I’ve suspected it, but it’s nice to have confirmation -it is cheaper for me to use Oyster Pay as you go then a Transport For London (TfL) travel code for my commutes between Zone 5 and Zone 1. Is it cheaper for you? (by looks of things, only if you regularly travel in to London during the weekend is it even worth considering a TravelCard).
Archive for January, 2009
Snippet: London Underground “Tube” – Oyster or Travelcard
January 13th, 2009Snippet: Weird Pricing on TheCloud
January 13th, 2009I’m just helping somebody find temporary wireless internet access (ideally free wireless in London), and I remembered The Cloud. Their pricing is a bit odd: for Pay as you go access, the price if £6.99 for 3 hours or £9.99 for 24 hours, or you can go for their subscription wireless access, it’s £6.99 for a whole month.
There must be a snag there – who would pay for 24 hours access, when it’s cheaper to get 30 days?
xckd: Learning a new language
January 12th, 2009
xkcd
This comic on xkcd is quite relevant at the moment
But she and I were watching Firefly over the weekend (10 out of 14 episodes done: big pity they cancelled it) and we did find it annoying that we didn’t understand the Chinese language in it: and we know at nearly the big “three oh”, we’re both going to find it difficult to learn a new language (especially since we would prefer to learn Japanese or Mandarin/Cantonese) as our brains have “solidified”.. Shame!
Anybody got any tips for learning totally new languages when you are a bit old in the tooth? Neither of us know any other languages (apart from several computer languages and very basic French: but those don’t count)…
PHP: Zend Session: don’t set it up in the Initalizer
January 9th, 2009I’ve just wasted a few hours trying to get Zend_Session (part of the PHP Zend Framework) working correctly – previously, on this codebase, I had “rolled my own” cookie and session management system, but I thought I’d do it properly and utilise the Zend_Session system and store it all in a database…
It didn’t work.
Short answer as to why my sessions weren’t saving into the database (even after I switched to using the “default” Zend_Session_SaveHandler_DbTable ) was that I was setting up the session within the “routeStartup” section of Initalizer.php (which is loaded, in MVC fashion, via the bootstrap.php file). Changing bootstrap.php to:
// Prepare the front controller.
$frontController = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
// Change to 'production' parameter under production environemtn
$frontController->registerPlugin(new Initializer('development'));
$maxSessionTime=60*60*24*30*6; // six months
Zend_Session::setSaveHandler(new My_Session_DbTable($maxSessionTime));
Zend_Session::rememberMe($maxSessionTime);
(i.e. take move the session savehandler out of the Initializer, but keep all the $thingy=new Zend_Session_Namespace whereever they are needed) means it started to work.
Most annoying thing: that there was no reason it didn’t work (no warnings, no errors, no documentation hints and no ‘out of place feeling’). Meh.
Personal: You know you are getting old…
January 3rd, 2009- When Policeman start looking younger
- You don’t remember being absentminded.
- You have more patience; but actually, it’s just that you don’t care any more.
- Your memory is shorter and your complaining is longer.
- You look forward to a dull evening.
- You quit trying to hold your stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
- Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.
- You begin every other sentence with, “Nowadays…”
- A ‘late night’ now ends at 11 pm.
- When the actor playing Doctor Who is younger than you
*sigh*
