Dom Davis (The Blog)

So, first off, why are we getting relegated to platform 4A. We not allowed a whole platform to ourselves any more? Secondly, who are all you people on the train? Thirdly, and most importantly, what are doing in my seat? I’ve been relegated to some crappy seat at the end of the carriage. This is Not On.

On a related note, let’s not have the screaming child for the whole journey, OK? They’re old enough to talk in coherent sentences so let’s discourage the communication via loud shrieks shall we?

There is a field we pass on the train journey between Cromer and Norwich. Actually there are many fields, but the particular field I am thinking of has things going on in it. Constructiony type things. Initially I thought the array of frames and what looked like pipes was for some über irrigation system. This turned out not to be the case. Turns out it’s a ruddy great big solar array. Not entirely sure how much power it’s going to generate as we start our slide into winter but I’m guessing someone’s worked out it’s viable. Couple that with the huge offshore windfarm and North Norfolk is getting very green.

The only downside with my train journey to work these days is that it passes through deepest, darkest nowhere. Lovely if you want to stare out of the windows. Hopeless if you want mobile data access. This problem isn’t limited to my line either. The Norwich to London line has crap signal. When I used to use it regularly I would be continually frustrated by the lack of signal in places like Stratford, somewhere you’d expect to be saturated with mobile coverage.

One thing I have noticed is the underlying infrastructure (where it exists) is much better at handing off between cells and switching between GPRS, EDGE and 3G than a few years ago. Despite this many apps are shockingly bad at handling patchy and/or slow data access. I’ve had games that were unplayable on the move because they’ve not been able to talk to an optional service, apps that crash because it’s taken to long for data to arrive and apps just behave badly due to losing connection.

Take the Facebook app. If I hit reload on the news page and the signal drops out it shows me a full screen message saying it can’t connect to the network. Useless. How about you cache what you’ve got, show that and inform me some other way (preferably not with an annoying dialog box) that this is old data. Chances are in 30 seconds I’ll have a GPRS signal again and you can resume loading. Useless.

Even the blogging software I use went through a phase of being utterly shit without a full speed 3G or Wifi connection. I can see how not being connected would be an issue when posting, but crashing every time you drop off the network when writing a blog entry? I believe the issue is now fixed, but I’ve had so many problems I use another app to compose blog entries and post them via the blog app when I know the signal isn’t going to crap out.

Still, give it 10 years and I’ll be bitching about how I’m only getting 1Gb/s downloads on my iPhone X thanks to being in the sticks… and I bet apps will still have issues if they lose connectivity

OK, serious WTF moment. There is a mother with child and what I’m assuming to be grandparents sat on the train. The kid is female and I’m going to guess under 5. She’s currently playing with one of her purchases from Norwich and asking if she can open them. The purchase in question: nipple tassels. I know this because the container says “nipple tassels”. Who the fuck buys a young kid nipple tassels?! And if I’ve misunderstood and they’re intact mums (or, god forbid, grandmas) who the hell gets their nipple tassels out on the train for a kid to play with? I mean seriously, come on people!

So, annoyingly, having not undergone a general anaesthetic yesterday and, therefore, not having had my insides poked about a bit, I can no longer claim I’m unfit for work¹. The upshot of this being that I’m now on a train to Norwich after having not had a lie-in with The Zozo. I shall then be spending the day at a desk and not with The Zozo, who had planned her days off round this little adventure.

While the fact that they didn’t ram a telescope, laser, and God knows what else where they have no right to ram anything isn’t something that upsets me greatly, there are knock on problems. Its going to have to happen at some point so time off needs to be rescheduled (again, this bring the second cancellation); this isn’t as easy for The Zozo as it is for me due to the nature of the work. I’ve now got 3 days of stuff I was going to do Wednesday-Friday while convalescing which I need to cram in elsewhere. Worst of all, I miss a day off with my wife. Our next day off tomorrow, resplendent with lie-in, isn’t until Boxing Day

¹At least no more than usual.

So after reading about, and getting excited about¹ the release of iOS 4.2 for my iPhone I promptly went home and forgot all about it. I was reminded this morning by Goron after reading his Facebook status² and thought it would be a fantastic idea to update my phone before heading to work.

Heading upstairs I booted up the big mac, kicked off the update and headed to the shower³. Shaved and showered I headed back into the bedroom to get dressed and check on the progress. Still downloading. Hmmm…

Dressed and with 8 minutes to go on the download I headed downstairs to pack my bag, say goodbye to my wife⁴ and generally finish getting ready for work. Back upstairs… updating firmware with a slowly updating progress bar. Oh, and an alert for it being bin day.

Bins emptied and put out I headed back upstairs. Still updating firmware. Well that’s OK, I still have, oooh, 45 seconds before I need to go. Hmmm…

Coat on. Bag ready, 1 minute past leaving time⁵. Still updating firmware, but very nearly done…

…nearly…

…done. Restarting phone. Great… Hurry up! I’m now 2 minutes late and missing the train is awkward… Hmmm, another progress bar. Now what? At least this one is going faster…

3 minutes late, progress bar is gone… syncing? You’ve just sunk! [sic] Come on, come on, comeoncomeoncomeon! …Done!

Grab phone, shout goodbyes to The Zozo, run out of door, sprint to station, jump on train with about 60 seconds to spare.

So what does iOS 4.2 give me over 4.1? Not sure really. Nothing that I’m going to use before I get home tonight. So why did I nearly make myself miss the train to install it? See point 1 below

¹ Hello, geek
² See point 1, and yes, my friends have geek tendencies.
³ Yes, geeks shower. You’re confusing us with the socially awkward Nerd. Very different beast.
⁴ See. Geek, not nerd.
⁵ No, I couldn’t just leave without my phone. See point 1.

Today we saw the first frost¹. I’m not a huge fan of frost. It implies cold and it makes the pavement slippery underfoot. That said, it can be quite pretty. Annoyingly so in fact.

This morning the train drove through the broads on its way to Norwich with the perfect combination of autumn light, autumnal colours, frost, still water and the tiniest amount of mist rising from the water. It’s the kind of weather you need to be out with camera and tripod capturing said scenes instead of on the train describing them.

¹ Not of the year mind you, there was plenty of frost at the beginning of the year. Snow too. This would be the first frost since summer. The first frost of the season if you will.

These days I’ve taken to sorting out my todo list, doing a load of admin and a bit of programming on the train to work. It’s the only way I can even hope to keep up with everything that needs to be done at work. It certainly helps that I now do 90% of my work on the laptop¹.

This morning I got on the train, grabbed a table seat² got out the laptop and hit big confusion. There were apps running that I hadn’t started, folders open that I hadn’t opened and files that I didn’t recognise. I’d picked up Zo’s laptop, a near identical one to mine. Crud.

My todo lists both sync to my phone, email and calendars are handled by exchange, code is all on a server and I could, in theory, move back to using my desktop for the day supplemented by my phone… or I could get off the train, go home, get my laptop and head into work a hour late.

I chose the latter; after all, I was in an hour early yesterday, I can work from home while waiting for the train and I’d probably get more done that way than ducking about with the other option. Teach me not to check which one I’d picked up

¹If anyone knows where I can get my hands on BEA weblogic 8.1 for AIX (don’t ask) I could make it 100%.
²Be interesting to see if I can still get a table when school starts again.