e-Ink e-Tickets

September 29, 2008 at 09:11 | In Ones and Zeros | 1 Comment
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While struggling to get back from Chester on the train recently, I started thinking about how e-Paper and RFID might help. Sky has some interviews covering this year’s Hursley 50th celebration which explain both nicely (between about 0:45 to 03:45).

Instead of having a printed timetable of my journey that the train company should have already known was unrealistic, and a ticket not valid for the alternative route via London, a combination of an Oyster-like ticket and e-Ink could have got me home only 15 minutes late with no extra cost. Instead I had to pay extra to arrived an hour and a half late.

An e-Ink display would enhance the current Oyster to visually show what ticket I’m travelling on, along with a mini timetable of my route. When I get to the departure station, the ticket could be automatically updated if there are problems on the rail network, with a new timetable, and with a route upgrade if required. Things might also go wrong during the journey, but the same thing could happen when the guard checks tickets; machine scans ticket and checks it’s valid, while also checking for any known incidents on the route the ticket is displaying.

Unfortunately rail ticketing seems to be getting worse not better at the moment–searching National Rail for timetables has resulted in a few warnings that multiple tickets are required for some journeys recently–so I won’t be holding my breath.

First Century

September 19, 2008 at 01:00 | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
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Almost by coincidence (i.e. only slightly contrived after I noticed how close it was) this is the first anniversary of Notes from a small field and the 100th post! If you don’t like blog posts about blog stats, look away now!

  • First post: Hello world! on 19 September 2007, and I didn’t even write it!
  • Least popular post (not including this one!): Perranporth, Cornwall with 3 hits, which is a shame because the Ordnance Survey still do nice wallpaper pics
  • Most popular search term: “low power home server” 112 times
  • Busiest day: Thursday, July 31, 2008 with 306 hits
  • Total views: 8,994
  • Spam: 2,763 (all caught thanks to Akismet)

Luckily it’s not all numbers. Here’s my roundup from the past year/99 posts:

  • Favourite comment: if I’d have started this blog sooner, there would have been a lot of posts about fitting the kitchen!
  • Most useless post: iPhone accessibility (nobody seems interested, which is a shame- must try and catch up with Andy about trying it out on the touch screen kiosk in the ETS lab instead)

If you got this far, well done! If all goes to plan, I’ll have some cakes at my desk in Hursley to celebrate.

P.S. Aarrr!

Update: If you were working at home today/don’t work in Hursley, you missed out… yum…

Cake

Cake

Money trees

September 10, 2008 at 22:17 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
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Can I interest anyone in a money tree? Yes, an actual money tree, not the virtual variety!

Before you get too excited, money doesn’t actually grow on this type of tree, and I must admit I haven’t even seen it flower. I got it from my mum, plus it has survived longer than any other plant I’ve had, mostly due to it’s incredible ability to go without water, so I guess it saves money but that’s as good as it gets.

The money tree is doubly hard to kill because everytime you pull a bit off, you end up with another one, a bit like the hell-hound Sammael in Hellboy… well, kind of. Anyway, the last two bits I pulled off have sprouted roots so they’ll be looking for a new home soon:

Money tree cuttings

Money tree cuttings

For anyone with previous money tree clones, here’s how the big one’s doing!

Wot no money

Wot no money

So getting just a bit top heavy. Might start taking bigger lumps off soon before it falls off the windowsill!

(All of which reminds me of German friendship cakes; haven’t had one of those round for years.)

Google plating

September 2, 2008 at 22:15 | In Ones and Zeros | 6 Comments
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This post is brought to you from the new Google Chrome browser.

I’m sure there will be some in depth and deeply technical reviews about Chrome before long, if there aren’t already that is, but here are my first few thoughts:

  1. First thought
  2. Second thought
  3. Third thought

So far Chrome looks reasonably solid- solid enough to risk writing a blog post on even! I certainly like the sound of tabs in separate processes, given the number of times a website has taken out all my tabs. I usually have far too many tabs open I admit… but I’ve not yet caused the entire internet to crash as a result!

Playing with the about:memory page was interesting as well, especially with other browsers listed with Chrome. Interestingly Opera 9.5 was using less memory despite having more tabs open. Both Opera and Chrome have gone for a cut down interface, which I prefer, although there does seem to be a fairly random split of menu items between Chrome’s “Control the current page” and “Customise and control Google Chrome” menus. I imagine a lot of time was spent deciding what should go in each… oh well.

It’s great to have another browser to spice things up, and I love the new tab page- Chrome will most definitely be staying installed, along with Opera, Firefox and IE!

Update: Some thoughts from other people:

Extra, extra! A roundup and review of the media hype on The Register:

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