Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-04-30
- Kudos to Terry Mulder for noting today that we need trams, trains and buses to get us out of congestion. #SpringSt #
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Inadvertently demolishing spider webs
I often think spiders would have better luck with their webs in urban settings if they had a little sense of spots to avoid, such as where us lumbering humans come barrelling through without looking (or without being able to spot them). It seems like time and time again I’ll inadvertently demolish a web — usually a minor one.
Check this fine example from Marita’s place. It was right across the back garden path to the clothes line.
Fortunately Marita spotted it before anybody walked through it.
Unfortunately she then forgot about it, and walked through it herself later in the day. Whoops.
Tags: spider webs, spiders
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I’m not a drinker
I’ve never been a drinker.
Oh sure, there were the social pressures in my uni days. But it’s a habit I just never picked up.
My parents weren’t drinkers. My partner isn’t a drinker. It’s just not my thing.
I’m not a teetotaller though. Occasionally (perhaps a few times a year) I’ll indulge in a beer or a glass of wine, but (particularly since the discovery that alcohol can sometimes help trigger cluster headaches), most of the time I’ll decline and stick to water.
So I find it a little puzzling that some people drink to excess. I can understand the enjoyable, social drink if that’s the kind of thing you like, but binge drinking, to the point of being sick? Why would you?
I suppose everybody’s different.
Supermarket specials that aren’t. Deliberate, or just careless?
I’ve turned into one of those boring people who looks out for specials in the supermarket.
This deal is from this week’s Safeway/Woolworths catalogue. If you happen to occasionally buy frozen fish and frozen chips, it appears to be a pretty good deal, saving $3.55.
(Sometimes I’ll use this type of thing; sometimes I’d prefer salmon or barramundi fillets on the BBQ, but either way, combine with lemon juice, mayonnaise, spinach leaves, cheese and perhaps a slice of tomato in brown round rolls… there you go, that’s my fish burger recipe. A good quick dinner for work nights.)
At the supermarket, they’ve stacked the fish and the chips in the special together with a big sign pointing you to it.
So, it’s just a matter of grabbing the fish, grabbing the chips, and heading to the checkout to enjoy your savings, right?
Not so fast.
If you try that, keep a watch at the checkout, because the items came up for me with no saving. On querying it, the lady said she wasn’t familiar with the special, but suggested it might be for specific items only.
But, I protested, they’re all piled together, highlighted as one. The “special” display includes about 4-5 fish varieties, all 425 grams as specified in the special. And there are straight chips and crinkle cut, again, all in the special display.
I hadn’t even seen it in the catalogue, but had found it via the display, and had grabbed the straight chips and the Deep Sea Dory original fish.
With the display set up in this way, how is a punter meant to know which specific products need to be combined to get the special price?
Sure, the small sign on the freezer door shows the items to be combined for the special, but it’s far from clear that it’s limited to just those two items, and the context implies it’s not.
Note that both the frozen fish and the frozen chips normally live elsewhere in the frozen food aisle. There’s no reason to be putting the items which are not part of the special into the cabinet with the big “Special” signage.
In my book, the advertising, the programming of the cash registers, and the presentation of these products don’t all match up. Is it carelessness, or deliberate?
And how many people just grab what they think is a special, but don’t notice at the checkout?
I swapped the fish for the one covered by the special and got my $3.55 saving. How many others might notice, but not bother querying it?
As always, it pays to check the small print.
Tags: chips, fish, Safeway, shopping, Woolworths
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I hope nobody with a morbid fear of rabbits was on Centre Road yesterday
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-04-23
- More level crossing eliminations would be good, but overpasses don't always stop cars getting on the tracks http://j.mp/fztgZi #
Tags: Twitter digest
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London Underground shower curtain FTW!
With thanks to my sister, who picked this up for me during a work trip to London last week. (I needed a new one.)
If you’re in London you can get them from the excellent London Transport Museum shop. Otherwise, at the online shop.
(It’s so big and my bathroom is so small that it’s impossible for me to snap a picture of the whole of it in position.)
Using Myki to calculate how late my trains are
I have a Zone 1 Yearly Commuter Club Myki, so I don’t normally need to touch-off, but I have been doing so, in order to gather data on train punctuality.
Each trip is recorded, with its start and end station, and the time down to the exact second, and can be viewed via the Myki web site. Over the past month or so (43 trips) I’ve fed this information into a spreadsheet, and compared it to the scheduled train times.
I’ve only included trips on the Frankston line (or to be precise, on the Caulfield lines), and also recorded the type of train, to see if the well-known Siemens braking problem (and subsequent speed restrictions when approaching stations with a level crossing beyond them) is affecting punctuality.
I subtracted a minute when calculating the difference between the scheduled time and the Myki touch-off time, because trains should not necessarily be expected to arrive right on the minute (and zero seconds), and because it takes a little while to alight from the train and get to the station exit. (There was only a single touch-off time that was less than a minute after scheduled train time.)
The times were further split into peak (which I decided meant into the city 7am-9:30am, out between 3pm and 7pm) and off-peak (all other times, including weekends) — the morning hours are slightly different from official definitions, but my view is the system is still quite busy between 9am and 9:30am.
Here’s the median figures (apart from the first figure which is the overall average):
Some conclusions:
The overall average figure of 5 minutes 20 seconds late underscores that the Frankston line continues to be the official worst for punctuality. The 12 month average of 69.6% arrivals within five minutes, compared to the network average of 86.0%.
23 out of 43 arrivals were 5 minutes or less late, making 53% meeting the loose government definition of “on-time”. It’s less than the 69.6% 12 month average figure, but most of my trips are in peak hour.
Peak (5:41 late) is clearly more problematic than off-peak (2:57), no doubt due to more passengers loading and unloading, and more congestion due to higher-frequency train services.
During peak, the Siemens vs non-Siemens issue does come into play to a certain extent, but perhaps not as much as one might think, at least not directly. This might be because there are a lot of trains running on the network, so even Comeng trains may be delayed due to Siemens trains.
The Siemens vs non-Siemens delays in off-peak (eg when passenger loading and network congestion is less likely to be an issue) does appear to be a notable problem, though the sample size (8 trips) is somewhat smaller, and may not be reliable.
The new timetable
The May timetable change includes putting Siemens trains on most Frankston line services, and adjusting the timetables to more accurately reflect their running times.
I assume that means some trips are going to get a bit longer, but the punctuality will improve.
After the change, I’ll have another go at tracking it to see how it’s gone.
