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September 30, 2006
Rocks, hard places, trains and funerals.
I'm off today to the SWPTUF (South West Passenger Transport User's Forum) meeting in Taunton - it's a bit of being 'caught between a rock and a hard place' because I really need this weekend for Manor preparations AND the meeting is an important one for me to further contacts and push the case for the local train service that I've probably bored you sllly with already over the last year or so.
Although the meeting covers regional transport policy throughout the south west of England, and is a bit generalised and distant for many of the people / groups in Melksham, I won't be the only one from this neck of the woods down there. We're meeting up with "x" on the train, with "y" at the meeting. "z" sends his regrets - he has to go to a funeral; now if I heard that from anyone else other than "z", I would be offering shocked sympathy, but we know him quite well, and know that in his day job, he works for the local funeral director. I completely understand and appreciate that he can't join us - but somehow "have a good day" didn't seem quite the right thing to be saying as we finished our phone conversation.
Posted by gje at 05:20 AM | Comments (0)
More about Graham Ellis of Well House ConsultantsSeptember 29, 2006
Coming together.
Every day, things seem closer to being done at Well House Manor - rooms getting finished, electrical second fit proceeeding quickly now, painted. Bathrooms coming into place. Outside, the work site is turning into a lawn. Deliveries are coming daily at both "48" and "404" and we're on course for being able to accommodate (sleep) people in about 10 days. There does remain a lot to do - a lot for all of us to do.
I unlocked the site about an hour ago, and had a chat with a neighbour walking up to the garage to get his daily paper (it's quite a trade that garage does in papers!); he was commenting on how much we've done, on how good it's looking ... and we got chatting about this and that. We're in quite a community there, and it's quite a community that will be looking out for us too. David was a little concerned that taking the wall away might have driven the squirrels that used to run along it away too, but I was able to re-assure him that they're still very much around. Give me some time with a camera and, perhaps at some future date, I'll post up some pictures of them.
Posted by gje at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
Celebration circles
Ever since man wanted to praise, to memorialise or to celebrate, he's chosen the circle as one his favourite geometric forms.
Stonehenge, just a short distance up the road from us, is the ancient form ... but there's many more modern forms too.
The modern stone circle - rather a different form - at Heaven's Gate, on the Longleat estate, was constructed very recently.
So was the circle of railway trucks at Ystrad Mynach in the Cardiff Valleys.
Perhaps the best known of modern celebration circles, though, is the Millenium Wheel in Central London ....
Posted by gje at 06:49 AM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2006
Tuesday night is party night
The young ladies of Melksham have a reputation for partying - indeed, I was talking with an old boy outside Well House Manor this evening as I locked up, and he was telling me how, at his home behind the Tavern and the King's Arms, he gets little peace on summer evenings when they're all in the gardens.
Here's a picture I snapped this evening of two young ladies boarding the X71 at the end of our road for a night on the tiles in Devizes; with buses back right up to 10 O'clock, they've got time for a few jars of 6X secure in the knowledge they're not driving ... after all, this particular pair are pillars of the local community.
Posted by gje at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
Easy criteria to meet
"I've got to write my blog when I get to my hotel tonight". So said I to the group that I'm teaching Tomcat configuration and deployment to here in Caerphilly today and tomorrow. "Shall I make it positive or a bit grouchy?" I continued. "Oh - positive" was the reply. "And shall I make it technical or no". "No" say they. So here we are, a positive and non-technical blog for the folks at Caerphilly County Borough Council (who also said they were very happy for me to drop their name in!).
I'm in Wales, and it's beautiful - so it's really not very hard to come up with something positive and something non-technical. The beauty of the valleys struck me as I drove in this morning, and this evening I stretched my legs walking into the town centre
Caerphilly Castle - one of those days that I can let a picture paint a thousand words. Would you like another thousand?
The low, bright autumn light over the moat, the ancient and modern mixing, may not be to everyone's taste, but I was sure happy to snap away.
There's a beauty to Wales that's more than landscape deep, too. I always find it friendly - remarkably friendly. The chap I walk by in the shopping centre remarks how nicely it's turned out today. The hotel receptionist goes out of her way to helpfully direct me int town. And my friends, old friends and new friends on the course up the road at Ystrad Mynach make my work so much fun. "Business or pleasure?" asks the hotel's check-in form. Can I tick both, please?
Posted by gje at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2006
Yes, but what do we do now??
Regular readers will know that I've been helping the campaign to retain the train service through Melksham at an appropriate level and, much to my surprise, a request that I made under the Freedom of Information act brought my 1kg of papers at the start of this month, followed by yet more information on line a couple of days back.
