Saturday 30 April 2011

Nice Days, White Weddings

Spring somehow manages to pull that trick of being somehow both gradual and sudden. One minute I'm celebrating the fact that a couple of daffodils have survived the morning frost and the snow has stopped, next thing it's everywhere, trees are blooming, grass is growing and there's been more than two dry days together. No wonder religions and spring got so intertwined. It's as if winter devastates everything in it's path and disappears leaving a Barron landscape and then spring just comes along behind it and starts colouring everything in again and makes it all look like it should. Yep Spring has definitely sprung. Here in Scotland it's been particularly nice for the last two weeks. (Spring can be a pretty wet affair in Scotland but not this year so far)

The downside to all this lovely springy stuff (you must have known there was a catch) is that things start to need looking after again. Grass and weeds spring up and hedges bush out where they shouldn't. Paths need that winter filth sprayed off them and it's then that you notice where repairs are needed. All those little outside jobs that you've avoided thus far due to the ridiculously cold weather can't be avoided any longer (Lucky I didn't put Christmas lights outside this year because, if I had listened to the wife and done it, it would have been about two weeks ago before I got them down).

Proof, if proof were required, that god exists comes at this time of year. Not from the beautiful rebirth of the world but more from the fact that, thanks to his rising again, we get a public holiday with which to catch up on all of these tasks. Ask any DIY retailer and they'll tell you that the big event in their calendar is Easter. Even your local supermarket will have cashed in with a selection of sun loungers, barbecues, hoses and lawn mowers.

Here in the UK this Easter has been a wee bit bigger than most. Why? Well because in the UK we have both God and a Queen which means that, when the queens grandchildren decide to get married, we get more holidays. Yep Prince William and Kate Middleton (commoner and daughter of multi millionaires as the press keep telling us) tied the knot yesterday and the whole of the UK workforce gained an extra public holiday to organise street parties, wave union jacks and basically celebrate along with our young royals. Cynics will point out that if you want us Brits to forget the recession, stop moaning about politics and generate a whole feel good factor then all you need is usually a royal wedding or a good war. The problem with the 'good war' plan is that it needs to be something properly nationalistic like the Falklands. I'm afraid that, whilst we have immense respect for our troops serving all over the world, the whole Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya type stuff just isn't nationalistic enough to create that uniquely British feel good factor that's required just now. Our sportsmen and Women aren't active enough just now either because they can sometimes create a mini feelgood factor. Nope the only way to get us to kick back and forget our woes this year was going to be a royal wedding and boy did we get one.

Now to be honest (Don't tell everyone) the United Kingdom over which our monarch presides isn't maybe as united as you might have been led to believe (unless of course you're battling the Falkland aisles). In fact there have been points in history where it's been downright un-United. Even now politically there are parties dedicated to nationalistic splits and every part of the country actually has it's own parliament as well as central government. It should come as no surprise then that some of it's royal subjects might have taken the day off, may even have raised a glass, but actually chose to use this free day for something other than a wedding street party. I have nothing against our young royals however I was asleep when they said 'I do' and when the crowds gathered at the railings of Buckingham palace I gathered at my own railings with a ladder and a paint pot ready to get one of those exterior jobs out of the way. Religion, Royalty and Politics are three things garanteed to cause controversy in any conversation however thanks to all three we had Easter Monday, The royal wedding on the Friday, and then International Workers day (May Day) the following Monday.

As the English and some of the Northern Irish sweep away the bunting, the Union Jack paper plates and napkins and reopen their town centres the gardens of Wales and Scotland will never have looked so well kept. Here's to William and Kate may their marriage be fantastic and long and may the press and tourism focus on bringing the benefits of this across the whole UK. Across all of the UK I think I can speak for everyone in saying thanks for the holiday.


So last weekend (Easter) we got a nice long weekend down at the caravan and this weekend (both the wedding and May day) we've had the chance to start the never ending task of making the outside of the house look beautiful. Caravans and gardens!! God I sound old. But it's all good really. Few things make a cold tin of beer more enjoyable than a weekend at the sea side or the end of a hard day grafting in the garden in the sun. If that makes me old then bring it on.

