Keynote article ...
What is coming up from Well House in 2013 - public Open Source / IT courses.
We're running public IT courses in Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Tcl, Lua, C and C++. Each of the programming language courses is available in two different forms, depending on the delegate's starting level - there are:
• courses for newcomers to programming, which make no assumption of prior knowledge and cover basic principles as well as the particular language itself,
• courses for delegates with prior programming experience, which allows these delegates to come on a course and start learning new material right from the start.
There are additional courses at a more advance level in PHP, Python and Perl, and also Linux / Web server deployment / Tomcat courses - associated technologies away for delegates who need to look after products and systems written in these open source languages and others, without necessarily needing to know how to do the actual analysis and programming.
All courses are scheduled at least 4 times a year, and the full schedule is published [here]. Some key course features:
• a maximum of 8 delegates ensuring excellent personal attention for the needs of each delegate
• no minimum number - you can book in confidences that course will run
• custom fitted training centre - all the facilities you need for learning
• course notes written by your tutor, who's also a user of the technology himself
• overnight accommodation available at the training centre
From a very "bold" list of slightly unusual features, other things follow and we end up with a product that's distinctly different - and for many delegates much better - in what we provide.
As well as training in our own centre, I occasionaly present or attend courses in other company's training centres, and that gives me an opportunity to learn from others facilities and methods. I can learn from their best principles, and follow those principles where appropriate. And I can also learn what doesn't work, and double-check our product to make sure it doesn't have any similar issues. Giving, or attending, a course that's in a room known as a "Goldilocks Room" (Always too hot or too cold), in a tight urban environment where there's no room outside for parking or inside to relax or even spread out your manual and set up your own laptop, and suffering "death by powerpoint" - where the tutor reads of a series of slides to you as his main delivery - isn't the best learning environment - but I see it provided all too often.
So what can I tell you about our public, 2013, courses.
• The notes we provide accompany the course, but they're not read to you (the delegate) as the main method of course delivery. The course is presented interactively - the tutor talking about, drawing diagrams, and writing programs to show tips and techniques, and using interactive feedback throughout the course. Short examples are written from scratch, longer examples may be pre-written, but the tutor will change the examples, show when they work (and when they don't), with the delegates having the opportunity to jump in, help identify what's wrong or what could be better with new code, and learning from the dynamic development environment rather than just from the static examples pre-prepared. It takes a technically very knowledgeable tutor to be able to do this, but the gains are huge. Our pre-written notes are typically skimmed through at the end of each section to ensure that the tutor hasn't overlooked any vital bullet points during the interactive presentation, and also to help the delegates appreciate the material that they'll leave the course with which is very much designed as a reference book for their later use.
• By having overnight accommodation at our training centre, we've turned a 9 - to - 5 setup where delegates arrive just in time for the course, and leave promptly at the end of the day, into something much more relaxed, and a much better learning experience - our training centre is our delegate's home for the week. And that means that, come 5 p.m. they can still ask the tutor questions, they can carry on with practical sessions for as long as they like - even taking our laptops up to their rooms if they like. And the rooms are fitted to four star standards, with our staff team being available from early in the morning to late in the evening just as in a regular hotel.
• Some delegates don't stay. It would be crazy for a delegate who lives 6 miles away in Trowbridge to stop overnight, for example. But the extended hour philosophy covers day delegates too. We're set up for people to walk in at any time from 7 a.m. if they wish, and to stick around to mid or late evening if they want to. And we find that out of "core" hours, delegates often socalise - walk into the town to eat together, perhaps play games, but also share discussions about their jobs, why they're on the course, and how the technology is helping (or will help) them. You may consider this "socialising" ... or you may consider it to be another tremendously useful facet you get from our courses - something you simply don't get in those places where you're being encouraged out of the door at the end of each day.
• Public course prices for 2013 remain as they were in 2012. That's 350.00 for the first day, plus 250.00 for each subsequent day of a course. If you're staying, add 60.00 per room per night, and I'm afraid you need to add VAT to the total bill. The course include lunch and all course materials, free parking, ... accommodation includes breakfast. There's unlimited coffee and soft drinks on tap. All you'll need to add will be an evening meal - plenty of eating places within walking distance, or feel free to order a delivery or bring in a takeaway. We're happy to pick you up if you arrive in our town by public transport, and we have 120 Mbit broadband freely available to you.
