Gordon's Blog

HD Douglas and Son brass instrument makers of Glasgow

2012-02-08T19:00:00.000Z

This is the summary of my research into Douglas & Son, brass musical instrument makers of Glasgow.

My interest in Douglas and Son started when I acquired a cornet with the company name engraved on it several years ago. I had never seen an instrument with a Scottish maker's mark so I had it restored to a playable condition. The bell is engraved Douglas & Son Ltd, 66 Brunswick St, Glasgow. It is a high pitch cornet that has been converted to low pitch at some point. I originally thought it was made in the 1880's but my research into the company name show it is probably post 1908 although the style is earlier. Here are some photographs from before and after the rebuild:

The story of Douglas and Son
Hugh Dow Douglas was a musical instrument maker who started his business around 1850 at 190 Trongate, Glasgow. His company made or sold a variety of woodwind, brass and bagpipe instruments aimed at the military and growing civilian wind band market. Douglas himself was a brass player and is listed as bugler to the 1st Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers. The 1st Lanark had a bugle band, but by 1887 it had become a brass band under Mr Robert Strachan and promoted to the 1st Battalion replacing the pipe band who were demoted to the 2nd. The 3rd Lanark didn’t have a band. They had a football team instead! Its probable that Hugh Douglas started in the bugle band and moved into the brass band, possibly even supplying some of the instruments.

Douglas seems to have been something of an entrepreneur and saw the potential for the new brass instruments to supplant woodwind instruments in civilian bands as a money making opportunity. In 1862 he organised and sponsored the first brass band contest in Scotland (known as H D Douglas' Contest) with a series of further competitions in 1864 and 1865. The top prize was £77 - equivalent to £1600 in today's money.

Credit is due to the late Mr. H. D. Douglas, musical instrument-maker, Glasgow, who was Field Bugler to the 1st L.R.V., for having attempted to do something for the improvement of these bands while they were still brass bands. He organised contests in 1862,1864, and 1865, with the view of "increasing the efficiency of the Volunteer and other bands in Scotland.
(Music for the people: a retrospect of the Glasgow international exhibition, 1888, with an account of the rise of choral societies in Scotland, Robert A. Marr 1889 (reprinted in The British bandsman: the official organ of the National Brass Band Championships, Volume 1, Issue 24 quoted in this article).

However, later in 1862 something appears to have gone wrong and he was in debt with his assets subject to sequestration (notice from the Edinburgh Gazette):

Maybe he was one of the first promoters of brass band contests to find out that there was no real money in it? This not withstanding, his business continued and by 1870 included his son at expanded premises 36-38 and later incorporating no 42 Brunswick Street. Then in 1908 the firm moved to no 66 Brunswick Street.

Business Names and locations:
1850 - 1870 Hugh Douglas, 190 Trongate
1870 - 1907 Hugh D Douglas & Son, 36-42 Brunswick Street
1907 - 1920 Douglas & Son Ltd, 66 Brunswick Street

Entry for H Douglas 190 Trongate, Musical instrument maker in the 1866 Glasgow Post Office Directory:

His display advertisement fromn the 1870 Glasgow post office directory:

His display advertisement from the 1875 Glasgow post office directory:

Display advertisement from the 1893 Glasgow Post Office Directory (Hugh D had died in 1887 and the business was now run by his son):

Display advertisement from the 1900 Glasgow Post Office Directory:

Douglas & Son Limited
The company Douglas & Son Ltd (company number 6545) Was formed in 1907 (source - National Archives of Scotland).

66 Brunswick Street
Brunswick Street in 1913, photographed by the Springburn photographer William Graham. No 66 is on the right hand side at the end of the row:

A shop sign carrying a representation of a bugle and other musical instruments is just visible in the distance:

By the onset of the first world war the company was mainly producing bagpipes and seems to have stopped trading totally around 1920.

Manufacturer?
Its not clear if Douglas & Son made brass instruments themselves or just marketed other peoples. His premises were rather small and although that does not preclude manufacturing of small instruments, manufacturing the full range of larger instruments he sold would have been difficult. At the time of Hugh D Douglas' death in 1887 he was selling instruments made by Thibouville Lamy of France (according to his will which lists a debt to that company), but he also owed a debt to an electro plating company in Glasgow so he must have been repairing or manufacturing something.

The cornet I have is very similar to French models of the period and Douglas were agents for Millereau of Paris (who also manufactured the Arban brand cornets). Its possible my cornet was made for Douglas and sold with his name on it. Against this theory is the fact that many Millereau instruments exist with the Douglas name engraved on them as supplier.

Genealogy of Hugh Dow Douglas
I undertook this work to try and determine who the son was in Douglas and Son. Its not clear as Hugh died in 1887 and many of his children seemed to have died in infancy. I will continue this in the future.

Birth:
Hugh Dow Douglas 04 Jul 1833, Perth - parish register entry

Parents:
Hugh Douglas (occupation also given as a musical instrument maker on Hugh D's death certificate of 1887)
Margaret Walker

Marriage:
Christina Gray, 17 Jul 1857, Edinburgh,

Residences:
1871 census - 37 North Albion Street
With his wife Christina, son John (aged 11) and Christina Milne (a saleswoman)
Occupation - assistant instrument maker employing one boy

1881 census - 106 Sauchiehall Street
With Christina and son John G
Occupation - music seller

Death:
04 April 1887, Glasgow (106 Sauchiehall Street), from liver disease - death register entry

According to his will lodged in the Glasgow Sheriff Court Hugh D Douglas died with debts including:

£4 to Thomas Smith and Son Electroplaters
£86 to J Wallis and Son, London (suppliers of woodwind instruments)
£35 to Thibouville Lamy & Co, London (manufacturers of brass instruments)
£3 to Riviere and Hawkes of London (later an instrument maker, but at this stage making instrument reeds and publishing music for military bands)

His main asset on death was his shop stock, worth £689. His cash in hand was insufficient to pay for the funeral. The business was inherited by his wife along with the rest of his estate.

