It is now ten years since Blue Cross Pet Charity has been running its fund raising scheme of 'Take Your Dog to Work Day.

This will be the fourth year that I have participated in this event. Royal Mail always gives its permission, so they turn a blind eye and allow my dog to run rampant up and down the aisles at the sorting office. She drags the mail bags, sits on the frame, barks at the delivery truck, makes herself comfy in the canteen and just generally snuffles around until it is time to go.

This year I am bringing Miss Bliss, who is a smaller dog than the others I have brought in the past, so she won't be able to carry as much mail. Once her back pack is on she is all business and ready to strut her stuff down the streets.

It is not too late, if you are interested (and your dog) in supporting 'Blue Cross'. The 'Take your Dog to Work Day' is on Tuesday, 20th September. To receive an information pack just click onto www.takeyourdogtoworkday.co.uk or call 01993 822651 or fax 01993 823083.

I hope you enjoy your working day along with your canine friend!

August was yet another record month for visitors viewing Wyenot.com. At 72,948 page views, the figure for August 2005 more than doubled that of the same period in 2004 (35,402 pages were viewed during August last year). I expect things will drop off a little in September as the tourist season draws to a close but who knows? Visitor figures seem to have at least doubled every year so far, so maybe they will continue to climb.

The main visitor figures for Wyenot.com between 1st and 31st August 2005:

Hits: 494,654.
Unique human visitors: 21,039.
Number of pages viewed by above visitors: 72,948.
Data downloaded (bandwidth used): 7,074,243 Kbytes. (7.07 GBytes)

The top ten most visited pages on Wyenot.com over the same period, highest to lowest were:

Home Page
Accommodation
News
Site Map
Pubs
Photographic Street Map
Yat Rock
Shops
Scenic Ross-on-Wye
Dining Out.

August Unique Visitor figures for the web site over the past five years:

August 2001: 192
August 2002: 1,159
August 2003: 3,415
August 2004: 11,567
August 2005: 21,039
The Hits and Page View figures for the month of August over the same period are many times higher.

The main visitor statistics for 2005 from 1st January to 31st August are as follows:

Hits: 2,845,300
Unique human visitors: 135,811
Number of pages viewed by above visitors: 424,154
Data downloaded (bandwidth used): 37,902,999 Kbytes. (37.9 GBytes)

Thank you for your visit and I hope you were able to find what you were looking for!

Looking at the amount of data downloaded from Wyenot.com, over seven gigabytes during the month of August, it will not be long before I have to purchase extra bandwidth. This is an expensive commodity which will eat considerably into the small amount of money I have so far taken in advertising revenue.

What does not help me in this area is having to cover the cost of thieves, not only stealing my copyright photographs but pulling them from my server to do so. This means that, whenever somebody visits the thief's unrelated web site, I have to pay for the privilege.

The biggest copyright and bandwidth thieves I discover during my monthly server log check are 'bloggers' using web log sites, such as (and in particular) 'Live Journal'. This month however, I have also caught the MSN group for the FTN television series 'Most Haunted' using one of my photographs without permission and pulling it from the Wyenot server. When I get to see it, I actually find the television programme quite interesting, in an amusing kind of way. That medium with the hairdo, who if all else fails and no ghosts appear, goes into a trance which would win him a gold in the 'Gurning Olympics', makes me laugh.

Here is another example of theft discovered this week. These thieves are costing me a lot of money whilst I am struggling to keep Wyenot.com afloat and eventually they really will bring about my having to close down this whole web site if they continue to take what does not belong to them. This in turn will cause a huge drop in tourism to Ross-on-Wye and the local area.

It is worth noting that: if you steal a photograph for use on your web site, I will see it on my server log! If you steal one to publish in a magazine or brochure, you can almost guarantee that somebody will point it out to me! I have had one of these this month as well. I don't intend to name the organization in this instance because I do actually support them and it was an independent company which actually published the photograph, cropping off my copyright notice to do so, without the knowledge of the organization concerned.

I am not being awkward here. I just cannot afford to work virtually all of my waking hours for other people, who think it is their right to just rip that work off without payment.

Whilst at the 'Mamma-Mia' event, sat on the grass and leaning back on the stage in a world of my own last Saturday evening, waiting to photograph the band, I watched the International Space Station float serenely overhead at a mere 17,000 miles per hour with Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev on board. I was almost certain what it was at the time but checked on the NASA web site when I arrived home to confirm.

I had left my tripod in the car and did not have time to run behind the stage and get it, so had to hand hold the camera during a three second exposure to photograph the event and this is why the people and hills look fuzzy. I thought I would include the photo though. Had I had the tripod, I could have photographed the whole trail as it passed but alas . . .

Out of the 5,000 people there; did anybody else there notice it? I am just curious to know. Please email me if you did.

The Space Station rose above horizon at 20:23, reaching maximum altitude at 20:28 in the South South East, entering shadow at 20:31 due east.