It appears that consultant's reports written in 2004 recommended the retention of peak trains, plus three daytime services, plus an evening service. And the consultants came down AGAINST retiming the commuter train so that it wasn't truely a peak service anymore.
I don't think the consultant's reports said what the people who commissioned them wanted them to say. We're ending up with no daytime service, and with the commuter train retimed away from the peak. I agree with the consultants that this isn't a good idea and will have a negative economic effect on the area, and on income for long distance journeys (to the tune of millions of pounds a year), whilst making a miniscule saving in the local area. Incredibly, the consultants reports were all based on growth predictions of less that 2% per annum when the real figure is around 35% for our line, and 41% over 3 years for all the services in the Bristol area.
So what do I and the other campaigners do now? We have official evidence / reports / suggestions that the service be retained. We know that our elements of the report have been rejected - perhaps by the franchise bidders who were given the freedom to come up with alternatives, of perhaps by the Deparment for Transport. But having evidence of what looks like mismanagement is a very different thing from being able, at this stage, to do anything about it, I fear.
Posted by gje at 06:32 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance
Welcome to the new, clearer, Horse's Mouth. You should spot that the text size is slightly larger, and contrasts better against the background. And if you're not keen on the new look, you are now empowered to change it to suit your own preference - simply click on the "customise" link on the right of the main page, and you'll be able to choose the colour combination and font size you want in another window, then choose "reload" that's just to the right of customise. If you're viewing this page on the archive, then the "Accessibility" menu will let you make a new selection ... and whichever way your selection is made, it'll be remembered for subsequent pages via a cookie.
The MovableType software that I use for this daily update is an excellent piece of software - but it's written and updated outside Europe, and doesn't necessarily conform to UK and European requirements. If this update provides a service, and I guess it does, then I'm required under DDA to make all practical efforts to make it equally accessible to everyone if asked, be they colour blind, or if they find a tiny text hard to read. Plenty more information from folks like the RNIB.
I could, probably, have claimed that I'm not providing a service when asked - that this is just a personal daily note. But I don't feel that's morally the correct position to take. Nor is it the correct long term business position to take - I want readers, and happy, non-struggling readers too.
Our main site and business is already DDA compliant - we've taken all reasonable steps to provide a level playing field, or one that's biased in favour of people with a disability ... but how to do it with a standard piece of software? It turns out that PHP and style sheets come to the rescue; the HTML pages are unchanged, but the style sheet is dynamically generated to meet the individual's request.
Here's part of the top of the style sheet code :
<?php
header("content-type: text/css");
if ($_COOKIE["whcmy"]) {
@mysql_pconnect((database login info));
@mysql_select_db($sqlaccount);
$q = @mysql_query(
"select * from whcmy where userkey = '$_COOKIE[whcmy]'");
if ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($q)) {
$fontsize = $row[fontsize];
}
}
$bfsize = 12;
if ($fontsize == 4) $bfsize = 10;
?>
And within the CSS code, you'll find things like:
#banner h1 {
font-size: <?= $bfsize+12 ?>px;
If you want to learn more about using style sheets in this way, the RNIB offer abasic course at the HTML and CSS level - see here, and we at Well House Consultants can provide you with PHP training, MySQL database training, and so on so that you can automate and integrate DDA compliance. Not only does it makes legal sense ... it also makes moral and business sense.
Posted by gje at 09:32 AM | Comments (3)
September 22, 2006
Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones
My involvement with the campaign to retain Melksham's train service at present or improved levels was always going to be a tough one. The threat to the service came to our attention late in the day, and the Government's political decision (for that's what it is) to slash trains in areas they don't hold any/many seats meant that we were up against an entrenched position with few party insiders who could scream that they might loose their seats over such things. So my initially modest aspirations were to get the service noticed, get it considered and reconsidered more fairly.
Well - we've certainly got more notice than I would have thought possible for a campaign started with a 2 pound domain. You'll see pictured here Mr Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, who's standing for the Conservative Party at the next general election in the new Chippenham seat. You may have heard of him or seen him on TV as "The Black Farmer". Yes, the other person in the picture is me, and we're at Melksham Station, this morning. Wilfred is bright, charismatic figure well in tune with media and publicity - indeed, he was there on a fact finding and photo opportunity, and we should find that some of the pictures and train information are spread further by him - including links back to the web site, and the rest.
It's good to see that we've got two strong, but very different, candidates standing at the next election, in our newly marginal seat. Both Wilfred and Duncan Hames for the Lib-Dems have been taking an interest in the train service and other local issues (the train is a bit of a no-brainer really!). Purely as individuals, I really like them both and they've impressed. On party lines, well, please don't let me get into reviewing party policies!
