Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

My timeline below illustrates the frustration and anger many of us experienced on our so called fantastic public transport system.

Thursday 9th June

7pm – I arrive at London Waterloo train station to catch my train home to Basingstoke on my daily commute. Immediately I can see across the board that all trains in and out of this station are delayed. I send a tweet to Sarah @girlygeekdom warning her of potential problems, as we regularly take the same trains.

7.15pm – I board the late 6.39pm train that had been delayed like all the others. Slowly but sure we moved forward… until we hit Clapham Junction. The guard informs us that there is a signal failure at this station and potentially other ones along the line. At this point I start tweeting the current situation to warn others. The backlog of trains on this track is starting to build up to 5,6,7 as time ticks by.

8pm – We are inching along past the smaller stations such as Weybridge. We stopped for half an hour before arriving at Byfleet and New Haw. A new update from the guard tells us that there are signal failures at Farnborough. The power of social media starts to kick in, as I’m tweeting these updates Steve @Actionlamb sees them and warns other people he knows that take a similiar route. I later tell Benjamin @BenjaminEllis and Sarah not to take any trains from Waterloo and to stay well away. Paddington to Reading and then a connecting train from there is the best bet.

9pm – An hour has past and we are still at Byfleet. The guard has no communication to Control, our driver is also in the dark. Passengers are enquiring if South West Trains will compensate them for taxi fares to go home. The guard is in a difficult position and cannot make this kind of decision. Frustration creeps in as everyone tries to contact their loved ones. What was more frustrating was seeing trains on the track next to us flow freely. We are stuck and cannot access the platform; we are in the middle of tracks on either side.

The guard promised us that if we ever do get moving, we will stop at West Byfleet for passengers who wish to make travel arrangements from this station. I decide this is the action I will take and take my chances on alternative transport. I call my fiance to let him know he may need to pick me up and drive from Basingstoke should Actioncabs run into difficulties. He starts to Google Map the route to West Byfleet.

9.30pm – The free flowing track is now also stuck. A lot of people are standing on our train and are getting very tired, each carriage is rammed to the ceiling with people. The message from the guard is the same: “We have no new information for you at the moment.” He tells us that he has been using his mobile phone to contact other drivers caught in front and behind us to see what is happening. However his battery is running low and has asked other passengers to lend their phones to him. The backlog of trains is now at 13. On average, a train will have 8 to 10 carriages. Hundreds of passengers are affected here, some with medical conditions and need to get home.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Benjamin meet up at the ICA in London to seek refuge, avoiding trains completely. Steve (now henceforth known as Actioncabs) heads to the ICA to pick them up, with the plan of grabbing me on the way back if I managed to escape.

10.00pm – My phone is dead and I slap in another battery. Phones are dying all over and it has dawned on many people that we could be cut off completely. Information is scarce, but the guard has new information and that the power has been turned off at Woking. No explanation is given at this point, but later I find out that passengers were pulling the emergency cord or prying doors open  to jump off and access the platform. Power has been shut off to prevent electrocution from escaping passengers. The guard on our train refuses to open the door for us to jump onto the standstill train next to us to get to the other side.

A wheelchair passenger is worried about getting home, but a fellow passenger has offered to assist if they manage to get to Woking. I am sticking with my plan of getting off at West Byfleet; no one knows the state of the line between there and Woking.

10.30pm – Over 3 hours has passed and the guard has good news; the train will be moving shortly however more passengers are jumping onto the track. It needs to be made clear before we can proceed. A loud cheer echoes around our carriage as we are finally underway. However, passengers wonder how they get to their final destination from West Byfleet with some needing to go all the way to Poole.

Meanwhile, the motley crew at ICA are waiting for Actioncabs to come rescue them. Our hero Steve continues on his journey, dodging traffic cones. I however, am still staring at the carriage ceiling. By this time I am absolutely starving, I contemplate eating nearby seats.