Children:
Christina Douglas, 25 Jul 1859, Glasgow (died in infancy)
Margaret Douglas, 13 Jun 1860, Glasgow (died in childhood)

Christina Gray Douglas, 24 Nov 1861, Glasgow (died in infancy)
Christina Douglas, 07 Nov 1863, Glasgow

Hugh Dow Douglas, b 18 Aug 1865, Glasgow (died in infancy)
John Gray Douglas, 03 Jan 1867, Glasgow
Hugh Dow Douglas, 24 May 1869, Glasgow
Margaret Walker Douglas, 30 Jul 1870, Glasgow

Other information
Here is a clip of me playing my Douglas and Son Ltd cornet:

The real reason I could never be a Christian

2012-02-07T11:36:00.001Z

When all is said and done and everything has been reasoned out, it all comes down to practicality. I just can't find it in my heart to hate other people enough to be a proper Christian.

Sure, I could be a woolly liberal, go to church and enjoy the music, but to be a true Christian requires a level of dislike for others that I would struggle to maintain. Anyone seeking evidence for this just has to look at how the online Christian community interacts with the unconvinced majority.

Excel Soprano Cornet Review

2012-02-02T20:00:00.000Z

I recently had the chance to try out the Excel Soprano cornet in Eb. These look very similar to the Chinese instrument sold under the JP brand, but are marketed by Band Supplies, one of the main dealers in brass band instruments with shops in Leeds and Glasgow as well as a mail order business. The one I tried was in silver plate and retails for around £300. The Yamaha student model is £660 so this one is half the price. It looks like copy of the previous (pre Xeno) Yamaha Maestro soprano cornet model.

First Impressions
The instrument feels heavy. Its not a lightweight bell, but the bell has the correct narrow throat of a modern soprano cornet meaning that smaller mutes will be needed than for Bb (Denis Wick and Wallace make suitable ones). The build quality is good. The silver plating looks good and the slides are nice and tight with good seals, but the screws that hold the trigger linkages together need some Loctite on the threads to strop them coming loose.

I had exactly the same problem with my old Yamaha Maestro cornet so this is a design that the Chinese should not so slavishly copy. On such short slides I would have preferred rings rather than triggers. In common with a lot of small trumpets and cornets the second valve slide is not removable. The valves are stainless steel which harder than brass and therefore not considered as good as monel for wear, but they are very smooth. The valve springs are quite strong like Yamaha ones. I am used to Schilke, and Besson which are much softer and Bach which is somewhere in between. It may be possible to fit weaker springs if this was a problem. Like all new instruments there was a bit of heavier assembly lubricant in the valves and this took a while to work its way out through normal oiling and swabbing of the valves and valve casings.

There is no fitting for a lyre. This means that if you want to march with it you will have to have one fitted or use a clamp on bell lyre like Schilke players do. Fitting a lyre box to the third valve tuning slide would be difficult because of the trigger mechanism. Putting one on the front bow of the leadpipe would interfere with the standing waves in the air column and is not considered to be a very good idea by instrument designers. This might be why it doesn't have one at all.

The case is made from a denim looking material with back straps and a shoulder strap and space for two mouthpieces, but no mutes. Clearly aimed at the student market rather than the committed brass band player who has music and mutes to carry. The case contains a cleaning cloth, the obligatory white gloves supplied with all Chinese made instruments and a mouthpiece that looks a bit like a Denis Wick 4B.

I can report that the instrument is well in tune with itself and the sound is nice. In common with all small trumpets and cornets I play on I am a bit low on the pitch so the tuning slide has to be all the way in to be at the correct pitch. I am going to have to select a mouthpiece that corrects this. I used a Wick 4B converted to screw rim with a Bach 1.5c rim on it for testing. Its not the right mouthpiece for this so I need to do some experimenting.

The upper register is very open and it doesn't close up on me. The top C is well in tune, D less so but acceptable, E is very flat and would require alternative fingerings - not that soprano parts ever go that high.

Here is a sample recording from my iPad:

Conclusion
This cornet is sold as a student level instrument and it does this and more. I have not been able to directly compare it to other instruments, but I have played a lot of soprano cornets over the years and this is how I think the Excel compares to some other student and professional models.

The Excel is not as responsive as the Schilke and does not have the same presence, but it does sound warmer. Its better than the either model of Besson Sovereign soprano, but thats not difficult as the Sovereigns were remarkably poor instruments. Its a bit better than the old 1980's long type Getzen I had because it speaks more easily. Its better than the old Imperial because it plays in tune with itself. Comparing it to student models its more free blowing than the later Besson student model soprano (although the Besson valves were superior) and better than the East European ones that schools used to buy in. Its about on par with the older Yamaha that it seems to be based on although the build quality is not as good.

I give it 7.5 out of 10, but I am a harsh judge (I would only give the Schilke a 9 because of the pitch problems and I find the sound a bit harsh - there is no perfect soprano cornet yet). The excel is 12% of the price of a Schilke but its about 75% of the way there. Like all musical instruments its a law of diminishing returns when it comes to price. The Excel is, by far, the best student model soprano cornet I have ever played on and is ideal for schools, junior bands or for cornet players who want to dabble on soprano or have a cheaper instrument for marching with.

Young Scots play key role in Scottish independence referendum.

