Life of Wiley

Below is the text of a letter a put together for the Watford Observer that was prompted by discussions around a proposed CPZ on the Cassiobury Estate in Watford. I’ve reproduced it here unedited:

I have been engaging in dialogue over the current set of proposal options for parking on the Cassiobury Estate. I have submitted my consultation return voting for the option that fits my own personal situation best but I wanted to draw you and your readers to what I feel is a far wider issue, the effect of CPZs on the future of Watford Town.

My concern with the Cassiobury scheme and other schemes that have been implemented across the borough is the apparent lack of alternative planning. What I mean by this is that if this scheme goes ahead and parking is restricted to prevent commuters, shoppers, football fans and visitors to the park from parking in the estate then the question has to be asked – where will these people park?

A trivial example is, occasionally we get together with some friends to do the pub quiz at the Southern Cross pub in Langley Road. On a fine night we would walk and that’s fine as we’re close enough to walk. When it’s raining though it’s a lot more difficult. The pub doesn’t have enough parking on its premises, St. Thomas’ opposite doesn’t open up its car park for probably understandable reasons and all the roads surrounding the pub have permit only parking. By the time I’m able to find somewhere to park and then walked back to the pub we may as well have walked and if it’s raining we’re as likely to say that we’ll not bother.

Now apply the above trivial example to the wider use of the town and its facilities and in the particular case in point, Cassiobury Park. The people that come into the town for work, shopping and pleasure represent the economic lifeblood of the town. Without them the town would be much sadder place to be. The town centre car parks alone cannot accommodate all the people that come into Watford so there has to be provision somewhere. If the council are going to continue pursuing CPZs for residents then provision must be made to provide parking to the thousands who come to Watford but there appears to be no evidence to support the notion that this is going on.

Take the Cassiobury CPZ proposal, it’s planned operating time is 10:30-14:30 weekdays (possibly Saturday). In the school holidays this will be in operation. Where will parents wanting to enjoy Cassiobury Park with their children park? The car park off Swiss Avenue will not be able to cope with the additional load placed on it and the proposed 94 short term and 74 long term pay and display bays across the estate (some of which I suspect will be too far from the park to be convenient). Indeed it could turn out to be the case that on hot sunny days in the school holidays when the park gets to its busiest you could end up seeing severe congestion around Swiss Avenue and Cassiobury Park Avenue as people flock to the currently free car park, find it’s full and then turn around to seek alternative places to park.

Cassiobury Park is a place that Watford should be rightly proud and should want every visitor to Watford to experience it, but with such proposals this will become harder. The potential impact of this is that people could stay away, preferring parks in other places where access to parking is easier. Similarly with shoppers, if they can’t find readily accessible parking they could take their business elsewhere thus reducing revenue for Watford’s businesses. Watford would then be in danger of becoming what I’ve heard termed a ‘bedroom community’, one in which people only reside in Watford to sleep; they take their work, shopping and leisure activities elsewhere.

I have lived in Watford for the last 17 years, having moved here to work from graduating. When we first arrived we didn’t much like the town but in the years since we’ve been here we’ve seen huge improvements in the range of facilities provided, the leisure options
available in terms of bars, restaurants, shopping, leisure centres, play centres, etc., and we love the fact that it is only 20 minutes from the centre of London yet is right on the doorstep of the Chiltern countryside. We have grown very much in love with the town and are proud to be bringing our children up here. I fear though that, whilst it may not seem significant looking at a single proposal, a path is being taken that could end up blighting the town as people look for alternative places to shop and spend their leisure time, which in turn will drive away businesses and therefore workers.

Rather than reflexively putting in yet another CPZ that may quite possibly be followed by another in Nascot Wood, perhaps simply enforcing existing parking regulations, such as parking across dropped kerbs and dangerously at junctions would be sufficient to overcome most problems whilst keeping the streets free for people who park safely and responsibly.

Whatever the outcome of the current consultation regarding Cassiobury Estate parking I would strongly urge the council to step back and look at the wider provision for access to and parking in the town and its facilities and seek a plan that allows easy and convenient access to parking for visitors from out of town and residents alike that will enable Watford to continue as a lively, thriving town full of opportunities.

A very sad event occurred at the end of last week when I finally terminated our broadband account with Demon Internet. It was sad because I’d been with Demon for almost 10 years since I joined the company in July 1999. I stuck with them even after leaving the company because they provided a great service and included a static IP address which was useful for me as I was hosting my own web and mail server.