Posted by gje at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2006
Who can use which access door?
Anyone can come to our front door and ring the bell. It's then up to us whether we admit them to the house, or deal with them at the door. You can describe the front door as being public.
The side door through Lisa's office is more restricted, and whilst I and other members of the team can gain access through there, it's not how other visitors should gain entry. So the side door is protected
If anyone comes up to our place and happens to find we've left the door open ... walks in and knocks on the loo door when I'm in there, I'll probably be pretty unforgiving unless it's Lisa. Have I ever told you that Lisa and I are pretty close and come as a package?
And anyone who walks into the house, and straight into the toilet when someone's already using it is - well - invading their privacy
In Java, classes, methods and variables which might be accessible outside a class are marked public, protected, or private using a similar philosophy to I use on my doors. public is the widest access of all, and anything marked public will probably include checks to vet calls and usages and make sure they're valid. protected allows access from classes in the same directory or from subdirectories, so that it's generally available from team and family members but not from the wider world. package items (you don't specify the word package as it's the default) are only accessible to other classes in the same directory, and private items are only accessible from within the class in which they're defined.
Posted by gje at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
Hotel Exchange Rates
Ever been in a hotel and looked at the exchange rate they're offering to convert your pounds to their local currency, and shuddered? Or looked at the rates offered by hotels in England and wondered if they're ripping off the overseass visitor?
Well - the boot's on the other foot now as we work out what to do at Well House Manor. I don't see currency exchange as a big market for us, but I do feel we should be able to accept payment in US Dollars and Euros if that's how the customer wishes to pay.
Our first step against the normal is to admit, quite openly, that our exchange rate sucks when compared to that offered by the banks or credit card companies, and to suggest to our clients that they should use those alternatives if possible.
Second step - to have an exchange rate that does update reasonably often. We can do that automatically by using the exchange rates from an xml file that's offered on the web by the European Central Bank at http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml - updated daily, it provides central rates to and from Euros and by double-converting (not a problem as we're using central rates) we can come up with a dynamic exchange rate page.
Here's the Hotel exchange rate page that we'll be using at Well House Manor. If you're operating a hotel too, you're welcome to point people at that page or to develop your own. In fact, our exchange rate code might be more generally useful. See here for a source code listing to help you get started.
Posted by gje at 06:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2006
Email metrics
How many emails do YOU get each day? How many of them are unsolicited bulk emails that you throw away without evening opening them, or have your server reject? A long time ago, I wrote a PHP script that gives me a quick traffic graph looking back a number of weeks so that I can spot a changing pattern / sudden spam flood at just a few clicks. See here. ((PHP Programmers - the page also give you the source code of how we do this if you want to adopt a similar tactic))
Our emails are filtered by "Spam Assassin" which is an open source product supported by our ISP. By using a shared server, updates that are applied to spam assassin (such as data tables to help it recognise new forms of spam) are automatically added in to our account and we don't have to employ a staff member to do regular updates. However, we have tailored a preference file so that certain people and certain words in the subject line are always allowed through - "White listed" in the jargon. We've also set the preference file up so that it errs on the side of caution - emails that it suspects to be unsolicited and bulk but if doubtful about still get forwarded to us.
To give you an idea, around 1400 emails were received and rejected automatically by our server computer in the last 24 hours. An additional 900 or so were NOT rejected but were forwarded to one or more of us - that's the four of us, plus a couple of customer and family accounts. (The sample graph may show a different story as it's from the live site!) I'm guessing that in all that, I get a dozen or two emails a day from customers and contacts that I need to answer, plus about the same number of internal emails and perhaps 20 to 40 standard notifications and a handful of personal messages. That's why it's so easy to miss the odd important one and it will get worse as we start getting hotel booking enquiries in volume; I expect many people who are not "techies" to use very poor titles.
There's no easy way to avoid missing the odd important email - I nearly missed a quote request on Monday as the subject line was the name of the company who wanted training and at first glance I thought it was a suggestiion that I invest in their stock. So the headlined, non-personal email addresses on our main web site that people should use for a first contact send to four members of our team and everyone does a quick check - a series of saftey nets if you like.
But at the end of the day ... Dear Customer, dear contact ... if you email us and we don't reply within 24 hours, please write again. Your email and your business IS important to us.
Posted by gje at 06:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
Java oversold?
Oops ... I missed my blog entry yesterday - indeed, I had been up so early in the morning after a short night that I fell asleep around 8 p.m. and slept through - didn't even hear Lisa come in from her "Villager" meeting. But, running crisply again this morning I've already spoken with plasterer, plumber, events co-ordinator and graphic artist (4 separate people) and the show's on the road. Ovenight and late yesterday emails answered and I expect to hear the crunch of gravel as customers' cars roll up the driveway in a few minutes.
