First Great Western - 17:30 27/02/2009 Paddington to Taunton farce

An announcement came over the train P.A. asking people to get off the train because it was too crowded! This just after the delayed 17:15 train passengers were asked, by First Great Western, to leave their train and join ours because theirs was broken and ours would leave sooner!

There were no further announcements before we left. 13 minutes late.

In the waiting period, one of the directors of First Capital Connect approached the buffet area, and asked to speak to the train manager because, and I quote, "There's plenty of room in first class, why are we still sitting here?" She left telling the poor buffet guy that there were 3 of them sitting in first class if they were needed! Nice to know.

If we don't hit Reading in the next 8 minutes, I'll miss my connection. Joy.

Annoyance update

Fixed one of them! My problem with the delicious add-on was a clash with another one called tab mix plus. Clash only happens on linux though. Both add-ons work fine together on Windows.

Removing it also fixed a problem I've been having off and on with the Google Toolbar.

Now, tweetdeck...

My gorgeous wife

4 years ago, on Sunday the 27th of February I asked my now wife to marry me. She said yes. That was silly!

We'd been going out since September 3rd the previous year, but had both known very quickly that we were going to be together. (I won't embaress her with the story of her asking me to marry her.) In fact, the whole thing was destined from the beginning. We both had a rule of not dating workmates, or housemates; well you know what two negatives make...

I'd first met her in July when my landlord came round to show this girl, a prospective tenant, our shared house. I was sitting eating microwave bangers and mash when he brought her into the lounge, introduced us and said that we worked at the same place. What followed was a very stilted conversation where we realised that not only did we work for the same company, but in the same building, wing and on the same floor. I didn't know her, or any of her team, and vice versa. Not exactly Shakespeare! I did, however, realise I quite liked her.

Over the next 2 / 3 weeks we passed occasionally in the hall or carpark, and I smiled. A bit. Shyly. (She thought, I found out in retrospect, that I was standoffish and rude. Actually I'm just painfully shy!) And then, on her bithday (which she didn't tell anyone about until a few days later) she moved into our house. Into the room next to mine. She asked me to change a light bulb. I failed. I was too short.

Over the next few weeks we spent more time together. She crashed her car the first week. She was fine, the car wasn't. So I started giving her lifts to and from work. She was appaled by what I was eating, so offered me some of hers. Within a couple of days we were shopping and cooking together. At first I didn't want to tell her that I didn't like most of what she was cooking (courgette!), nor did I drink wine, for fear of being seen as an idiot. What I quickly found was I did like what she was cooking, and I did like wine with her.

On September 3rd I picked her up from work, and took her to a fish and chip place on the Northumberland coast. I enjoyed that more than she did. We then walked for 3+ hours along the beach while I plucked up the courage to ask her out. Eventually, I did. She said ok.

We'd bought the ring a few weeks earlier, and she was under the impression that I was going to propose on top of a mountain when we went to the Lakes for my birthday. I know she hates walking up mountains.

I was working in London at the time (I'd left her on valenntines day a couple of weeks earlier), so was only there for the weekend, and had to leave later that day. We'd agreed to meet my grandparents, and my Aunt and Uncle for lunch as it was my Uncle's birthday the next day, and to pass the time in the morning, we went for a walk.

I took her to her favourite tree, beside a river, got down on one knee, got asked what I thought I was doing, and asked her to marry me.

She is, to me, the most gorgeous, intelligent, beautiful person. I love her more every day. There isn't anyone else I could spend my life with. Since that day, we've moved twice, got married, had a child, and changed so much; and yet, through that, she is my rock, and the one thing I cling to at times of stress and trouble.

Thanks babe. I love you. Xxx

So that's what early looks like!

For the first time in a long time I'm,just, on time. What you can't see in the pic is the train right beside me that I nearly missed. However, I didn't. So here is the view from 07:02. Different to last time. Definitely light. Spring is on its way.

King of the line

To travel from Winnersh Triangle to Canary Wharf (and back again) with maximum efficiency avoiding all the human traffic black spots all you need to do is follow these simple instructions.

At Winnersh Triangle you want to go to the very far end of platform 2 (check as you do that the train will have the expected 8 carriages on the overhead display. If it only has 4, wait at the "4 car stop sign). Reading is the end of the line, so being at the head of the train will get you out first. Stand to the side of the doors. On the 02 trains you want to be at the left of the train, the 32 on the right (general rule, doesn't always work). On arrival at Reading you should be first off, onto the concourse, hugging the wall to the steps, up and over with a quick glance at the monitors to discover whether you need platform 5 or 8.

