Here are Rob's Blog entries for October 2003.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
FHM are doing a photoshoot for their High Street Honey's outside the office.
As no one was allowed past while they took the pictures I was forced to stand and watch. Pure hell believe me!
If you have a mobile phone with Orange check your bill on the 24th October.
I was surprised to find that I had been charged for calls and messages that day when I was well inside my inclusive deal.
When I called Orange, they admitted there was a problem that day and that the price would be credited back to me next month. They are unable or unwilling to produce a correct bill for October.
I was also surprised to find that now the 3 month free WAP has ended, I was being charge an extra 4 pounds a month for access. I have now cancelled that and will just pay for what I use.
It pays to check your bills!
Communication is certainly not the strong point of South Central Trains.
I was actually early getting to the railway station this morning, and a good job I was. I found my usual 07:02 service from Hampden Park to London Victoria had been retimed to start at 06:59. Not a great difference, but it would of meant me missing if I hadn't of been running early.
I checked the South Central Trains website, and downloaded their winter timetable. The train still is listed there as going at 07:02.
I checked the National Rail website, and the train is listed there as 06:59.
So is this a permenant retiming? Who knows? It's certainly not been advertised anywhere. I've used the contact form on their website to enquire so hopefully I'll find out soon.
Ironically, despite the train leaving earlier, we were almost half an hour late getting to London. This was because, despite multiple ramming attempts, my part of the train was unable to attach to the part from Seaford at Lewes.
The BBC has excellent coverage of Concorde's retirement.
It's a shame to see the end of supersonic passenger flight. From now on it's slow old jumbos instead of this sleak technological marvel. It used to fly so high that you could see the curviture of the Earth and the darkness of space above.
Most military planes can only reach supersonic speeds for short periods, yet here was a civilian craft capable of sustaining a speed of over twice that of sound over long distances.
For the billions of tax payers money it cost to build, it is a shame to see it now moving into the history books and various museums. Richard Branson should be given the chance to fly them if he thinks he can make them pay.
It is strange to think that in the future our children can marvel that we were able to fly supersonic as they are left in slow subsonic planes.
Todays news that Network Rail is starting to take track maintenance back inhouse is very welcome. News that one of its major contractors, Jarvis, falsified documents relating to rail upgrade work is certainly worrying, and Network Rail is right to want to reassert control at a time when confidence in the rail network is low.
There is also news that the RMT Union balloting for strike action on the tube over safety concerns. The RMT wants regular, 24 hour track inspections of all Tube track after this weeks incidents on the Piccadilly, Northern and Victoria lines.
For once I find myself sympathising with the RMT. These incidents have shaken a lot of peoples confidence in the safety of rail and Tube travel. When it comes down to it, RMT members are the ones driving the trains and if there was an accident, their members lives would be at risk as well as the publics.
No one should have to risk their lives just so a private contractor can save a few quid by doing a botched job.
Webtrends is a really nice product and I've been using alot on Aloud.com lately.
However the documentation is exceptionally poor, and incorrect in many places.
We're using Webtrends Reporting Service, and one example of this is in tracking commerce. The documentation for the Shopping Cart tagging is actually incorrect. In the end I guessed what the tag may be as their support team didn't bother to reply to my emails, and it is now working.
Step 4 of the shopping cart process is listed as...
<META NAME="WT.si_p" CONTENT="CartBuy">
this should actually be...
<META NAME="WT.si_p" CONTENT="CartComplete">
Maybe their slogan is Work Smarter
, as you have to use your brain to second guess their documentation.
Series 2 of The Office was released on DVD today.
The cast were out to promote it at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, so went down to get my copy signed over my lunch break.
Ricky Gervais, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Ewan Macintosh and the lovely Lucy Davis did the honours. Fact!
Two Tube accidents in two days, a fantastic advertisment for the botched privatisation of the London Underground by the Labour Government.
Todays accident involved a Northern Line train derailing outside Camden Town station. Thankfully there are no fatalities, though 6 people have been taken to hospital.
The other incident was on Friday night outside Barons Court station, when a Piccadilly line train was derailed when a rail snapped under it.
Both of these lines are the responsibility of Tube Lines, a consortium made up of Bechtel, Amey and Jarvis. Jarvis was in the news earlier this week for giving up National Rail maintainence after a series of botched jobs caused accidents including the Potters Bar crash, and the derailment of a train at Kings Cross where they "forgot" to replace a rail.
While it is good news that older trains are being phased out in the South Central area, it's worrying to note that the new trains actually have less seating capacity.