This week, I'm running a private Java course - and it's a greater pleasure than I had anticipated. We dropped publlic Java courses a year or two back, as everyone has different needs, and Java's a language that's been oversold quite absurdly. Some applications are excellent, but there's a significant number of people using Java because of commercial / marketing decisions when it's not right for them and without vetting / weeding out, they can drag the public courses down. It's a rather different thing on our Deploying Apache httpd and Tomcat public course, though ... by that stage people have established a usually-excellent use of Java applications.
Posted by gje at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)
Useful link: Java training
September 17, 2006
Autumn comes to Wiltshire.
A misty Sunday morning in Wiltshire - Autumn is here and it'll soon be time to turn on the heating. For us, it will be another long day of preparations for the opening in just 3 weeks time of Well House Manor.
Our bedroom, on the second floor of the old Spa House, looks out through a wrought iron balcony to the gardens below and a whole family of spiders had built their webs in the diamonds. Great droplets of water, condensing on the silky joints, added to the beauty.
Up at Well House Manor, the spiders have been busy too. The house, set back from the road, looked vague in the mist as I unlocked the site; the team working on the staircase should be in there today - like the railways where important junctions are renewed at the weekends, so it is with the risers and banisters.
A skip remains outside the manor, with final rubbish piled high; I've loct count of the number of skips we've had in the past 3 and a half months, but I think we're down to just one or two more now. And the contents which were, in the early days, old fixtures and fittings and rotted plaster have now become wood offcuts and builder's waste - no longer old material, but fresh and new to reflect Well House Manor as a whole. Once we get rid of the last skip, I'll post some pictures.
Posted by gje at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2006
UNABLE TO ATTEND
"Unable to Attend" - so says the notification attached to a refund cheque that I've received for a course that I had booked in May to attend in July. It's taken two months to get the refund. I felt the wording "unable to attend", whilst technically correct - was extremely cheeky. Why was I unable to attend? Because they cancelled the course that day ....
Lisa's also booked with the same company. To start this coming Tuesday, one day per week. "They'll change it at the last minute" I joked with her and, sure enough, she took a call at the end of the week to let her know that the course was starting and running a week later. As it happens, this isn't a problem, but I'll not be surprised to hear from them again next week.
Posted by gje at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
Smoking, or no
"No Smoking".
That's the story at our training centre, and at Well House Manor too. But there's a further story that says "but these delegates and hotel guests are our customers and we provide them with a service that doesn't restrict them". A paradox; one man's freedom to smoke in the lounge is another's loss of freedom to enjoy clear air there. I was anticipating that the new smoking laws, passed in February 2006 and due to come into force next year would provide guidance, but I now read:
"Smoking will still be allowed in the home and in places considered to be homes, such as prisons, care homes and hotels.. Ah!
So It's our choice as proprietors. We want to provide for our customers, to give them somewhere they can smoke in comfort and whatever the weather. But we don't want to have our other customers holding theire breath every time they go through the lounge or come in through the front door ....
To some extent, the Jury's still out and we're investigating options. Options to provide a good, dry, easy to access smoking area that the smokers WILL use, and very much aware that if we fail on any of the three criteria - if it's poor, wet, or hard to get to, many people will take the easy option and smoke just in the entrance porchway, or in their bedrooms and set the alarms off.
It's been a "manor morning". What with the smoking, and with working our final details of which way all the doors open and how we want the locks programmed. I now know my RX (handle on tight, opening inwards) from my LO (handle of left, opening outwards)
Posted by gje at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2006
Being sure to be positive in Perl
Perl's printf and sprintf routines (and functions with similar names in C and PHP, and the Python % operator) all provide us with a reasonably flexible way of formatting floating point numbers, but they can't meet every eventuallity. At times, you'll need to use sprintf to do most of the work then adjust it with some other facility such as regular expressions.
Example ... if you want to add a "+" sign onto the front of a positive number ... a couple of quick regular expressions will do the trick. And if you want to avoid "-0.00" being reported for a tiny negative number, you can do another fix. Here's the code:
sub price_format {
my $result = sprintf "%6.2f",$_[0];
$result =~ s/\s(\d)|^(\d)/+\1\2/;
$result =~ s/\s[-+]0\.(0+)$/ 0.\1/;
return $result;
Written, you'll note, as a named block of code - a "sub" - so that you can easily store it in a module, reuse it, not have to work out those expressions again.
