Holy Living Fuck....

....man flies into space, and comes back, in a commercial space vehicle. Yep I just noticed that Rutan's team have just completed the first successful flight in their X-prize bid. OK I'm slow, I know. I have an excuse as to why I was out the loop (see the previous post). Here is a nice pic of SS1 safely back on the ground.



If you watch the video of the flight you can a real eyeful of the Virgin logo. Don't you just love Richard Branson?!

Denial of Service

The phrase Denial of Service (DoS) is nowadays often used in regard to attacks on websites and other internet resources which leaves them unable to respond to valid requests. However, in the UK we have a much older and more common arena for DoS. The rail service. This is a service (and I use the term service in the absense of sense) which regularly suffers from DoS attacks. However, unlike those attacks performed on websites by script kiddies, the rail DoS is usually self inflicted. Ok not usually. Always.

Lets take today for example. Now, I regularly travel to work by train (a combination of bike and train). The timetable for this service (God it is painful to use that word) has just been revised - I think they used the term updated but I think it gives the wrong impression, i.e. one of improvement. And it is quite a substaintial change. Which happened on Monday. So low is my expectation of this service (ahhhhh) that I only noticed this evening that the train was late by a different amount of time than I was expecting (is it actually possible that there is some nasty relativistic process at work here? Is the problem that the time experienced by passengers is not the same as that expereinced by those sat in offices writting the timetable?). I guess one reason I noticed was that I had so much time on my hands, due to the late running of the train, and was able to fully digest the timetable. Perhaps this is what they had in mind. Make the service late so they have the time to enjoy the new timetable. Well at least they are getting the nation reading.

The train itself was over 45 minutes late. Late by an amount greater than twice my journey time. Why was it late? I have no idea. Neither apparently did anyone at Wilmslow station (well Alderley Edge is unstaffed so I rode to Wilmslow for some company). I did ask if they were concerned that they had apparently lost a train but they didn't see this as a problem - maybe they saw it as acceptable loss and these things tend to turn up in the end anyway. Today was by no means atypical. I use a servi..serv....s.. trainline which, for the first half of this year was closed; replaced with a bus service. This bus service was, despite having to negotiate the traffic, far more reliable than the train it replaced. It wasn't just a bus, it was a bus service. The improvements made to line in this time are difficult to see. Sorry, I meant impossible.

Fortunately, although standing around at the station means I can miss my children going to bed, it does mean I get time to think about what action we, the passengers, might take. The obvious one is don't pay. Due to the obsession with understaffing stations, we are often expected to pay on the train. This provides an excellent opportunity to sample the merchandise before handing over your money. And if you don't like the service withhold your money. Or at least some of it. Perhaps tell the conductor that "there will be a delay to the arrival of your money and apologise for any inconvience this causes". If you are ever get challanged as to why you don't already have a ticket just tell them that you didn't want to be so presumptuous as to pressume there would actually be a train. Wouldn't it be great to have a day of action where everyone in the country who uses the train did so, but refused to pay. What on earth could the rail companies do about it?

Bad Daddy, Naughty Daddy

I have just told my daughter she is not in our good books. She asked me what that meant. I had to admit I didn't really know. What books am I talking about? The only 'books' she is in are photoalbums and these aren't catagorised into anything like good, bad, ugly etc (actually given my family the whole lot could be filled under ugly). So what have I actually told my daughter? Where the hell does this expression come from? So many questions, so few neuronal interconnections.

Fantasy League of my own

I like football (or association football/soccer as our American cousins know it). I like to play it. I like to watch it. I also like to play fantasy football. For those that don't know what that is I will explain. What the hell am I thinking, this is the web just follow this link and your belly will be full with understanding or someit. Now I was just mulling over the relative merits of playing Robinson in the nets today as apposed to Van der Sar (could be counter productive with a full Chelsea back row) whan I sudddenly realised that I didn't want a team comprised of Premiership players at all. I wanted to play fantasy league with players from the Champioship league. The reason. Simple, I support a Championship team; Q P R. So I care more about the details of the Champioship than I do Premiership. Now the problem with that, you might well not be thinking, is that everyone would have to be playing in the same league in order for the rankings to work. Well I don't think so. You get points for goals, assists, saves etc. All of which happen at a similar ratio in every league (with the possible exception of those below the Conference where scores of 7-2 are not that uncommon). So you could easily compete on a level playing field (haha).

Universal Timeline

Oh look a second post! I saw this picture on a BBC website story about the Hubble Telescope.



Its a neat diagram showing the relationship between cosmological time and view distance that I hadn't seen before. And I wanted an excuse to stick an image in my blog. The full BBC story is available here

To Blog or Not to Blog

Ok, I'm here so that means To Blog won, but I have tried to resist the temptation to have a blog because, like the vast majority of people with a blog, I don't actually have much to say. It's not that I don't have much to say, as I have opinions on a wide variety of subjects. And voice them at any opportunity. I will gladly bore complete strangers at train stations with my musings on why the 7.45 to Crewe hasn't appeared (it's all to do with the poorly thought out train naming convention adopted by the rail networks resulting in service names which nearly always look like times. Silly idea really.) But you see, that's not the point. Everyone has something to say about anything even if it is only "Sorry I don't really know very much about that sort of thing" or in the case of politicians especially if they say "Sorry I don't really know very much about that sort of thing". Blogs are full of this sort of textual noise and it is becoming increasing hard to find anything you want/need/like. "So why are you joining in?" I don't hear you not asking. Well, I've come to realise that having a blog is not about having something to say but about showing that you don't have nothing to say. Either that or, if you can't beat them join them.

So what is going to be in this blog? In truth, I have no idea. It may start and end with this one entry - the shortest blog ever?. It may contain every thought I ever have... err well maybe not. The only thing I hope for is that it will get read and I don't just mean by me.