2012-02-02T19:00:00.000Z

The younger generation of
Scots may be more
lion rampant than saltire

One thing is clear about the forthcoming referendum on Scottish Independence: young people will play a key role in determining its outcome. Even if Alex Salmond fails in his plan to include 16 and 17 year olds in the vote it is likely that the under 25's will decide the outcome of the poll. The older generation is very evenly split on the issue and younger people are more easily motivated to engage in political issues than they have been for many years.

This could work for or against the SNP's Yes campaign. Anecdotal evidence from my younger friends is that they are either more internationalist than nationalist or they misunderstand what is being proposed under the umbrella word "independence". The former group are less likely to vote Yes in the referendum because they don't see the relevance of international boundaries. The latter group seem to believe that an independent Scotland would be able to prevent immigration from eastern Europe (it couldn't); get rid of the royal family (the SNP have made clear that this is not on the agenda); have a level of autonomy that would allow it to take unilateral military action such as going to war with England if it wished (it couldn't) and have full fiscal autonomy with a currency unaffected by England (it couldn't).

On this latter point I see from today's papers that John Swinney has come out and said that an independent Scotland would stay in the pound. Its not clear if he means the UK pound or a separate Scottish currency called the pound with parity to the UK pound as is the case with the Isle of Man and Gibraltar pounds. He certainly means retaining the Bank of England as lender of last resort. How many of my young friends are going to be happy with that?

One of the problems with the current debate is that the SNP have failed to define exactly what they mean by "independence". They have allowed it to be all things to all people and seem quite happy to "run with the hare and hunt with the hounds" when it suits them. For example, they are clear that its geographical and political nationalism they are promoting rather than ethnic nationalism, but at the same time they are quite happy to lean on images of Scotland's old tribal culture and military victories when it suits them. These things appeal to the younger generation of Scots who may be more lion rampant than the Scottish Government's pantone saltire. If they vote for Independence on the SNP's terms then they may be sorely disappointed with the outcome.

Christian adverts banned for claiming miracle healing

2012-02-01T18:30:00.000Z

According to the National Secular Society a Christian organisation called Healing on the Streets - Bath has had its adverts banned because they claim to be able to cure specific diseases:

The ASA ruled that 'A video on the website made claims that HOTS volunteers had successfully prayed for healing for people with cancer, fibromyalgia, back pain, kidney pain, hip pain, cataracts, arthritis and paralysis. We noted the testimonials on the website and in the video but considered that testimonials were insufficient as evidence for claims of healing. We therefore concluded the ads were misleading'.

The ASA also 'noted we had not seen evidence that people had been healed through the prayer of HOTS volunteers, and concluded that the ads could encourage false hope in those suffering from the named conditions and therefore were irresponsible. We acknowledged that HOTS had offered to make amendments to the ads, and to remove the leaflet from their website. However, we considered that their suggested amendments were not sufficient for the ads to comply with the CAP Code.

The full article can be found here:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/02/adverts-claiming-cures-through-prayer-are-banned

I have written before about a similar organisation in Scotland that seems to be based around churches with links to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Their motivation seems to be that miracles are a "convincer" for God in what amounts to a sales process. Quite different to conventional protestant evangelicals who rely on a forensic (reasoned legal) argument for the existence of God, these new wave Christians use a sales process based around selling the benefits of belief - whether ultimate salvation or current earthly ones.

Some Christians will no doubt see this as evidence of persecution, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and personal testimony just doesn't cut it. For example, I can remember being in a church where a miracle was announced to have happened - somebody healed of breast cancer - but on enquiring it turned out that the lady had felt a lump, gone to the doctors, the congregation had prayed and the lump was found to be benign. I am willing to bet that the lump was never cancerous. Had it been found to be so and then the congregation had prayed I might be more sympathetic to the idea.

How many .nu domains are registered?

2012-01-31T18:30:00.000Z

I have always had a soft spot for .nu domains. They were one of the first CCTLD's to be sold for other purposes and I registered hudson.nu in 1998. This means I have had the same email address for 14 years along with a short, memorable, web address - although most of my web pages have now been folded into www.ecalpemos.org and hudson.nu may be email only by the end of the year.

The advantages of .nu include that the public whois does not list the registrant, but it does list accurate technical information. It also has a low tolerance for spamming and reasonably high registration fees which means it is a clean name space with high availability of good names.

I notice from the whois lookup at domaintools.com that there are 49,242 domains associated with support[at]nic.nu.

I don't know if this is the total figure, but it gives some indication of how small .nu is. There are over 100 million active .com domains and over 9 million .uk ones.

How to get Microsoft Publisher files printed by a commercial printer

2012-01-27T18:30:00.000Z

I recently had to get a leaflet printed without having the time or budget to go to a designer. Normally I would have done this using colour digital printing, but 10p per sheet it was too expensive for a run of 2000 or so. My usual designer uses Adobe Indesign which is the standard these days for graphic design. All I have is Microsoft Publisher 2010 and professional printers can't handle publisher files so I had to find a work around.

The solution turned out to be to design the leaflet in Publisher and output it in pre-press PDF format. This does not compress images like a normal PDF and it will embed font files (where this is possible). To do this requires using a printer who can print from PDF so I settled on www.1-2-print.co.uk who are based in Germany, but deliver to the UK. I paid £99 for 2500 double sided, full colour, A5 leaflets on 170gm paper including delivery and a £10 charge for checking my file for errors before printing.

The leaflet was designed normally in Publisher, but with bleeds set (so the background colours would go over the edges of the paper).

The first thing you need to do is set the document to use process colours - CMYK - not the default RGB. RGB is fine for screen images and some desktop colour printers, but commercial printing uses a four colour process. To do this, start a new document or selct an existing one, go to the file menu, click on info, then commercial print settings. Select "change color mode" and select CMYK.

