Andrew Beresford's Blog

One thing I learned tonight… Mac OS X sucks at driving USB hard disks. REALLY sucks. The machine locks for seconds at a time whilst reading and writing at moderate data rates… (10MB/s). Linux manages fine on the same hardware.

The second thing I learned is that Mac OS X really sucks at writing to FAT32 filesystems… again, Linux manages just fine on the same hardware without thrashing the disk like crazy. It’s not even as if it’s a small difference. This external disk nearly jumps around the table in OS X, in Linux it’s smooth as silk.

This was written on Friday, but because of the GPRS problems, I couldn’t upload it

Well, I’m on my way to Edinburgh by train as I write this and I want to complain! I booked a ticket from Sheffield to Edinburgh on Tuesday night which cost me £44. The outward journey actually went from Sheffield, to Manchester, to Oxenholme (in the lakes… hi Mike!), then to Edinburgh. I suppose I could have gone directly to Manchester, but as I’d booked the train to Sheffield, and it’s slightly easier to get to Sheffield from my house, I decided to catch it from there.

Anyway, so I get to Sheffield and the train is on the platform, with about 100 other people also trying to get onto it. The woman “organising” things on the platform informs me that I can catch a different train to Manchester in 35 minutes, which is useless to me because it means I miss my connection. So I gave my dad a ring as he’d just dropped me off at the train station and wasn’t far away and he very helpfully agrees to take me to Manchester to try and catch up with the train.

On the way my dad tells me the reason the train was full was because of an international match at Old Trafford in Manchester, the first international match between England and Wales in about 20 years. I’m absolutely sure this is an event that the train company could have forseen months in advance when the fixture was made, and put on a larger train to compensate. But no… a tiny 3-carriage train.

Anyway, we soon realise that I’m not going to make it to Oxford Road in time to get the train there, so we think about trying to catch up with the train at Oxenholme, a distance of around 90 miles from where we were. Then I suddenly had the brainwave of using my laptop and GPRS to check if there was another train to Edinburgh running later on Manchester. Sure enough, it all works perfectly… I find a later train. The staff at the ticket office were genuinly helpful, stamping my ticket to inform the conductors on the train that I was allowed to catch a different train from that on the ticket, and from there on it all goes well.

What annoys me most is that I had a reservation for all the trains that I was travelling on. I had planned the journey to the best of my ability and done everything correctly. It would annoy me less if a train had just broken down, but the changes and delays were all because of Midland Mainline’s poor planning. Grr.

My second gripe… (I’ve got plenty of spare time on this train… it’s not the quickest to Edinburgh!) is about GPRS. I’ve tried using GPRS whilst on the train for IRC and checking my e-mail, which would work perfectly if it weren’t for the fact that the connection only seems to stable for 30 seconds at a time. Surely it would make sense for the mobile providers to cover commuter routes… or maybe Edinburgh (the largest city in Scotland) and Manchester (one of the top 5 in the UK I guess) just aren’t important enough to have coverage between them. It would be fantastic if they had a wireless access point on the train, incredible if it was free, but I might even consider paying for using it if it were there… apt-get on the train

Rant over.

I’m off to enjoy Edinburgh with Sarah

thats it

I’ve been working abroad for nearly a year now, and it’s come to my attention that I’m missing quite a lot of goings ons. My company his hired new people and people have quit. I got a new housemate, and then she left again. I’m now living with my little brother, except I’m not, because I’m only there about three or four days per month. It’s weird. Most upsetting of all, a year ago I could count the number of single women I knew on one hand. Now at least three of them have paired off with someone.

I’m in fairly regular contact with housemates, workmates, and canoe club mates electronically. And I fly back every now and then. But sometimes it feels like I’m struggling to maintain a tenous connection to my real life. Especially today, after three weeks here. But I’m off to the airport right now, in time for drinks with workmates in London tonight!