Have a look in our course schedule - [here] - at the course you're interested in; each item links to a full course description with all the details, and notes of alternative courses. If you're left with any questions, please email me (graham@wellho.net) or phone (01225 708225). We can take your booking by email or phone, and we also have online booking links from each of the course descriptions. In practice, we prefer you to email or phone so that we can discuss your needs ahead of time, ensure you're booking the right course, and so that I know when I'm presenting how to tune your particular course to best train you in the way you need.
(this article written on 2012-12-28) |
Other articles ...
[4063] Backups by crossover between network centres - setting up automatic scp transfers
- (new - 2013-04-13)[4056] An overpractical test of our backup strategy!
- (new - 2013-03-30)[4045] Linux Web Server - User Roles, User Accounts, and shared administration
[4013] Web Frameworks - nested templates
[3902] Shell - Grep - Sed - Awk - Perl - Python - which to use when?
Top or
Show all for Linux and Shell Programming
[4064] Apache httpd - a robust, open source web server
- (new - 2013-04-16)[4001] Helping search engines with appropriate 400 error codes
[3997] Servlet v JSP (Java Server Page). What is the difference?
[3996] Tips on Tomcat - moving applications around
[3892] Distributed, Balanced and Clustered Load Sharing - the difference
Top or
Show all for Apache HTTP and Tomcat Servers
[3982] Using a vector within an object - C++
[3979] Extended and Associated objects - what is the difference - C++ example
[3811] Associated Classes - using objects of one class within another
[3809] Dwarf Exception Unwind Info
[3807] Reading (and writing) files in C++
Top or
Show all for C and C++ Programming
[4097] Melksham Chamber of Commerce - Report for AGM, 21st May 2013
- (new - 2013-05-21)[4048] Art, Catering, Transport - Melksham Campus Elements - reaching local experts
[4046] Over a hundred welcoming businesses - Melksham Town Centre
[4041] Report on the last year - Melksham Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Melksham Without Parish Council
[4039] Seed Swap at Well House Manor
Top or
Show all for Melksham
[4082] Training around the world - easy payment in pounds Sterling
- (new - 2013-05-10)[4015] Upcoming courses and availabiity
[3983] Upcoming courses at Well House Manor - Ruby, Python, Perl
[3964] What is coming up from Well House in 2013 - public Open Source / IT courses.
[3961] Well House Staff Party
Top or
Show all for Training from Well House Consultants
[4093] More things to make sure that we do NOT do ...
- (new - 2013-05-18)[4091] A reminder of why we opened Well House Manor for our customers
- (new - 2013-05-17)[4081] Pushing down the advertised price, pushing up the total price charged.
- (new - 2013-05-08)[4078] Train works for me!
- (new - 2013-05-02)[4077] Palty or Parliamentary?
- (new - 2013-04-30)[4058] The highs and lows of customer service - Cheltenham
- (new - 2013-04-03)[4051] On reading a new hotel review
- (new - 2013-03-24)
Top or
Show all for Running a training and hotel company
[4083] Spring at Well House Manor - Teas and Coffees, Museum, Garden, Rooms
- (new - 2013-05-11)[4049] Business meetings in Melksham - Well House Manor
[4030] What is on OUR pond?
[4019] Coffee Shop in Melksham
[4005] New guest ... becoming returning guest
Top or
Show all for Well House Manor - Hotel and Training Centre
[4076] Web site - fully back!
- (new - 2013-04-29)[4065] Handling requests to a forum - the background process
- (new - 2013-04-17)[4038] Using Pygments to colour our training examples
[4025] Backups, Codebase, Strategy and more - dealing with forum incidents
[4017] Acceptable User Policy / vexatious interacter
Top or
Show all for For the Webmaster, Postmaster and moderator
[4096] Perl design patterns example
- (new - 2013-05-20)[4066] MVC and Frameworks - a lesson from first principles in PHP
- (new - 2013-04-19)[4061] Seamless, integrated IT - we have a long way to go!
