Rob's Blog - June 2003

Network Rails Ten Year Plan

The BBC is reporting that it will be 2009 until one in nine trains will be able to run.

Network Rail, who runs the railway has just released its ten year plan. At present one in five trains runs late, but it seems that Network Rail we won't be seeing any real benefit for the next six years.

To help achieve this, they are making one in six of their employees redundant. This will probably mean more rail strikes as the unions protest against it. The timing is bad considering that last week Network Rail gave out huge bonuses to directors, despite the continuing collapse of the rail network.

Maybe it is time to seriously consider renationalising the railways again, and build an integrated national transport system.

Maxims Jazz Night

I ended up at Maxims jazz night tonight with Chris and Kev. It was quite enjoyable, and the band was playing 1920's music.

You know when people have had enough alcohol when someone (not myself I hasten to add) turns the conversation to when it is and isn't acceptable to murder someone else. In the background was the cigarette machine with the backdrop of New York (complete with the twin towers still) on it. Sobering...

Anyway, everyone seemed suitably impressed with my new Nokia 7250 camera phone. It's not the best camera in the world, but takes pictures suitable for use on the web like the ones of tonight.

Dr Shipman Spam

I have a spam email from a Dr Shipman today advertising a human growth hormone diet diet today. Surely it isn't THE Dr Shipman trying to earn a few extra quid on the side whilst in prison. Anyway, it's not inspired me with confidence to buy from them. Is this the worst case of inappropriate spam on the .net?

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

I've just noticed that Mil Millington's excellent website Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About has been turned into a book.

Reading about it on Amazon, it appears it's been out for a while and I've just not noticed it. The book does not follow Mil and Margret (the now legendary girlfriend), but is about a fictional girlfriend called Ursula. Sounds like it's going to be worth a read in these sunny summer months.

Mr Manly

The Mr Manly website has just uploaded another 88 episodes of the show to their site. These are only available using Real Player unfortunately, but it's better than nothing!

Until next time... this is Mr Manly saying "Be manly, and good day".

Bye Bye Connex

The BBC is reporting that Connex have lost their South Eastern fanchise.

I know how bad they were when they ran the South Central franchise before loosing it.

I was looking at the BBC comments page and I noticed a reply from an old friend on there. Here's what Keith Marshall had to say...

I commute daily into London on Connex from Whitstable which seems to be one of the better routes they have. Since the service is already adequate I assume it can only get worse as a result of this change. Frankly, if Connex can't afford to run the service, what makes anyone think some other company can? Rail services should be publicly owned because they simply aren't geared up to be profit-making.

Ketchup ONLY Shop

Thank god I don't live in Kilburn, North London. My worst nightmare has come true there. A shop only selling tomato ketchup has opened there.

However, it doesn't sell a variety of ketchups. No, it only sells Heinz, 9432 bottles of the damn red stuff.

Kerrang Awards Website

The Kerrang Awards website has now gone live.

This was a something that I had to program quickly, and thanks to the power of Perl, MySQL and The Template Toolkit it was completed successfully.

There is a nice backend running so the magazine can see who has voted for what and who the current category leaders are. There is also some protection in there to stop people from voting multiple times so the results should be quite accurate.

It also tries to sell ringtones to users after they have voted. When the result is logged, it does a quick lookup with the ringtone provider we use, and if we have matching results list them along with the vote confirmation. Hopefully as people are fans of those artists and tracks they might buy a ringtone.

Why Do Stale Biscuits Go Soft?

There was an interesting piece on BBC Southern Counties Radio this evening asking why biscuits go soft when stale, yet bread goes hard.

Well it turns out this is due to the way they are produced. Biscuits are cooked so the moisture in them is removed, leaving them hard and crunchy, the opposite is true with bread.

This means that biscuits have less moisture in them than there is in the surrounding air. Moisture in the air penetrates them, making them soggy when left out.

However, bread has a higher water content than the surrounding air. This means that the water in the bread evaporates into the surrounding air making it go hard when left out too long.

So there you go! You learn something new every day.

South Central Trains Again

I made the mistake of having to use the toilet on the South Central train to Eastbourne this evening.

Yet again it was filthy, and there was no water to wash my hands or to flush with. Is this against health regulations?

I wonder just what I have touched on that train as I was obviously not the only person who was unable to wash their hands after using the facilities.

What sort of lovely diseases are spread this way? Worms anyone?

Cadbury's Nut 'n Crisp

My new favourite chocolate is Nut 'n Crisp from Cadbury.

