Train Toilet Design Flaw

There’s a lot written about good, bad and quite frankly appalling design in software. Having worked in software for a while I’ve got a degree of sympathy of how it occurs. Software developers aren’t evil misanthropes with a complete loathing of people in general and users in particular. OK, ok – some are exactly like that but that’s not why poorly designed software happens. Pressure to ship, corners cut on usability test and a design to focus on cool new technologies all contribute. But at least software can be patched, upgraded and fixed. What I find it harder to understand is when major pieces of real world kit have bizarre usability issues.

The worst offender is the new train toilets that are popping up in newer trains. Rather than a boring old mechanical lock that has served mankind well over the last 300 years the new toilet are locked by a series of flashing buttons. The sequence is

1. Enter toilet
2. Press flashing button to close
3. Wait till door shudders shut
4. Press a second button to lock it. There’s no indication that the door is locked so just cross your fingers and hope it is
5. Then pants down and away you go.

For God’s sake though don’t add an additional step of pressing the lock button again to make sure that it is locked. This has the amusing effect of reopening the door with no warning whatsoever. It’s design flaw of the year surely.

A Polish woman did exactly this when I was waiting my turn outside of a train toilet recently. I was rapidly faced with an alarmed looking Eastern European woman with her pants round her ankles. A special moment for us both I felt. The ties between Eastern and Western Europe become ever more intimate.

Podcats

I love a good podcast as I’ve previously alluded too. But even more I’m a big fan of pod cats and these are some of my favourite feline podded wonders.

Suburban Pod

Here Tiddles is modelling a modern stylish lightweight pod. Sleek, sophisticated, urban with a discrete pouch for the current murdered rodent du jour.

Travel Pod

A portable, practical self assembly pod for the busy feline about town. Scratch resistant with a wipe clean surface for those little kitty accidents.



Hygienic Pod
Felix is modelling the latest in robust, white porcelain pods with a kitty lid. Securely fixed to the floor of the littlest room in the house with a white plastic rim to facilitate easy entry and exit. We are please to announce that these model come with a handle activated Jacuzzi swimming pool. Just what your cat needs after a busy day at the office.

World War 2 Fighter Pod

Baron von Feline, scourge of the airways, models the latest in WW2 fighter pods. Features include three-blade constant-speed propeller, triple ejector exhaust manifolds and X80 HP Rolls-Royce Merlin II engine. Lethal in the wrong paws. Achtung Tiddles!!

Sennheiser Headphones and the Fire Brigade

I’ve recently purchased my second set of Sennheiser CX300 Eco Ear Canal Headphones so I thought it was about time I gave a little shout out for these headphones. I’m no audiophile but they’re the best headphones I’ve ever bought. Good sound reproduction, comfy, last a fair length of time and a nice eco wrapping rather than hermetically sealed in 15 layers of non-biodegradable nuclear plastic.

However simultaneous my most and least favourite quality is their oh so too good sound blocking. When I first bought these I was more used to less superior sound cancelling characteristics from my headphones. So much so, that when wearing them and letting myself into my old office I accidentally rearmed the security alarm system. Two bleeps instead of one are easy to miss with Sennheiser’s sound cancelling. I wandered nonchalantly upstairs to the office and couldn’t understand where the strange continuous siren was coming from. Cue anti-criminal smoke gushing out of some previously innocuous looking boxes and the entire office was in total whiteout.

One fire engine, four industrial fans and 60 minutes later and the office was final fit to be reoccupied. Thankfully I was working my notice at that company otherwise I would have had to resign in shame. Not my finest hour.

Crazy Cool Sci-fi Covers: The Wanderer

I’m slightly obsessed with old science fiction books. I find the old stories charming but the real obsession comes from the covers. They’re often wild, wacky and bizarre. Spaceships, winged dinosaurs and scantily clad female aliens are all there – it’s like one of my more juvenile dreams.

One of my faves is this cover to Friz Leiber’s The Wanderer. Which cat owner hasn’t wished that their cat was looked a bit more like a girly, had breasts and was seemingly as big as a planet? It’s certainly the dream of a fair few male cat owners I know.

And what tell of the contents of the book? Well, although this book is supposedly a classic and is published by the reputable Penguin books – it is quite frankly a stinker. There is a tradition in sci-fi books of the cover having nothing to do with the story itself. Sadly in this instance the cover is an alarming representation of this “classic” piece of fiction. It’s giant cats with breasts causing havoc with the planet Earth. For God’s sake! The climax (literally) of the tale comes when the giant sexy cat makes beautiful love to the scientist hero. Blllurrrgggeeeee!!!!!! Thankfully both giant cat and scientist regret it the morning after.

JobStats

A quick shout out for a revamped favourite site of mine – JobStats. JobStats has been tracking the IT job market for over 10 years now and plotting in on an exciting graph. Sadly the site was moribund since early 2003. The graph still automatically plotted itself though so it was always worth a check.

Good to see then that someone has updated the site and made it a bit flashier. The exciting graph is still there and there are more locations, a personalisation bit and predictably more adverts – Oh well. So if you’re like me and have a morbid fascination with the IT job market I recommend that you check it out.

