Posts from January 2011

Dear Fat Controller

Occasionally, I use South West Trains to commute from my home in sunny Norbiton into the City of London. However before you say anything, don't worry, I am not a merchant banker despite what my friends say.

Today, in an attempt to secure a seat, I delayed my departure slightly and caught the legendary 08:36 service from Norbiton. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed a highly prized seat when a rather forceful gentleman, who boarded after me, miraculously managed to reach the last vacant seat 0.74 seconds before me. Bastard.

According to the official South West Trains timetable, which is proudly pinned up in my downstairs lavatory, this service that leaves at 08:36 should take 30 minutes, precisely, arriving at its final destination at 09:06.

Today's journey left on time and arrived at Waterloo at 09:14 - a mere 8 minutes late. This isn't 5% late. This isn't 10% late. This isn't 20% late. This delay of 8 minutes on a 30 minute journey represents a delay of 26.66667%.

Still, I guess I should be grateful that the cost of my weekly TravelCard (Zones 1-5) has only increased by a paltry 6.81% from £44 to £47 from January 1. If the Financial Controller from South West Trains saw these metrics, he may well (incorrectly) conclude that if the trains run 26% late, then the cost of the ticket should rise by the corresponding percentage.

During our extended, tedious, never ending journey where we frequently came to a grinding halt outside a station or lingered for four thought provoking minutes adjacent to that cemetery near Clapham Junction, I am pleased to report that we were afforded the courtesy of the occasional helpful announcement from the guard: 'Ladies and gentlemen. We apologise for the short delay but we are being held at a red signal. We hope to be underway again shortly'.

The thing is - this delay isn't a one-off. This isn't a delay caused by the inclement weather we experienced before Christmas. This sort of delay is now routine.

In fact, these delays are so routine that people don't even moan any more. People just shrug their shoulders, scurry along the platform onto the tube network and accept this poor service as the norm.

Thankfully, I don't have an annual season ticket and I am not condemned to using South West Trains every single working day. I am an occasional commuter but whenever I do use the service, it invariably arrives late. Once it was just 12 seconds late - if only the driver hadn't lingered at Wimbledon reading the football reports in 'The Mirror'.

Now, I guess it would be an interesting exercise to keep detailed metrics for all my journeys in order to support this bold claim with statistical evidence that could then form the basis of a compensation claim.

However, I refuse to do this for two reasons; firstly I simply can't be arsed and secondly that way lies danger and obsessive compulsive train-spotter disorder (OCTSD). Before you know it, I would be stood, wearing an anorak, on a wet and windy, desolate platform 11 at Clapham Junction late at night holding a video camera, desperately trying to capture the rare '337919' engine that powers the Gatwick Express.

Obviously, I don't want to waste your time and money by forcing you to issue a stock response to a yet another stock complaint from 'Mr. Angry Commuter from Redhill' so here's my constructive suggestion in order to significantly improve the service between Norbiton and Waterloo.

Simply increase the planned duration of all journeys between Norbiton and Waterloo to 45 minutes. Currently some journeys are scheduled to take 28 minutes while others are supposed to take 30 minutes. This inconsistency needs to be addressed.

Altering the timetable in this way will help ensure that all journeys arrive not just on schedule but ahead of schedule as in early.

This seemingly minor change will have multiple benefits; commuters will disembark, happy and smiling, consulting their watches and exclaiming '8 minutes early. Again. How fantastic. What a marvellous service. I really must email South West Trains congratulating them on this sustained improvement in the service'.

Following this modest increase in the estimated journey times, customer complaints will rapidly fall to zero. This means you can sack all the people in the customer service centre with a corresponding beneficial effect to the very important 'bottom line'.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, South West Trains will meet all their performance targets and you will be eligible for your massive financial bonus and a well deserved promotion to 'Morbidly Obese Controller'.

Hopefully, you will consider this suggestion and implement it initially on a pilot basis on the Shepperton line, If, as I am convinced it will be, this change proves to be a success, this novel and innovative change to make the railway timetable actually reflect reality can be rolled out across the entire network in 2012. Just in time for the Olympics.

Yours sincerely

Norman Brightside

This blog and the handful of modules I use has been upgraded to the final version of Drupal 7.0 which was released today.