Platform 5 requires you to loop back on yourself and keep an eye on the floor for a yellow arrow. Stand about 4 paces before that point, and the door for standard class will stop right in front of you. Position yourself just to the right of the door as it opens to the left effectively blocking anyone there. Open the door to let the alighting passengers off, then be the first on to the train.

On platform 8 the trains stop earlier than on 5, so you need to head further up the platform. There is a mind the gap painted onto the floor just before you reach opposite WH Smiths. This is where to wait. You'll now be in the same position as platform 5 door wise.

On entering the train you have a choice. Risk it all for a seat (if you lose you will be stood in the most uncomfortable position between the seats deep in the carriage), or head to the buffet. I head to the buffet. Somewhere to lean, a surface to put things on. If things are really cramped, go just beyond the buffet to the point just before the door into the kitchen. There are some bars to lean on, and a nice view.

As you approach Paddington you will notice a series of numbers on the wall. Small yellow disks counting down from over 4000. When these reach the 1200s set off to the front of the train. You should reach the front without hassle just before all the first class passengers stand up. Best to hang in the middle here, let someone else claim the door post. It is pretty much 50/50 as to which door will have the platform. Let someone else make the call and you will be off second.

On exit, head straight across the concourse to the underground. If the gates are shut, bear left, outside, stay left and go round the corner at the top, there are alternative stairs down there that will get you ahead of the crowd. Once down, head onto the Bakerloo platform, use the second entrance, and keep left heading down the platform. As you move down you'll see the wall jut out and a maintenance door, just beyond this are 4 seats. Stand opposite the fourth seat. The train doors will open in front of you. Head straight across the carriage and stand to the left of the opposite door.

At Baker Street you'll be immediately opposite a short passage to the Jubilee line. Stay left, and head down the platform a short way until you are directly opposite the first of 2 posters towards the end of the platform. The first set of double doors in the last carriage will open in front of you. You want to stay as near to these doors as possible to ensure you are the first out and up the escalator in front of you at Canary Wharf.

Return is reverse, hit the first set of double doors you get to on the first carriage of the Jubilee line. At Baker Street you need to traverse the longer passage way and then head half way down the platform. You will see an underground roundell next to a line map. You should stand directly opposite this roundell, and stay by those doors on the train. This will ensure prime position at Paddington and allow you to lead the crush for the escalator. The train from London is up to you, but you want to be at the front of the last carriage at Reading, at the left hand door to be straight off. You then want the very front of the train to Winnersh Triangle. And your back. Simple eh?!

Annoyances

My wife isn't well. This isn't an annoyance. It's unfortunate. I hope she feels better soon.

I'm late today. Very late. This also isn't an annoyance, it just is.

No, the annoyances in my life are trivial, minor things. That's why they annoy. Like, why does the delicious extension for firefox refuse to add the toolbar buttons on my home copy of firefox? Is it a linux thing? A kubuntu thing? I doubt it. Google doesn't turn up with anything useful. So it's probably something local to my machine. This is an annoyance. I've tried recreating my profile to no effect; so, temporarily, I'm stuck. Annoyed.

I installed tweetdeck to try to get on top of the hundreds of tweets @wossy sends. So far I haven't had a single Adobe Air app work properly on Linux. I installed the BBC iPlayer, which works fine until you reboot, then, seemingly, can't access it's config file and sits useless. However, back to tweetdeck. Installed fine, on running the window comes up, a bunch of buttons, and nothing else. Apparently it's a problem with kwallet, but kwallet is working fine. I use it daily for kcheckgmail and kopete. So the app is useless. An annoyance.

Plasma restarts once a day at random. I have no idea why.

My system monitor app stops reporting stats occasionally. Uptime stops ticking and the app is useless until next reboot. Except temperature. This keeps working, so the app hasn't crashed. It seems related to the screensaver, but I have nothing but gut to go on.

None of these things are problems as such; I'm a little less productive with my time, but no different to last week when I wasn't aware of these apps. It's just annoying.

At least I don't have something important to complain about.

"Controversial internet law on hold" - Update to earlier post

Controversial internet law on hold - Key - Technology - NZ Herald News

So, the law is now on hold. Blogs were re-directed, ministers see sense. Seems a tenuous link at best. If I were a more cynical person, I'd say the law was there to push the compromise. There is now talk of a voluntary code of practice.

Maybe I need to more open to the options. Can we now all blackout until Gordon steps up, announces it's all his fault, and resigns from government and public life forever?

Censorship

I'm recently into twitter. I like it. It's an easy way of making a comment or statement on something that has happened or occured to me without having to write a whole blog post around it. I can also follow other people, some of which I know, some of which I know of, and some that just seem interesting.

