I was amused at the co-incidence ... to see that one of our most downloaded images in the last 24 hours has been this one, taken st least three years ago at the rear of "404". It's a co-incidence because - just yesterday - I brought that BBQ out of storage in 'The Tack Room' at The Manor, degreased it, set it up in just the same place, and we had our first garden-cooked food at home since 2006! I was less amuse when I investigated just
why this picture is so popular - it appears to have been hotlinked from an 'adult' web site which, I surmise, is using random links to increase its street-cred. You can see our current most viewed pictures
here, and the most common ones called from places that our not our main sites (usually stolen)
here. The listing is constantly updated - and if you want to know how to do it, come on the
PHP Techniques Workshop or have a look at
the source code
This last week, "The Horse" has been very technical ... and that's because I have been at it, non-stop it seems, since last Sunday morning. August is supposed to be the quiet 'holiday' season in the training business, but you shouldn't entirely believe that. A quiet time at XYZ Engineering is also a good time for the staff to go our and get trained, and it's also an excellent time to consider and plan for work-team wide training for the autumn. So as well as a three day public
Python course and a two day
Apache HTTP Server and Apache Tomcat Course, I have had very welcome enquiries to be following up; every customer is an individual, training is
always an important part of each individual's development need, and so we all make sure we go to great lengths to come up with the very best solution we can offer in each case. It takes time, but it's a good investment for everyone!
Yet the busyness has gone beyond just a typical busy training week. Struck by a significant but quite small minority of delelages who want to learn languages such as Python, PHP and Lua but who have
never programmed before, we now add an extra day on the front of the more typical courses (for those who HAVE programmed before) to give the novices a good start and foothold. We expect those extra days to be run on demand, and only prior to a small proportion of course dates. And they WILL run for just one person - it makes huge sense, as that's then another place sold for the rest of the course, and a delegate who's then well able to stay with the course. But anyway - long story - there was an extra Python day at the start of this week - yes, Sunday - with two delegates who were both delighted with the extra, and the quiet learning opportunity provided at Well House Manor.
(Links -
Ruby,
C anc C++,
Perl and
Python - more comments about "learning to program" in the particular languages)
Oh - and August is the busy
weekend / leisure hotel season too. We welcome such guests to Melksham in Wiltshire, but we're very much aware that they're not people who are travelling frequently - they need / desire extra attention, and whether it's a guest who's scheduled a 3 p.m. arrival and then not shown up till 9, has arrived as 10 a.m. with "can I chackin a bit early?", or phones at 23:30 to check that his reservation is on order, it does add to the
welcomed load.
So, dear reader, that is why you've seen little but technical notes in the last week ... but with a hope that we'll be back to a more 50 / 50 balance in the future.
(written 2009-08-22, updated 2009-08-23)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
Z100 - Daily life [19] interesting products and subjects - (2004-08-19)
[20] Not two the same - (2004-08-20)
[26] Matching Cat - (2004-08-24)
[110] Friday, busy week! - (2004-11-05)
[149] Fish stocks - (2004-12-12)
[206] Fox and Python - (2005-02-08)
[228] Beard Justification - (2005-02-26)
[232] Diverse activities - (2005-03-01)
[238] Difficulties with a trolley - (2005-03-07)
[271] Different course every day - (2005-04-07)
[283] Natural or man-made? - (2005-04-18)
[307] Farming yesterday - (2005-05-10)
[330] An O level comes in handy - (2005-05-30)
[363] Greetings from Edinburgh - (2005-06-29)
[446] Up early - (2005-09-16)
[455] A Stengthening day - (2005-10-04)