Setting CMYK as the colour mode in Publisher 2010

Now design your publication as normal. When you are finished save it as a publisher file (so you have a back up in editable form) then go to file > save as and select PDF:

Click on the Options button which opens up the following dialogue box.

Select Commercial press and click on "Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded".

Commercial graphic design packages use Postscript fonts which can be embedded in a pdf. Whilst Truetype fonts can be embedded, very few have their right set to allow embedding. By choosing to bitmap the text you are turning it into an image and you don't need to embed the font. The results will not be as crisp, but they will be very close to the quality of an embedded font.

Now click on the Print Options button:

Tick the box marked "Allow bleeds" but do not tick the one marked crop marks or bleed marks. If you do that then you may get the lines intruding into the publication.

Make sure the page size is the same as your document. if you have set it to A5 with a bleed area then you will need to select custom size and enter the full size of your document.

Now you can save the document. It will be a larger PDF file from those you are probably used to seeing. You can open it in your usual PDF viewer to check it and generate a new PDF if you want to make changes in publisher.

This method gives charities and voluntary groups the opportunity to improve the quality of their publications while saving money on digital printing and colour photocopying costs. I have had good results, but it requires careful colour management.

Climate Change becomes the new Evolution for America's Christian Right

2012-01-16T12:50:00.001Z

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.

The full article can be found here.

Although it states:

Attacks on evolution come largely from conservative Christians who believe in a literal reading of the biblical creation story. Climate change denial is mostly rooted in political ideology, with foes decrying it as liberal dogma, teachers say. The NCSE's Scott said that made it much harder to use the courts to protect climate science education.

it is known that many evangelical Christians are opposed to action on climate change, including our old friend Grady McMurtry, whose diatribe against "environmental terrorists" can be read here.

For those who are interested in the mainstream Christian view on climate change I would suggest reading Christian Aid's material on Climate Justice.

Starbucks Price Increase for Loyal Customers

2012-01-10T08:41:00.000Z

The price of coffee as a
commodity rose and fell
during 2011

Starbucks has restructured its UK Starbucks Rewards Card programme and removed the "tall filter for £1" part of the offer. Now, customers will pay £1.50 but receive a free coffee for every 15 purchased. Customers on the old rewards card scheme have been put on gold level meaning they retain the other free extras they used to get, but my guiess is that most regular customers will now be out of pocket with, what is in effect, a 40-50% price increase.

My initial obserrvations is that Starbucks has got quieter at peak times in the morning and afternoon.

The price increase has been caused by sharp rises in raw coffee prices and reflects price increases by Starbucks in other markets recently. Prices for coffee peaked in October after a sharp rise over the summer, prompting retailers to increase prices Prices have since fallen back to a lower level. It remains to be seen how Starbucks will react to the price fall.

Capital punishment possibly not being restored.

2012-01-05T10:58:00.002Z

Just noting that Paul Staines' petition to have a parliamentary debate on the restoration of capital punishment has only reached a quarter of the 100,000 signatures required with only four weeks to go.

25,956 votes out of a population of 62,218,761 means that, in spite of the impression given by many popular newspapers after some heinous crime has been committed, there is no widespread support for even discussing the issue in parliament - let alone actually restoring the death penalty.

Hopefully Mr Staines will accept the vote of the public come February 4th.

Update 17th Jan 2012
According to an article on the Liberal Conspiracy blog, Paul Staines has been stopped from running a misleading ad in support of the campaign by the Advertising Standards Authority:

The assertion was stood up by taking figures from 1964 – which was the date of the last hanging, and not the date of actual abolition, which came in 1969.

Moreover, the period on which Restore Justice is basing its claim ends in 1997, which is fourteen years ago. Murder rates since then have not been considered by the campaign.

Does this matter? Well, yes it does: in 2008/9 the UK recorded its lowest murder rate for 20 years.

The intentional homicide rate for the UK fell from 1.71 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000 to just 1.17 in 2009. By contrast, the USA, where many states still execute, went from 5.5 to 5.0 in the same period, while Russia, which also executes, went from 28 to 15.

This article bears out my Twitter tirade against Staines last July when I queried his position after reading the latest Home Office statistics.

You can follow the Restore Justice campaign on Twitter here, but they have not posted anything since last November.

*My tweets on this issue from the start of the campaign in July 2011 (click on image to see full size).

A thought about Christians and sex before marriage.

2011-12-28T13:47:00.001Z

I wonder if the view commonly promoted by Christians - that there is a lot more sex before marriage than there used to be - is due to people getting married later than in previous generations? Rather than being entirely the result of the permissive sixties it would seem that house prices and the need to have both partners working is the reason people delay marriage to their late 20's or early 30's.

In the days when people got married at 18 or 19 it was more possible to control those urges for the short period of time, but delaying for 10 years or so is a much harder proposition.

If the church wants to discourage sex before marriage then they need to encourage early marriage and endorse social policies, like increased social housing, that make this possible. I would guess that evangelicals would rather continue to condemn sexual activity than have to endorse progressive political agendas, or would they?

Logik TV with fault - picture breaking up even with strong signal

2011-12-28T08:08:00.001Z

I came across an unusual fault with a Freeview digital TV over the holidays that I thought I would post the solution to in case anybody else comes across this. The set was a wall mounted Logik (Currys own brand) L22LDVB21 22 inch with built in DVD player. Occasionally the picture would pixelate and break up as if the signal was dropping out, yet it was in a very strong signal area and the signal strength was very good. I checked the antenna connections and the plug to the back of the set and the wall socket were correctly in place. When I touched the edge of the set there was a static discharge and the picture came back perfectly. After a while the picture broke up again and after touching the side it came back.