Twitter as a source of information, or as a method of information transport is fantastic. In the time it takes to write a text message, your info can hit all your followers. They can then "re-tweet" it, with no effort, to all theirs. Information can reach hundreds of thousands of people in seconds.

Because of this reach, twitter can be, and is, used to rally individuals to a cause. "Click this to help out", "Re-tweet this to raise awareness". Etc. Now this works, but to work it has to be passive. You're not going to get people, who wouldn't normally have gone anyway, to go to a march for example. You're going to get bandwagon jumping of the simplest element of your crusade at best.

Which brings me to this: "it's the last day of #blackout today http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html yes, I'm not from/in NZ but supporting the protest "

The background to this is a daft piece of legislation in New Zealand. They, like others before them, want to censor the net. The details are a little different than previous attempts (China, North Korea, Australia) but the outcome will be the same. Failure. The internet is borderless, and the protocols too open for something like this to succeed. Encrypted proxies would be in place before you can say "Waste of legislative time".

However, there is a valid argument for protest. The bill is being proposed by a specific MP belonging to a specific party. By all means, write to these people, explain your problems with the legislation, point out the errors with the execution of it that will follow, and, if you're lucky, raise the issue for debate, and get your point across.

The site linked in that tweet above gives you the details to do just this. However, the page linked asks you to black out your twitter picture in protest. This is where I have an issue. What's the point!? All this does is make the little avatar that accompanies your tweet go black. Nothing else. This makes it slightly more difficult, at a glance, to see who has tweeted. Your name comes with the tweet, so it takes a little more effort. Nowhere do you have to justify your blackout. People will generally re-tweet something similar to the tweet above, and then move on. Tweeting as normal. No blog posts, no action, just a silly black picture.

Now, how many New Zealand politicians are quaking in their boots thanks to a few hundred blacked out pictures in twitter (and probably facebook)? None. What has this achieved? Nothing. An ill-conceived campaign bringing awareness to nothing. (The tweet above was in reply to someone asking why they were blacked out. I've seen dozens of these in the last couple of weeks. People don't "get it", there is no obvious connection).

So where does this get us? At best we stay as we were, a small number of people will campaign properly, and something may be done. If the bill passes it will fail, and, quietly, it'll be forgotten about. At worst, a bunch of people will have assumed they are doing something worthwhile when their efforts haven't even been noticed by those they were hoping to influence. I think that's a shame.

Steve needs...

So, a meme passes round. Go to google, type in

<yourname> needs

and hit search. Post the results.

Apparently,

Steve needs to find a squirrel hitman. (Possibly the best answer that could have come up, and it's the top link!)
Steve needs a new home. (Hmm, something I'm not being told about?)
Steve needs to cop himself on and tell Michelle (Not exactly sure what this means)
Steve needs serial thrillers (All bad pulp fiction, send it my way)
Steve needs your help (Not sure what with, but all help appreciated)

There you go. Over to you.

If this was a popular blog I'd tell you to leave yours in the comments, or answer on your blog and leave a link. But it isn't, so I won't.

Friday

All day.

I spent last night on the computer, sorting some paperwork out, and saving us some money. All worthwhile.

My wife was out at a restaurant with friends until late, and my daughter went straight to sleep with no fuss, so I had the evning to myself.

Once the paperwork was sorted I cooked a quick meal (quick apart from heating up the oven. I'll be glad when we get to tomorrow and I can replace the fan motor in the quicker oven), watched a little TV (there really isn't much on worth watching), and then retired to "World of Goo". I'm now part way through world 2, and the game is getting interesting. Multiple problems per level, and a little lateral thinking. It leaves me hoping for a real challenge a bit further in.

Apart from fitting the fan motor I don't know what the weekend has in store. Thats ok though, everyone needs some mystery in their life.

One of these days...

...I'll right something more interesting than:

Feeling tired
Travelling to work
Woken in the night
Meetings today
Looking forward to the weekend
Etc

Today is not that day.

Tomorrow might be.

I'm not promising anything.

Late post

This post is late. As am I. But I'm going to be late this evening, so it balances out. That's my theory anyway.

Did some exercise last night. 30 minutes of cardio box. The upside was that I felt like I was boxing with Davina, the downside was that I was doing exercise.

I don't feel too bad this morning. A little tightness in my calf.

Other than the exercise, we ate and went to bed. Well, one of us did. Someone may have stayed up writing e-mails and surfing the net.

Off to work now. It's exactly a month until all my staff are back in the office. Back from all their seperate holidays. Something to look forward to.

