October 07, 2008
Which is your best hotel room?
"Which Room would you recommend for a special weekend ..." Question on the phone from customer booking at Well House Manor. And Lisa's comment - "I feel awkard giving my personal opinion - it may differ from what the customer's would be." Well - give them the data and let the customer choose!
"We have a lot of customers who ask for the same room they were in last time when they book - and that's for every room in the hotel. Every room has its fans"
• Room 1 is a quiet room at the back of the hotel, double, with a large circular-doored shower with a seat in it. [see bedroom 1]
• Room 2 is larger that room 1 (mind you - room 1 is not small) again at the rear of the building, overlooking the main garden and the apple trees. Usually a double, we'll convert room 2 into a twin if required. [see bedroom 2]
• Room 3 has a large sleigh bed and a double ended bath (no shower) in a light and airy bathroom. It overlooks the main lawn and is situated closed to the main stairs. [see bedroom 3]
• Room 4 is the largest in the hotel - configured as either a double or twin room (please let us know when you book) and with a lareg walk in double shower. Again, this room overlooks the lawn. [see bedroom 4]
• and Room 5 is at the front of the hotel, with a King double bed, and both bath and shower. There's a fireplace in the room (regrettably not working) and the desk is situated in the bay window so that you can look out whle you work. [see bedroom 5]
Which would I sleep in? Any of them ;-) ... and indeed I HAVE tried out some of them so that I'm fully aware of our product from a users's pespective, and we continue to encourage staff to stay and report back occasionally.
Posted by gje at 06:07 PM
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More about Graham Ellis of Well House Consultants
FSB - an update.
Last Tuesday, I got a phone call at lunch time asking me if I could attend - as a witness - a D&D (Dispute and Disciplinary) hearing of the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) at Bath that afternoon. Unsurprisingly, I was giving a training course and couldn't oblige, but the D&D committee went out of their way to receive my input starting at 9 p.m. that evening, and lasting for over an hour.
Why me in particular? Well it wasn't me in particular - the hearing into allegations made by an employee of the FSB against the chair of our branch which had led to her being suspended from office for well over a year lasted for most of the week. I didn't comment earlier as it was "sub judice" (I think that's the term), but I am now happily able to report the verdict that cleared both our chair and her husband of the matters for which they were suspended for in late spring / early summer of last year.
The Committee's decision is a "narrow" one in that whilst it clears Marion and Malcolm, that's as far as the committee can go. As I understand it, it is beyond their remit to actually lift the suspension. Now you would think in the interests of common justice that such a lifting would happen immediately, with full recompense and re-instatement of Marion and Malcolm, wouldn't you. We'll have to wait and see on that one. With just the occasional exception, I've learned as I've watched this matter from the sidelines that the FSB is much more a member-led organisation in word than in deed.
If you would like to read back to my previous articles on this subject:
26th May 2008 - The old sayings are the best (FSB)
18th February 2008 - FSB, EGM, AGM.
19th January 2008 - Summer Ball at Bowood - Saturday 12th July 2008
20th December 2007 - FSB leaves its members feeling like mushrooms
13th September 2007 - FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) Western Region
27th June 2007 - Is this how to run a business for businesses?
And this is what the FSB should be about in my view - a business networking event on 20th April 2007 (yes, 18 months ago) where we had an opportunity to meet 19 other local businesses for our mutual benefit.
Another view of what the FSB should be doing. The Wilshire Business of the Year awards, 13th December 2006, in Swindon where we were finalists and teh FSB sponsored one of the sections
Here's hoping that the FSB can get its eye back on the ball soon ... that we can soon benefit again from our membership as we were doing in the Spring of last year, being piloted by a committee in North and West Wilts that we have elected from amongst all of our members, without exclusions, diversions or suspensions preventing it.
Posted by gje at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2008
Claverton Pump
What's inside this little building that sits over a back water of the River Avon just a few miles up river from Bath?
A 25 foot wide water wheel, with each scoop on the wheel taking no less than half a ton of water [background], and a set of full functioning gears and flywheel - the whole being fully operational!
The fly wheel drives two huge beams, which in turn operate pumps that use to raise water up to the Kennet and Avon Canal that runs along the hillside above. Read more about it at the official site here.
The River Avon rises and falls quite dramatically at times of heavy rain, and indeed it was rising late yesterday when we dropped in by chance at the pumps.
Although shut(ting) down for the day, one of the team of volunteers briefly showed us around and I was able to take these pictures, including this one where he indicated where the two floods that have already had this summer rose to. Astonishingly, apart from moving some of the more delicate exhibits up above the water level, they can just let it flood - the engineering is so robust that it's not a major concern or panic - indeed, he also showed us the mud lines on the gears and flywheel which clearly indicated the angle they happened to have stopped at before the floods.
And a big THANK you to the gent - who's name I don't know - for letting us have that brief look around; it's little gestures like this, at the end of his day, which really "made" it for us.
Posted by gje at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2008
Autumn
We're into Autumn, and on a blustery Sunday we went out to show Chris's mother in law, visiting from South Africa, some of the local scenes in Wiltshire, and Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES).
The hardier souls were out in the countryside - a handful of boats moving on the canal, fishermen, cyclists ... and of course the dog walkers, who will still be out walking their dogs long after the canals are beset with winter stoppages and the bicycles are in the back of the garages.
The Cafe at Avoncliff remains open from 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. until the clocks go back ... and of course the pubs continue to be open for extended hours as illustrated at Bathampton.
