Hotel and training centre, Melksham, Wiltshire
High quality accommodation for course delegates, business travellers and the leisure visitor too.

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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
One Thousand Posts and still going strong

Can you believe it? In the two and a half years I've been writing here I have posted no fewer than ONE THOUSAND items and articles - ranging from the frivolous to the serious, and from the long to the short, and from daily life to highly technical tips.

Why do I do it? Because it gives me a chance to think, to get my thoughts together. I can come up with new working to describe some technical issue that I keep being asked about (and a trainer, of all people, needs to do that). I can give thought to issues that are quite beyond the Open Source world ... be it to the local police's policy on its proactive anti-drink-drive campaign and consolidate opinion, or to finding a picture of a donkey suitable to illustrate a point I was making at the time. And - I admit it - because I enjoy writing. Now there's a rum'un for one who did his very best to avoid English prep at school and can be classified in the lower percentiles of traditional letter writers.

What do I NOT post about? I've refused an offer of a T-shirt that has "I'm blogging it" emblazoned across the chest. That's because, when I talk with you socially or on business, I'm not making notes of juicy incidents to tell the world about. Family will note little reference to them - and that's out of respect for their privacy in both cases. The ups and downs of family life, sicknesses, healths, arguments and financial ups and downs, curious domestic arrangements and custody battles are much more interesting when read about celebrities in "Hello" than they would be here. However, I will occasionally turn the corner over when there's a special, positive family occasion; and I hope that family - and now staff - and customers will accept my thanks for their support on this blog and on so much else - I couldn't do without them.

Memorable posts and subjects? My mind springs straight to my post on "technical loneliness" where I commented on how fortunate I am that Lisa understands what I do and how so many people in our business spend their whole days deeply involved in a project, to go home and be unable to share it with family. That one really struck a chord. There's many more - I picked a few random posts as I was reading back in writing today, and every post returned a memory. It seems articles such as my item on MySQL Left Joins and how they differ from normal MySQL joins has struck a chord with others too. Each week, nearly 1000 hits arrive at the page that has that article archived, and we get a flow of "thank you" reviews that helps make it worth while.

So who reads me? More people than I think. Google is an avid reader, but I don't count him or her - although I do count the ladies and gentlemen (s)he sends my way. I'm sure some of them wonder what on earth they have come to! A lot of Well House customers read too - perhaps they're more on the technical tips whereas family, and extended family read the more personal and thought-ish stuff. Every so often I'm taken a back by a comment that tells me that someone quite unexpected, who I would have felt had little time to visit here, has been and then remembered some of the least significant detail.

"The power of the net". Will it bring World Peace? Probably not, but it certainly brings the world closer. I was emailing, on a technical issue, with a lady Dr in Iraq - just before George and Tony invaded - and that sure brought the human aspects closer to home; it didn't seem like a distant country any more. Nearer to home, the power of the net and the power of the word in places like this has been brought home by our 'Save the train' campaign. I would scarcely have thought that we would be facilitators that lead to questions to the Transport minister, or that I would have railway staff approaching me to thank me for the visibility it has helped bring the case. The power of the net also brings us new customers, and helps keep us in touch with existing ones. [[Graham waves "hello"]]. Let's face it, people don't walk up Spa Road in Melksham and knock on a door in the hope of finding a PHP or Python course - they need to establish confidence in the supplier, plan ahead, and book, then (we hope) tell their friends and colleagues. On Friday evening, another trainer dropped by to see our new place. He's looking for work at a time we're rushed off our feet; Lisa and I found ourselves asking "what's the difference" when he left. We came up with our enthusiasm, our training structure, our flexibility and support of our customer base as some of the keys. And our support is offered through the power of the net.

Will I carry on? What a silly question I'm asking myself - of course I will ;-) ... But in all seriousness, yes, I will. In writing this article, I've asked myself the question and concluded 'steady as she goes'. Fine tuning. Perhaps a drop off in the article rate over Christmas (but then I always say that and just miss the odd day), but the formula is there and there's still more left out that goes in.

So, at 1000 articles, let me thank YOU my readers, for taking an interest, being here, making it worthwhile; here's to the next 1000 - who knows what subjects will come up tomorrow, let alone next year. I certainly don't!

-- Graham

Articles mentioned:
Looking for a donkey
MySQL, join and left join
Save the Train
Technical Loneliness
Drink Drive
(written 2006-12-18, updated 2010-10-13)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes
  [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
  [677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
  [742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
  [769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
  [897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
  [927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
  [931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
  [939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
  [951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
  [1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
  [1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
  [1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
  [1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
  [1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
  [1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
  [1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
  [1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
  [1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
  [1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
  [1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
  [1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
  [2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
  [2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
  [2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
  [2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
  [2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
  [3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
  [3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
  [4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
  [4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)