Now things have changed. I don’t believe Demon offer the service they used to and they are now very expensive compared to our new provider O2. We also only need a basic broadband package for Internet access since I’ve outsourced mail hosting to Google and web hosting to Godaddy.

I was very impressed with the speed at which O2 provisioned the account once I’d prised the MAC code out of Demon. Looking forward to the go-live date later this week.

As an aside I had originally intended to take up the free broadband offered by TalkTalk but it turns out that it’s not free after all – I needed to ‘upgrade’ the package I was on and they were going to charge an ‘installation’ fee of £30 despite us having been customers for the last 5 years and despite all their competitors not insisting on this fee. Bizarrely if I’d have just signed up on the web the install fee would have been waived!

I’ve seen the future, and it’s not Orange but a Pomegranate!

[Note: it takes a while for the flash to load, but it's worth it!]

Forgot to take your portable speakers with you on your trip. Fear not, designed Dmitry Zagga has the answer with his DIY speakers. All you need is 4 paper cups, a couple of toothpicks and your standard Apple-issue earbuds!

Just before I came out to Chicago I bought an iPhone 3G. In the UK this is on the O2 network and in the US the iPhone operates on the AT&T network. However, when the 3G signal from AT&T gets sufficiently weak it seems that the iPhone loses the signal and then will reconnect to the T-Mobile network. This is what happened to me on Tuesday when I noticed that the phone was rebooting almost every minute. I tried all sorts to get fix it including doing a complete factory reset, thus wiping out all my contacts and music that I’d carefully prepared before coming away:-(

It turns out that I needn’t have bothered with any of this. The workaround is to simply turn off the 3G mode which is fine if you’re roaming out of the UK as the network data charges are astronomical (£6/MB). Turning off 3G and then doing a manual search for network provider usually allows you to connect back to AT&T. Just remember to re-enable 3G when you’re back in the UK.

Update: Forgot to include the link where I found the workaround:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1671274&tstart=465

Over the last two years I’ve become a fan of Wired magazine as it provides excellent reading material for longhaul flights. So much so I’ve become a subscriber (though they don’t seem to be very reliable at sending the magazines to the UK:-(  Consequently on my recent trip to Montreal I bought a copy at Heathrow and was shocked to find that their inside backcover feature called Found: Artefacts from the Future was not there. It’s always the first part of the magazine I turn to. I scanned through the whole magazine twice looking for it, thinking perhaps they’d moved it, but it just wasn’t there. Ho hum.

Move forward to my return flight, I dropped into the newsagent at Montreal airport as I’d not only read through the aforementioned copy of Wired I’d also finished the book I’d brought along. I was pleased to see that in the week and a half I’d been in Canada a new issue of Wired had been published so I got it. I was even more pleased to see that I was not the only person upset at the omission of Found as there were several rants about it in the Rants feature. Apparently, the Editors say, the feature had just been “on a sabbatical”. Yeah right! I expect some advertiser insisted they had both pages of the inside back so they couldn’t fit it in. Glad to see it back though. Now just need them to sort out their international distribution problems!

Lately the choice of films on BA flights has been a bit poor. There was nothing remotely interesting to watch on the flight to Montreal last month and there was little choice this time around too. I opted to watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall as I quite enjoy listening to Russell Brand. What a mistake! This film has about 2 scenes featuring Brand that are worthy of a slight titter, the film is one of the worst I’ve seen. Really, don’t waste any time on this film.

I got more entertainment watching fellow passengers trying to figure out how to open the toilet doors! Why is it people can’t figure this out? It clearly says push on a large flat hand-sized panel indicating where and what you need to do to open the door but people always seem to want to try and pull something to get it open.

A few weeks ago Louise and I had the opportunity to have an evening out that we spent at The Stables restaurant in Rickmansworth. We did have a bit of a shock then when, as can be seen in the photo below, it appears that the restaurant is endorsing a drink that may be a little out of the ordinary!

I’m in the middle of what could well be my last visit to Montreal. At the end of next week I leave Ericsson to start working with a small Chicago-based company called 29west. It’s a complete departure for me as I’m moving out of telecommunications having spent the last 9 years in the industry beginning at a time when it was still in the midst of the dot-com boom. Now sadly telecomms is an industry that is facing increasing pressure in terms of commoditization of services, especially in the mature markets of Europe and North America. Unfortunately 29west are a software vendor working in the financial services sector; which is not enjoying the best of health at the moment (the financial sector, not 29west)! Still I’m really looking forward to the challenge of working for a small company again and in a new market sector.

No not nitrous oxide, but a very funny video involving gas.

Thanks Dave for the link.

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