It appears that the set is lacking an earth. The power comes from a 12v power supply pugged into the wall so there is no direct mains earth. I think the TV distribution amplifier may have the "earth" side of the aerial cable sitting above earth. Either way there is an insufficient earth, probably made worse by having the set wall mounted. I am going to try earthing the earth side of the wall TV aerial socket to a radiator, assuming that's a better earth, and see what happens.

Angels from the realms of glory

2011-12-22T11:40:00.001Z

Do evangelicals choose their religious faith based on their pre-existing extrinsic values?

2011-12-18T15:57:00.001Z

I went to a conference last week on values and climate change behaviour at which the main speaker was Professor Tim Kasser of Knox College, Illinois. Professor Kasser is a social psychologist who works on values and how they affect people’s outward behaviour. Part of this is the classification of values as either intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic values are those of wanting to help others, helping the community or empowering others. Extrinsic values are about power, acquiring money or having status. During the presentation Professor Kasser used the Schwartz Values Circumplex to show how people tend to be orientated towards either intrinsic or extrinsic values. Intrinsic people tend to be more satisfied, have lower levels of anxiety & depression and greater empathy towards others than extrinsic people. Extrinsic people tend to be less satisfied and look for the approval of others, acquiring more of things in order to appear more successful. Extrinsic people are self interested and likely to engage with others mostly when this will benefit themselves in some way.

One point he made was that when peoples extrinsic values get activated this suppresses their intrinsic ones. The example given was that people in the UK are exposed to around 1600 advertising messages per day which activates their consumer needs and subsequently suppresses their need for community and empathy. People with extrinsic values associate with others of like minds and exhibit social dominance orientation, believing that their group is superior to all others.

The presentation left me feeling a bit uncomfortable as the model put forward looks so similar to the differences between evangelical and liberal Christians. Could it be that evangelical fundamentalists, with their overriding interest in personal salvation and concern with personal wealth are just exhibiting extrinsic values? If this is the case then the rise in evangelicalism, particularly Pentecostalism (the biggest movement of the urban poor in history) would appear to be caused by, or supported by, the rise in consumerism. If this is true then this rise can only continue.

I have always thought that people are attracted to the form of Christianity that best fits their personality. For example, I have known a number of charismatic churches where all the men worked in sales, but I had not thought about a link with values until I got involved in values in behaviour change, particularly values and frames. Could it be that people’s choice of religious faith is determined by their pre-existing values?

Here is the Schwartz Circumplex. The self-enhancement side relates to extrinsic values and the self-transcendance to intrinsic values.

Click on image for larger version

Post Script

This may go a good way to explaining why evangelicalism is synonymous with the conservative political position. The two come from the same value set. It may also explain why conspiracy theorists are so similar to fundamentalist Christians. Both come from the same values base.

Implications for Evangelism

Evangelical Christians already use marketing techniques to attract new converts. For example, targetting young adults - in particular students - because this tends to be the point that people's beliefs about the world are becoming more solidified. If I put my marketing hat on and apply these values models to evangelism the obvious lesson is that Christians should look for converts amongst those who already hold similar values. This includes people with an interest in achievement, power, conformity and tradition. In other words - those with right wing tendencies. This would not be conversion in the true sense (turning radically from one thing to another), but simply recruitment of the like minded.

How to convert DIVX or any video format to MP4 for iPad

2011-12-13T21:34:00.004Z

There are a couple of players for playing DIVX files on the iPad, but this does not get the files into iTunes for synchronisation so I went looking for a simple way of converting the files. After a bit of research I found a free programme called Any Video Converter.

Download and install Any Video Converter from here (being careful not to allow the install of toolbars and other ad related programming unless you really want it).
Follow the simpe on screen instructions to convert your video file to MP4 (Mpeg4) format.
Select "Customised MP4 Movie". The only setting you need to change is the frame size which should be set to "original".
Convert the file (this could take an hour or more for a very big file).
Open iTunes.
Add the converted file to your library (you may want to go to file > library > organise library to copy your file into your iTunes folder).
Plug in your iPad to synchronise it.
When its recognised click on it in the left hand menu in iTunes and go to the Movies tab. Make sure your new video is ticked to synchronise and apply the changes. It will be copied to your iPad.
When its all synchronised unplug the iPad go to movies and your video should be listed.

This is not as complicated as it sounds. Just follow the steps and it will work fine.

By the way, if you want to save a YouTube video onto your iPad download it to your computer in MP4 format at www.keepvid.com and then add it to your iTunes library as above.

How to make cheaper international phone calls from the UK

2011-12-02T07:10:00.001Z

Yesterday I had to make a phone call to Switzerland. As Switzerland is not in the EU I knew it would be expensive, but I was not prepared for what I found when I looked up the prices. My land line provider (Virgin Media) wanted 60p per minute and my mobile provider (T-Mobile) wanted 70p per minute. This would have meant spending around £25 on the call so started thinking about alternatives.

I used to make lots of calls from the UK to the US and Canada and used an alternative carrier (Onetel) for this. Then I had a phone line from Sky and calls to the USA and some other countries were free. I didn't have time to sign up for another service, but I had an hour or so to do some research. I found a company called Planet Numbers who route via an 0844 number and claim 1p per minute. I had doubts about this as 0844 numbers normally terminate at 3 or 4p per minute so checked their number in the very complicated virgin media call pricing charts and found it would actually be about 7p per minute. Given the time constraints I still used them and the call cost me around £2. Quality was fine and it saved me over £20!