The old slam door services have 234 seats available per 4 coach train, compared to only 176 on the new Electrostar trains being introduced. The new coaches are also slightly narrower.
At least Eastbourne being the start of the line means I'm hopefully able to get a seat unlike the poor buggers further up who'll be forced to stand.
I've now added a RSS feed to this site. It will give you the links to the 5 most recent stories, and a brief summary of their content.
I've chosen to implement version 0.91 of the RSS spec as it is the most common.
Here is the link for the RSS feed of RobertPrice.co.uk.
I was having serious problems using the Perl module XML::Parser to extract data from an XML file.
The file was several megabytes in size, but every so often the content of one element would not extract correctly. I was convinced the problem must of been with expat, the C parser behind XML::Parser.
It turns out I should of read the manual a little better.
I was resetting a variable in my Char handler each time the handler was called. I was assuming this would only be called once per element. However, it can be called multple times per element and this is what was happening.
For my small test file, the original code was fine. However, resetting the variable in the Start handler and making sure that the Char handler now appends data each call has fixed the problem for all files, including very large ones.
Well Aloud.com has won the AOP Award for the Consumer Design 2003.
Aloud.com was relaunched in March 2003 and its efficient, clean design, produced entirely in-house, has contributed to huge year-on-year tickets sales growth of 400 per cent. Aloud's design ethos is to be "innovative, succient, memorable and multi-media compatible", and the website presents news and information clearly. The user is led through the purchase path in just four clicks, and the excitement of music events is captured inspiring customer loyalty.
Judges comments: As booking sites go, Aloud.com really works. It does its job perfectly, and is lively and interesting, making you feel that there is lots going on and alerting you to things you wouldn't have thought of. It appeals to a very broad audience, and manages the balance between design and clear functionality very well.
We were up against stiff competition from CVG, HELLO!, NME, Telegraph and Vogue.
We at Emap Performance have just won the best consumer design for Aloud.com!
Will is modelling our new award.
Bev and caroline enjoy the chocolate dessert.
Will, Jo and Andrea discuss our forthcoming victory.
Bev, gigi and Vanessa are enjoying the evening so far.
No, i've not taken up a new career as a doorman.
I'm off to the AOP awards, where Aloud.com is nominated in two categories.
Wish us all luck!
Those crafty Nigerian fraudsters are at it again, this time offering to buy your car.
The scam works when you receive an email offering to buy your car for a good price, but you must ship it to Nigeria. The buyer has just come into some money so will send you a cheque for thousands of pounds more than the cost of the car, all you have to do is to take the cost of the car and shipping expenses, then send the difference back to him via Western Union.
The cheque will arrive, and will probably clear. However, the sting comes a few weeks later when the cheque is found to be a forgery and the funds are cancelled. You have probably already sent money to Nigeria and also lost your car if it has already been shipped.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
Strangly, one of the most popular search phrases to find this site is What does Bo Selecta mean?
Well, I'd better enlighted you if you don't already know.
It can either refer to the Channel 4 series Bo Selecta starring Avid Merrion...
...Or else it is club slang for Go (bo) DJ (selecta)! Basically something to shout out to make the feel DJ feel like he or she is doing a good job, and as a thank you for not playing any Craig David tracks.
Bo Selecta!
According to new research it appears that beer bellies are a myth.
The study was carried out by British and Czech researchers, and the scientists found there was no link between beer consumption and obesity.
Great! Everyone down the pub then!
I've done it. I've come to see the prat in a box.
Verisign have finally bowed to pressure from ICANN and have suspended the controversial Site Finder service.
The service was controversial because it wildcarded the .com and .net domains meaning any domains that didn't exist were directed to Verisign.
This made many spam filters ineffective as some refuse all email from non-existant domains, but the changes introduced by Verisign meant all domains suddenly did exist. It also introduced problems to other other tools and services, with privacy issues also being a major concern.
Hopefully it will die quietly now.
First came the controversial Redemption Song statue, now we have another called Holier Than Thou.
A row has broken out as it appears the mitre on the statue of the Catholic clergyman looks like an enormous penis.
"If people want to laugh at it or spit at it, that's OK. I just don't want them to walk by it", said artist Jerry Boyle.
The sculpture is on display at Washburn University in Kansas.
The Rocky Mountain News has the story and a picture.
Tom Baker has named Eddie Izzard as the new Doctor Who.
The BBC are refusing to confirm the rumour, saying that Baker's comments are pure speculation.
If it's true then the new Doctor could end up with an even worse costume than Colin Baker had as the 6th Doctor.
Anyway, BBC news has the story... Comic Izzard tipped as new Dr Who.