Complete code (commented and with test program) here
Sample output - showing special formatting in the left had column, and regular sprintf format to the right:
-1.65 -1.65
-1.10 -1.10
-0.55 -0.55
0.00 -0.00
+0.55 0.55
+1.10 1.10
+1.65 1.65
Posted by gje at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)
Useful link: Perl training
A lazy programmer is a good programmer
I'm lazy.
By which I mean, if a job can be done once in such a way that I don't have to keep doing it time and again, then that's how I will try and do it, even if there's a bit more effort and cost at first. That's why (for example) we've laid an underground water pipe out to where we're planning to have a fountain at Well House Manor even though we know we could top up the water with buckets or hoses every couple of weeks.
And I'm a lazy programmer. Which means (I think) an efficient programmer. Always looking for ways to reuse code, and always looking for coding techniques which save effort at data entry and maintainance time. That last is all the more important, since data entry and maintainance is a huge task in most applications, outweighing the coding many times over.
We've been adding map references to our pages about the Melksham area for quite a while, with clever links to maps, etc. And we've also been adding a paragraph with words like "and nearby you'll find ...." onto most of the pages too - a bit of a maintainance hassle that as if I were to add - say - a page on West Woods and talk about Marlborough and Avebury, then I would also have needed to have visited those other pages and added references in the other direction too.
WIBNIF (Wouldn't it be nice if) I could just add a grid reference to a page and have it AUTOMATICALLY and dynamically add a list of nearby places? Well - I've invested the time and coding to do this. You can find my PHP source code here (and it's in functions so that you too can be lazy and just use my hard work!), and you can see it in action here where we list out over 50 places on our database near to Well House Manor Hotel.
Posted by gje at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2006
Catching the slope
I find it very hard to capture slopes and hilly tracks in photographs. What I feel is very hilly and quite spectacular out there on the ground turns out to be flat and boring when loaded in from camera and leaves me, let alone my audience, saying "so what". There's a similar issue with some of the wide open views that we have here in Wiltshire.
But I felt that this picture managed to capture the drama of the edge of the Marlborough Downs at Roundway Hill Covert - (more pictures) - a beauty spot that's only 15 minutes from us in Melksham and is worth visiting at more or less any time of year (not that I would be keen on that path in the ice!)
In the last couple of weeks, I've stolen a couple of hours here and there to grab a few extra pictures even closer to home than Roundway Hill ... just look around the corner in Melksham and it's surprising what you can find - or perhaps follow one of thse links if you're not in town at the moment.
Link - Melksham Parish Church
Link - Church Walk
Link - Melksham Miscellany
And near to Roundway Hill, you'll also find ...
Link - Oliver's Castle
Link - The Devizes White Horse
Posted by gje at 06:22 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
Add to shopping cart - NO VACANCIES sign
I've been writing a standard piece of text this morning that says "Sorry - we're full on xxxxx night(s) and can't offer you a bedroom" ... and Well House Manor doesn't even open until early next month. And I've also taken a decision to block all remaining rooms on an "event" evening, as having just one or two "outsiders" at a hotel that's otherwise turned over completly to a celebration of (in this case) a national festival is unfair on those extra guests, and is unfair on the celebrants.
We've said that we'll not be set up to take walk in business; but never the less I would expect that people will drive in or walk up to Well House Manor and ask if we have immediate availability. And, should a room be open and we're happy that everything is in order, we'll take them in. With bookings going as they already are, that means that we'll need a "sorry - no vacancies" sign sooner rather than later.
Posted by gje at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2006
Double and Triple equals operator in PHP
Have you been given a piece of code to maintain that has single, double and treble equal operators in it? What's the difference?
A single = sign is an assignment - take what's on the right as an expression and save it in the variable named on the left.
A double = sign is a comparison and tests whether the variable / expression / constant to the left has the same value as the variable / expression / constant to the right.
A triple = sign is a comparison to see whether two variables / expresions / constants are equal AND have the same type - i.e. both are strings or both are integers.
When should I use == and when ===? Here's an example.
If I write
if ($_REQUEST[name] == "") .....
then I'm testing to see if a name has been entered on a form - it will return true if no name has been enetered and it will also retrun true if there wasn't an input box on the form called "name" or if the URL was called up witghout a form at all. However, if I use the three-equals varient:
if ($_REQUEST[name] === "") .....
then this will return true if and only if the form had an input box called "name" into which the user didn't type anything at all.
Naturally, there will be times when you want to check very specifically that the form was submitted but with an empty box, and other times where you want to check simply if you've got a name or not (for whatever reason). That's why PHP has the flexibility and provides both == and ===.