This got me thinking so I did some further research and it turns out that there are lots of companies providing this kind of service. Moneysavingexpert.com runs a search engine for finding and comparing the cheapest providers:

International Call Checker

If you select "quick and easy" it only lists the ones that don't require signing up in advance. Ideal for the odd call, but if you make a lot of overseas calls then the services you have to sign up for are even cheaper.

(This is an independent review. I receive nothing for linking to these services).

My simple Macaroni and Cheese recipe

2011-11-28T21:31:00.001Z

Not strictly macaroni as it uses Penne pasta, but this cheese sauce based recipe will serve four people comfortably. For two people reduce the amounts by half. You could use macaroni instead of the penne pasta. Like all of my recipes, this has been simplified so it can be made using the limited range of ingredients I have in the cupboard (e.g. plain flour instead of cornflour). The paprika and nutmeg I use is Asda’s own brand in little jars.

Ingredients
500g penne pasta (bag)
50g salted butter
200g cheddar cheese (you may prefer more, or less, cheese)
50g plain flour
500ml full cream milk (semi skimmed will work too)
½ tsp paprika
Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Preparation
Grate the cheese.
Measure out the other ingredients.
Put the serving bowls in a very low oven to heat them.
Put the pasta on at a low heat initially (accelerate or take off heat as required during the sauce making process).

Sauce
Melt 50g butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat
Stir in 50g flour and cook for one minute, until it turns light brown in colour.
Let it cook for a short time, stirring all the time.
Gradually whisk in 500ml milk, reduce the heat and cook for 10 minutes, whisking constantly.

Once thickened, stir in ½ tsp paprika and a pinch of nutmeg.
Season with salt and pepper
Stir in the cheese, retaining some for sprinkling on the top.
Set aside to cook slightly.
Check that pasta is cooked.

Pasta
Boil the pasta until aldente.
Drain thoroughly.
Add back into the pan and stir in the sauce.
Mix in half the sauce.

Serving
Serve in the bowls with a sprinking of cheese on the top

Alternative to the Metro Newspaper Mobile Version

2011-11-08T19:22:00.004Z

I notice that the mobile optimised version of the Metro newspaper normally found at http://metro.mobi has disappeared at the same time as the main Metro web site has been redesigned. The mobile address just sends you to their normal web site now.

I contacted Metro via Facebook, but got no response and they deleted my enquiry from their wall so I can only assume that metro.mobi is a dead duck. The main Metro web site is difficult to navigate on a phone which is why I used the mobile version. There is a way round this though. Google has a web kit which can make a standard page easier to read on a mobile device so try going here instead:

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http://www.metro.co.uk

I don't know what this says abut .mobi or the mobile web in general. Quite a few newspapers do not have mobile versions so I tend to bookmark their main sites through the Google web kit.

Update: I just got a message from the Metro that they will be launching a new mobile site in the next few months so we might be back on track. Meanwhile, try the link above.

Sending an Email Merge from Microsoft Access using PHP

2011-11-07T18:35:00.000Z

I was recently faced with a network restriction on sending out emails to more than 20 recipients from Outlook when we had over 800 members on our Access database who required to be mailed notifications for meetings and newsletters. I did try a number of mail merge options including Worldmerge by Coloradosoft, but I felt that what we needed was a simple hosted solution that avoided the need for an onsite mail server. In the long term we need to move to a service like Mailchimp, but everyone would (presumably) need to verify their opt in again and I am not sure how we would keep it in synch with our database.

Because of these difficulties I decided that as a short term solution I would generate recipients as CSV files from a database query and send the emails with a PHP script hosted on a web server. This worked and here is how I did it. I hope this is easy to follow. Its not intended to be a downloadable script solution, but a way of showing how the issue can be addressed fairly simply. It might help teach the basics of the PHP mail function too.

Generating the CSV file
Set up a query in Access which selects the recipients, but shows only first name, last name and email address. By incorporating the persons name into the email it makes it more personal and I have found I get more feedback.

The Mailer Script
For simplicity, the bulk email script exists as three separate parts. The first (mailer.html) is an html form; the second (writefile.php) is a script for writing the address data to a file and the third (mailer.php) processes it and sends out the emails.There is a fourth file called addressfile.txt which is the list of names and email addresses.

HTML Form
This form I called “mailer.html” and consists of two forms on the one page.
The first sends certain values to the mailer script (from email address, real name, subject, message and footer). the second allows the comma separated values to be written to a text file on the server. here is the html for the two forms on mailer.html (aplogies for the use of tables - this wad done in a hurry):

<form method="post" action="mailer.php" name="mailer">
<table style="text-align: left;" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined">From:
  </td>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined"><input name="from" value="you@foo.bar"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined">Realname:  </td>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined"><input name="realname" value="Your Real Name"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined">Subject:  </td>
<td align="undefined" valign="undefined"><input name="subject"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
Message:<br>
<textarea cols="70" rows="20" name="message"></textarea><br>
Footer:<br>
<textarea cols="70" rows="10" name="footer">
</textarea><br>
<input name="btn" value="Submit" type="submit">
</form>
<form method="post" action="writefile.php" name="mailer"><br>
Addresses:<br>
<textarea cols="70" rows="20" name="list"></textarea><br>
<input name="btn" value="Submit" type="submit">
</form>

You could set a default value for any of these fields so you don’t have to keep retyping them every time you send an email.

Write File Script
Open the CSV file in a text editor and copy and paste the values into the form. Press the submit button and it will write these to a file called addressfile.txt.

