Here are Rob's Blog entries for June 2004.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
The new extension to platform 1 at Hampden Park is almost ready by the look of it.
Hats off to the Orange Customer Retention Department.
When I told them I was thinking of leaving Orange, the phone company I've been with for 7 years, they swung into action.
The cost of upgrading to a Nokia 6600 phone was waived, internation roaming was enabled without a deposit, and the cost of my talkplan halved.
I wish I'd thought of doing this before. Last year I had to take out a new contract instead of just extending my old one to get a reasonable deal.
If you want to do the same, just ask for your PAC number and say you wish to transfer to an alternative network.
I'm a happy Orange customer for another year now.
Moose has been placing a graffiti style template on grimey concrete then cleaning it. The result is a crystal clear image that gradually fades in time as it gets dirty again.
Leeds council has called it "sheer vandalism" and has demanded he "clean up".
It will be interesting to see the legality of this. Is it vandalism?
I made it back from Glastonbury 2004 safely.
This years festival was excellent and I had a great time.
The rain came down on Saturday, and the mud returned, but it was certainly not as bad as in previous years.
One of this years highlights was having a backstage pass. It's not the holy grail some people try to make it is, but it does mean nicer camping, cleaner toilets (though only just), shortcuts between stages and the chance to mingle with celebs.
I seemed to have half of Worthy Farm's topsoil on my boots, so I've given them a good bash and put the mud on my spring onion patch in the garden.
I notice I managed to add 16 entries to my blog live from Glastonbury this year. I'm really pleased that the software I wrote to handle that works so well.
It's a rather bizarre experience, but we're watching the English National Opera perform Ride Of The Valkyres on the Pyramid Stage.
At least it's quite nice weather still, but the clouds are darkening quickly.
This is a shot of the backstage camping area.
We've just seen Michael Eavis being interviewed outside the hospitality tent.
Despite running the best festival, he's never slept in a tent. Well i suppose he doesn't have to owning the farm house.
The weather is grey, but at least it's not raining today.
Paul macartney is currently headlining on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage.
The picture makes me seem further away than I actually am.
He's currently playing some old Beatles songs to a very good audience reception.
The Rutles are now playing in the Acoustic Tent.
An excellent way to warm up for Paul Macartney.
Currently listening to Joss Stone is the Jazz World field, my new 10 quid slouchair, www.slouchair.com, is a lifesaver letting me sit down instead of standing in all the mud.
This little bit of luxury is well worth it.
The end is nigh!
Remember, don't piss in the streams at Worthy Farm!
The Glastonbury dance elephant machine thing is just rolling past.
The shot doesn't really show is but it's pulling an upturned volkswagon beetle with lots of girls dancing in surrenders and corsets.
Now I think of it, maybe I've taken the wrong photo...
The glastonbury mud is back!
The rain is pouring down, but thankfully we've found the real ale tent up by the acoustic stage.
woodfords wherry is certainly a fine pint!
There's quite a good jazz funk band on at the bandstand.
The sun is setting as the Kings Of Leon take to the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury.
Todays celeb moment is ordering a cider at the backstage bar standing next to Bez from the Happy Mondays.
Badly Drawn Boy has just played on the Other Stage, complete with a guest appearance from Bez of the Happy Mondays.
Easily the best row of Glastonbury so far, but it's still only Friday...
I'm facing the pyramid stage at present watching Nelly Furtado playing.
Glastonbury is great, and the weather is scorching hot. It's turning out to be a really good year.
This is the view towards the Jazz Stage at Glastonbury today.
The weather is lovely and it's going to be a great day.
Well i've arrived at Glastonbury!
I'm currently enjoying the sun in the Green Fields by the Standing Stones.
With the rain pouring down, the Waterloo and City line closed due to flooding, it doesn't look too good for this years Glastonbury Festival.
Micheal Eavis is ready for a safer festival this year according to the BBC.
We've found that it usually rains on every fifth Glastonbury, which is this one
, Eavis admits, But the forecast is pretty good, so this year we're determined the break that jinx.
I hope he's right! The BBC's Glastonbury webcam is currently obscured by large rain drops on it's lense.
A quick look at the 5 day weather forcast for Glastonbury has sun for Thursday and Friday with clouds on Saturday and Sunday.
We've all been kicked off our Southern train to Eastbourne at Lewes.
There is a track fire at Polegate and the signalman has got a train stuck behind us in the tunnel that needs to move.
Lots of very angry people here, especially as most will miss the big England football game now.
A fire can't be helped, but the poor treatment of passengers can. I was "expecting more" from Southern, unfortunately it's "more of the same" crap service we've had to put up with from South Central and Connex before them.
As my blog is now a year old, I suppose it's a about time I generated my bloggercode.
B5 d++ t++ k+ s+ u-- f i++ o+ x-- e+ l c-
.
I've just realised that my blog had it's 1st birthday a week ago.
