Kingsway Villagers

Hi Neighbours,

These last 3-4 years have been slightly frantic at my house! With my wife Angel’s (almost) constant migraines, I’ve been busy trying to keep up with everyday household stuff, community work and running my own business and this website; pretty-much in that order, although everything has suffered to some extent!

Several years ago I talked about updating the site and I’ve never yet got around to it.

Recently I have decided to close down my business and am going into partnership with my son David at BartonsWeb (Website Design & Development).

This will give me a little more time (and help), so I’m finally going to get on with some new website design plans, which should make the whole site much easier to navigate, and better to look at!

Amongst other things, I’m also going to be offering FREE advertising to local businesses (Kingsway, Quedgeley, Hardwicke, Tuffley, Waterwells, Copeland Park and Hunts Grove); so if you run a business based in those areas (and offer goods and services for local customers), keep your eyes peeled for more announcements.

Also, if there’s anything you would really like to see (by way of additional facilities etc), please suggest it here.

I’d like to apologise to all those who have been unable to log in for the past few weeks, Some extra security procedures were instigated on my server recently, which were not supposed to affect normal users… I did have some tests run… which were fine… but apparently the problem affected everyone - except my “test-pilot”

To make matters worse, I have been unable to find time to get in myself! My wife is still quite ill (it’s been more than 12 months since she was last at work) and I’ve had very little time to spare in recent months. Being self-employed is no fun in these situations (no cover)! If I hadn’t been so rushed, I should have noticed the lack of posts and picked up on the problem sooner.

I finally managed to add a gallery of pictures from the litter pick day (here) and to add the post below about the Litter Pick Poster Competition.

Hopefully I will be able to catch up soon… (extra big sorry to Mark at MSPC-Repairs for my unforgivable delay… I will make it up to you)!

I will be back soon to post about the 2013 Kingsway Big Lunch: Diary Date - Sunday June 2nd (don’t miss it - there’s loads going on this year, it’s gonna be epic)!

 
Sorry again to everybody, and welcome back

Four weeks ago tomorrow (the day after our last public Residents Association meeting -as I prepared to add my meeting summary), my 9 year old (Tiny) PC finally bit the dust as the hard-drive failed and to make matters worse, I was actually in the throes of reorganising my back-up system at the precise moment that the damn thing croaked, so a number of my back-up files were corrupted

Faced with the possibility of losing all of my saved emails and a lot of my business data, I enlisted the help of local PC hardware expert Neil Souter at Soutersoft in Quedgeley, who was very helpful indeed. Neil was able to retrieve all of my important data, including my all-important email archive.

Retrieving my data and purchasing/installing my new PC took around 3 weeks, then there were issues with my replacement PC, (PC World made a simple mistake, supplying me with the wrong model, which I didn’t notice until after I’d set the damned thing up) which lost me an additional week!
To top things off (sic), when my mother-in-law was babysitting for us on the night before my birthday (as I went out for dinner with an old friend), she sat on my office chair and snapped it in half and sadly my wife has been ill for most of the last month, so I’ve also been coping with much of the housework and looking after the kids!

So, with the furniture damaged and some time on my hands whilst I was waiting for things to be sorted out, I took the opportunity to renovate my old desk, replace my broken chair and rearrange my “office”.

The whole thing has cost me 4 weeks, a good deal of stress, considerable expense and some loss of income

I was able to log in to this website (using my laptop) to "catch-up" with posts / comments / new user requests / spam etc on a couple of occasions, but I didn’t have the time/opportunity to do much else, and having finally managed to get back to some sense of normality, I am now some 4 weeks behind with my work and have an inbox full of emails to catch up with

On the upside, I now have a shiny new supersonic Packard Bell triple-core PC with a 1TB hard-drive (that will take some backing up) and am now in the midst of trying to catch up with my work whilst sorting out the new PC, and coping with all the strange things that Windows 7 keeps doing… lol (get Bill Gates in here, I want to slap him)!
Heads Up: The last two PC’s I bought both came from manufacturers who went bust within months of my purchases, so don’t buy any shares in Packard Bell for a while

Here’s to another 9 years of trouble-free processing!

So, if you recently posted on the website and were frustrated by the (slight) delays in processing your post, please forgive me… normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Regards,
Clive

I would just like to remark on the hard work which Clive has undertaken in providing such an extremely helpful website.

I have found the Kingsway Blog a positive way of having access to, and with the community, and discovering what is happening within the development (good, bad or indifferent).

I would take my hat off to him for all the hard work he has, and continues putting into everything that he has provided the wider community to use and contribute toward… The only problem is I don’t wear a hat!

Seriously though, you have clearly worked very hard, and for that you should be applauded. No I haven’t taken any gifts or promise of a drink (when the new pub’ arrives) from Clive in passing these comments, but I hope others will join in and equally add their thanks too.

On December 18th (in this post), I mentioned that my "Article Submission" facility was playing up… again!

After wasting lots of time trying various solutions and workarounds suggested by the software creator, I finally got fed up and made one of my own The new method may seem more complicated at first but is - in reality - a far better solution.

Amongst other things, improvements include a "Top (20) Contributors" list (right-hand menu column) with links to Author Archives, allowing you to list all posts by any specific author.

What’s more, I’ve worked my way through every post to date and made sure that each post/article is attributed to the correct author (even those that I posted on behalf of other users when the facility was down in the past).

I’ve also added a function to (automatically) include the author’s name below all post titles, so you can easily see who made each post.

The old "Article Submissions" form page (now entitled "Submit A Post"), now includes comprehensive instructions, general rules and a guide to using the Author Archives etc, so please feel free to give it a try and let me know (here) if you see any problems or have any further suggestions on the subject.

Regards,
Clive

(…better late than never)

Following my "Where was I" post in December, (I do hope you all had a merry christmas) last year ended in a bit of a haze for me as I struggled to catch up with my work, and the new year started the same way!

I’ve been so busy that I have hardly stopped for breath and - as I write, I can hear Phoenix grumbling (she’s off school and in bed with a sore throat)!

I’ve been neglecting this website, and my role on the Residents Association (sorry folks) and have a steadily increasing queue of customers - and local matters, awaiting my attention

I’m still awaiting help to fix the Article Submission facility, and - from the lack of posts/comments on here (despite a steady stream of visitors) I can only assume that you’re all in the same boat!

I now (officially) hate Christmas

Let’s hope things calm down soon…

Happy New Year (2010) Kingsway Villagers!