Welcome to December ... just over three weeks to Christmas, and at this time of year I would usually be scrambling back through the archives for last year's pictures to add festive snow to some of my articles. But this year is different; the snow has come early, and it seems has caught everyone by surprise (hey - it usually does!). Here's a picture from yesterday morning - the predawn train calling at Melksham at 07:17 on its way up to Chippenham, where I changed ...


Cars, people, pushchairs all fighting their way through the light sprinkling of snow in Chippenham, still predawn (or first light) as I changed to head down to Bristol ...


I took the flow with the crowds out of Temple Meads, and walked across the City Centre - I was presenting a private Python Course in one of the high rise offices just below the hill that's Clifton ... and it gave me a chance to look at a few of the scenes I don't often see

I was agreeably surprised how quiet the actual city centre's roads were, even at that time of the morning - and I'll put my journeys to Bristol to give this course in the big success bracket. But, alas, the return journeys were so slow, with over an hour to "kill" on the journey - a course finishing at 5, but the train with a connection from Bristol not leaving until 6.30 - that's an hour later that ideal. And I wasn't the only one making that Melksham to Bristol journey yesterday morning - the barriers at Bristol rejected my (perfectly valid) ticket telling me to seek assistance, and in amongst those crowds another person who had joined the train at Melksham was going through the same thing. And I find it vaguely like I'm being accused of not having the right tickets when the barriers reject me; I can't help wondering is this puts other people off too.

And here's an interesting thought. There were between 40 and 50 people on the train from Melksham when it got to Chippenham, but only about 15 on the way back. What happened to those other people? Perhaps if there was an evening train at a true peak hour return time it would do much better ... it would certainly encourage me to use the train for days in Bristol!

(written 2010-12-01, updated 2010-12-04)

 Y050 - Python - General
  [3519] Python - current versions and implementations (CPython, Jython, IronPython etc) - (2011-11-13)
  [3489] Python courses and Private courses - gently updating our product to keep it ahead of the game - (2011-10-20)
  [3463] Busy weekend of contrasts. - (2011-10-03)
  [2822] Python training courses for use with ESRI ArcMap software - (2010-06-23)
  [2778] Learning to program in Python 2 ... and / or in Python 3 - (2010-05-24)
  [2504] Learning to program in ... - (2009-11-15)
  [2394] Two days of demonstration scripts in Python - (2009-09-05)
  [2367] Learning to program - how to jump the first hurdles - (2009-08-20)
  [2285] Great new diagrams for our notes ... Python releases - (2009-07-13)
  [2227] Learning PHP, Ruby, Lua and Python - upcoming courses - (2009-06-11)
  [2020] Learning Python - many new example programs - (2009-01-31)
  [2017] Python - a truly dynamic language - (2009-01-30)
  [16] Python training - (2004-08-16)

Back to Change of balance, of attitude, and of work method

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Perl 6 - significantly nearer, and Rakudo looks very good

Santa Special - rather more special than usual - December 2010
TransWilts Rail News ... Melksham (Santa Special) Edition ... 5th December 2010
Royal Wedding. How William and Catherine have changed our schedule
Perl 6 - significantly nearer, and Rakudo looks very good
Python through the Snow
Change of balance, of attitude, and of work method
Running a course ... what if the tutor isn't well?
Customer Service - the boundary
Finding elements common to many lists / arrays
Well House Price list, January to March 2011