Access all areas

Yep the database that I was cursing last month is now a reality in my workplace. God was it a bad idea to start that project. From the minute I realised that it wouldn't work properly across a network I should have abandoned it but, did I? Did I hell. I now have a database with four full months worth of info based on a platform that is almost guaranteed to collapse. The thing is, people are loving it and even asking that I develop more. No-one seems to want to listen when I point out that it's hurtling towards an inevitable crash landing. I think the problem is that I've come up with a solution that seems to work. It's quick, functional and seems to have very few glitches that couldn't be worked around within the first week of use. Even I forget how precarious it all is. To be fair I've got it backed up all over the place so, when it comes crashing down, we shouldn't actually lose anything but the information that was being keyed at the time of the crash. Or maybe my band aid type fix of having users in the North work with a front end whilst users in the south access the back end directly isn't as precarious as it seems. If you google this method of a semi split database you'll find nothing comes up. No one either recommends or condemns it. Is that because it's such a stupid idea or is it because no-one has ever thought about it? Not so sure myself.

Anyhow if it continues to work as it does at the moment and I can tweak a few things it might just be the appraisal winner that I need for this year. I've been all but obsessed by it for over a month and now that I've finished delivering the course that I was delivering I should be able to get another month devoted to it before I move on. It's not every job that affords you two months to work on a geeky project that you actually enjoy doing. For all the frustration it still beats going to the shops and buying a brain training game. Trust me, with access, every small triumph brings with it many many pitfalls that need fixing. Every simple suggestion that anyone makes to improve it results in endless hours puzzling over why even the most straightforward of ideas can't be accomplished in the way that you thought. If I were my employer I wouldn't have let me near this project as, if I ever left the job, there's almost no-one about that would have any idea how to develop the damn thing. That said a lot of the reason it's taken so long to design is that I've avoided taking any shortcuts. Every report and form has been designed in such a way that, whilst it's taken a while to create, it should not need any maintenance to continue to work. Maybe future proof is too strong an expression but definitely future resistant. Well at least provided it doesn't corrupt. Fingers crossed.

In learning and designing the database I've also relied heavily on the Internet and a few of the forums that are out there devoted to Access. The problem with the forums, and databases in general, is that there is a sort of science behind databases that needs to be adhered to. That's probably why they are so much less popular than huge excel spreadsheets. Databases need thought about in advance. You almost need to know everything you will ever want out of it in advance or you'll pay dearly further down the line. If your design didn't anticipate that you would want that 'percentage' report or 'comparison' report then you may have to do a lot of back peddling and redesigning to get your tables into a state that will allow it. In doing so you'll also probably break all the other reports that you were successful in creating first time round. Users on the forums seem to almost take pride in how un-user friendly it actually is. They love to talk about data redundancy and the 'normalization' of data. Yep they'll devote days, even weeks to getting a table structure that avoids any duplicate references yet they think nothing of having to create three or four queries just to end up with a calculation that could have been written into a cell in excel in about a minute by a complete novice. The difference I suppose is that the access database will take up a tiny bit of the disc space taken by it's excel counterpart. The database will also be easier to use and more robust for the end user. If I'm honest I'm delighted with myself for getting this one moving but, had I known at the start what I know now I would probably have spent the time designing a huge excel spreadsheet. At least then, had it all gone wrong, I would have had plenty of people willing to help.

So there you have it, the clocks have changed, the weather has changed and now we're heading toward my favorite part of the year, Summer. Don't think I've forgotten about the money saving stuff. We're still car sharing, the electricity and gas are with cheaper supplier's and the next focus will probably involve seeing how much I can save on this years car insurance. Previous blogs will also point those who need it in the direction of cheaper tyres and a fantastically priced vehicle recovery service. Yep money saving will continue to be a big part of life so keep watching this space.

Till next time
T

Thursday 31 March 2011

Access all areas

First things first. Congratulations to Jo on getting to 40 days stopped. That's about when you begin to start thinking that, much as you might miss the cigs, it's a bit of a waste to blow it. Let's face it there was a point where 40 minutes without would have been good for me. Giving up smoking is a truly strange pursuit and one that I think only a smoker can understand. Very well done.


