Main Content

Quiet summer days? I think not!

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-08-22 23:41:16 - Graham Ellis

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.