Short one?

I didn't get home last night until 20:30. We ate, and went to bed.

Not the most interesting of tales.

I didn't get woken in the night, for the second night in a row. As a result, I feel better this morning.

No meetings until 13:30, so I might get some work doe for once.

No late meetings planned, so I should get home on time too.

Probably out tomorrow with work. My lovely wife is out Thursday with friends. A busy week.

Too much to say, no way to say it.

Here I am standing (for a change) on a train with, maybe, three blog posts going round my head. They are competing with several work thoughts, and a number of home thoughts. As a result, nothing is getting through. I have the oppsoite of writers block!

So? Summarise:

World of Goo on Linux - a very fun game, ported well. An interesting design decision to make it run fullscreen at 800x600 which is interesting with 2 monitors. A quick change of config.txt fixed that, and the game has worked perfectly since. Sound, graphics, it all looks the same as the windows version (as you'd expect). It really is a good game, if you enjoy fun games that make you think a bit, pop over and get yourself a copy.

Swimming - took my daughter swimming on Sunday morning in the first of what will become regular sessions. I got her a jacket with lots of floats to keep her upright, and she loved it. By the end of the session she was able to swim 2 widths of the pool under her own steam. A natural!

I've now changed train twice, and completely lost my train (!) of thought.

Can't think. Need to get my head straight. Busy, important week starts now. Oh dear.

World of Goo released for Linux

A *good* native game has finally been released for Linux. World of Goo is an extremely simple and fun problem solving game.

I've played them demo through wine, and really enjoyed it, but had held off buying the game as I don't like running things in emulation mode. The game has now been released natively for Linux, and I bought a copy this morning (downloading as I type).

I'll report back on the excellence of the port once I've installed and tried it out.

Friday, finally. The "will I make it to the end of the day?" edition.

Whinge, whinge, moan. Whine, whine, whine.

Right, that's out of the way.

Friday! No doubt a fun day.

Then the weekend. Bringing sleep. I hope.

2 calls in the night, and I'm still feeling bloicky.

Taking my daughter swimming this weekend. Went last weekend, and she loved it. Just me and her this week, give Mummy some time off.

Not much else really (unless I complain lots, but we all know how that goes).

Time to suffer in silence, and get through the day.

Better

One indigestion tablet and a couple of polos later I feel better. Stomach returning to normal, mouth tastes better.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I've got too much on at work, and that my daughter waking me several times a night isn't helping. Time for some baby valium!

Out tonight for a leaving do. Don't think I'll stay long.

Out last night with my wife. A pint in a recently refurbished local pub, and a chat. It was nice. We don't get many opportunities to sit and chat away from the daily grind very often.

Weekend approaches, no idea what's planned yet. Hopefully some sleep!

Been better

So, my stomach hurts, I feel bloated, and my mouth tastes of vomit. I haven't been sick though. Just stressed. Boots at Paddington I think. I'll write more once I'm settled.

Late? Glacial travel

Our local river burst its banks last night. As a result, everything stopped dead this morning. I don't know whether the time stamp on this will go on post time or send time (they get sent underground and posted when the phone surfaces), but it is now midday and I'm still not at work.

I'm parked at a train station on a different line, getting home will be interesting, and I'm supposed to be in some very important meetings today starting at 11:30. Oops.

In other news, google have finally put calendar and contact sync in place for the iphone; so, finally, my wife and I can have a shared calendar, and an easy way to maintain contact data. Woo. It took long enough!

Now, better concentrate on thinking about work. Easier said than done, the girl next to me is wearing the brightest, most hideous red jacket and I've forgotten my sun glasses!

Digital identity

Having a quick think about it, I have presence on:
Facebook
Picasa
Google
Flickr
Yahoo
Twitter
LinkedIn
MSN
Microsoft
Hotmail
Pipex
Virgin
Bulldog
ICQ
AOL

I'm sure there are a few more. Some of them are defunct, you'd be hard pushed to find me on AOL, some of them require effort, and some of them I see as pointless.

I like Twitter. It's easy, it's simple, it's quick. I dislike Facebook. Status updates are fine, but all those daft applications (that I've now deleted, so stop throwing polar bears at me!), walls, super walls, status comments. It's like they've taken the best bits of twitter and IM, removed the near time element, and rehashed the annoying MSN nudge function. As a photo app, picasa or flickr are much better (even for comments). Twitpic let's you share that funny pic right now, and a targeted mail, or public folder on picasa shares the rest of them the next day.