[473] Looking different in town - (2005-10-22)
[474] Vintage Bus Day - (2005-10-23)
[516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
[580] What to do with milk - (2006-01-28)
[584] Loosing breath with Gerald - (2006-01-31)
[605] Design your day with a walk - (2006-02-13)
[612] Coming or going? - (2006-02-18)
[613] Greetings from Dublin - (2006-02-20)
[623] Behind every face is a person and a story - (2006-02-25)
[635] Odd one out. - (2006-03-06)
[645] Lost Camel - (2006-03-14)
[654] Making use of disabled facilities - (2006-03-22)
[655] Can some food be TOO different? - (2006-03-23)
[692] Healthier eating - (2006-04-20)
[698] Catch up weekend - (2006-04-24)
[706] May day away - (2006-05-01)
[724] Helping mental health through diet, exercise and other lifestyle matters - (2006-05-18)
[752] Over zealous police activity? - (2006-06-09)
[777] On Crosby sands - (2006-06-25)
[817] Working on Weekend in Wiltshire and others - (2006-07-29)
[843] To join an organisation? - (2006-08-23)
[882] Rocks, hard places, trains and funerals. - (2006-09-30)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[908] And so to Inverness - (2006-10-29)
[911] Letter Home - (2006-11-01)
[921] French Exchange - (2006-11-11)
[978] Wellhouse Manor, Hotel, Melksham - (2006-12-10)
[992] Enthusiastic, but .... - (2006-12-16)
[1056] Another frantic posting! - (2007-01-30)
[1057] Selling by phone and Skype - our policy - (2007-01-30)
[1061] Take vehicles off the road - put all the passengers into one - (2007-02-01)
[1100] Wondering where I have been - (2007-03-06)
[1138] The Holiday - unlikely romantic comedy? - (2007-04-08)
[1151] Gordon Dodge, R.I.P. - (2007-04-16)
[1178] Ducking stool for Melksham? - (2007-05-06)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1272] Behind closed doors? - (2007-07-22)
[1303] Heading Upstate New York - (2007-08-14)
[1429] Remembrance day - inside a church and inside the day - (2007-11-11)
[1643] A lack of technical content - (2008-05-16)
[1810] Middle aged subsidise young and old - (2008-09-26)
[1953] End of Training, 2008 - (2008-12-20)
[1979] Looking forward, in Melksham, in 2009 - (2009-01-05)
[2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
[2008] The Month Ahead - What is happening in Melksham - (2009-01-25)
[2024] Carry on Training - in spite of the weather - (2009-02-03)
[2027] Who sticks by you in the snow? - (2009-02-05)
[2030] The final step to being British - (2009-02-07)
[2034] Through Snow and Flood to Linux and Tomcat - (2009-02-10)
[2064] East of Melksham Countryside - (2009-03-02)
[2068] Playing Catchup - (2009-03-06)
[2090] Melksham to Georgia - (2009-03-19)
[2105] Hire Car, from Atlanta Airport - (2009-03-27)
[2106] Learning to Twitter / what is Twitter? - (2009-03-28)
[2118] Spring Sprung - (2009-04-05)
[2121] Out in the Vale of Pewsey - (2009-04-07)
[2141] Town Crier competiton - (2009-04-25)
[2159] A long day to guess where - (2009-05-06)
[2164] Updating my public profile - Graham Ellis - (2009-05-09)
[2217] Enjoying the summer weather - (2009-06-04)
[2264] Learning about others private lives - (2009-06-30)
[2401] Back Tomorrow - (2009-09-10)
[2450] Family Gathering at 404, The Spa - (2009-10-11)
[2580] C course inspires new teaching examples - (2010-01-16)
[2868] A move towards the family - (2010-07-12)
[3125] The family is defunct. Long live the family. - (2011-01-09)
[3316] Twitter Phishing Trips ... and a great new alert service - (2011-06-04)
[3319] Moving on - a task for the hotel staff! - (2011-06-08)
[3463] Busy weekend of contrasts. - (2011-10-03)
[3553] Changes to morning routines - (2011-12-16)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[4222] Five lessons learned or re-learned on my travels - (2013-12-15)
Some other Articles
Designing your data structures for a robust Perl applicationLead characters on Perl variable namesTranslation from Ghanaian to EnglishPublic Transport from (and to) Melksham on SundaysQuiet summer days? I think not!C++, Python, and other training - do we use an IDEUsing a cache for efficiency. Python and PHP examplesPython - fresh examples of all the fundamentalsLearning to program - how to jump the first hurdlesAt the end of the course