So for all you nostalgia fans, the first ever entry was the imaginatively titled, New Blog.
Since the first entry I've gradually modified the blogging system I've written to be XHTML / CSS based, added MMS posting from my mobile phone, related links, RSS, RDF and Atom feeds of the latest 5 blog entries.
I've lots of ideas for future developments, such as comments, trackbacks, pingbacks and article feeds, so expect to see them gradually appearing over the next few months. I've still to decide on the final implementation of these as over the past few weeks I've noticed various attempts at referer spam, but I expect it will involve moderation or some sort of user verification.
I'm not sure what's going on at Victoria today, but only two trains are currently advertised and the clocks are about 40 minutes slow.
Maybe it's Southern's attempt to improve their performance. If only two trains are running it's hard for them to be late, but just incase adjust the clocks to make them appear really early.
While catching the Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Victoria my seat was next to a drivers cab.
I thought it was quite interesting so here is a quick photo of it.
The Register has an amusing story from BBC Bristol entitled, The BBC, the lost tape and the 6-foot fridge.
Someone sent an urgent video tape via courier to BBC Bristol, and this arrived at the post room. Noticing the label was peeling off, the post room staff stuck the old label on their fridge while they replaced it with a new one.
Later, the send received this worrying voicemail.
Simon Taylor, the South Central commuter who blocked the level crossing at Berwick when told his train was "the wrong sort" and wasn't going to stop at the station today, walked free from court yesterday.
The judge gave him 80 hours community service and made him pay 250UKP in compensation.
The Eastbourne Herald has the story, with the confusing headline of commuter escapes jail.
My new favourite CSS tag is overflow.
It provides the ability for blocks to scroll if they overflow their bounding box. It's part of the CSS2 specification, but most modern browsers should support it.
I have added it to the my code blocks as they tend to overrun the most often using preformatted text for the display.
For more information have a look at the CSS Overflow Guide.
It had to happen, but the first virus to target mobile phones has been successfully writen.
EPOC.Cabir targets Nokia Series 60 Devices.
The user has to actively accept the worm when it is sent by Bluetooth. Once running it scans for other Bluetooth devices and tries to send itself to them. Thankfully there is no payload, except for shortened battery life caused by the constant use of Bluetooth.
How long before a serious virus is written? Unfortunately I expect it will be sooner rather than later...
The latest cockup to fall on the Southern Railway is the news that their new million-pound-a-carriage Electrostars will be wearing out the track far faster than the old slam door trains.
The Evening Standard reports that rail chiefs are having to keep a special check on the lines. The new trains weigh 168 tons, but the tracks were designed for old stock weighing 150 tons. Network Rail believes the new stock will lead to a significant growth in rolling contact fatigue propogation with consequential impact on track maintenance activity
.
To be fair on Southern, this isn't their fault, but the fault of the former Railtrack who forgot to anticipate the affect running new would have on the network. Their biggest cockup was not putting in place the power to run the trains in the first place.
Hello Mash!
Waiting at Eastbourne station, i've just heard the most bizarre platform announcement.
It was to ask parents to keep a children supervised at all times as high speed trains pass through.
I hope trains don't pass through at high speeds as Eastbourne is a terminus with nowhere for trains to go except crashing into the station.
I'm not sure if it's genius or freaky, but someone has turned some old shop dummies into tables outside an Eastbourne cafe.
Believe it or not, i was actually sitting in a clean carriage before a large man from the London School Of Economics (as he noisily announced down his mobile phone) got on at London Victoria.
By the time he got off at Lewes the compartment I was travelling in was covered with old pastie, various parts of The Times, unwanted carrier bags and old greasy food wrappers.
It just amazes me that someone could treat fellow passengers with such contempt and leave all that rubbish, without even attempting to clean it up. The trains are normally filthy enough without selfish people like this making them worse.
One good thing about the change over from South Central Trains to Southern Railway is the introduction of more ticket inspectors.
Here the person on the block of seats infront of me is being issued with a penalty ticket for fare dodging.
Personally I think it's a good thing. I have to pay over 3000 a year for my season ticket, so I don't see why others should travel free.
Now Electrostar trains are coming into service on the Southern Railway, maintenance of the old slamdoor trains is badly neglected.
The arm of my seat is currently hanging off, the wood splintered and screws sticking out of it.
Southern are telling us all to Expect MORE, but in this case "less is more", as i'd prefer less damage to the interior of my train.
Hampden Park railway station is having it's platform 1 lengthened to help accomodate longer trains at present.
I went to Pevensey Castle today.
This picture is of the Norman gatehouse.
It was built in 1066 by William the Conqueror after he landed at Pevensey.
My train home today was crawling behind a new Southern Electrostar that was having door trouble.
This seems to be a very common occurance. Are Electrostars the most unreliable train model? They are beset with problems.
On the plus side, I managed to get to level 67 on Palm OS MissleCmd with a high score of 146550 while we were sitting in the middle of nowhere.