- (new - 2013-04-11)[4021] Spike solution, refactored and reusable, Python - Example
[3978] Teaching OO - how to avoid lots of window switching early on
Top or
Show all for General Programming Topics
[4075] Further recent PHP examples
- (new - 2013-04-28)[4074] A comment on comments in PHP
- (new - 2013-04-28)[4073] Learning about Object Orientation in PHP - a new set of examples
- (new - 2013-04-28)[4072] Splitting the difference with PHP
- (new - 2013-04-27)[4071] Setting up strings in PHP
- (new - 2013-04-27)[4070] Passing variable between PHP pages - hidden fields, cookies and sessions
- (new - 2013-04-26)[4069] Even early on, separate out your program from your HTML!
- (new - 2013-04-25)[4068] Arrays in PHP - contain different and even mixed data types
- (new - 2013-04-24)[4062] Sessions, forms and validation in CodeIgniter - early examples
- (new - 2013-04-13)[4060] CodeIgniter - an excellent PHP framework with an easy start point
- (new - 2013-04-06)[4059] Curl and curling from PHP
- (new - 2013-04-04)[4057] stdClass in PHP - using an object rather than an associative array
- (new - 2013-04-02)[4055] Using web services to access you data - JSON and RESTful services
- (new - 2013-03-29)[4053] Frameworks - learning through exploring and understanding data sources
- (new - 2013-03-27)
Top or
Show all for PHP - the language and its application
[3573] New in Java 7 - and why we are not running public Java 7 courses
[3497] Not the same language - but based on the same constructs
[3365] Turning bright delegates into bright and knowledgable ones
[3048] String handling - from first steps to practical examples
[3047] What is a universal superclass? Java / Perl / Python / Other OO languages
Top or
Show all for Java and the Java Environment
[4084] New Pictures - Melksham Pack Horse Bridge
- (new - 2013-05-12)[3989] Plenty to see and do - even in Winter - on a Well House Manor weekend
[3884] Pictures - across the park, French Weir and River Tone, Taunton
[3860] Melksham to Steam in Swindon, by train - great day out
[3729] Then and now pictures of Melksham - on show through the summer
Top or
Show all for Around, about and nearby to Wiltshire
[4031] Showing what programming errors look like - web site pitfall
[3941] Building an object based on another object in Perl
[3940] Run other processes from within your Perl program
[3939] Lots of ways of doing the same thing in Perl - list iteration
[3927] First match or all matches? Perl Regular Expressions
Top or
Show all for The Perl Programming Language and its use
[4037] Cascading Style Sheets and formatting your web page
[4036] HTML tags uses in these blog articles
[4035] Special characters in HTML
[4034] The VERY basics of a web page ... and web site
[3563] How big is a web page these days? Does the size of your pages matter?
Top or
Show all for Client Side Languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
[4010] Really Simple Rails
[4009] Clear, concise examples - Ruby classes and objects.
[4008] Reading and checking user inputs - first lessons - Ruby
[4006] Ruby / SQLite3 example program, showing JOIN v LEFT JOIN
[4003] Web and console - same principle, same code - Ruby example
Top or
Show all for Ruby and Ruby on Rails
[4007] Which database should I use? MySQL v SQLite
[3928] Storing your intermediate data - what format should you you choose?
[3494] Databases - when to treat the rules as guidelines
[3361] Blowing our own trumpet - MySQL resources
[3270] SQL - Data v Metadata, and the various stages of data selection
Top or
Show all for SQL and MySQL
[3638] Sorting dicts and arrays in Tcl
[3629] Sharing lots of values in Tcl without having lots of global declarations
[3618] lists and struct::list in Tcl - Introduction to struct::list and examples
[3617] The fileutil package and a list of file system commands in Tcl
[3614] Tcl - dicts - a tutorial and examples
Top or
Show all for Tcl, Tcl/Tk and Expect
[3730] What is a metatable? How do I set one up? How do I use them? Lua
[3727] Using Lua tables as objects
[3725] Lua Tables
[3724] Learning to Program in Lua - public / open training course / class
[3695] Functions are first class variables in Lua and Python
Top or
Show all for Programming in Lua
[4095] Django - first steps - Updated
- (new - 2013-05-19)[4094] Python Properties - how and why
- (new - 2013-05-18)[4092] Identity in Python
- (new - 2013-05-17)[4090] Test Driven Development in Python - Customer Comes First
- (new - 2013-05-16)[4089] Quick and easy - showing Python data hander output via a browser
- (new - 2013-05-15)[4088] Some tips and techniques for huge data handling in Python
- (new - 2013-05-15)[4087] Python network programming - new FTP and socket level examples
- (new - 2013-05-14)[4086] Cacheing class for Python - using a local SQLite database as a key/value store
- (new - 2013-05-14)[4085] JSON from Python - first principles, easy example
- (new - 2013-05-13)
Top or
Show all for Python Programming
[4079] Melksham Area - Unitary Council results, May 2013
- (new - 2013-05-04)[4052] The PHP course this week is in... Salford
- (new - 2013-03-26)[4016] Red, yellow, green or pink dog? Yellow Dog Project
[4011] From Salford
[3990] Stripes of Snow
Top or
Show all for And also ...