11pm – I arrive at West Byfleet, with just enough battery life to make one more call to Sarah. Actioncabs et al are on their way, I just have to hang tight and find somewhere warm to wait. I stumble upon a pub called Catherine of Aragorn just outside the train station. The pub owner kindly lets me stay there even after closing time. I bump into a fellow passenger on another train who is waiting for her boyfriend. It seems her guard did not convey any information to her train, such as the Woking and Farnborough incidents. Neither did she know that people were jumping onto the track which caused further delays. South West Trains have failed miserably with comms tonight.

About 50% of the passengers stayed on the train and risked going to Woking to get connecting trains. Everyone said their farewells and wished each other luck… for some their journey is far from over.

Friday 10th June

12.30am – Thankfully my phone is now fully charged at the pub, and I am in constant communication with Sarah via Twitter. The welcomed sight of Actioncabs headlights illuminates the darkness, I have been rescued!!

1am – In the Actioncabs car is our hero Steve as driver, Sarah, myself, Benjamin and… Andy @andypiper. Andy was caught in a similiar situation, and he also hooked up with the ICA crew once he knew about our plans via Twitter. Apparently we went to the same FireFox 4 launch party I went to about a month or so ago, small world.

The end is not yet in sight however, as our car gets pulled over by the local police while going through Farnborough. There were some burglaries in the area and they were doing a routine check to make sure we weren’t car stealing. They were quite pleasant about it, Sarah and Steve talked to them while Benjamin, Andy and I sat quietly in the back. We are innocent, honest. I sat in the middle, a bit of a tight squeeze but Benjamin and Andy make good safety side airbags.

1.40am – After dropping off Benjamin and Andy at Farnborough train station and dodging more traffic cones, I got back to Basingstoke and finally got home safely. The first thing I did was make a bowl of instant ramen I was that hungry. I cannot describe to you how good it feels to a) have something to eat and b) to go to the toilet. My thanks goes to Steve Actioncabs for saving all of us from this hellish journey, but my heart goes out to all the other passengers that were still trying to make their way home.

To say that I will be making a complaint is an understatement. Poor communication, lack of information being relayed to drivers on the ground and not to mention the lack of ventilation on a lot of carriages. Throughout the ENTIRE journey, not once could the guard or the driver get through to Control. How can they justify the increase in rail travel, when people are being treated like this? I urge everyone who experienced this torment to bombard South West Trains with complaints and ask for compensation. Sarah posted the complaint form here.

What with the snow and such, all the Secret Santa packages were delayed hence why I only just got mine. Plus the fact I only just did my bit and sent my one off; December was a bit of a hectic month. To help my Secret Santa, I added the usual things to my likes, such as anime and geek stuff and also… bacon. The swine produces some of the best meat around and I have to say I am quite addicted to it. Lo and behold, I got bacon! Well not exactly…

Bacon popcorn?! I mean really?! I was amazed that such things exist, but I guess you can get anything these days. I admit to having a sweet tooth, so I wasn’t sure about this. At first bite, it just seems like salty popcorn. But after a few chomps the bacon flavour does come out. It’s actually OK, I’m not a great fan of salty popcorn like I say but I keep diving my hand into the bowl so it can’t be that bad! Second on the list is Mo’s Bacon Bar; a chocolate bar… that tastes like bacon. Whatever next! Surprisingly, it is quite good. It’s not salty at all; the chocolate side of things is more prominent with a hint of bacon. For some reason, it actually works fine on the tastebuds. I think I prefer this out of the two presents, but regardless a very thoughtful and original gift so a big thank you to my mystery Secret Santa

Some Fun Gum sweets were thrown in too, to balance out the bacon taste perhaps?

Monday 9th August 2010
07:00am – 08:00am: I open the front door to throw some rubbish into the bin, took one step outside and… what is that smell. I look down and see the likings of feline excrement all over my front porch. And I know exactly which cat it is that has done it, a repeat offender. It may be expending all of its 9 lives very shortly. An hour of scrubbing helped, but the smell is still there and my poor poor shoes took most of the punishment.

12:30pm – 03:00pm: Server cluster was clusterfscked. So much so that none of the resources were accessible, and there was a user acceptance test the next day. I was too busy to deal with it myself so handed it over to my colleague, he now hates clustering. Welcome to my world.