G997 - Well House Consultants - Newsletter Lead Articles
  [1065] Graham Ellis - an Introduction - (2007-02-05)
  [1136] Buffering output - why it is done and issues raised in Tcl, Perl, Python and PHP - (2007-04-06)
  [1224] Object Relation Mapping (ORM) - (2007-06-09)
  [1318] Well House Manor - feature comparison against the old place! - (2007-08-24)
  [1386] New software product for warmblooded programmers - (2007-10-10)
  [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30)
  [1545] Letting new visitors know we provide training courses - (2008-02-19)
  [1600] Cambidge - Tcl, Expect and Perl courses - (2008-04-04)
  [1663] Python in an afternoon - a lecture for experienced programmers - (2008-06-01)
  [1754] Upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5 - the TRY issue - (2008-08-15)
  [1819] Calling base class constructors - (2008-10-03)
  [1912] Book now for 2009 - (2008-11-29)
  [2052] How was my web site compromised? - (2009-02-24)
  [2119] Make your business a DESTINATION business - (2009-04-05)
  [2253] Walks in and around Melksham, Wiltshire - (2009-06-21)
  [2370] C++, Python, and other training - do we use an IDE - (2009-08-21)
  [2425] Weekend and Christmas Promotion - Well House Manor Hotel, Melksham - (2009-09-26)
  [2538] Open Source Training Centre and Courses for 2010 - (2009-12-16)
  [2743] Public Open Source Training Courses running this summer and autumn in Melksham - (2010-04-27)
  [3202] Telling you something about us in just one line - (2011-03-15)

G905 - Well House Consultants - Blogging and Blog Administration
  [1] First Jottings - (2004-08-05)
  [6] Blog v Forum - (2004-08-07)
  [18] Wanted: More hours in the day - (2004-08-18)
  [141] Too technical? - (2004-12-05)
  [145] A comment on comments - (2004-12-09)
  [177] Blogs come of age - (2005-01-14)
  [185] Who am I? - (2005-01-21)
  [204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
  [231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
  [245] I'm not blogging it - (2005-03-14)
  [359] Chicken soup without the religion - (2005-06-26)
  [390] Moderating wiki, blog, and forum contributions - (2005-07-26)
  [405] Horse's Mouth is a year old - (2005-08-07)
  [410] Reading a news or blog feed (RSS) in your PHP page - (2005-08-12)
  [425] Caching an XML feed - (2005-08-26)
  [508] Comment, please! - (2005-11-28)
  [671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
  [876] Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance - (2006-09-23)
  [1077] In answer to 'am I glad I started a blog' ... - (2007-02-12)
  [1203] A Fresh horse - (2007-05-24)
  [1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
  [2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
  [2192] Copy writing - allowing for the cut - (2009-05-21)
  [2449] Four aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and Hotel - (2009-10-11)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
  [2751] Going off at a tangent, for a ramble - (2010-05-04)
  [2823] Where have all the bloggers gone? - (2010-06-24)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [3163] Twitter - the special use of @ # and http: in tweets - (2011-02-09)
  [3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
  [3208] Links for social media, microblogs and business networking - (2011-03-20)
  [3514] Microblogging - what I should have tweeted in the last 48 hours - (2011-11-10)
  [3759] The five oldest blogs and the horses mouth - (2012-06-09)
  [4000] 9 years, and 4000 articles on - (2013-02-09)
  [4121] Has your Twitter feed stopped working? Switching to their new API - (2013-06-23)
  [4292] The Horse is back! - (2014-09-15)
  [4568] Moderation - and the tendency to over-moderate - (2015-11-02)
  [4714] The technical article feed continues - personal updates more proactive on Facebook now! - (2016-10-30)

G503 - Well House Consultants - Newsletter and publicity
  [48] PHP - onwards and upwards - (2004-09-14)
  [57] Posting 1000 letters! - (2004-09-21)
  [281] What they are saying about our OF COURSE newsletter - (2005-04-16)
  [336] Targetted Advertising - (2005-06-05)
  [458] Final courses of '05 coming up .... - (2005-10-08)
  [480] New look to website - (2005-10-30)
  [734] Keeping customers informed by email - (2006-05-26)
  [904] Of course I'll tell you by email - (2006-10-25)
  [1087] Telling a story in different ways - (2007-02-20)
  [1090] Too many instructions, too much detail - (2007-02-23)
  [1284] An update on the West Wilts show ... - (2007-07-30)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1673] Spam Filters ... are working! - (2008-06-11)
  [1698] Dealing with The Press - (2008-07-06)
  [2051] A Presentation about our company - web and PHP - (2009-02-23)
  [2124] Building down expectations - (2009-04-09)
  [2244] What should a web site cost you? - (2009-06-16)
  [2388] `Of Course` is back! - (2009-08-31)
  [2873] Another toot of the trumpet - (2010-07-16)
  [3153] Points West to Belfast - (2011-02-01)
  [3165] Journalism 101 - (2011-02-11)
  [3354] Sales and Marketing - adding advertising to the product - (2011-07-11)
  [3974] TV show appearance - how does it effect your web site? - (2013-01-13)
  [3984] 20 minutes in to our 15 minutes of fame - (2013-01-20)
  [4266] Facebook marketing - who are we reaching? - (2014-04-23)


Back to
Cascading and the buses
Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home
Forward to
.pdf files - upload via PHP, store in MySQL, retrieve
Some other Articles
Old dog, old tricks
Room at the Inn, Guy at the station
Meet the neighbours
.pdf files - upload via PHP, store in MySQL, retrieve
One Thousand Posts and still going strong
Cascading and the buses
The year of the exploding projector
Most recent file in a directory - PHP
Setting your colour theme through PHP
Ruby's case - no break
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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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