Posted by gje at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)
Useful link: PHP training
September 11, 2006
4 weeks to go
A month to go ... and there's still a lot of work to be done at Well House Manor. And yet so much progress happens and suddenly things are starting to fall into place. Today and Friday, I'll be on "Office days" catching up on the mountains of paperwork and calls, and helping make sure that nothing falls between any cracks - indeed, this morning's blog, as is becoming standard, is written from Well House Manor.
A word (truthfully - many words!) needs to be said about all the back room work that Lisa's being dong on this project - it couldn't have been done without her, and she's working like a Trojan on everything from the layout of the buffet table in "The Whitworth" through to sourcing an arranging the installation of the door card system, via all the individual room layouts and getting the booking system together. Lisa - THANK YOU.
There's a certain beauty even in construction work at times. The pictures above and below, though showing just how much work remains, also have a certain beauty. From a tired old house, we're getting tantalisingly close to a crisp, modern hotel. I hope some of you will come and see us when we're done.
Posted by gje at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2006
Ballooning from Devizes
A lovely day yesterday, with a gentle south easterly breeeze. On the green at Devizes as we drove through at the end of the day, a great red monster was taking shape - a hot air balloon ride.
First, an electric blower started the inflation and as the thing grew bigger, the gas burners were turned on; blasts of gas filled the ballow that moved from horizontal to vertical. And when the balloon was fully inflated and strong, the riders all climbed into the basket .... and off she went.
I undertand that they were going to fly at a height of about 1000 feet for around an hour, travelling in the Melksham / Chippenham / Corsham directory - what a lovely way to spend a summer's evening.
Posted by gje at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2006
Warning - false emails, said to be from Paypal
I get a LOT of spam emails - phishing trips by people looking to steal my identity - asking me to confirm my details with the likes of E-bay, Paypal and half the banks in the world. The idea of the spammers is that you go on to what looks like the company's site to confirm you details but really you're on their site - with the same buttons, look and feel that you may be used to - and by submitting your login information you're giving them access.
There's a similar scam - I've seen before but suddenly had a batch in the last 24 hours - which tells me about a Paypal transaction I'm said to have made, and asks me to dispute the transaction if I don't agree it. This is likely to be an attempt at identity theft - a phishing trip - too and you should NOT follow any of the links offered.
Here is what my sample looked like.
My advise is to ignore these emails, but I'm slightly concerned in offering that advise as it's highly unlikrly, but possible, that such an email could be providing you with a warning that someone has already got into your account. You must make your own decision what to do (this is my "limitation of liablilty" statement!!).
Personally, if in doubt I "view raw source" and / or "complete headers" of the email and look for clues such as
Received: from apache by sv1.pacificasia.com.sg with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from
as the last "received" header which tell me that the message cam from Singapore and
<a href="http://203.115.31.108/Sea%20Level/.www.paypal.com/us/login_secure/"><span class="ppem106">Dispute Transaction</span></a>
as the HTML that created the "Dispute Transaction" button ... the numbered IP address is clearly wrong (but beware - this button could have a rogue named server similar to Paypal's).
If still in doubt and you really feel you need to contact Paypal, do so by connecting to their system via your normal link or another route and absolutely NOT through any link in the email you've just received. Chances are, though, you are needlessly worrying - millions of false emails go out every day.
Posted by gje at 11:48 PM | Comments (1)
September 08, 2006
Put the answer in context - it may be printed
Always remember that your web appllication user is likely to print out the final page and keep it. And it will be pretty useless to him if it doesn't contain certain information - information such as the inputs he made in order to produce the page.
Q: At what time on 7th December do .... trains leave Melksham for Swindon, after 5 p.m.
A: 17:02 and 21:33
But don't just output the two times. Restate the question in the answer, even adding in extra confirmatory gems: "Trains for Swindon leave Melksham (after 17:00) leave at 17:02 and 21:33 on Thursday, 7th December".
There are excpetions - people would get rather unhappy with you if you echoed their password of their credit card details, though they will be thankful for the last 4 digits of their card number so that they can recall, later, which card it was that they used.
Posted by gje at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2006
From the Manor written
This morning, my daily update is written for the first time from Well House Manor. Our hotel opens in a month's time, with a C course followed by a C++ course in the first week we're running, and a MySQL course followed by a Python course in the second week. And rather than the gentle opening we expected, we're going to hit the ground running; we're getting fully booked already.
It turns out that this is an opportune time for us to be opening accommodation. For the first time I can recall, a delegate on the current course, staying locally at a hotel we've often used with success but is now under new ownership, decided to move to another location after one night. Basic facilities were missing / not working / dangerous, and he found it difficult to sleep because of the noise. Giving that place a score of 1, we'll be aiming to provide a score of 100 at Well House Manor, and we'll expect our clients to tell us if we slip below 75. Forms provided, and we'll ask too!
