Electropedia

I came across this new website today - Electropedia, which is a database of electrical and electronic terms and definitions.

A few customer's may find it interesting, but I'm sure the people involved in this line of work will find it a useful resource if it fully develops - especially apprentices.

The definitions also translate into French, German and Spanish, which may not be a bad thing as Europe continues to try and force their wiring regulations and systems on us in these shores. eg the new wiring colours introduced in 2006.

I'm Back - Holiday Review (Part One)

Well thats another holiday over with. Previous holiday's saw Jennie and I off to America(2005) (Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone NP, Yosemite NP and Death Valley NP), The Gambia(2006) and last October to Kenya(2006) for a week's Safari. This time we had a somewhat shorter flight to France, where we toured part of the South of France along the border with Spain.

We flew into Girona(Northern Spain) with Ryanair from Prestwick Airport. Thankfully the Ryanair flights took off and arrived on time, something they made a big deal of when landing by playing a hideously annoying tune over the PA system, heralding the fact they were on time. This was also the first time I have flown from Prestwick Airport, which I believe is in need of a good overhaul, especially externally to the terminal building and also it can become very cramped inside the terminal building during busy periods.

Anyway lets get onto Girona. Most people who fly into Girona do not see any of the city, instead they are herded onto a coach and escorted 60 miles down the motorway to Barcelona, which I visited 3-4 years back and is a nice city break experience, we were there for 5 days and managed to see most of the city and surrounding areas highlights but it was a non-stop five days to get round them all.

We hired a car at Girona Airport and drove the 10 miles or so into the city centre.

A glorious summer evening greeted us as we arrived at our recently built hotel, although the name Bellavista had me recollecting an episode from Only Fools and Horses and the hotel from hell in Margate.

We checked in and I somewhat reluctantly tore myself away from the free minibar and headed to the relatively small city centre were we made our way to an outside cafe, for our first taste of the holiday of some tapas and beer.
As I said the city centre of Girona is very small, but well worth visiting, to view the Cathedral, a walk along the town wall and narrow cobbled streets, soaking in the relaxed atmosphere.

We only had one night in Girona, before we headed off to our next overnight stay in Beziers in France, as we headed to the French border from Girona, we headed along the coast to take in the Mediterranean sea air. Our first stop for lunch, where Rabbit and Snails were on the menu, we stopped at Port Bou, a relaxed coastal town. Afterwards it was onto historic Collioure, which had a more busier feel to it and worth spending a few hours either visiting the historic buildings or topping up the tan on the sandy beach. After a Nutella icecream cone, it was time to head further into France and onto Beziers.
We didnt really spend a lot of time exploring Beziers, but the view from the Cathedral concourse was well worth the visit, as the view took in the surrounding vineyards and towards the foothills of the Massif Central to the north.

It was a busy ten day holiday with many places and hotels to visit along the way. Our one night stay in Beziers was over and it was time to head further along the coast towards Montpellier. Before we arrived though, we again took the coastal route and visited quaint little towns such as Agde/Cap d'Agde and Sete.

Montpellier is a vibrant university city, which oozes good vibes. We had an enjoyable late evening walk into the city centre via the ancient Viaduct route and past Montpellier's own Arc de Triomphe were we enjoyed dinner, before retracing our steps and watching the sunset while local's near the viaduct enjoyed a traditional get together and dance.

Our one night stay in Montpellier was over far too quickly and it was time to head further in land towards the Gorges de Tarn area.

Our few days by the coast were over and it was time to sample some of France's most breathtaking scenery.

Part Two to follow.....

Latest

I have not posted lately as I have been off work for ten days in May ill and then its been busy trying to catch up with all the jobs and paperwork.

Our admin and electrical team have been working flat out lately with our busy schedule and its our team which will be in charge over the next few weeks as I take a holiday in the South of France.

We are working hard on our new admin project and one new electrician will join our team later in June, where they will hopefully be joined by our new office team member.

I will update you all with our latest news when I return but in the meantime in my absence call our office team on 01786 813916 where they will be more than happy to help you and book your electrical job.

Hot Cable

Here's an interesting article that appeared recently in The Times regarding plans to generate electricity in Iceland using its natural geothermal landscape and pipe the electricity to these shores and mainland Europe using a 1,200 mile cable.

Now us Sparks are always on the look out for overloaded and warm cables when diagnosing electrical problems, but if this Icelandic plan comes to fruition, this would be one Hot Cable.

View details of The Times article as reported by electrical news website Voltimum

LogMeIn

I came across "LogMeIn" last week which is really helping us develop our new admin project quicker.

LogMeIn is a free download utility that allows you to access your computer from any web browser from anywhere in the world.

So we set up LogMeIn on two of our office computers which is allowing us to work on our admin project away from the office.

There is a free version of LogMeIn which will allow you remote access and full control of your computer and is available from here

The Power of Blogs - Sage Part 2

The power of blogging fairly hit home today when we received a telephone call from accounting software giant Sage. Readers may have read a previous post on this blog from April 10th, when we were experiencing problems generating our end of year employee P60 and P14 forms.

We eventually had to pay for support cover from Sage for them to look into our problem which turned out to be because we were running Payroll for 2005 and not the 2006 version, hence causing some technicality problems when generating new employee returns for the year end 2006 - something which we did not anticipate happening, since we only bought the package in March 2006, one month before the new tax year began.

Anyway, we payed for Support Cover and within an hour, we had downloaded the updates from Sage and the problem was fixed.

Today however, we received a phone call from Sage regarding our previous post on this blog.

Now half expecting a rollicking from Sage, because we had blogged about them, I put on my tin hat and body armour and spoke to a gentleman called Mike Green.

But my expectation of a telling off could not halve been further from the truth.

Seemingly Sage trawl the web, looking to see what people are saying about their company. They had come across my blog post and after reading about the problems that we were encountering, called us up to offer advice. Before they knew that we had already upgraded, they kindly told us that the problem that we seemed to be having, was likely to be linked to an out of date Sage package and they recommended we upgrade.

Now, I'm sure like all company's Sage have various policy's and ways of working (eg support prices and call waiting times) that can irritate people at times, but in this instance I would say that in calling us today deserves 100% praise for this type of customer service.

Sage were more than happy that I was discussing my issues with their software online, which in turn allowed them to find out the problems people were having, allowing them to seek to address these problems, either by calling us like today or by using the feedback to enhance future software releases.

So there you have it, a small company in Stirling, starting a blog only a few weeks ago and already we have had the mighty Sage knocking on our door.

Before I sign off - once again well done Sage and Mike Green for your foresight in calling today.