9:00pm – 11.00pm: Hard day at the office, but time to flex my aggression and my sword on my weekly night of fencing. Everything was going well, but during one fight I tried to parry an attack with my coquille (sword guard), which coincidentally pushed my opponent’s sword downward. I was too slow and I essentially helped him stab my own leg. “Are you OK?”…”Oh YES I’m perfectly fine, let’s continue!”. After I got back home, the adrenaline wore off and I felt crippled.

11:00pm – 02:00am: I get home late so I eat dinner late. I thought I would make some BBQ chicken wings for dinner, in the oven it goes. I loaded up StarCraft 2 and proceeded to play, I had my headphones on and the door closed. 30 minutes later my other half charges in and says he can smell burning. Sure enough my entire kitchen is engulfed in smoke, then the smoke alarm went off waking up the entire neighbourhood. I didn’t have dinner that night and I also died in the StarCraft 2 mission since it wasn’t paused. Addtionally, I burnt my arm against the oven from trying to remove the charred wings too quickly.

Tuesday 10th August 2010
08:00am – 09:00am: I ran out of Mountain Dew, again. This, to me, is a very big deal. After fighting through hoards of traffic with people not knowing the existance of indicator lights, I wanted caffeine. I wanted it now. And why do people insist on driving huge cars without knowing how to drive a normal one. Their thought process: Yes I am a mother and I must have the largest car humanly possible, even though I know I have zero spacial awareness of other objects around me, and I have as much navigational sense as a crane fly. But I will still buy one, because I am that awesome. Got to love those “Children on Board” stickers when the driver of the vehicle with said sticker is the hazard. Some people should not be allowed to procreate and it’s a shame Mars can’t be colonised just yet.

10:00am – 11:00am: I choked on a croissant.

11:00am – 04:00pm: It’s amazing how many things can break within 5 hours. We had about 10 hardware defects and for some unknown reason, network cables were being removed at the back of servers. Why?! Who?! Cable elves?! Virtual entities were going missing as well, about 50% of my virtual infrastructure went poof overnight. But I open sesame’ed it back, thank Crunchy. But it wasn’t Friday, sadness.

05:00pm – 05:30pm: After viewing a house, I start to drive away and I hear a grinding noise but it went away after a few minutes. Very ominous; like the sound of the sword falling on the head of Anne Boleyn, it signalled the doom that was to befall me.

Wednesday 11th August 2010
07:00 – 08:00am: I woke up, the worst thing I could have possibly done. This is marked down as an hour because I snooze my alarm clock about 7 times.

08:00 – 08:30am: I try to start the car, and nothing. Foot on brake pedal – check, gears in neutral – check, seatbelt on – check. Turn the key and… still nothing. You definitely need your foot on the brake when starting my car and I was doing that so hmm. Flick through my purse, find the RAC roadside assistance membership card, dial number. “Yes madam, a recovery vehicle will be with you in 2 hours because of traffic in your area”. Fantastic. But at least my car was on my driveway and not stranded in some ditch.

08:30 – 09:30am: Waiting, I hate waiting. I emailed the guys at work and left voicemail messages to tell them of my car problem. After awhile, I decided to watch the third episode of Sherlock. My viewing was disrupted by phone calls and updates about when the RAC will arrive at my house. But lo and behold he turns up. Hooray! Or maybe not hooray.

09:30am – 10:30am: Mr. RAC conclude after extensive taking apart of my car and trying to push-start a semi-automatic with an SMG gearbox (which I did say probably won’t work), that my car is officially fubared. The starter motor is shot to pieces and the grinding from the night before was an indication of its demise. He flicks through his book and says my car cannot be towed. He calls in a truck so my car can be loaded and taken to the nearest garage for repairs. ETA whenever they can arrive, which is most likely another 2 hours. 2 hours of my life I can never reclaim back. Why me Lord, WHY. OK so maybe I took a pad of Post-It notes one time at work and I forgot my mother’s birthday a couple of times. But Jesus Christ give me a break? Please?