I've not seen this available anywhere, except in a pound shop in Eastbourne, where they sell 4 bars for a pound.

The bars seem to be of Irish origin, at least all the contact details on the wrapper seem to be for Cadbury Ireland. They are just at their "best before" date.

Were these bars a trial launch that wasn't a success? There is nothing on either of the Cadbury websites, and a quick google doesn't seem to turn up anything either.

Any information gratefully recieved!

Eastbourne Seaweed

It seems that my hometown of Eastbourne is in the news today as they appear to have started a zero tolerance policy towards seaweed collectors.

Three men were apparently arrested, handcuffed and held for several hours after they collected some seaweed from a public beach. It took two squad cars and a police motorcycle to arrest them. They have now been released without charge.

Unsurprisingly, the men have lodged an offical complaint against Eastbourne Borough Council. They claim that the seaweed in question was Sea Kale, a rare plant for the area.

Eastbourne was in the news a few weeks back for importing seaweed to perk up its tennis courts.

Chungking

I bought a copy of Chungkings new album, We Travel Fast, from HMV today.

It's great stuff. I'm sure what to compare it to. The BBC Collective suggests they have an early 70's radio sound.

As for my favourite tracks, well i'd say it's either Making Music, Angel Eyes or World Of A Thousand Suns.

I'd recommend a copy to chill out to. It's out on Tummy Touch Records with a catalogue number of TUCH094CD.

Orange SMS Spam

I used to be very happy with the service I was receiving from Orange. However lately I just seem to be getting constant SMS spam from them to my mobile phone advertising various services.

I signed up for a free three month trial of their WAP services. Getting rather fed up of the SMS barrage from them, mainly relating to this free trial, I sent a STOP message through to the reply number and received a confirmation that the messages would now stop and hoping I enjoy the rest of the free trial. However, today I've received another SMS from them advertising voice help for the service.

What annoys me even more than receiving these messages is that each time I send STOP messages, it costs me money. Maybe that is Oranges plan? If they are doing this to everyone they must be making a fortune (as well as alienating their customers).

Dodgy Office Network

Are the Central IT department telling fibs when they say the reason I have no intranet access is because a JCB cut through a fibre optic cable outside the office?

Some of the servers I'm trying to access are located in the same building as me which makes it sound a bit fishy. What makes it really whiff of rotting tuna is that the internet connection to external sites is fine, including to this blog page.

It sounds more like someone may have messed up a network config. This seems to be what the IT guys have told Cal, who works doing similar things to me for the same company, but in a different building.

South Central Trains

Travelling to Eastbourne today, I'm struck by the difference in trains north of London to those in the south.

I took WAGN's Cambridge Cruiser service from Cambridge to London. This was fast, quiet, clean and comfortable.

However, from London to Eastbourne I took one of South Central's battered old slam door trains. This was absolutely filthy.

I made the mistake of visiting one of the on board toilets. This was a huge error on my part. Sewage on the floor and graffiti on the walls. The taps had been removed and sealed over, so it was impossible to wash my hands, though bizarrely there were paper towels for drying my hands on. This would probably be useful for anyone who would have had to sit in there, as there was no toilet paper anyway.

I was glad to get home and freshen up properly.

Cheese and Onion Crisps

I took the National Express coach to Cambridge today.

The journey itself was very plesant and the coach itself was very comfortable. However, why must people eat such terrible smelling food on board?

Cheese and onion crisps are the worst offenders. As the coach is air conditioned there are no windows to open to escape the stench and get a breath of fresh air. Why do people feel the need to eat them on packed public transport? Surely waiting until the next rest point would not be the end of the world.

As you can probably guess, I'm not really a big fan of smelly food in public. Also included on this list are the people who eat burgers on packed trains then leave the packing onboard when they get off.

Tightening Up Security

I've just downloaded Zone Alarm for a friend of mine to try to help secure her NTL cable modem connected computer.

I'm shocked at the number of attemped connections on port 445. This is apparently Windows NetBIOS's port for sharing files etc. There are also various other scans going on seemingly every 5 minutes from various IP addresses.

I also took the liberty of downloading SpyBot Search and Destroy and installing it. Again, that detected quite a few Spyware apps on her system, as well as various cookies. These have now also been removed.

New Blog

Well I've decided to write my own little mini blog for the site. The software is custom written in Perl for fun, so things may change for a bit while I bed down the code and decide exactly what I want.