"Where's my master" asks one lonely, 4 legged soul left out in the cold!
Posted by gje at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2008
Sorting objects in PHP
The OO model in PHP is very powerful indeed - and much more code is now written using the facilities it offers than was the case a year or two ago. On yesterday's Object Oriented Programming in PHP course, I wrote a new example that nicely brought together many of the facilities on offer - you can see the full sample code here.
One very common requirement is to sort an array of objects in PHP, and if you just use the regular sort function, you'll end up sorting (I think) based on the memory address at which they are held. That is never what you want! Instead - you should use usort
Here's my example of a call to usort:
usort($wellhousemanor,array("transact","mvf"));
And that sorts an array of objects in the $wellhousemanor array, using the static member function called mvf in the class transact to compare pairs of records. All you (as the application programmer) need do is make the call in this (rather curious, it must be said) way. If you're the programmer writing the class, you simply provide a method of the given name that takes two parameters and return negative if the first object passed should come earlier, positive if the second object passed should come earlier, and zero to indicate that the objects are equally ranked for sorting.
Here's my example comparator:
static function mvf($first,$second) {
if ($first->getvalue() > $second->getvalue()) return 1;
if ($first->getvalue() < $second->getvalue()) return -1;
return 0;
}
Q: I'm a PHP programmer - should I use objects these days?
A: In most cases YES - exceptions are minimum maintainance jobs on older code, and tiny applications where you'll never have more than a few lines of PHP. And even if you're not writing your own objects, chances are that you'll use objects that other people have written and perhaps contributed via something like PEAR.
Posted by gje at 05:47 AM
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Useful link: PHP training
October 03, 2008
Calling base class constructors
In all object oriented languages, you have a facility called inheritance where you can define one type of thing ("class of object") based on another, and the newly defined class ("subclass" or "extended class") takes the initial ("base") class as it starting point.
In your code for your base class, you'll have some logic which sets up new objects (a "constructor" method), and you'll have code in your extended classes through which you set up objects of that extended type. Almost inevitably, your extended objects will be pretty similar to your basic objects but they'll have a few extras, and so the writers of Object Oriented languages provide you with a way of calling the base class constructor within (or before) your extended class constructor. The base class is sometimes called the parent class. Let me translate that into an example in plainer English.
"A Train journey is a specialised type of public transport journey. If you're setting up a train journey, you'll want to set up a regular public transport journey within it first, with attributes like where it goes from and to, and at what time and who runs it. Then you will add some train extras such as how many carriages long it is"
How does this work in C++?
Train::Train(int nvh, int vhc, int xtrwa ) : PubT(nvh, vhc) {
tronly = xtrwa;
}
A Train is a PubT. When you create a train (with three parameters), you create first a PubT passing the first two parameters in to it, and them you perform the extra actions in the code block - which is saving the third parameter.
Course - C++ Programming
How does this work in Java?
public Train (int nvh, int vhc, int xtrwa) {
super (nvh,vhc);
this.tronly = xtrwa;
}
How does this work in Python?
def __init__(self,nvh,vhc,xtrwa):
pubt.__init__(self,nvh,vhc)
self.tronly = xtrwa
Course - Python Programming
This is old style classes; in new style classes, you'll call parent on the current class to avoid having to state the name of the parent class within the extended class definition.
How does this work in Perl?
In Perl, you "roll you own" ... it's so flexible and there are so many options it's almost untrue! Here's an example:
sub new {
my ($self,$nvh,$vhc,$xtrwa) = @_;
my $cc = new pubt($nvh,$vhc);
$cc->{"tronly"} = $xtrwa;
bless \%{$cc};
}
Course - Perl for Larger Projects
How does this work in [incr-Tcl]?
constructor {nvh vhc xtrwa} {
pubt::constructor $nvh $vhc } {
set tronly $xtrwa
}
}
Course - Tcl Basics and please let us know when you book that you would like us to add in strong coverage of Incr-Tcl
How does this work in PHP?
public function __construct($nvh, $vhc, $xtrwa) {
parent::__construct($nvh, $vhc);
$this->tronly = $xtrwa;
}
This example is for PHP 5. If you're still using PHP version 4, you'll call your constructor the same name as the name of the class, and call the base class constructor via the class name.
Course - Object Oriented PHP
def initialize(nvh, vhc, xtrwa)
super(nvh, vhc)
@tronly = xtrwa
end
How does this work in Lua?
Lua is a small language which provides you with facilities through which you can write OO like code but it is not strictly objects. You can set the metatable of a table [object] to the metatable of the table which you wish to be the parent, then modify it - thus emulating the facility that I'm talking about in this article.
Course - Lua Programming
Posted by gje at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2008
Icelandic Badge
Lisa's doing new staff badges for us all - both ID badges and swipe cards - and they're personalised.
We have our own picture on our ID cards so that customers can recognise us, and they're to a fixed Well House Manor format. But we have a choice with swipe cards of - more or less - anthing. And I have chose one of my own pictures, which you see accompanying this article.
Everyone has been giving a great deal of thought to the picture they would like, as they're pictures we're going to use / live with for years and there's all sorts of possible significances. Perhaps I should have chosen a picture of Lisa - I would have done so, save for the fact that people might think it was her card! But anyway I have very fond memories of a holiday in Iceland. And a picture that I took which still says "wow" to me. So I have chosen that. You can click on the image to see it larger if you like. And you can see more of my Iceland pictures via here
Posted by gje at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