Well folks the clocks have changed and I can now see the potholes in the road on my drive to work because it's daylight. It seems quite sudden too. Around valentines it was beginning to look like our poor wee dog might at least glimpse the twilight on her walk if we rushed home. Now it's broad daylight for a couple of hours after. Daffodils and everything. After the winter we had it's really good to see. For me it's over a year since I smoked and, despite the odd cigar when the wife was away, I'm now more of a non smoker than a smoker. I still don't do the non-smoker thing though. Quite the opposite. If you want to smoke smoke. The smell has absolutely no impact on me, strangely neither bad or good. For a long time after I stopped I seemed acutely tuned to the scent of smoke but now I can take it or leave it.


As to saving money: well quidco and EDF energy both made good on their promises in the last month. £80 cash back for signing up through quidco and £100 of the first bill with EDF. Nearly £200 earned for doing essentially nothing. That can't be bad. We continue to car share to and from work which is saving us a good bit per month as well. I haven't however got any new fantastic savings to pass on. The good news is that that means the car has behaved and not cost anything for a few months.


I haven't had much chance to blog because I've been driving myself nuts creating a database for my work. We have been recording our time on a spreadsheet for about three years and now it's decided to kick the bucket. As a true geek I've often wished I understood how to use MS Access so I decided that I finally had to try and up skill myself. Back in 1998-99 I fell in love with a software called Lotus Approach. At a time when people could still be shocked out of their minds by the fact that Word had more than one Font or that PowerPoint might actually replace acetates and the overhead projector I eagerly worked away on a stock and order system for the shop I managed. It was actually pretty effective and lasted for about three or four years before that particular company got swallowed up by another.


So if I was making software around the millennium how come I'm not a dot com millionaire? I'm all about creating it and figuring it out and knowing why something works and even what it could be capable of. Once it's working and everybody is happy with it I lose interest. It's also unusual for me to even care about perfection. Does it work? Does it do what you needed? Is it better than what you had? Yes, well that's good, get on with it. But what about... Get on with it. So it has glitches that shouldn't happen and you're learning workarounds before you've even learnt the correct way. Get over it. Basically when I create something it's usually very good but it really needs someone else to make it saleable. This time however I'm trying to push myself a bit further. After Lotus I didn't like the look of Access. I preferred every other Microsoft product but not Access. Now that I've properly applied myself to it I have to say... I was right to not like the look of it. What happened Bill? With everything else it seemed to about helping imbeciles like me to get good with the computer but with this? The truth is that if you don't write code your off to a very bad start. Everything can be done using wizards etc but really it only pulls together with code. Why? With Lotus approach you basically designed some pretty forms and it did the techy stuff in the background. With access it's the other way around. If you want a pretty form you'll have to work pretty hard and jump through lots of hoops to get there. It's the first software I've ever encountered where you can do the same thing twice and get a different result both times.


However after three weeks of almost literally banging my head against the wall I seem to have something that is actually pretty good. I have worries though. The whole reason that I got allowed the time to do this is because our spreadsheet is effectively crashing every users PC. I'm trying to put it to the back of my mind but the database isn't exactly nippy. It doesn't crash the PC and we're talking about seconds rather than minutes but it's brand new at the moment with just one quarters data in it. Is it going to slow to crawl in it's first year? Hope not. Also it has a small issue that if two of us are working on separate records and then one hits save...the other finds that their record jumps to the saved one. For a variety of reasons that won't be a big issue with this particular database but it's driving me nuts that I don't know why it happens. In true me fashion though I'm presenting it to my bosses tomorrow and expect to subject the masses to it within the next week. It's not quite saleable yet but it's something that any training department would benefit from even in it's present state. That makes me want to learn more about Access because, even if it was never saleable, when you go for an interview and you can describe how you created something like that it always sounds good.


Sorry to land you with such a geeky post when I haven't posted for a while but, as those who remember me getting the iPhone will know, I can get a bit obsessed with this sort of thing for a while. It's my addictive personality.


