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Isomatic UK Weblog

Peter Burton's daily log, covering Peter's personal interests, e.g. jazz, travel and general grumpiness plus (occasionally) the business of Isomatic and its associate companies.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Fraudulent bank drafts and transfers from Nigeria 

Yesterday we received another bank draft from Nigeria that seems to be suspect. This brings the total to three within a month, two bank drafts and one electronic transfer that originated from a fraudulent cheque. How does an honest Nigerian business overcome the suspicion with which it will be treated by everyone because of the activities of so many fraudsters.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Phase converters in Canada 

Our Canadian associates are
K2C Industrial Automation
They produce a range of Boosters similar to ours.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Currency conversion 

The subject of web-based currency converters has been raised again in the IEE consultants chat line. I am pleased to say the our favourite OANDA.com was highly recommended.

Friday, March 26, 2004

PayPal 

Two prospective customers have asked if we accept payments through PayPal, to which I responded that I know nothing about it. Investigating further I found
PayPal Sucks
I don't think we will be using PayPal !

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Google versus Yahoo comparison tool 

This morning I tried a great tool for comparing rankings on Google and Yahoo. Just enter the key word and a schematic diagram of the results appears. This is much faster than trying each search engine separately.
See yahoo-vs-google

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

IEE career advisory service 

Yesterday I provided advice by telephone to another fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers who is facing imminent redundancy. The IEE career advisory service provides help with career changes.

One piece of advice I offered was to join the IEE consultants E-mail chat line, part of the IEE consultants' professional network (CPN). Consultancy jobs are sometimes passed on by this means.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Wigmore Hall 

This morning my wife and I are going to a cello recital at
The Wigmore Hall
featuring the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata.
I do hope the St Patrick's Day parade won't get in the way of our journey !

Saturday, March 13, 2004

Protecting one's E-mail address from spammers/porn merchants 

Mark Fisher wrote:
My QSF address long ago became a spam target, so when I designed my photography website, I used JavaScript and a JPEG image to protect my email address. So far it seems to be working - I am not getting any spam to this address after 5 months, whereas other addresses (used much less prominently) I set up at the same time are starting to get spammed.

Here is my page:
Mark's photography page

I got the idea (and slightly modified it) from Joe Maller.

If a non Javascript browser accesses the page, instead of the mailto link it sees a JPEG image of my address.

Friday, March 12, 2004

Extending search phrases for 3 phase converters 

On examining the rankings of search phrases for 3 phase converters I have noticed that our weaknesses are the mis-spelling convertor and the phrase Rotary Phase Converter (or Convertor). Yesterday I attempted to remedy this with 3 new web pages
3 phase convertors
Rotary converters
Rotary convertors

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Reply to my message to the Mayor of London 

Yesterday I received the following reply to my E-mail to the Mayor of London regarding transport issues.

Our Ref: TfL 32028/GLA 180204-8818

Dear Mr Burton

Thank you for your e-mail to the Mayor concerning public transport and the congestion charging scheme. I have been asked to reply on his behalf, please accept my apologies for the delay in doing so.

Mr Livingstone is aware that drivers make up a substantial proportion of not only the voting public but also the population in general which is why he is committed to making public transport a more viable alternative to the car. Obviously for this to be possible it needs to be safe, reliable and convenient; substantial progress has been made and there are several long term projects in the pipeline to help achieve this aim, please refer to the following link for more details at: www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/initiatives-projects/ip-index.shtml

Whilst rush hour does see traffic levels rise to a significant level, incentives have also been introduced to encourage off peak travel by having cheaper fares in operation on certain networks. The school run certainly adds to the morning and afternoon rush hours and one of the ways in which the Mayor and Transport for London are trying to tackle this is by encouraging schools to organise walking buses across the capital. Free travel for under 11s on buses and Tramlink as well as freezing all other child fares has also been introduced.

As you feel very strongly about the congestion charging western proposal, you may wish to add your views to the consultation process by completing the online questionnaire at: www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/cc-ex/public-form-test.shtml

Finally, in reference to telecottages, there are many such developments being built in London also known as live and work units; flexible working patterns can be of further benefit to many workers and it is something that Mr Livingstone would like to see more widespread. In addition, the Mayor is currently consulting on his draft childcare strategy, which includes plans to encourage private and public sector employers to expand flexible and family friendly working policies.

Once again thank you for informing us of your views.

Yours sincerely
Jasmine Howard
Customer Relations

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

MS Word incompatibility 

I am contributing to an interesting chat line thread regarding incompatibility between MS Word's different versions, on different platforms, with different computer settings, etc.

My conclusion is that one should try not to E-mail attached files (except PDF) as one never knows how they look to the recipient. A better methodology is to point to a web site or FTP site from where the files can be downloaded.

Monday, March 01, 2004

Site statistics from Hitbox 

As it is the first of the month I have just checked the February 'hits' on our web site. Despite there being only 29 days in the month, all previous records have been broken with 14655 hits. Most popular page by far was
3 phase converters with 3199 hits
followed by
DSL splitters versus filters with 1802 hits
then
DSL splitters and filters with 1409 hits.
Even the specialist page
resistance welding transformers received 330 hits although this was not a record.

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