I was quite pleased that I used Drupal 7 from the early beta versions and then tracked the D7 release candidates as this gave me valuable experience in upgrading Drupal 7 relatively quickly while preserving my additional modules without losing all my data which always helps. It's worth noting that although I barely scratch the surface of Drupal 7's wide range of functionality, the quality, reliability and performance of Drupal 7 was perfectly fine for this blog.

Personally (and rather selfishly), I hope that the formal release of Drupal 7.0 will encourage more developers to upgrade which, in turn, which provide impetus for more Drupal modules (and themes) to be ported and made available for Drupal 7.

Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, posted a interesting set of reviews looking back on 2010 with his hopes and predictions for the coming year for:

• Drupal - the open source content management system.
• Mollom - comment spam service with commercial pricing for larger sites.
• Acquia - Dries' startup offering Drupal based services including hosted Drupal sites
• Drupal Gardens.

Steve Rubel has resolved to return to feed reading in 2011.

However, I have been using Google Reader since 2007 and use it daily to catch up with the tech and sports news in addition to my favourite blogs. I honestly can't imagine life without it. I was also interested by a recent article (prompted by the demise of delicio.us) that described the use of Google Reader as a bookmarking service.

Steve Rubel sings the praises of Markdown and good old fashioned text editors.

I agree and for a long time have dithered over whether to write all of my blog posts in Markdown. This makes sense as it simplifies the syntax and theoretically should make writing content easier and quicker. I was particularly struck by Caius Durling's use of Markdown on his Habari blog and the use of the plaintext plugin to reveal the raw Markdown.

However, despite experimenting with both the Markdown plugin for Habari and later the Markdown filter module for Drupal, I have actually never taken the plunge.

I think the subconscious reasons behind for my reluctance to bite the bullet and fully embrace Markdown are:

1. Knowing the subset of HTML tags I commonly use, I am finally relatively comfortable composing posts in raw HTML.

2. Although Markdown uses a simple, easy to learn syntax (which is rather the whole point after all), the Markdown markup would be a slightly different syntax to learn and master.

3. I am (justifiably in my case) worried that I would constantly produce incorrect Markdown syntax and hence generate flawed HTML so I would be forever reviewing the generated HTML which again would be time consuming and self-defeating. A side by side split, live screen Markdown/HTML preview would be really useful.I have just discovered the Live module which looks like it could be used in conjunction with the Markdown filter to create similar functionality (but only when this module is ported to Drupal 7).

4. Sometimes I embed images from Picasweb or YouTube and I'm not sure how these HTML embeds would work in Markdown or whether the Markdown processor will accept raw HTML for these occasional exceptions.

5. Drupal supports different filter types on a per post basis but I have concerns about attempting to migrate a blog containing a mixture of HTML and Markdown posts to different blog platforms and I'm hardly likely to convert 1,000 historic posts to Markdown. However, if the Markdown is processed and the generated HTML is stored in the database, this may not be a problem. Another obvious solution is trying to curb this constant urge to tinker with the underlying technology powering this blog but that is unlikely to happen.

Anyway, time to stop procrastinating. I have managed to write this post in Markdown and already I like the modified, simpler syntax, so I will endeavour to follow Steve Rubel's advice and join the ranks of the 'modern communicators'.

Manchester, near England - Wednesday 5 January 2011

The footballing world was left reeling yesterday at shock news emanating from Manchester Citys training facility at Carrington. A local man, Frank Booth explains: 'I always pass the City training ground on my way to work so I always check out the players going through their drills. Yesterday I was quite shocked to see all the players smiling and laughing. I couldn't believe my eyes so I stopped for a closer look.

'The senior players appeared to be discussing the presents they had received at Christmas. Emmanuel Adebayor was sporting a lovely Inter Milan shirt and Carlos Tevez was passing around some Braun hair straighteners. All of this just two days before a crucial top of the table clash away at Arsenal that could decide the destiny of the league title and end 35 years of hurt. The Italian manager, Mancini, was no better and appeared to be trying to place a Christmas Angel on top of Yaya Toure's head using a small, portable step ladder. For a laugh, each squad player had given Mancini an identical pale blue and white City scarf so he was attempting to wear all 23 scarves at once.'

