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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 Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own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))
Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas

It's significantly darker each morning as we take Gypsy and Billy out for a morning walk. We're out well before sunrise now, which was at 07:29 on his first morning with us, it is at 08:04 today - just a fortnight later - and will be at 08:16 by 31st December. Only from 1st January does it start getting lighter earlier in the mornings.

It's commonly - and correctly - thought that the days get longer from 21st December, or there abouts, so why does it still get darker in the mornings for a further 10 days beyond then? It's because it starts staying lighter in the evenings from about today (10th December), and by around 21st the evenings are getting lighter quicker that the mornings are getting darker. I understand this offset is caused by the wobble on the earth's axis - probably (but I've not done the maths) the same wobble that causes the seasons. There's a table of sunrise, sunset and day length figures [here] if you would like to look at the data.

Gypsy and Billy are both black dogs. So this makes it rather difficult to photograph them and show how they're getting on during their morning walks. A black shape against a dark grey background flying past us indicates where one - or other - of them is, and, yes, there's enough predawn light to make them out in the distance. A very good friend told me when Gypsy arrived that "a Lurcher will always stay with you, but a Lucher's definition of 'with' may be more liberal than yours", and we have learned with Gypsy that she's always got her good eye on us - even a field's width away. Billy has been through a number of homes, feels less secure at the moment, and stays significantly closer. But it is good to see him moving, well far enough away to run - to make great high speed circles around us and the field. And there comes another problem with taking a low light picture ... by the time the camera button's been pressed and the exposure has been worked out, the dog's no longer in the area that the camera is pointing at.

However, these days we have cameras built in to our computers - much used for video calls and meetings via Skype, and there's a toy called "Photo Booth" for recording stills too. Here's Billy and me answering an email on Thursday evening.


And here's Lisa taking a few quiet minutes with Gypsy, Charlie and Billy - I turned the computer around to capture this one! As I write this, Billy is again supervising. It's 06:20, so an hour or so before we'll be getting up. Gypsy's snoozing at my feet, Charlie and Lisa are already risen, catching up on a backlog of paperwork which has built up (I wonder why?) in the last two week. I start a Learning to program in Python course tomorrow - and indeed I have a pick up from Melksham station, for delegate, for the course at 15:48 this afternoon. And from Thursday onwards (through next weekend), I have a Learning to program in Lua course that I'll be presenting.


(written 2011-12-10, updated 2011-12-17)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
Q101 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Programming Principles
  [2001] I have not programmed before, and need to learn - (2009-01-19)
  [2022] Pre and post increment - the ++ operator - (2009-02-03)
  [2228] Where do I start when writing a program? - (2009-06-11)
  [2310] Learning to write high quality code in Lua - (2009-07-30)
  [2327] Planning! - (2009-08-08)
  [2415] Variable names like i and j - why? - (2009-09-22)
  [2510] The music of the stock market - (2009-11-22)
  [2550] Do not copy and paste code - there are much better ways - (2009-12-26)
  [2586] And and Or illustrated by locks - (2010-01-17)
  [2737] Improving your function calls (APIs) - General and PHP - (2010-04-24)
  [2769] Easy - but for whom? - (2010-05-18)
  [2878] Program for reliability and efficiency - do not duplicate, but rather share and re-use - (2010-07-19)
  [2915] Looking up a value by key - associative arrays / Hashes / Dictionaries - (2010-08-11)
  [2964] An introduction to file handling in programs - buffering, standard in and out, and file handles - (2010-09-21)
  [3026] Coding efficiency - do not repeat yourself! - (2010-11-02)
  [3456] Stepping stones - early coding, and writing re-usable code quickly - (2011-09-24)
  [3542] What order are operations performed in, in a Perl expression? - (2011-12-07)
  [3551] Some terms used in programming (Biased towards Python) - (2011-12-12)
  [3673] Object oriented or structured - a comparison in Python. Also writing clean regular expressions - (2012-03-26)
  [3878] From Structured to Object Oriented Programming. - (2012-10-02)
  [3928] Storing your intermediate data - what format should you you choose? - (2012-11-20)
  [3954] Lesson 1 in programing - write clean, reuseable and maintainable tidy code - (2012-12-16)
  [4003] Web and console - same principle, same code - Ruby example - (2013-02-14)
  [4061] Seamless, integrated IT - we have a long way to go! - (2013-04-11)
  [4090] Test Driven Development in Python - Customer Comes First - (2013-05-16)
  [4118] We not only teach PHP and Python - we teach good PHP and Python Practice! - (2013-06-18)
  [4153] Rooms available tonight - how to code an algorithm from first principles - (2013-08-19)
  [4206] Writing the perfect program in Tcl? - (2013-11-13)
  [4325] Learning to program - what are algorithms and design patterns? - (2014-11-22)
  [4611] Hungarian, Camel, Snake and Kebab - variable naming conventions - (2016-01-03)
  [4632] Remember to ask the question before you listen for the answer - (2016-01-26)
  [4645] What are callbacks? Why use them? An example in Python - (2016-02-11)