Wish me luck with the database and good luck with whatever you're up to. If you find a way to save or make lots of money please let me know.


Till next month


T

Sunday 20 February 2011

More or Less the same

Well as the mornings brighten up almost enough to drive to work without headlights what's been happening?

Since we last spoke I took my last trip of the season down to my caravan just to make sure it was all OK. The site is only closed in February so we like to get down around the end of January to check that it's survived the worst ravages of winter and will be ready when the site opens again in March. Why do they shut at all? Well it's to do with tax. Basically it proves that it is a leisure home and not a main residence.

Car

Anyway I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of mysterious fate trying to keep us away from the van. As you read in January's blog we had a mystery breakdown half way down when we went to go at New Year. This time I wasn't even at the end of my street when I drove over a nail and lost the back tyre. I put on the spare however and continued with the rest of the journey. Of course this meant no spare at a time when the roads have so many pot holes that they look like they've been bombed after Decembers heavy snow. In the last blog on tyres I used C Tyres at 73.50per tyre saving me about £40 per tyre on the next cheapest quote. This time I used Camskill. The tyre cost £60 and there was a £10 charge for fitting so just a further three pound saving. In order to keep track overall of savings since I started this quest though I've got to count it.

Saving on one new Tyre against the next cheapest at £113 is £43.00

Whilst we're on that as well I got the tyre fitter to take the one remaining rear tyre that hadn't been replaced so far and fit it to the spare using the spare on the rear wheel. That's another saving of at least £113.

Using spare tyre on rear wheel and old tyre on spare. Saving at least £113.00

I also discovered at the end of that weekend (when my car wouldn't start) that I had a dry cell in my battery. I love my car. It has so many ways to cost me I lose track. Now surprisingly here I'm not going to list a saving. I found plenty of decently priced batteries on the Internet but all had high delivery costs. It ended up that a shop just across the road had a battery around £10 dearer than the Internet price but it worked out the same without the delivery. In fact it worked out a lot better because the first battery was millimeters to big for the tray, although by measurement it shouldn't have been. so we went back and got it changed for another type. I also now know how to change a car battery. So I can change a wheel, a battery and a headlight. Mummy I'm a mechanic now don't you know.

Computer

OK so regular readers probably haven't been by as much as they used to be. Why? Well because I haven't been updating with any regularity so it gets a bit dull reading the old blog pages all the time.

Part of the reason for not updating has been that I'm lazy and living the quiet life hasn't given me a whole load of stuff to write about. Partly it's been because, much as I love my little net book and have had it hooked up to my 32 inch screen, I hate the blurry poor quality display I've been getting from my net book since the computer died. Now a few times I've looked online at bargain basement PC options and it has to be said that you could do reasonably OK for as little as £100 (although you're getting a low spec old system with no guarantees that it will survive any upgrades you do to it). The problem has been that I don't have £100. Also the reason that the net books graphics transfer so poorly to my flat screen is that I bought one that doesn't have a socket for the PC. You can only transfer your display via HD or via the old analogue video cable. HD is great but cheap PCs and laptops haven't got that far yet. Almost half the price of my dead PC went on a graphics card with it's own memory and an HD output and it was this that I hoped I could save and use in a newer cheap model.

Completely unconnected to my computer woes my brother came round to ask me if I could help him figure out how to use his new HTC phone (I'm so jealous, on first impressions it seemed so much better than the dreadful iPhone). Anyway I think he was just showing off because it seemed that he had the damned thing working perfectly. It's not called the desire for nothing. Thing is when he came round (my wife was away for a few days, more on that in a mo) and I was surfing amazon looking at cheap shit PCs and wondering whether they would handle my graphics card. Turns out that my brother has a broken PC of his own that he's consigned to a cupboard. I asked if I could have a go at creating a hybrid between mine and his.

First thing is that I took his, connected it to a projector as I don't have a standard monitor and... It worked straight away. I found myself staring at wallpaper of an F15 fighter launching from an aircraft carrier. After a few minutes wrestling with my conscience I texted him to say his PC worked and that he could have it back if he wanted. I seriously considered claiming dishonestly that it was some magic that I had performed and that he hadn't just given me a working PC. I'm glad I was honest though because he told me to do what I could with it and, if it worked it was mine.