[4080] Fancy a day at the seaside? Weymouth from Melksham
- (new - 2013-05-06)[4040] Report on the last year - Melksham Railway Developement Group for Melksham Without Parish Council
[4032] Easier public transport from Melksham to Bristol Airport
[4023] Melksham to Chippenham (Station) bus services - times and routes
[4022] A request for all of Melksham transport groups to work integrated
Top or
Show all for Public Transport
[4067] The woman, the television, the bullock and Darlington
- (new - 2013-04-23)[3922] Twerp - A person regarded as insignificant and contemptible
[3912] Sand to Arabia, Coals to Newcastle or Woodburners to Russia
[3868] How to make an ohno cake
[3851] Who is this? Picture Puzzle
Top or
Show all for Fun and Flames
[3164] Brown - or Mrs Sally Brown, accountant from Whitstable?
[2537] Faster network, but not faster browsing until ...
[2483] Clustering on Tomcat
[2384] Looking ahead to the Autumn season of training and accommodation
[2326] Learn a new programming language this summer.
Top or
Show all for Keynote Articles
[4099] Perl Dancer - a Perl Framework - Installation and first test
- (new - 2013-05-23)[4098] Using object orientation for non-physical objects
- (new - 2013-05-22)[4054] On Salford Docks - mind over matter?
- (new - 2013-03-28)[4047] Looking for Creative Design, Catering and Transport inputs to help with Melksham Campus
[4044] What to do on a wet weekend in Melksham?
Top or
Show all for unclassified
For the Webmaster, Postmaster and moderator • Training from Well House Consultants • Tcl, Tcl/Tk and Expect • Running a training and hotel company • Melksham • Linux and Shell Programming • The Perl Programming Language and its use • Python Programming • And also ... • Apache HTTP and Tomcat Servers • Fun and Flames • Java and the Java Environment • PHP - the language and its application • SQL and MySQL • Public Transport • General Programming Topics • Keynote Articles • C and C++ Programming • Well House Manor - Hotel and Training Centre • Around, about and nearby to Wiltshire • Ruby and Ruby on Rails • Programming in Lua • Client Side Languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
A little more about this newsletter ...
At Well House Consultants, we run niche IT training courses ... and we run a hotel for delegates on those courses and other visitors to Melksham too. And we make a lot of friends - have a lot of ambassadors with whom we want to keep in touch. So every day Graham (that's me, writing this piece) puts together an article or two which might include the latest sample programs that I've written during the current course, new information about
Well House Manor - our business hotel, tips on search engine optimisation,
announcements of upcoming public courses, pictures of local places, and even (on occasions) rants and whimsical pieces to keep those friends up to date and in touch. The feeds are available directlt via the Blog -
"The Horse's Mouth", they're on our
Twitter Feed and you can find me at my
LinkedIn profile.
But most people just want to look us up occasionally - every month or two, and then to catch up on the latest news just for their particular subjects of interest ... and that's what this newsletter is about
You'll find above the titles of ALL the new articles written in the last two months, listed by major subject area, and showing as
(new) with their date of publication. You'll find additional articles in each category too - topping each category up to a minimum of five articles. And you'll find a link at the end of each section which lets you expand that section to show the titles of every article that's been published in that section. After all, "the old ones are often the best ones", aren't they?