Trials & Tribulations: a blog about running a small UK family business.
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Sourcing Quality Gifts Amid Rising Costs and Poor Customer Service
As a small business in the gift industry, finding high-quality products at reasonable prices has become increasingly challenging. The cost of living crisis has led customers to expect lower price points for gifts, particularly for peripheral celebrations like wedding anniversaries, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. This, in turn, has put additional pressure on…
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Careful when Playing with AI
None of the following is true, it’s convincing, but untrue. Filed under ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer! The Great Storm of 1673 in the UK Introduction The Great Storm of 1673 is one of the most devastating natural disasters ever to hit London. The storm struck on November 23rd, causing severe damage…
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Updating MySQL Windows Server to new release version.
I spent a lot of time researching how to upgrade our MySQL windows server from version 5.5 to 5.7 there are indeed many resources spouting the best way to achieve it. The biggest problem with this type of upgrade is the fact that the underlying system tables can (and do ) vary between the different…
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Top 7 hidden costs of using Franking Machines
We’ve used a franking machine for the past 8 years and whilst it has suited us some of the time there are some wild claims out there especially from some suppliers who claim it is cheaper than using stamps. Once you add in all the hidden charges it is, in our experience, often more expensive…
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The Scout Report — Volume 19, Number 17
The Scout Report April 26, 2013 — Volume 19, Number 17 A Publication of Internet Scout Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison Research and Education Documenting the American South: Colonial and State Records of North Carolina Impact: Earth! PSU Case Studies National Science Foundation: Publications Cornell University Cooperative Extension Urban Institute: CHA Families and…
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Moving to a responsive web design
We’ve been looking for a while now at a content management system (CMS) that would suit our needs, alas to no avail. Some have come close however there always seems to something that would stop us. As we couldn’t find one we’ve decided to hand code our site in the same manner that our original…
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Incorrect Franked Mail refunds from Royal Mail – their latest wheeze!
Using a franking machine you occassionally make a mistake on the franking label, either in value or it smudges or prints poorly. To make life easy for the Royal Mail they have a scheme where-by you can send these in and they will refund you the value less an amount for their admin of the…
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Cookie Law aka The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2011
As a small business involved in ecommerce and online marketing I’ve spent a lot of time looking into the cookie law to understand what we need to do to successfully comply with the law and, unfortunately, there is no clear answer, only case law will make it more manageable to understand, what is or is…
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Classic ASP and SQL Server 2008
I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to get an ecommerce package written in classic ASP to run well using a network connection to a SQL Server 2008 Express edition. These are my findings which may help someone. Don’t settle for the standard connection string you used to use. The ADO connection string provided…
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SEO and VPASP Ecommerce Software Ask a Question Page
We continue to tinker with the VPASP Ecommerce engine, the latest issue we looked at related to the SEO capabilites and was highlighted by, in my humble opinion, the very good SEO Module you can get as a free add on for IIS. As an aside I discovered the module will SEO analyise any web…
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