"But what about catching up with all those old friends?" I here you ask. What about it? Usually, if I want to keep in contact with someone I will. If, for whatever reason, that contact slips, I have e-mail, phone numbers, old addresses. I'll find them if it's that important. In the main, everyone I connect with on facebook I speak to in other ways, and for those older friends; the majority have connected and then nothing. Empty silence across a wasteland of status updates and photos of people I don't know.

I've never used myspace. I accept I'm too old. It just looks a mess to me. I tried bebo for less than a week, but didn't "get" that either.

Side note, I keep pressing alt for a comma on this phone, but that gives me a ? it's really annoying.

I'm also on LinkedIn? But I *really* don't get that one. I now have a bunch of people I work / worked with linked to me. So what? No one I've ever worked with is in a position to get me a job. I've never re-worked with anyone? And if I did it would be a coincidence. Other than a couple of agents, everything else on there is just one more voyeristic online snoop.

All this begs the question, "What am I doing on there then?", and the answer has to be snooping. Although, actually, in both cases I have a small amount of people that keep in touch that way, and I don't want to lose contact.

So, from this, I you want to know what I'm doing, check twitter or this blog. Or e-mail me (novel idea, I can't remeber the last time I got a decent personal e-mail). If you want me to know what you're doing, don't rely on online sites to do it.

Found these...

Thought of you.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/farside/pool/

I analysed my blog

I Typealyzed my blog. This was the result:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Sign

We have a sign at work that stops you leaving through an automated door and forces you through a turnstile type door instead. Neither door has security on it, but the automated one gets people through quicker. Why it's blocked is beyond me.

The sign states that the door is for disabled use only. They then stick the sign right in the path of the opening door. So it won't open. Utter genius.

Hopefully the pictures come out clearly enough.

An entry

I have a headache. I've had a headache since yesterday evening. I'm not in a good mood.

It snowed overnight. They cancelled trains, but I ignored them. I took the *looonnng* route, slowly, and I'm nearly at work. At least all the trains far underground aren't complaining about adverse weather conditions this time.

Too much to do, too little time and staff to do it.

Meetings late into my home time yesterday just gave us more work, more reports. These ones won't go down well either. Name and shame is the new game in town. CYA. Management is different now. Bridges will be burnt. I think a few quiet heads-ups may be in order. I hate surprises, I'm sure others do too.

I read a lot of other blogs (a large portion of which are found down the left of the screen if you're not reading this over RSS), and the one thing that strikes me is how boring my life seems. Are all these other people working? Are they making all the stuff they write about up? Or are we just so safe and boring, that even when we do things, those things don't impart fun tales?

That was a really bad sentence.

I can't be bothered to fix it.

Onwards we go. My daughter has started repeating us. After months of simple two word structures, we're making leaps and bounds now. However, new words get repeated. New words we don't always want her repeating. We're pretty good about our language, but sometimes things slip out; and when they do, they're caught, copied, and filed for future reference. Oh dear. This parenting lark keeps coming up with new curve balls.

She knows what she wants too. It's bendable at the minute though. "Do you want to get out the bath?" "No". "Do you want a cookie" "No". "Really! Do you want a pony?" "No". "Ever?" "No". "Ok".

She wouldn't stand up the other day. Every time I said stand up, she sat down. Eventually, I said sit down. She stood up. Job done.

Can't see that working for long!

Time to stop rambling. Must go and make up some interesting stories.

Wednesday, the new Monday

A few flakes of the white stuff brought the south of England to a halt this week. We didn't get that much, but the train companies used any excuse to stop running. Even though we had no extra snow Monday night I still couldn't make it in yesterday.

The funniest bit about the whole thing: the main problem with my route on Monday was the underground. Deep level lines were suspended due to "adverse weather conditions". Underground. In a tunnel. I can understand the above ground parts having a problem, but all lines have emergency underground junctions for just that occurence. Didn't stop them halting everything.

Travel problems aside, the last couple of days have been good. Plenty of time spent with my daughter, and a snowball fight with my wife.

We've also managed a little more sleep of late which is definitely helping.

Still finishing off Dexter. This evening will be the last episode. Managed it quite quickly this morning. I left for work early, anticipating problems. 7 minutes early. I arrived at the car park 10 minutes late! This on clear roads with no excuses for slow driving. People down here just don't get it. A little bit of white at the side of the road, and suddenly they drive at 5mph everywhere, and don't pull out at junctions unless there is a half mile gap in the traffic!

New week, new month. I've finally got all my company and personal tax paperwork sorted and filed. Thanks for your help Jon, just one more to go and that one should be easy!

Waterloo is approaching, (I'm coming in the long way) so time to think about exiting this crush and getting to work. More tomorrow.

An icey morning at the triangle