Building Work in France
August 31, 2009 by tony · 2 Comments
I try to answer all mail I get, a lot is asking me about moving to France or getting work in France – when there is something which may be of interest to others, I publish them in my blog. This came in today.
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Hello Tony and Family,
I would be grateful if you could tell me what are the possibilities of work for an 53 yr old ‘fit’ carpenter. I have a wide experience of house building gained over the many years of living and working in the UK and Ireland and even a short spell in Brittany. I am very capable at brickwork , block work stonework, I can roof almost any type of house and finish carpentry is my trade anyway. I am very experienced in Groundworks from setting out for excavations to laying all services and pipeworks.
My wife and 11 year old girl(who absolutely adores dogs ,and has 3 little terriers) are probably less enthusiastic than I, but given the right area(we live in the countryside ) the may be for turning.
We have our own house here which we would have to sell or rent, but could look at that down the road.
I would be very much appreciate any advice you have to offer.
Yours sincerely
Michael
Ireland
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Hello Michael,
Do No Evil
August 31, 2009 by tony · Leave a Comment
I think “do no evil” is a catch-phrase Google had as a motto for their service – today I am happy that Google have reinsted this blog as a “safe” site and give credence to their slogan. Google were helpful and fast to react to my problems – my thanks to them.
Early this year my web-hosting service was attacked and, I believe, thousands of websites were hacked and malware code inserted in them including three of mine.
The attacker put code all over the place, hidden in database files, in .htaccess, even in Googles own verification code – it took me days to clean up the mess and I still l see hundreds of other people’s sites if I search which are still “hacked” – luckily I have a little knowledge of site construction and code, but many people have just given up and lost millions of hours of work and effort.
In the great scheme of things, hacking websites is not the greatest evil, illness, accidents and violence are the real sorrows, but I cannot get my head around why many, obviously talented, people wish to create such misery and spend a huge amount of time and effort doing so.
It is a lesson and I am securing my sites netter, but the problem was the hosting company, it was their server infiltrated directly allowing thousands of people to lose, in some cases their living, income and dreams.
Google must be the prime target for these brain-warped hackers, the security team at Google must have a very low opinion of human nature.
A lost Sunday in my cgi-bin
August 30, 2009 by tony · Leave a Comment
- help -
Earlier this year I had a big problem as my hosting company was attacked by hackers from hell who hijacked thousands of websites and inserted “malware” into them – this has resulted in some of my sites still being listed as “dangerous” by Google.
I have had to search through thousands of files and check pages and pages of code to find the tricks and traps which had been inserted.
Google have some tools to help me with this, but it is a game of “cat and mouse” and I am not a programmer or remotely expert in this sort of thing.
Amongst the debris I cleared out and the corrupted files I corrected, I have noticed that every site had a file “altered” in the cgi-bin on the 2nd of January this year – all the files are identical and it is a 6.3 megabyte file – to me it is unreadable and without it none of my sites, including www.twiku.com, will work – any help or ideas are welcome, I am looking for some diagnostic software or service which can pinpint the bad pages or problems on my sites and let me get the Google blacklist lifted.
Can anyone explain the reason why a person will do this sort of thing – the misery and expense is enormous.
A year is a long time on the Internet
August 29, 2009 by tony · 10 Comments
I am curious to see how many people are left in my subscriber list to my newsletter after more than a year since I last wrote to them.
I have been writing a newsletter and blog about life in France since before the word “blog” was though of – work and problems over the last year have made it difficult for me to concentrate on writing, but all that is history now and I hope there are a few readers left.
Soon find out – -
Putting on the Ritz
August 26, 2009 by tony · Leave a Comment
After a year away from computers and coding, creating pages and thinking of ways to make interesting content is a sloo-oow process. On our new site at Villa Roquette which is to offer our apartments and BandB for rental, I am trying to make pages interesting, accurate and “zappy”.
It is 80 years since Irving Berlin wrote “Putting on the Ritz” – and i looked for inspiration in the words for my website – anyway, here is a clip full of magic—
I saw a Kingfisher
August 23, 2009 by tony · Leave a Comment
It is good to be back at my desk writing – it means I am not too tired to take the dogs for a walk in the evening. For nine months I have been building, concreting, roofing an doing a lot of physical work so by the evening I was too tired to go out – very boring for Carole as she usually took the dogs out. The river through our village is called the Thongue and we have discovered a lot of walks along the banks through the vineyards.
This evening I stopped at place where the dogs often paddle and cool down, but they were off chasing rabbits so I stood quietly for a few minutes watching the fish below and a kingfisher landed on a branch right in front of me – only a few seconds – but it was brilliant.
It Is Good To Be Back
August 21, 2009 by tony · 3 Comments
What a week – Friday already and for the first time in over a year I have sat at my desk every day to begin to relearn how to use a computer.
One big change is that I am now all Apple – so most of the programs I have been using for over twelve years are not relevant, new text editors, new file management systems – I’m not sure my brain can cope with this – the big benefit is that I no longer have to suffer the slings and arrows of Microsoft – I once thought I could not use a computer without Firefox, but,believe me, Safari rocks.
Where have I been since last June? For the first three months I was trying to help a company who rent luxury apartments in Paris, I thought of them as friends and believed they had a good service and system, boy oh boy was I wrong. After three months it was as clear as crystal that they had no intention of paying their debts and the information I had been given was a pack of lies. So back to the sunny South of France and I totally immersed myself in getting our rambling old house into a good, high quality commercial venture. From next week you can come to our home in Montblanc (by the Mediterranean not Mont Blanc in the bumpy bit in the middle of Europe). I have started to build a website describing what we can offer at VillaRoquette.com We hope to share a glass of wine (or three) with you here soon.
An interesting year – but it is good to be back again.
Back From the Land where the Bong Tree Grows
August 18, 2009 by Tony · Leave a Comment
I have been away for a Year and a Day and it is good to find this blog still working.
I will be explaining what I have been doing over the next weeks and sharing some of the experiences I have had about business, building work and life in France.
Now I must re-learn how to use all the computer tools and get back to earning a living
