far enough that I’d have something meaningful to demonstrate, even though it wouldn’t yet be good enough to actually sell.

However, I’ve developed this theory that whenever I state in public that I’m going to have time to do this, or work on that, my (non RISC OS) workload increases and prevents me doing what I said I’d do. It therefore came as little surprise to me that when a list of confirmed Wakefield exhibitors was published, which obviously included Soft Rock Software, the result was a sudden increase in my workload. (This is something worth keeping in mind if I’m ever short of money, of course – although that workload doesn’t always include paid work!)

I consequently decided that there wasn’t going to be enough time to do what I’d wanted or hoped on WebChange before the show without rushing, and rushing would lead to messy code, which I didn’t want. So the question became one of what I could do instead in the amount of time available.

The answer, I decided, was to write a simple adventure game using the software I’d written for this purpose many years before – Trellis. Ironically, I wrote that software so that I could more easily write adventure games, but in the end the only games I’ve ever written with Trellis were the demonstration games supplied with it (and, strictly speaking, they were simply ports to the Trellis system of two adventure games I’d written already!) Continue reading »

Obtaining a Work in Progress figure from Sage Job Costings

Nov 242009

All of the companies I work for on a regular basis use one or another of Sage’s products for accounting purposes, but only one uses Sage Job Costings. As its name suggests, this is a program into which all the company’s costs are input, be that supplier invoices, employee time, etc, and allocated to a particular job, each of which has a unique reference, in order to provide accurate costings on a per job basis. If this program is used fully, it can also be used to generate invoices based on the costings – but (and I imagine this is common) the company doesn’t use it this way. Invoices are actually produced in the normal sales ledger module of Sage Line 50, using reports produced from Sage Job Costings as a basis. This gives them more control over the final invoices.

The downside of this approach is that the Job Costings program itself doesn’t know when a particular job has been invoiced (or, more accurately, when particular costs associated with a job have been charged out) and therefore can’t easily provide a figure for Work in Progress – which is, in essence, the costs associated with jobs that haven’t yet been charged out to customers. An accurate figure for Work in Progress is obviously needed for accurate accounts.

There is also an oddity in the way the company dates its invoices which, although I don’t fully understand the reasons for this, I just have to accept as the way things are done. It’s relevant because it does make calculation of a Work in Progress (WIP) figure that much more difficult.

It turns out that they have a list of every job in a spreadsheet, along with the date it was invoiced where appropriate – so by using that it’s possible to go through the list of jobs in Sage Job Costings and select those ones that haven’t been invoiced by a particular date (taking care not to select those new jobs that hadn’t been booked in by that date) and then run a report showing the total costings up to the desired date for all the selected jobs; this would be the WIP figure at that date. However, this is a very long and tedious job which is prone to error. It would possibly be a task that is bearable once every year, but certainly not something that anyone would want to do on a monthly basis. Continue reading »

Welcome

Nov 102009

Welcome to the ‘Posts’ section of the Soft Rock Software website. The purpose of this section is as a repository of miscellaneous articles which would be usefully provided via the website, but in a content managed form rather than in the normal website design. These would be articles which are related to the business operations in some way, but which don’t themselves need to form part of the core site – items which previously might have appeared in the ‘misc’ section.

Over time, there has been the occasional item in that section, but they haven’t remained on the site beyond a move or major redesign (where more work was required than a few operations of WebChange, and I’ve thus concentrated on the core site; the information and downloads, etc). There have also been times where I’ve considered publishing something in that section, but didn’t because I was planning such a redesign (or whatever). By publishing such things in this WordPress blog in future they will survive such redesigns – they are now seperate from that core site.

The sort of thing that will actually appear here should be quite varied, and not just be limited to what (I imagine) most people who “know” Soft Rock Software online will expect, which is probably the RISC OS software etc. While there will be some of that, it’s actually the smallest part of the business – the biggest is accounting work, mostly using various of Sage’s packages, and I’ve sometimes considered publishing articles based on questions I’m often asked or issues I often deal with; so that’s an example of the sort of thing that’s likely to appear here.