Repeater NamingContainer Gotcha

Here was an odd thing. Take one repeater

<asp:Repeater runat="server">
        <ItemTemplate>
            <asp:CheckBox ID="chkBox1" AutoPostBack="true"
OnCheckedChanged="CheckBox_Click" runat="server" />
             <asp:TextBox ID="txtBox1" runat="server" /><br />
        </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:Repeater>

Bind it up to something and get a list of textboxes and checkboxes. Like so

The task is to wire up the Checkbox click event so that when it is clicked the corresponding textbox is disabled i.e.

Easy peasy I thought and wired it up with this code

protected void CheckBox_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 CheckBox myCheckbox = (CheckBox)sender;
 TextBox textBox = (TextBox)Page.FindControl("textBoxId");
 textBox.Enable = !myCheckbox.Enable;
}

The surprising result is that no matter which checkbox is clicked it is always the first textbox that is disabled. The problem is with finding the control. The line fourth line has changed -

protected void CheckBox_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
 CheckBox myCheckbox = (CheckBox)sender;
TextBox textBox = (TextBox)myCheckbox.NamingContainer.FindControl("textBoxId");
 textBox.Enable = !myCheckbox.Enable;
}

I suddenly realised what a NamingContainer was. Previously I just thought it was a piece of arcane .Net knowledge – defined in MSDN as

Gets a reference to the server control's naming container, which creates a unique namespace for differentiating between server controls with the same ID.

Yeah right whatever. Well apparently it’s actually important stuff.

In the first example the code finds the first textBox called “textboxId” in the page. This is always the first one hence my code doesn’t work. In the second, corrected code – the control is searched for within the NamingContainer of the event sender – in this case it’s the RepeaterItem. So in the repeater there are any number of texboxes called “textboxId” but the don’t clash and can be accessed because each one exists in it’s own NamingContainer – i.e. unique naming space.

I appreciate this will be obvious stuff to many people but I felt like a super-brained coding rock star when I found this out. Then again I’m easily impressed.

10 Great Podcasts

I’ve been listening to podcasts for over 3 years now. Most of my knowledge of the wider world seems to come from them these days. I LOVE them. Sooo, it seems about time that I share with an (almost certainly un)eager world what my favourites are. My faves are obviously skewed by my nationality (British – so there is a number of BBC ones) and interests (there’s no sport – I’m a geek for God’s sake) but caveats and disclaimers not withstanding – here’s the 10.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews
Film Reviews from the BBC
My favourite of them all. Dr Mark and Dr Simon argue and bicker give vitriolic opinions on this week’s film releases. Often controversial but never dull.

Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone
Alternative Music from the BBC
I’m a big music fan but not a big music podcast fan. Due to licensing restrictions you only get snippets of songs so it’s a bit frustrating. Even so – this is a podcast worth a listen. Full of freaky, bizarre obscurest artists that no-one’s ever heard. And if that’s not enough to whet your whistle then Justin Spear’s University of the Strange surely will. What’s not to like.

Money Talk from fool.co.uk
Personal Finance
I’ve a deep dark secret. I’ve a genuine interest in personal finance. For others with a similar affliction this is a great podcast. Informative and lively chat from the highly engaging David Kuo. A variety of topics means that even though you might not be interested in credit cards, the following week’ topic on mortgages might be just up your street.

Guardian Tech Weekly
Technology from the Guardian newspaper
I find a lot of technology podcasts very unsatisfying. They are dull or amateurish or juvenile or all three. This is one of the exceptions. A lively interchange from the current pod members – Aleks Krotoski, Bobby Johnson et. al. It’s got quite a big focus on gadgets but covers the current affairs and business stuff too.

Dilbert Animated Cartoons
Cartoons of course
The only video podcast (vodcast??) I subscribe too. Daily 10 second bursts of Dilbert, Dogbert and Wally. Nuff said.

Slate Political Gabfest
US Politics from Slate Magazine
My only US podcast. The ever liberal Slate team discuss American politics. I got into this for the election but it’s got a shelf life past that. Emily Bazelon is the star of the show here. It can get a bit low key if she isn’t there to liven things up but she’s a regular contributor so that hardly ever happens.

Wake Up To Money
Business News from the BBC
20 minutes of business news 5 days a week. I love it. Andy Verity and Micky Clarke present. Well balanced and informative even if Micky C is a bit of a 4 wheel drive loving right winger (as I’m sure I will be in the years to come). It’s been a bit gloomy recently since near total collapse of the capitalist system so a strong stomach is required at the moment. It will cheer up eventually I’m sure.

Dr Karl and the Naked Scientist
Science from the BBC
I don’t bother with the Naked Scientist bit but Dr Karl is great. Dr K answers late night science questions from various insomniac scientist wannabees. The questions range from the highly insightful to the deranged but Dr K answers them all with genuine good humour. Worth the listen for the inevitable loon who rings in claiming to have disproved the theory of relativity, gravity or evolution.

Philosophy: The Classics
Philosophy
From Plato to John Stuart Mills – it’s the history of western Philosophy delivered in 15 minutes bite sized chunks by Nigel Warburton. Why would you ever wade through 500 page 18th century philosophical tomes when Mr Warburton will summarise for you.

In Our Time
History of Ideas from the BBC
Take three professor types, add a spoonful of Melvyn Bragg and throw in a History/Science/Philosophy/Literature topic, mix around and deliver 40 minutes worth of cerebral chat. Intense cleverness in a pod – Lovely.