Archive for August, 2008

17:50 train out of Nottingham - saved!

Ooh, lovely. We’ve received word that East Midlands Trains have decided to retain the 17:50 train out of Nottingham. This is a significant win in the campaign!

There is no word about other services in the timetable, nor about stations other than Aslockton, so I can only assume that those cuts are still planned.

But it good news for many - both residents of Aslockton/Whatton, and the folk who live near Bingham station!

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Filed under transport : Comments (0) : Aug 21st, 2008

Public meeting about train cuts

A public meeting was held last night, hosted jointly by Aslockton and Whatton Parish Councils, and I’m pleased to report that attendance was higher than I expected. Thanks to both Councils for arranging the meeting.

Two guests appeared: one was a Community Rail Bod (who, we assumed, would be on-side) and the other was a chap from East Midlands Trains (who, we assumed, wouldn’t be). That’ll teach us to make assumptions.

John Hillman, East Midlands Trains “Stakeholder Development Manager”, showed genuine concern. He openly admitted that the proposed timetable was inadequate, listened to our arguments and appeared to understand our complaints. The Community Bod*, on the other hand, showed very little sympathy and suggested we were being unreasonable in expecting a “bespoke rail service”. What a waste of space he was.

So I’m feeling a little happier now than I was before the meeting. Just a little.

* Name withheld to protect the useless

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Filed under transport : Comments (0) : Aug 21st, 2008

Extreme Tips for Unmaintainable MIDlets

I stumbled on a blog post containing “Extreme Tips for Lightning-Fast MIDlets“. Let’s look at some of these programming gems:

Avoid synchronization when possible

Mmm, okay. Don’t know about you, but I synchronize code only when I need it. Perhaps the author of this article likes to synchronize on a whim? Not me…

Array-spreading

Example:

// Before
int[][] table; // a 4×4 table

// After
int[] table; // a 1×16 table

WTF?! Let’s look at the pros and cons of this:

Pros:

  • marginally quicker

Cons:

  • extra computation needed to find the correct array element, if the data structure is supposed to model multi-dimensional data. Espcially relevant if the number of the items in the first dimension isn’t fixed at compile-time
  • yields code which is more difficult to maintain. Associated risk of introducing bugs

Read the rest of this entry »

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Filed under tech : Comments (0) : Aug 5th, 2008