But isn't it a bit daft me being up at "The Manor" a month early? Not really; I'm getting into practise, and we've got so many deliveries and workmen arriving it's an excellent chance to catch up with them and guide the work along. In fact, a lorry load of window shutter expected first thing has just arrived; I had better go help get them unloaded into goods inwards.
Posted by gje at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
Strikingly busy
How do we manage this? We introduce something new and we're rushed off our feet - not that I'm complaining in the slightest! And so it is with our Hotel. Although we're not open until next month, we've got every room pencilled in already for one of the courses that month, and also for Geekmas as the end of November. A rapid edit to the web site last night to ensure that people don't ask for rooms that are gone .... and a very rare chance for me to use the <strike>through to </strike> tag pair in HTML. I had to look THAT one up. Resultant text:
The Geekmas meetings are FREE, but attendance is by prior booking only please. If you wish to join us at "The Refa", we'll ask you to make a contribution of 10 pounds a head (much easier than trying to split the bill many ways) to include aallll the food and soft drinks you want. And if you want to stay overnight, we're extending our introductory delegate rate to the "Geekmas" weekend and it's just 60 pounds a room including 1 or 2 breakfasts. If you wanted to stay - sorry - all our bedrooms are gone. But please let us know as there is other accommodation nearby that we can put you in touch with.
It's going to make Geekmas all the more fun. With 6 people staying with us, a number of local people not staying, and I expect others stopping elsewehre in Melksham it will be a fabulous weekend. If you've not read about / signed up for Geekmas yet, please visit the page and sign up now!.
Posted by gje at 06:21 AM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2006
The train returns for a few weeks
From 26th August until yesterday morning, the Melksham train service was again replaced by a bus. The first train back was the 05:52 to Swindon and I found myself on that service ... with 18 people on from Melksham to Chippenham, and no less than 42 from there to Swindon. Yes, I had raised a group but my group save ticket for 8 was actually a minority of people on the train. Here are some pictures:
 The view of ... the Department for Transport |  The view of ... the users of the service |
I'm buoyed up, enthusiastic concerning news / figures / infomation received and observed, even if also tinged with a little dark cloud that says "perhaps too late" - the service is due to be cut back to just 2 trains a day, at less than optimum times for any of the traffic flows, in December
The pictures are both views of the same train; what I see is a whole lot of passengers and talking to them I see a whole wide range of journeys, and I hear of problems for them when the train is no longer available. What the DfT see is a very nice, expensive train with no-one around.
You'll find lots more at www.savethetrain.org.uk
Posted by gje at 06:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2006
Fitting our bathrooms
It's a day to show you what's going on behind the scenes at Well House Manor - there are so many things to consider when refitting a hotel and thank goodness for modern electronic devices to help us.
Picture 1 of a series of 5. Choosing where to place the towel rack for spare towels in bathroom 1.
With just a month to go to our opening, there remains a great deal to be done. We see progress every day, we chivvy and chase where we feel there's a possible issue, and we order so many elements that should all we coming together in the next four weeks. September's going to be an interesting month!
Posted by gje at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2006
Morgans Hill
Friday evening, and a walk on the downs. We came across these two, supping on a nice juicy meal of cowpat that really was still as moist as when it was dropped; ah, the wonders of what once can do with a digital camera!
Morgan's Hill, at the edge of the Downs on the Devizes to Calne road has been a spot I've visited many times over the nearly 30 years that I've lived in Wiltshire. The old Roman road from Bath to London climbs from the valley of the river Avon near Calne almost straight up to the watershed, and in places you walk with a great view and drop on one side, and the nature reserve on the other. More pictures!
The Fair is in Devizes this weekend - they come twice a year, and being the Devizes Festival at the moment, it's a good time for them. Pictures - yes I took some there too on Friday evening; once again, the wonders of the digital cameraa! Pictures!
Posted by gje at 04:56 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2006
To list a directory under httpd on a web server, or not?
One of the choices a web server administrator has to make when he configures a web server is what to do with directories in which his content suppliers do not put a home page. Does he want to provide an error response (such as a "404" or "403" page), or does he wish to provide a directory listing?
A directory listing is useful - VERY useful - for developers on test systems as it lets them see what's there and navigate at early testing stages, but conventional wisdom is to turn the faciity OFF on live web servers on the internet and indeed we have it turned off here, even though we also have ensured there's a home page in every directory except one .... exception to be explained in a minute.
To turn indexes off for the whole web site, the web administrator ensures that
Options Indexes
is not specified in his httpd.conf configuration file.