I called this script writefile.php

<?php
$filename = "addressfile.txt";
// file will need chmod to 666 or 777
$text = $_POST['list'];
$fp = fopen ($filename, "w");
if ($fp) {
fwrite ($fp, $text);
fclose ($fp);
echo ("File written");
}
else {
echo ("File was not written");
}
?>

You should create an empty file called addressfile.txt and upload it to the same directory as the script and CHMOD it to 666 to give the scruipt the intial parameters to work from. A simpler solution would be to allow the upload of the CSV file from the form. I didn’t do it this way at this stage as I did not know for sure what the file permissions situation would be on writing a file. I will be replacing it shortly with that system. Some web servers will write files from PHP as a different user and you might not be able to delete or modify them so this is not an exact process.

Mail Processor Script
Clicking on the submit button in the top form of mailer.html posts the form values to the script mailer.php (below), opens up addressfile.txt, reads each line, explodes the entry into an array of first name, last name and email address thensends individual emails to each of these recipients. For simplicity it only handles plain text emails at the moment. It adds a “Dear $firstname” line to the beginning of the email.

There are some in-line comments that help explain what the script is doing:

<?php
//assign post data from the form to variables
$from = $_POST ['from'];
$realname = $_POST['realname'];
$subject = $_POST ['subject'];
$message = $_POST ['message'];
$footer = $_POST ['footer'];
//this first section processes the body of the email message
//PHP will escape any apostrophes or quotation marks so first we have to strip out the slashes
$message = stripslashes($message);
//to retain formating we limit lines to 70 characters and prevent leading full stops being deleted
$message = wordwrap($message,70,"\n");
$message = str_replace("\n", "\n", $message);
$message = str_replace("\n.", "\n..", $message);
//add a blank line at end of message to separate it from the footer
$message = $message . "\r\n\r\n";
//headers for the email
$headers = "From: \"".$realname."\" <".$from.">\r\n";
$headers .= "Return-Path: <".$from.">\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
//open the text file containing the recipients
$file = fopen("addressfile.txt", "r") or exit("Unable to open file!");
//read the file one line at a time until the end is reached
while(!feof($file))
{
$dbentry = fgets($file);
//split the line from the text file into firstname, lastname and recipient
$delimiter = ",";
$splitcontents = explode($delimiter, $dbentry);
$firstname = $splitcontents[0];
$lastname = $splitcontents[1];
$recipient = $splitcontents[2];
//generate first line and add blank line below it
//$firstline = "Dear $firstname $lastname,\r\n\r\n";
//version for just first name - you only need one of these lines
$firstline = "Dear $firstname,\r\n\r\n";
//join the first line, body text and footer together
$bodytext = $firstline . $message . $footer;
//send the email
mail($recipient,$subject,$bodytext,$headers);
//show success message
echo "Message sent to $recipient. <br />";
}
//close the file
fclose($file);
?>

Limitations and improvements
This all works OK under PHP5 and should do under PHP4 as well. Its a quick and dirty piece of programming and its not claiming to be well written, but it works.

Some issues that might need addressing:

The write file process needs to be changed to uploading the CSV file rather than writing the data.
You may need to list your web server as a valid sender in your SPF DNS record to allow mail to be received by some mail services (depending how tightly your SPF records are set up).
With a long mailing list it takes a while for the confirmation page to appear. It would be better to open a window with javascript and write each successful send as a separate line.
Moving to a proper templating system where [[Firstname]] would be replaced by $firstname wherever that appeared. Could then move to having any number of fields in the query.
Allowing HTML if I could find a way of editing html effectively in a browser window.

Disclaimer
Some web hosts limit the number of emails that can be sent using PHP so it might not work for you. I am sending emails to people who are members of an organisation and have opted in (in writing!) to receive emails. You should not use scripts like this for spamming. If you are a spammer you probably know more about this sort of programming than I do so you will have learned nothing from reading this.

The day I was virtually slapped by Westboro Baptist Church

2011-10-28T13:00:00.003+01:00

So I arrived at work this morning to find police guarding the door. Westboro Baptist Church were in town picketing a conference going on in our offices. Later we had crash barriers outside, but all I saw were three counter protesters with a dog and a handful of journalists. Apparently three protesters did turn up, but were greeted with apathy. The Westboro people seem to feed off counter demonstrations, but being dour Edinburghers we can't really be bothered with that sort of thing. The Starbucks across the road was busier than the demonstration and nobody over there had even noticed it was taking place.

The day's events ended up with myself and @echurchblog being told by Margie Phelps that we are doomed (via twitter - she wasn't actually here).

According to the Phelps clan there are precious few people who God doesn't hate and most of them appear to be members of the same family! Over here we don't go in for that sort of fundamentalist claptrap. We have bigger issues to deal with and our country is too small to fall out with everyone else.

All I saw was a few counter demonstrators (with a dog) hanging round the door, two policeman and a woman waiting at the bus stop!

A bit of prescience from Rudolf Steiner

2011-10-27T12:27:00.000+01:00

This could have been written today:

"You will no doubt have heard that certain people are over and over again proclaiming to the world that democracy must spread to the whole civilized world. Salvation lies in making the whole of humanity democratic; everything will have to be smashed to pieces so that democracy may spread in the world... Concepts are taken for reality, and as a result illusion may take the place of reality where human life is concerned by lulling people to sleep with concepts. They believe the fruits of their endeavours will be that every individual will be able to express their will in the different democratic institutions, and they fail to see that these institutions are such that it is always just a few people who pull the wires, whilst the rest are pulled along. They are persuaded, however, that they are part of democracy and so they do not notice they are being pulled and that some individuals are pulling the strings. Those individuals will find it all the easier to do the pulling if the others all believe they are doing it themselves, instead of being pulled along. It is quite easy to lull people to sleep with abstract concepts and make them believe the opposite of what is really true. This gives the powers of darkness the best opportunity to do what they want. And if anyone should wake up they are simply ignored." Rudolf Steiner, The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness, 1917

My Simple Fruit Scone Recipe

2011-10-25T18:43:00.002+01:00

This is my simple recipe for making fruit scones. It uses fewer ingredients than some recipes and can be made with the minimum number of utensils, especially if you have a set of electronic scales that can be zeroed between ingredients.