So, I took a working PC and set about breaking it in the pursuit of better graphics, memory etc. I opened the box intent on installing my hard drive only to discover that it was a SATA model and all of my peripherals were ATA. Boo. I installed my graphics card and sound card. I hooked it up to the 32" TV and... It still worked. I spent most of that night and the following night installing and uninstalling programmes in order to truly make it my own. After several hours it looked and behaved not unlike my beloved dead PC. The wallpaper was mine, my photos, my music and a host of software that I like. Unfortunately it started to behave a bit too much like the old PC. After two days it crashed completely. Because the first thing to go was the sound I removed my sound card and reverted to the motherboards inbuilt sound. This seemed to work. The free virus checker that I've been using for nearly ten years, AVG, was using masses of system resource so I uninstalled it and tried another Avira. This made a big difference and the thing seemed to start to act like a stable PC. My old PC also turned out to have a card in it that seemed to extend the motherboards capacity for hard drives, DVDs etc. I reasoned that, although this was ATA technology, it was attached to a PCI slot so might work in a SATA PC. I now have a second drive in the PC and an external drive attached to a USB. It seems good. A little further research has shown that I can buy a SATA/ATA converter that may allow me to use my old DVD drive and even my old floppy drive. Yep I seem to have a working desktop PC again. This is great has almost certainly saved me about £100.

Building a PC out of two broken models. Total saving approx £100

Smoking

I mentioned that my wife was away for a week didn't I? Well I'm ashamed to admit that whilst she was gone I bought a packet of Cafe Creme cigars (small ten pack cigars) and smoked the lot. I thoroughly enjoyed them too. I'm ashamed to admit this when I'm also at a point where I've completed one full year as a non-smoker. It's even more shameful when I know that at least one follower of this blog has recently been re-reading the story of my triumph against smoking using Champix. In fairness though it was only for a week, it was only ten cigars and I haven't slipped any since or, surprisingly enough, even wanted to.

Finally can I also say a big hello to Jo.Kennedy who has joined the merry band of supporters on the site. I know a Jo Kennedy although that's actual Joe Kennedy so probably unconnected but a big welcome anyway.

So I think that brings you about up to date.

Hopefully more savings to come next month.

Till next time

T

Saturday 22 January 2011

Another year older but no further in debt

Happy new year folks

It almost makes me smile to think about those who will be struggling with their new years resolution to either give up smoking or cut down on drinking. I'm almost a full year ahead on both.

Have I smoked? Yes, there have been slip ups but I'm almost through the first year. My weakness has been the occasional, irrational cigar. Even one makes me dizzy enough to fall over but, every so often I have caved. The good news is that I have also been able to return to the world of non smoking without pain or cravings. As for the drink....

Lack of hard cash has meant that drinking has been reduced to one or two bottles of wine over a weekend. It's been a forced abstinence rather than voluntary and I did love the brief respite of Christmas when I drunk almost like the old days but, by and large, drink has been an area of my life where I've been able to save a fair bit and felt a lot better for it. If money ever returns to normal I think I'll still go without during the week.

Without smoking or drinking to torment me you may be worried that the blog will go all iPhone on you. Not so. I've fallen completely out of love with that device. It basically looked great and had a myriad of functions that should have made it the greatest phone on earth. The problem was that it didn't perform any single function well and sometimes didn't perform at all. I reset it to its factory settings back in November. It works as a phone and does some things well but is nowhere near the phone that it claims to be and from my point of view never will be.

Nope, this years blog will be about saving or earning money. I intend to share my fight to maintain a quality of life despite this painful recession. I'm considering renaming the blog to 'Make dough and mend'. What do you think?

I've already managed to earn £80 by changing my electricity supplier whilst the new supplier gave me a bonus of £100 for switching and promises savings of around £200 over the course of the next year. It has to be said that I haven't seen this money yet but I live in hope. As well as this I have saved on car tyres managing to replace two tyres for less than the cost of having one fitted by the dealer.