If overrides are allowed for individual directories, the a file called .htaccess can be placed in any directory that SHOULD be allowed to produce an automated index - simply put the Options line I gave above in a file of that name. But why on earth would you want to?
This morning, the postman delivered a heavy weight of papers which I had requested under the Freedom of Information act. A lot of documents to sift, and I've one or two railway-minded friends (this being an issue with the local train service) who wanted to see them rather quickly. So - a new directory on the server, an upload of a .pdf file, and added .htacess and I can simply point them at http://www.wellho.net/dft_foi and they can have a quiet evening reading about whether or not the Bristol to Oxford train should be re-introduced, and how much the Train Operating Company here abouts askes the government to pay to maintain our Melksham service. Oh - there's also a summary here if you don't want to wade through hundreds of pages like I've been doing this afternoon!
Posted by gje at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)
Eventful evening - a lesson in looking after contacts
Yesterday evening, we went out for a drive ... a glorious evening at the end of a long day. Late afternoon over the Marlbrough Downs; glorious Wiltshire. Then down to Calne for a quick pub meal to round off the brief break. In the car park there, this guy we didn't know ran his car into ours.
D'you know - I would NOT use that pub again, and yet I would very cheerfully welcome the chap who pranged us into my home. Odd, but it all come down to interaction and attitude - and it's a good reminder for us in a customer facing industy that presentation, willingness, helpfulness are so vital; reaching a conclusion without keeping people waiting and good, reliable results are also important, but they're not everything.
It's only a smallish dent on the car - we're perfectly OK. We were stopped, he reversed out and his nose swung into our front wing as he turned. He moves a yard forward so that I can get out; we both leave our cars "are you alright?". "Yes, are you". Good - no need to apply yesterday's First Aid lessons. Easy exchange of details. profuse apology (from him) to the extend that I was reasuuring him that these things happen. And he even came back a few minutes later after he had spoken with his insurers to check that I had ALL the details that I would require. Seen those "Direct Line" adverts where someone smiles because he's been hit by a Direct Line driver and they clear it up for everyone? Well - we'll be testing that out in practise.
The pub (it's a hotel as well). We walk in to reception from the very limited car park. "You checking in" asks a chap seated eating a steak and chips at an awkward table in the public area of reception. "No - just looking for a meal - can we eat. Are you the proprietor?". "I'm the owner" he confirms, and I end up chatting about our business customers and his internet access which I've seen widely advertised around. "Oh- there's something wrong with it at the moment - has been for a while - it just cuts out... but if anyone needs it they can use our computer behind reception ...". I'm not sure I would be happy about that if I was there on business; the room prices looked too good to be true and, yes, they were too good to be true.
In a quiet pub, it took over half an hour to serve two meals, and both came out wrong - one the wrong dish, and a rare steak came out well done. "Probably the worst steak I've ever eaten" I'm thinking to myself and it's very VERY unsual for me to think in such terms. The staff never came round to 'check service' and see that everything was OK with us (I suspect they knew they had served a dreadful meal), and the barman came over to claim an extra 10 quid that he had given us in excess change (I told him of his mistake at the time, but he had assured me that I had given him 2 x 20 not 20 + 10!). As we were about to leave, "mine host" offered me a compliment slip so that we have their details on file. But then he couldn't find one anywhere around and just told us his URL instead. I do know it anyway, but I'm not inclined to post it here.
Posted by gje at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2006
Emergency First Aid Training
As part of our business, we're very conscious that we have customers to look after at our training centre and that they could have accidents or be taken ill at any time. And that will be all the more of a concern when we offer overnight accommodation, and widen our customer base / operation to a full hotel in coming months. So we concluded that we should go away and get ourselves trained up for emergency first aid - enough to stabalise a situation, call in the experts, and care for the patient unti they arrive.
But where to go for such a course? Well - "start looking close to home" is the motto. We went on our First Aid course yesterday - an excellent public course run by Peak Health Promotions in (would you believe it?) the centre of Melksham, just five minutes walk from our new place.
The tutor - Paul Cambridge - was excellent; good information, well presented, tailored to fit the specific questions and work place requirements of the delegates. His company, it turns out, is a local one in the town although they will work all over the country. I can't recommend him enough - he's on 01225 700997.
Following on from the day, we decided that ALL of our staff, and not just Lisa and myself, should complete this training. We are just ten doors up from the local hospital (with its casualty unit), but never the less we feel it is utterly in our customer and staff's interest for everyone to have a little training about what to do if a medical crisis hits. It could save a life.
Posted by gje at 07:37 AM | Comments (0)