Wind and Webs

Well if you've been around in the UK during the last few weeks you'll have noticed the wind.  "Wind eternal and ever lasting Wind."  I never thought it would stop.  Some nights it's kept me awake - I'm a natural born worrier.  Amongst other things I was most worried about the trees we are surrounded by falling on us, or on the house, or on the electricity cables.

Post biggest storm we went out to survey the damage.  Preseli Mags mentioned on her blog how their trampoline blew away.  It prompted me to check ours - which is out of sight of the house.  Thankfully one benefit of having the trampoline sited on a near 45 degree slope is that the legs are buried in the ground one side and staked down at the other.  It's going nowhere.  We did have a casualty though.  The greenhouse lost two panes of glass.

I have also been working hard promoting a new side-line for our business.  Diversity is the key in these hard economic times.   I have occasionally created websites... but now I'd like to focus on this area a little more so we have branched out into hosting them too.  A sister site to run alongside our main business website was in order, specifically promoting design and hosting.  Creating this new site has been another learning curve for me - as this is the first time I've used Joomla.  Joomla is a CMS (Case Management System), where the web designer designs the look and feel of the site, but the client can create, edit and manage the content.  I've always liked a challenge.  I'm most definitely not clever... but I positively enjoy the learning process and the satisfaction of problem solving is really rewarding.  Our new site is still yet in development - but hopefully it's shaping up nicely. 

Apologies for this shameful plug little bit of self promotion. I don't know what's come over me!

  

Broadband

Last Thursday we noticed our download speed had decreased from the normal heady heights of about 500 Kbps to about 90 if we were lucky.  Although we were still receiving email, using Remote Desktop or the Internet generally was simply hopeless.

My heart sank (we've been through this frustrating process before).

We called our phone service provider.  A BT engineer eventually spoke to us Saturday and although he tested the line and said it was fine (we had deduced that as we were talking on it and it was as clear as a bell), he said there was nothing else he could do for us.  His hands were tied.

We knew that in our nearest village of Maenclochog the Post Office, Sarah's Newsagents and General Stores and Ysgol Gymunedol Maenclochog were affected (the village is over three miles from us) and we also knew all our neighbours were in trouble.  Even though we told the BT engineer this, this information was apparently 'irrelevant' - how can this be?

I know for a fact that many of our friends and neighbours had to go through the rigmarole and expense of swapping out routers (shops that supply IT hardware are about an hour round trip for most of us) and fiddling around with the micofilter.  This along with dire warnings that if the engineer arrives on site and it is found to be the fault of your equipment you will be charged hundreds of pounds.

Why can they not join the dots?

Our ISP could tell there was a problem at the exchange in Maenclochog on the Thursday when we first raised the issue.  Apparently though the powers that be have to wait for enough ISPs to call in and complain before they look further than the end of their nose.  This can take a while in an area where there are fewer businesses using the Internet on a daily basis and the population is generally low.  It took until Monday afternoon until we were back in business - literally.

This weekend it has dropped to a crawl again.

We are running an IT company in a very rural area.  It is crucial we have broadband to operate.  But no-one seems to care at BT.  Come on UK PLC, we need to do better than this.

We spoke to our local MP's assistant after last weekend's debacle and it looks like we will be speaking to them again come Monday.

Mrs Angry

I have been lusting after an iPad for a long time. 

Business and private bank balances do not warrant such an extravagant expenditure, so I have gone without.

J on the other hand ordered one - secretly.

He was away on a business trip when I discovered this.  I phoned him whilst he was travelling.

I was prepared to forgive him if he'd bought it for me.

Nope.  Just for himself.

Burning the midnight oil...

I've dabbled in website development, strictly as a sideline - never really admitting I do it.  One of my clients recently asked for their website to be totally revamped.  Nice and simple site. Not too many pages.  They were very pleased with it.  Then the Principal asked if I could do one for her son, who runs a Real Estate firm in the USA.  Requests for a blog and database etc... whoa.  I tried very hard to wriggle out of it, but when the cheque arrived before I had even started, I felt I didn't have much choice.

Quick - Amazon.  Bought a couple of books (knowledge in cold storage).  Both good but one in particular has been revolutionary.  I ordered new software on the back of it (which I'm still waiting for) but I feel empowered.  I am beginning to understand what I'm doing now, the fog is lifting.  I can deconstruct what is really going on behind the scenes.  Sounds strange but I've always used WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software up to this point.  But for many reasons it has been really restricting me and it bloats the code.  WYSIWYG works well until things do not go as planned - trying to edit the code was like wading through treacle as I hadn't learned the basics from scratch.  Now that's all changing.  I'm really starting to understand what the code can actually produce and how I can manipulate that code, this time to my tune.  I might be back in control.

It really is like another language with strict unforgiving grammatical rules, but hey ho I've never been a first past the post kind of person.   Always a plodder that (hopefully) gets there in the end.

My Web Design Bible