First Capital Connect: Why I am now an off-peak passenger

January 5th, 2010

Yesterday, I could not get my motorbike started in the morning after the Christmas break (it was a stupid error of mine whereby the bike was still in gear, so wouldn’t start anyway!)

I decided, since the weather it due to get worse, I will continue taking the train; with some annoyance.

Yesterday, I heard the dreaded announcement, “This train has been cancelled, because there are not enough drivers to run this service”, and am being continually informed that the timetable has changed to cater for this; but still trains are being cancelled.

Speaking to some of the regular commuters, it seems even when these trains are cancelled, if other services are then down-rated to an all station service, it is touch and go whether they will actually stop at all stations.

Last night, I had to wait over half an hour to get on a train to actually not be crushed by the sheer volume of passengers; this I think is a total failure by First to provide any quality of service, not only that but they are also a firm that will no doubt put up fairs as much as they can to increase profits.

I will be travelling off-peak for this week, simply because the trains are quieter, but no doubt this will mean my fare will be massively increased compared to the standard fare; so I feel punished for having to use the worst train service in the nation.

I beg the government to retract their tenure over these important services; how on earth can the capital run if we can’t rely on public transport?

Once again, if you need to get into London, see my previous blog, and buy a motorbike! It does have its advantages of actually being more environmentally friendly compared to the trains too!

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Help me raise money for Movember!

November 14th, 2009

I’m partaking in Movember, a world-wide event whereby men grow Mustaches during November for Charity!

Its a worthy cause, all money raised goes to The Prostate Cancer Charity, which I feel is a very worthy cause.

So help me out by visiting my Movember page and donating!

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First Capital Connect letting you down? Get a motorbike!

November 12th, 2009

Only after a few years of enduring what I would consider an over-priced, under resourced cattle truck into London, that you couldn’t rely on even at the best of times, I decided enough was enough; I bought a motorbike.

Why? Well, I’d always wanted to ride a motorbike from a young age, so the decision had already been 50% made. It is quicker, very convenient, and you run to your own time-table, so never mind missing that train that might be destined to be late, or heaven forbid, cancelled!

But the decision bore a financial aspect as well; let me expand.

So, lets take for example a First Capital Connect annual Travel Card from St Albans. I believe this costs in the region of about £3000.

My travel on a motorbike costs £3.60 in fuel a day, tax about 25p (if weekdays are counted only), and insurance roughly £2 a day. Unfortunately I also have to pay to park my bike in ghastly Westminster, which costs a further ~39p a day (if weekdays are counted for a yearly permit of £100). this means that my daily commute costs no more than £6.24 a day. Using this Monday to Friday for the entire year means this costs no more than £1600, roughly half what you’re paying to sit on seats that are 50% the size of a normal person!

I haven’t taken into consideration things like buying a motorbike, getting training, and all the necessary equipment – to me these are costs that are kept to a minimum if used; My motorbike is costing me £100 a month on 0% finance, and my bike gear has cost no more than £1000. Thats all about £5500. This will pay for itself in the long term.

There is a few disadvantages; not being able to go out drinking so readily, but this means you save a bit more money in these testing times! But occasionally you still need to grab the train, so you’re not rid of them forever!

So, if all these strikes are making you consider alternatives, get a motorbike; they’re very dependable, and they’re not as bad as most people think! Having commuted on them for roughly 3 years, I’m still enjoying it!

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on for £20!

November 9th, 2009

For those who are lucky enough to read my Blog; ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ is on general release from midnight, and there are two offers everyone should be aware of:

First and best one is with Makro, who have the game on offer for £20 (£17.39 + VAT), limited to one per customer with this voucher. This is limited to 33 stores with limited stocks (3000 for Xbox 360, and 2000 of the PlayStation 3 variant).

However, the problem with Makro is that it is only accessible to those who are members of the trade.

A much more accessible (and marginally more expensive) option is Sainsbury’s, who have the game on offer for £26 from tomorrow (So is reported over at hotukdeals), again, one per customer, but whats to stop you going around again if you’re like that?

I might even try to grab one of these tomorrow – good luck!

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Grab HTML Comments using jQuery!

November 4th, 2009

jQuery is really useful if you want to grab anything available in the DOM that has a tag name, an ID, or any other attribute!

But what if you want to grab anything that is invisible within the DOM, such as a HTML comment?

I recently pondered this myself, as there are a few benefits to doing this:

  1. Making configuration invisible to users, whether they be abled-bodied users who view the website through a standard browser, or blind users reading the website using a reader
  2. Making configuration invisible to search engines

So, I wrote my own jQuery extension to handle this (I’m sure this can be written better, but its a start!

jQuery.fn.comments = function(i) {
    if (this.html() != null && this.html() != '') {
        var searchString = this.html().split("<!--");
        var commentArray = new Array();
        for (j in searchString) {
            if(typeof(searchString[j]) == 'string'){
                if(searchString[j].indexOf("-->") != -1) {
                    commentArray.push(searchString[j].split("-->")[0].replace(/^\s+/,'').replace(/\s+$/,''));
                }
            }
        }
        if (isNaN(Number(i)) || i == null) {
            return commentArray;
        } else {
            return commentArray[i];
        }
    } else {
        return null;
    }
};

This allows you to do a few things:

  1. $(”div”).comments()
    • Will return an array of all the comments within the selected DIV
  2. $(”div”).comments(0)
    • Will return a string of the contents in the first comment found within the selected DIV

This is my first attempt at making a jQuery add-on! So go easy on me :)

Download this project from jQuery directly by going to the jQuery Comments project page

Read my documentation and view a working example on My Projects; Comments plugin

I look forward to your comments!

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About time too!

November 3rd, 2009

Welcome to my brand new blog!

I decided to set this up yesterday as a place to air my views, showcase things I’ve been working on, and general musings about web development (JavaScript, CSS, HTML, jQuery, JSP, JSTL, Java, and other cool languages), Politics, the world, life, art, the state of the world economy, etc etc…!

Please subscribe and enjoy my mindless gabble for at least as long as I’m around!

Luke

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