Roberto Mancini attempted to justify this unexpected outbreak of peace, love and harmony: 'At this moment, this is very normal for the players to be relaxed and smiling. In the recent moments, we had tough matches over Christmas so now we relax just for one of the eight daily training sessions. There is no problem with morale in the squad in this moment. The Inter Milan shirt for Adebayor is not a problem. In fact, that was, how you say, my Secret Santa gift for him'.

In an exclusive interview, Chief Executive Garry Cook attempted to give a managerial spin on this remarkable turn of events: 'It is absolutely ludicrous and completely untrue for amateur journalists from tabloid newspapers to print these despicable lies just before a crucial match. There is no suggestion whatsoever of any harmony within the club - either on the training ground, in the dressing room or on the coach to away matches when Joe Hart, Kolo Toure and Gareth Barry squabble over the front seat near Roberto. Why - only this morning, I was having a chat with Carlos about the imminent arrival of Edin Dzeko from Wolsburg. I told Tevez, that we had been forced to offer Dzeko a basic salary £375,000 per week and Carlos was moaning that this was higher than his £350,00 a week and he was going to cry and cry and scweam and scweam until he got an improved offer of £500,000 a day'.

'I replied this simply wasn't possible and anyway his annual net income would exceed £775,000 when we win the Premiership, The Carling Cup, the Fair Play League and the Champions League this season. Tevez didn't take this very well and exploded with rage, mumbling something in Spanish about City not even being in the Champions League. He then proceeded to strangle me with his snood and Brian Marwood had to intervene and restrain him before I was choked to death. So, rest assured, there are still internal squabbles, player disquiet, unrest and petty arguments in the Manchester City dressing room and I wouldn't have it any other way. It shows that the players care. It shows the player are passionate. About money'.

Before Christmas, my friendly postman tried to deliver a parcel when no-one was home. Instead of leaving the parcel propped up by the front door to be buried under the falling snow, inviting passers-by to steal the potentially valuable item or slinging it into our dustbin, this time he helpfully left a note asking me to collect the package from the local sorting office or 'request a redelivery' on a subsequent date using a form on the Royal Mail web site.

As I am quite lazy, I went for the latter option, and requested re-delivery for two days later. The Xmas parcel duly arrived on the prescribed date so that was fine. Well done to the Royal Mail for making the re-delivery request option available online. Less work for me. A little more work for them. Everyone's happy.

A full 10 days later, I was a little perplexed to receive the following email from Royal Mail. At first, I assumed it was a feedback request to 'Please rate our service' but no, it wasn't.

Subject: Redelivery response

If you are now in receipt of your redelivered item, thank you for using our on-line redelivery service and please delete this email.

Ah OK so I can safely delete this email message as my parcel has been successfully redelivered but let's read on just out of idle curiosity.

Dear Sir or Madam

Thank you for requesting redelivery of your item.

Your local delivery office received your request and after searching for your item was unable to locate it. This could be because you have either already collected the item from the delivery office or it has been redelivered.

If this is not the case may I firstly apologise for any inconvenience you have been caused and for information on what to do next please visit our website at www.royalmail.com or contact Customer Services on 08457 740 740

I had to read this correspondence three times before I was able to parse the words - 'Your local delivery office received your request and after searching for your item was unable to locate it'. Eh ? But the local delivery office did receive my request and actioned it. The re-delivery request had a number associated with it so why didn't they update the status with 'Re-delivery scheduled for '19/12' ?

The next sentence is also rather odd - 'This could be because you have either already collected the item from the delivery office or it has been redelivered.' Somehow this implication of the first statement is that this state of confusion may partially be my fault for having the temerity to visit the local sorting office as requested to collect my parcel. Again, it's clear the Royal Mail has no idea what actually happened to this parcel. For all they know, it's sitting at the bottom of my tall, black wheelie bin under two heavy sacks of Christmas rubbish imminently destined for landfill.

However, even though the Royal Mail has no idea what happened to my parcel, I can rest easy - 'If this is not the case may I firstly apologise for any inconvenience you have been caused and for information on what to do next, please visit our website or contact Customer Services on 08457 740 740'.

So, if my parcel hadn't been successfully re-delivered or I hadn't collected it in person, this email from Royal Mail Customer Services hardly inspires confidence that they will inform me with any degree of certainty what to do next.