here’s the bidding:

and here’s the feedback:

You’ll note that the bidding started at £9.99, and it was pretty furious with wining bidder fmw2004 starting at £25, then over the coming days getting into a frenzy: upping the bid 10 times (these are individual bids, not ebay upping towards the maximum as others bid) to £30, then £45, then £55, then £65 then £70, then £75, then £85, then £95, then £98 before something unknown before winning at £117.  You will also note that the cracked glass slide is clearly mentioned.

At no time did fmw2004 get in touch and ask for clarification on any area.

Within 12 hours of payment the item was carefully packed (I pride myself on my packing – this particular item took about 20 minutes and probably 10 metres of bubble wrap) it was on the 24hr couriers van and on it’s way to fmw2004.

—

About a week later I received the following:

From:fmw2004

To:makeitfolky
 Subject:Item I received is not as described: fmw2004 sent a message about Antique Wooden Cashbox Till, Lockable with Key #190636915304
 Sent Date:16-Feb-12 10:11:44 GMT

 Dear makeitfolky,

 I am very disappointed, I have paid way over the odds for what looks like
 the base of a vintage cash box till, but with a replacement ply- wood lid,
 I am presuming that the glass was broken when the piece for the till roll
 was put into the top.

 -fmw2004

So the complaint seems to be this: she bid and paid over the odds for something which wasn’t what she was expecting, despite it being carefully photographed and described with the defects noted.  I replied as follows:

Dear fmw2004,

 Hello, 

 I'm sorry you are disappointed. There is never any attempt to
 mislead on my part, and you bid based on the information in the auction.
 It is always wise to seek further information before bidding what you
 consider to be over the odds. The starting price for the auction was
 £9.99. 

 Two photos of the item were provided, one of the exterior and one
 of the interior, and the cracked glass was mentioned in the listing. There
 is nothing to suggest to me the cashbox lid is a replacement as it has the
 original instructions pasted onto it. 

 Please advise how the item was not
 as described, and how you would like to resolve the problem

 -makeitfolky

Was it sarcastic?  It certainly wasn’t meant to be.  I’d priced an item at a reasonable price, detailed the defects and sold in good faith.  When complaining, you should always know what you is required to put the complaint right – otherwise it’s just a moan.  I offered fmw2004 the chance to come back to me and say what she wanted from me to put the problem right.  A refund?  She would have been given it.  Money off?  She would have been offered something, or at least the opportunity to pass up to the next bidder.

What fmw2004 didn’t do was reply.

Instead she left it nearly 2 months and then left negative feedback.

My conclusion?  She didn’t read the listing, she was too embarrassed to admit it, and she didn’t have the good manners to give me the opportunity  to correct the problem.

I’m not too put out.  As all the books on ebay say: “There’s always one”.

A quick inspection of the site with Firebug showed a bit of hidden text that gets picked up when you copy and paste. The slight annoyance was offset by the cheekyness, and I learnt a new little trick today!

so, to extract field number x from strings in where the field separator (FS) is y:

$ nawk '{ FS="y"; print $x }'

$ bundle install

on a RoR application I’ve been testing locally.

here’s the error:

Installing pg (0.11.0) with native
extensions /home/christian/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:551:in `rescue in block in build_extensions': ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
/home/christian/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/bin/ruby extconf.rb
 checking for pg_config... no
 No pg_config... trying anyway. If building fails, please try again with
 --with-pg-config=/path/to/pg_config
 checking for libpq-fe.h... no
 Can't find the 'libpq-fe.h header
 *** extconf.rb failed ***
 Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
 necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
 details. You may need configuration options.
Provided configuration options:
--with-opt-dir
--without-opt-dir
--with-opt-include
--without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
--with-opt-lib
--without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
--with-make-prog
--without-make-prog
--srcdir=.
--curdir
--ruby=/home/christian/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/bin/ruby
--with-pg
--without-pg
--with-pg-dir
--without-pg-dir
--with-pg-include
--without-pg-include=${pg-dir}/include
--with-pg-lib
--without-pg-lib=${pg-dir}/lib
--with-pg-config
--without-pg-config
--with-pg_config
--without-pg_config

To fix, I ran the following:

$ sudo aptitude install 1ibpq-dev

followed by:

$ gem install pg

I can now bundle the application successfully.

1. Right click on an editor tab
2. Choose “New Editor”
3. Drag one editor tab to the bottom or side of your editor area

    function validDomain($domain)
    {
        // Test domain is actually valid
        if (preg_match('/^[a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?(\.([a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?)+)*$/i', $domain))
        {
            return TRUE;
        }
        return FALSE;
    }

The key here is the regular expression (delimited by the forward slashes at each end):

/^[a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?(\.([a-z]+([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?)+)*$/

This basically translates as follows

• ^[a-z]+    : First chacter must be alphabet
• ([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)    : A group. The first character may be in the range, a-z or 0-9, or a hyphen. This pattern can repeat, although the last character may not be a hyphen
• ?    :  That last group is optional
• (\.     :  Start of next group, and it must be a dot
• ([a-z]+ : First letter must be in range a-z
• ([a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]+)?  :  Then an optional group of a-z, 0-9 and hypen, though last  character may not be hyphem (as above)
• )+)  : Do the last bit at least once
• *  :  The last bit is optional and can repeat as much as you like
• $:   And that’s the end of the string

It’s not a perfect reg-exp for the job, but it does the job where a quick quick is required (user signups fro example), rather than mission critical domain testing.