Some of my fruit scones

List of ingredients
225g self raising flour
55g lightly salted butter
25g caster sugar
150ml semi skimmed or whole milk
1 egg
100g sultanas or raisins

List of required utensils
Plate for holding the butter while it softens.
Mixing bowl.
Baking tray
Bowls, if required, to hold sugar and dried fruit
Pastry cutter (1” / 2.5cm)
Table knife
Chopping board
Measuring jug
Bowl for beating the egg.
Balloon whisk or fork for whisking the egg
Rolling pin

Method
Cut 55g of lightly salted butter into cubes of less than 1cm and leave on a plate to soften.
Set the oven to 220 degrees or gas mark 7.
Grease a baking tray.
Beat the egg in a bowl with the milk.
Measure 225g of self raising flour into a mixing bowl (this does not need to be sieved as it is going to be crumbed).
Quickly rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add the 25g of caster sugar and stir in using a normal table knife.
Add 100g sultanas or raisins and stir into the mixture - if you prefer you can add slightly more
Measure 150ml of milk into a measuring jug
Make a well in the middle of the bowl and stir in the milk and egg mixture a little bit at a time until there is a smooth pliable dough. It is easy to add too much so go slowly. You will not need it all - the rest will be used later.
The correct dough mix should be wet enough to hold together into one lump and come off the bowl, but not so wet it is sticky.
Turn the mixture on to a floured chopping board and turn/shape smooth then lightly roll out to 2.5cm (1 inch) thick.
Cut scones using a 7.5cm (2") pastry cutter.
Place on the baking tray and brush with the the milk and egg mixture.
Bake near the top of the hot oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown and well risen.
Cool before eating.

Simplification
This recipe will work fine with just milk and no egg, although it may not rise as much. You can brush the top of the scones with milk instead of egg too.

If you like this recipe you might like my simple fruit cake recipe which uses fewer utensils and makes less mess.

Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray - the Edinburgh connection

2011-10-20T17:44:00.001+01:00

John Gray

Whilst the news is full of church concerns about gay clergy and gay marriage, its worth remembering that a former rector of St Peter's, Morningside, Fr John Gray, was a close friend of Oscar Wilde and addressed by Wilde in a letter as "Dorian" long before the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published.

From the Wikipedia article on John Gray:

His most important supporter, and life partner, was Marc-André Raffalovich, a wealthy poet and early defender of homosexuality. Raffalovich himself became a Catholic in 1896 and joined the tertiary order of Dominicans. When Gray went to Edinburgh he settled nearby. He helped finance St Peter's Church in Morningside where Gray would serve as priest for the rest of his life. The two maintained a chaste relationship until Raffalovich's sudden death in 1934. A devastated Gray died exactly four months later at St. Raphael's nursing home in Edinburgh after a short illness.

This is just another of Edinburgh's many literary connections.

Gray's poem "Summer Past" was dedicated to Oscar Wilde:

SUMMER PAST
TO OSCAR WILDE

There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy.

Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads' floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun.

Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That other things might tell
Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves.
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what listening well
Where holy trees,

Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
Of restless green?

From Silverpoints by John Gray.

How to stop line breaks disappearing in a PHP generated email

2011-10-20T17:34:00.000+01:00

I recently had a problem with a PHP script which accepts input from a form, formats it and then sends it out as an email. All of the fields were working fine apart from the textarea box used to input the body of the email. When sent, the emails had lost all their line breaks and just became one continuous line of wrapped text.

The script was intended for sending plain text email and I was using the linewrap command to keep it to 70 columns and preserve some sort of formatting. To try and get the line breaks back I tried the following:

Manually adding \n to the end of every line as part of the linewrap process.
Commenting out the linewrap command.
Adding \r before the \n.
Stripping out any instances of ^P or ^M in case it was a windows encoding issue (I was clutching at straws by this point).

None of these worked, but I slept on it and the next day realised that it was nothing to do with the text of the message at all. It was the headers.

I had set the encoding headers as:

$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n";

Simply removing the MIME type header and changing the other one to:

$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";

fixed the problem and my line breaks started working again.

I will return to the script later and add the ability to alternate between html or plain text, but for now I have the problem of the missing line breaks solved.

Seventeen Degrees

2011-10-18T19:18:00.001+01:00

Seventeen degrees Celsius is the temperature at which I turn on my heating. Most people heat their houses to twenty degrees or more so seventeen feels quite chilly if I am not moving around. Why seventeen? I can't stand living at sixteen. If I could I would. You see, I am part of the squeezed middle. Prices are going up, but my salary isn't. My only choice for survival is to reduce my spending. Every aspect of my life is being trimmed. Surplus possessions are gradually going to new homes via EBay. I have stopped any unnecessary car journeys, but I need the car to visit my kids. I only buy food that will definitely be eaten and I throw nothing away. Every service I don't use has been cancelled. There is no dead wood remaining. Which brings me to my electricity bill of £50 per month. Unfortunately for the government I can't change supplier. My landlords won't allow it so I am hostage to the best deal I can get from Scottish Power.

Which brings me to the injustice of the regular monthly bill. My £50 per month is based on previous year's spending, so reducing my electricity consumption will make no difference for many months. Maybe I just have to bear with it and get my overpayment back in the spring. It might be the closest I get to feeling like a lottery winner. Until then I will be chilling out at seventeen degrees.