P208 - Perl - Lists
  [28] Perl for breakfast - (2004-08-25)
  [140] Comparison Chart for Perl programmers - list functions - (2004-12-04)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [240] Conventional restraints removed - (2005-03-09)
  [355] Context in Perl - (2005-06-22)
  [463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
  [560] The fencepost problem - (2006-01-10)
  [622] Queues and barrel rolls in Perl - (2006-02-24)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [773] Breaking bread - (2006-06-22)
  [928] C++ and Perl - why did they do it THAT way? - (2006-11-16)
  [968] Perl - a list or a hash? - (2006-12-06)
  [1304] Last elements in a Perl or Python list - (2007-08-16)
  [1316] Filtering and altering Perl lists with grep and map - (2007-08-23)
  [1703] Perl ... adding to a list - end, middle, start - (2008-07-09)
  [1828] Perl - map to process every member of a list (array) - (2008-10-09)
  [1917] Out of memory during array extend - Perl - (2008-12-02)
  [1918] Perl Socket Programming Examples - (2008-12-02)
  [2067] Perl - lists do so much more than arrays - (2009-03-05)
  [2226] Revision / Summary of lists - Perl - (2009-06-10)
  [2295] The dog is not in trouble - (2009-07-17)
  [2484] Finding text and what surrounds it - contextual grep - (2009-10-30)
  [2813] Iterating over a Perl list and changing all items - (2010-06-15)
  [2833] Fresh Perl Teaching Examples - part 2 of 3 - (2010-06-27)
  [2996] Copying - duplicating data, or just adding a name? Perl and Python compared - (2010-10-12)
  [3400] $ is atomic and % and @ are molecular - Perl - (2011-08-20)
  [3669] Stepping through a list (or an array) in reverse order - (2012-03-23)
  [3870] Writing more maintainable Perl - naming fields from your data records - (2012-09-25)
  [3906] Taking the lead, not the dog, for a walk. - (2012-10-28)
  [3939] Lots of ways of doing the same thing in Perl - list iteration - (2012-12-03)
  [4609] Mapping an array / list without a loop - how to do it in Perl 6 - (2016-01-03)

P207 - Perl - File Handling
  [12] How many people in a room? - (2004-08-12)
  [114] Relative or absolute milkman - (2004-11-10)
  [255] STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR and DATA - Perl file handles - (2005-03-23)
  [616] printf - a flawed but useful function - (2006-02-22)
  [618] Perl - its up to YOU to check your file opened - (2006-02-23)
  [702] Iterators - expressions tha change each time you call them - (2006-04-27)
  [867] Being sure to be positive in Perl - (2006-09-15)
  [1312] Some one line Perl tips and techniques - (2007-08-21)
  [1416] Good, steady, simple example - Perl file handling - (2007-10-30)
  [1442] Reading a file multiple times - file pointers - (2007-11-23)
  [1467] stdout v stderr (Tcl, Perl, Shell) - (2007-12-10)
  [1709] There is more that one way - Perl - (2008-07-14)
  [1841] Formatting with a leading + / Lua and Perl - (2008-10-15)
  [1860] Seven new intermediate Perl examples - (2008-10-30)
  [1861] Reactive (dynamic) formatting in Perl - (2008-10-31)
  [2233] Transforming data in Perl using lists of lists and hashes of hashes - (2009-06-12)
  [2405] But I am reading from a file - no need to prompt (Perl) - (2009-09-14)
  [2818] File open and read in Perl - modernisation - (2010-06-19)
  [2821] Chancellor George Osborne inspires Perl Program - (2010-06-22)
  [3326] Finding your big files in Perl - design considerations beyond the course environment - (2011-06-14)
  [3830] Traversing a directory in Perl - (2012-08-08)
  [3839] Spraying data from one incoming to series of outgoing files in Perl - (2012-08-15)

P205 - Perl - Initial String Handling
  [31] Here documents - (2004-08-28)
  [254] x operator in Perl - (2005-03-22)
  [324] The backtick operator in Python and Perl - (2005-05-25)
  [970] String duplication - x in Perl, * in Python and Ruby - (2006-12-07)
  [987] Ruby v Perl - interpollating variables - (2006-12-15)
  [1195] Regular Express Primer - (2007-05-20)
  [1608] Underlining in Perl and Python - the x and * operator in use - (2008-04-12)
  [1849] String matching in Perl with Regular Expressions - (2008-10-20)
  [2798] Perl - skip the classics and use regular expressions - (2010-06-08)
  [2816] Intelligent Matching in Perl - (2010-06-18)
  [2832] Are you learning Perl? Some more examples for you! - (2010-06-27)
  [2963] Removing the new line with chop or chomp in Perl - what is the difference? - (2010-09-21)
  [3005] Lots of ways of doing it in Perl - printing out answers - (2010-10-19)
  [3411] Single and double quotes strings in Perl - what is the difference? - (2011-08-30)
  [3547] Using Perl to generate multiple reports from a HUGE file, efficiently - (2011-12-09)
  [3770] Sample answers to training course exercises - available on our web site - (2012-06-21)


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Some other Articles
Melksham Training Centre and Hotel internet speed - how does it compare?
Provide a useable train service, and people will use it!
Well House Manor - perhaps the best hotel rooms in Melksham
Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas
The difference between dot (a.k.a. full stop, period) and comma in Perl
Finding all matches to a pattern in Perl regular expressions
Looking for hotel rooms in Melksham over Christmas? We still have some availability
Some different pictures from Melksham
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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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