amcho blog

Social Lending

admin — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:58:59 +0000

I have recently been looking at various social lending websites. The idea is that individual lenders lend money to individual borrowers via the social lending website, rather than via the banks. The result is that the lender receive a higher rate of return while the borrower pays a lower rate of interest.

For the sake of this exercise I have opened a lending account on four of the social lending websites to see how they compare:
Funding Circle
Zopa
Yes Secure
Ratesetter

processing open office .ods files in perl

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 10:07:57 +0000

Have just spent the last couple of days trying to process a spreadsheet file created in openoffice using perl. The problem I had was deciding which CPAN module to use. A choice of one which did everything I wanted would have been ideal. Unfortunately I had the overwhelming choice of hundreds.

I finally settled for ODF::lpOD

Thanks to the following pages that pointed me in the right direction:
how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_read_OpenOffice_OpenDocument_spreadsheets_in_Perl

search.cpan.org/dist/ODF-lpOD/lpOD/Tutorial.pod#Individual_cell_access,_read_and_update

search.cpan.org/~jmgdoc/ODF-lpOD-1.114/lpOD/Table.pod

PHP Upgrade for 5.3

admin — Tue, 10 May 2011 08:54:56 +0000

Busy updating websites so they work in PHP 5.3
a somewhat boring task:
change each MySQL login password so it is stored in the new format
and update any depreciated code:
replace split with preg_split
replace ereg with preg_match
and wait for them to come to term!
Or postpone the problem till PHP 6 by ignoring all depreciated warnings:
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED);
and do the job properly later…

Links:
PHP 5.3 depreciated functions
error-reporting

Census – Students to be exterminated

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:27:07 +0000

According to the census form – if you are a student and have any part time or casual employment you will not be classified as a student but instead as a part time or casual employee with a very low salary.
I am still trying to work out if this is ‘conspiracy’ or ‘cock-up’?

Census Form

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:50:54 +0000

Just finished filling in my census form, spent hours trying to work out the correct answer to enter into the box labeled “This Question left Blank Intentionally”.

Possible Answers:
YES – but then the box is not blank intentionally or otherwise.
NO – as the box is not blank.
TRUE – would reflect on the intention of the form designer,
UNTRUE – as the box is not blank but the intention was TRUE
FALSE – correct as far as the blankness of the box is concerned
DONT KNOW – can’t figure out what the question means, let alone the intention of the questioner.
PASS – maybe the best answer – this is the one I settled on.

any other possible answers interpretations – please comment below…

Inflation up again

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:29:40 +0000

The Bank of England governor said that excluding the effects of the rise in VAT, the fall in sterling and recent increases in commodity prices and energy prices inflation would probably have increased at a rate “well below” the 2% target.

In other words if we exclude inflation from the figures,
our inflation rate would be zero!

I am now waiting for the company that announces massive director bonuses with a chairman’s statement the includes the quote “apart from the losses this year we are a profitable company”.

see full article

WordPress Upgrade – White Screen of Death

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:59:35 +0000

Just upgraded my wordpress blog to the latest version. All seemed to go OK but when I looked at the blog all I got was a blank page. After a few hours of searching I finally got it up and working again. For any one else in the same position (and as reminder to myself for the next time!!)

1. turn off all plugins
2. after loading the new code dont forget to load any plugins and themes you are using

Probably best to install the new version over the old version that way all the plugins will still be there.

Another VAT increase

admin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:16:03 +0000

Look out for the next VAT increase due at the start of next year: VAT will be charged at the new rate of 20% on all invoices issued on or after 4 January 2011

.COM .NET Domain Names to Increase in price

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:45:45 +0000

VeriSign recently announced price increases for .COM and .NET domains that will go into effect later this year.
Expect your .com and ,net domains to be 5% to 10% more expensive towards the end of this year.

VAT goes back up to 17.5%

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:47:11 +0000

Just a quick reminder that any payments received by us before the end of December will be charged at the lower VAT rate of 15%. From 1st of January 2010 all invoices will be charged at 17.5%