10:30am – 01:00pm: More waiting. The truck arrives, quite a nice chap but he had a very bad toothache; his filling had pierced through his tooth and touched sensitive nerves in his mouth. He wasn’t having a good day either. The car is loaded and then taken to the garage for repairs, and he was also kind enough to give me a lift into work. I never did finish that episode of Sherlock, I had placed the BBC iPlayer on pause. I walk into the office, where I am now faced with mocking comments about cars and towing for the next 4 hours. I love work so much.

05:30pm – 06:00pm: The other half picks me up from work so I can get my car and oh look, the height of traffic. Again. That’s why I leave work at 4pm but the repairs on the car took longer than expected, which was also reflected on the bill afterwards. I may be living on instant ramen and Pocky for the next few months.

08:00pm – 08:30pm: After a quick nap I head out to meet with my badminton partner for our usual Wednesday match. I drove around the car park 3 times to find a space and finally I found one, of course after having to wait 15/20 minutes for someone to reverse their car out of the space. Hello eternity. My badminton partner booked the court online the week before but according to the sports centre, no court reservation was found. Double checking then triple checking, still nothing. I really shouldn’t have woken up today.

08:30pm – 09:30pm: We decide to not take a later timeslot and go to Tesco for our food shopping. As I walked to the checkout, I just knew that something bad was going to happen. I mean there was a whole 4 hours or so left of the day. Plenty of time to destroy my life some more. Not only did the barcode scanner broke on the till, but also I disputed the final bill since the discounts did not appear. The scanner was not my fault by the way, the Tesco lady tried to put the discounts through for me manually and try as she might, the computer says no. Meanwhile, a Polish guy with limited English vocabulary tried to buy a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. The till next to me was locked; he then proceeded to place a £10 note on the table and started walking out with the bottle which was security tagged. My lady helper ran after him trying to explain, he finally stopped just short of the alarm sensors. There I am, stood at the broken till, with a bag full of shopping I can’t touch because I can’t pay for it. Half an hour later, I walk away with the goods. I didn’t even scan in my Tesco Clubcard, I wanted to leave while I still had the chance.

I eventually finished watching Sherlock, great episode. I hope that by the time you read this, I am having a better 24 hours.

Enjoy and have a good weekend!

I and many others looked on in horror as events unfolded during the live broadcast in the House of Commons. To paraphrase, creativity is more important than freedom, was one of the alarming arguments proposed to promote the bill.

Here is the response in full:

Thank you for your recent correspondence concerning the Digital
Economy Bill. I share your concern about the way this piece of
legislation has been handled by the Government. Since the Dissolution
of Parliament, there are no longer any MPs, but I can continue with
casework/correspondence.

The Bill contained important provisions regarding the regulatory
environment for the digital and creative industries. It is completely
unacceptable that the Government failed to allocate the sufficient
time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It is
wrong to push through these issues and because of this I did not
support the Bill and I abstained from the vote.

The reason that I did not vote against the Bill is that a number of
the measures within it have great merit – particularly tackling online
copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs
the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. I
want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual
property framework in the world for innovators, digital content
creators and high tech businesses.

Also, the measures in the Bill designed to tackle illegal peer to peer
file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following
public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people
having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not,
as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an
appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up
to another ISP immediately without penalty.

However, the Government should not push through such significant
issues without proper debate – the handling of this Bill means that
the debate on copyright is not over and my Party will seek to revisit
options for a balanced solution as part of a broader update of
copyright following the General Election.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.

With best wishes,
Maria Miller, Parliamentary Candidate

Anyway, this year is the year of the Tiger, for people born on the following:

• 1902
• 1914
• 1926
• 1938
• 1950
• 1962
• 1974
• 1986
• 1998

According to the story, the Tiger came 3rd in the race. A small factoid… The number 3 is considered a lucky number in Chinese beliefs; 3 in Chinese also sounds like the word “life or alive”. However, the number 4 is considered unlucky as the same pronounciation for this also means “death”. Maybe 2010 is your lucky year! Don’t forget to give someone you love a Red Envelope of money.

May 2010 bring you good fortune and prosperity!