A good tool for testing your regular expressions can be found here

svn log -v -r <commit-no>

The log command returns broad information about a commit (or list of commits) – date, author and changed paths

-v  (or –verbose) give detailed output

-r  displays information about a specific commit only

1815 Born on 21st November in Littleover, Derby, the son of Edward Woodward & Ann Green
1817 Christened on 6th July in Littleover
1820 Brother George born
1823 Wife Eliza Pikett born in Boston, Lincolnshire, daughter of John Pikett and Anne Bowser
1846 Married Eliza Pikett on 27th July at Kirton in Holland, Lincolnshire
abt 1847 Daughter Clara Pikett Woodward born.
1851 Entered twice in the census – as head of household in Norfolk Place Boston, and as a labourer in the household of Joseph Waite, Manager of Gasworks, at Witham Marsh, Boston
1852 Daughter Emily born in Boston, Lincolnshire
abt 1855 Daughter Eliza Ann Woodward born in Boston, Lincolnshire
1861 Living in Norfolk Place, Boston with wife Eliza and three daughters, and working as a gas stoker
1870 Testimonial dinner held in his honour by the local Liberal party following his sacking fromthe local gasworks for refusing to vote Tory. Was offered a job at the gasworks in Spalding and moved there accordingly.
1871 Living at 39 Albion Street, Spalding with Wife, daughters Emily and Eliza, and his niece (and adopted daughter) Beatrice Woodward Steer (illegitate daughter of his brother William Woodward and Maria Jaycock Steer). Working as a Gasworks Manager
abt 1881 Adopted daughter Beatrice dies
1881 Living at 39 Albion Steet, Spalding, with Wife, and Granddaughter Emma Horry. Manager of Gas Works
1891 Living at 39 Albion Street, Spalding with Wife and Granddaughters Emily Horry & Etheline Hutson
1898 Died at home on 16th February at Elm Villa, Barrells Lane, Spalding. Buried at Spalding Cemetary
1898 Will proved on 14th June, in London. Effects £3386 16s. 4d.
1915 Wife Eliza dies on 15th December at Elm Villa, Barrells Lane, Spalding. Buried alongside John Woodward in Spalding Cemetary

Born 12 March 1808, Colyton, Devon, England,
Died 23 March 1883, Ottery St Mary, Devon England.

Charles Mayne (The ‘Down’ does not appear until his first marriage) was born the ilegitimate son of Francis Mayne nee Stedham in Colyton, Devon on 23 March 1808. She was listed as a widow, and her husband Philip Mayne had not been heard of for a number of years. In 1810, she married James Snell. Was James Charles’ real father? His entry in the Colyton parish baptism register appears to have been added at a later date, and only mentions his birth date – his baptism date is given as ‘-’. Deepening the mystery, the entry does not appear in the Bishop’s Transcripts for Colyton. And where did the name Down come from? Did Charles know who his real father was and add the name to embarrass him? Or did a ‘Mr. Down’ sponsor his education – Charles came from a poor, uneducated background, yet managed to have a book published, and owned a number of bookshops and properties in the Exeter area. Any suggestion welcome!

Timeline

1808 12 March, Charles Mayne born illegitimate son of Frances Stedham, Colyton.
1810 Elder half-brother, John, dies, age 7, at Colyton.
1810 19 August. Mother, Frances Mayne marries James Snell (widower), Colyton.
1816 29 December, mother, Frances Snell dies, Colyton.
1826 Married Sarah Farrant, 3 August 1826 at Shute Witnesses: Samuel & Mary Farrant
1827 Son, George Down M. born, bap at Shute
1829 Son, Edmund Robert Down M. born, bap. 22 February, Shute. Occupation: Schoolmaster, abode: Shute.
1830 Daughter, Frances (Fanny) Down M. born.
1830′s Began trading as a bookseller in OSM (Long ago in Ottery by Roy Packer)
1833 Daughter, Mary Ann Down M. born, chr 2 June , OSM
1834 Witness to the will of Christopher Salter – OSM
1836 Son, Charles Down M. chr 25 March 1836, Ottery St. Mary
1837 Opened another shop in Exeter (Long ago in Ottery by Roy Packer)
1843 Abt April, wife Sarah dies.
1843 Wrote “Culture, Management and propagation of the Fuchsia” OSM
1843 7 October, married Ann Norrington (widow) nee Carter, Ottery St. Mary. Occ. Scrivenor. Witnesses: James Elias Carter & Charlotte Carter.
1844 Abt September, daughter, Emma Franklyn M. born.
1850 Abt April, wife Ann dies.
1850 Deputy clerk to the Commissioner’s of taxes for east Budleigh and Cliston district. Sub-distributor of stamps, Silver St, OSM (Whites directory)
1851 Bookseller & stationer, Silver St, OSM (1851 census)
1854 Bookseller, Castle Street, Exeter
1855 Bookseller, 4 High St, Exeter
1855 Abt June, married Isabella Stokes in Kensington.
1857 Bookseller, Stationer, House & Land Agent, High Constable for the Hundred of Ottery St. Mary, sub Distributor of Stamps, Agent to the Western Annuity Society of Exeter, Property and Protection Society of London, Atlas Fire and Life Insurance Office and lessee of the Tolls of the Markets and Fairs, Silver Street, OSM. (Billings 1857)
1857 Opened a shop in Exeter 11 June (Exeter Flying Post)
1857 Bookseller, 244 High St, Exeter
1862 In partnership with W Clifford as a Publisher, Exeter St. Leonards
1868 Removal of premises reported 5 August (Exeter Flying Post)
1868 Sold his stock in OSM (Long ago in Ottery by Roy Packer)
1869 Removal of premises reported 24 February (Exeter Flying Post)
1869 Bookseller, Bedford St. until 1875
1875 Bookseller, 24 High St. as Mayne & Co, until 1878
1881 Sub Distributor of stamps & House & Land Agent, Ridgway, OSM (1881 census)
1883 23 March, Charles Down Mayne dies.
Thanks to Carole Sharp for this timeline