This month has been no different and I have a couple of ideas to share to help the savings mount. Back about September/October our dishwasher kicked the bucket. God she was sorely missed. My wife is a great cook and I'm lucky to eat fantastic food but..She likes to use every dish and pot in the kitchen to do so. For months I have been fighting a mountain of dishes that just doesn't seem to ever go down. She's accused me of having OCD because I go into a deep depression when I can't keep on top of the never ending pile of washing. Anyway Yahoo have site that is simply fantastic for such an emergency. Freecycle. Google it and you will be amazed. Based on your postcode or zip code you will find a freecycle community in your neighbourhood. The idea is simple. Got stuff you don't want? Give it away to someone that does. The person taking said goods doesn't pay anything but has to arrange collection and removal at their own expense. In the past we have given away items as diverse as gym equipment and feather cushions. I know of one woman who wanted the stone chips removed from her drive so she could re-surface it. She offered the chips to anyone who could remove them on a set date. The drive was cleared free of charge.

Anyway, once you have donated stuff to freecycle you can then ask for stuff. So we asked for a dishwasher. A guy about three miles away had just had a new kitchen fitted and wanted the old appliances taken away. We took the dishwasher. If it hadn't worked we could just have binned it but, no, it was a working dishwasher. I am delighted. The dishwasher is installed and working and it cost precisely nothing. It doesn't get better than that.

So how do I calculate the saving on this one? Well a new dishwasher would be £200+ but it's not a new dishwasher so it wouldn't be realistic to count that as a saving. A second hand dishwasher I imagine would be about £50 so that's what I'm adding this in as.

Total Saving on Dishwasher £50
Time delay: N/A

The next saving exposed a flaw in a previous saving that I thought I was making. My bank account comes with free breakdown cover amongst other things. It's not unusual now for banks to offer these types of benefit as there seems precious little else to recommend them. I've always seen breakdown cover as being essential as my first car was a banger and needed recovered more than once and my wife has a classic old car that really shouldn't still be roadworthy but is. So, despite hating the bank, one of the reasons I stuck with them was that I perceived this breakdown cover to be worth about £60 per year. I drive a newish car however and don't expect to break down.

Expect the unexpected. Between Christmas and new year we suddenly lost power and found ourselves stranded in quite a dangerous position at the side of a very busy country road. We phoned our breakdown cover. It turns out that all we had cover for was if we could get fixed at the roadside. Had the car needed towed it would have been taken to the nearest garage and we would have had to look out for ourselves over 100 miles from home. Fortunately it was started at the roadside and we got home without incident. My first thought however was to arrange a recovery service. Should this ever happen again I want the security of knowing that I will get towed home if needs be or to my forward destination.

I did a load of price comparisons and found someone at less than half the price of the big guys. I checked all their literature and read some reviews on them as there is no point them being cheep if they can't do the job. It's all good. They basically have links with loads of local recovery firms so will organise recovery with someone local to your breakdown. They will recover me home as well. If you are in the UK try Rescuemycar.com

Despite this I wanted a little more. You see no-one has been able to figure out why I broke down in the first place. The in car computer shows no faults, the battery is working and the engine has run like a dream before and since. This is good but is also a form of torture because I can't guarantee that the problem won't reoccur. For this reason I also wanted home start. This means that they will also come to your home and try to get you going, or tow you to garage if there is a problem. There are two main motoring organisations in the UK and both want over £100 to offer, repair, recovery and home start. I now have the lot plus piece of mind for £32. What's more I purchased this option via quidco so will get about £6 cash back. All in the a cost of £26 against £100. Cool or what?

Vehicle recovery. Total saving £80 approx
Time saving N/a

So I'm already doing pretty well with the savings. Tyres, plumbing, dishwasher, recovery it all adds up. The other angle of this site however also has to include making money. There will be caravan fees this year at approx £1200 and I have no clue as to where these will come from. We're both hard workers and will meet some of this cost through our wage rises however these are likely to be a lot lower than in previous years. I can feel some sort of part time work coming on. Watch this space....

T

 

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