Sags' Blog

South Kenton Station

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:33:00 +0000

Waiting Room
- Door from southbound platform locked
- No radiators despite plenty of space

Platform display
- Does not list the next Elephant & Castle trail (~9. 26) - despite my phone listing it
- When the train arrives the computer announces it as non-stopping, so does the platform indicator
- The platform staff do not issue a correction

HOW POOR

Gmail Annoyances/Enhancements- Filters

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:03:00 +0000

For example I often want to edit my filters but it's a main to go to settings wait for a tab to load up which I'm not interested in and then switch to the one that I am interested in.

More options on the gear menu that correspond to the tabs in settings would improve usability.

@Gmail team: Are you familiar with KLM ? Keystroke Level Model? It's a very good methodology for evaluating the efficiency of a user interface against a set of user stories.

Another enhancement request I have is for gmail to be cleverer about combining filters.

Say I have a filter which applies the label "Parents" to emails from dad@gmail.com and another filter that applies the label "Parents" to emails from mum@hotmail.com. Would it not be great if gmail could suggest I combine those two filters to a filter that applies the label Parents to emails from:(dad@gmail.com OR mum@hotmail.com).

Once I had to spend the best part of an hour going through all my filters and combining them. Presumably this would make processing more efficient for gmail too.

There's also a "bug" in the new gmail filters popup. It pops up exactly where the search box is which means it hides the first few rows of results (often the most important when you're considering whether to apply filters to an existing set of mails). If you close the box down then you loose all the filter settings you've just filled in. I think this is a bug, but I probably need to test it a little more.

Gmail Feedback - Mark as read/unread

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:53:00 +0000

The "Mark as read" button should become "Mark as unread" when a read message is selected.

I spend soo much time going into the menu to choose the mark as unread option. This would be such a useful change.

More on Parking Charges

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:21:00 +0000

Cllr James Powney was kind enough to respond to my comment on his previous article on parking charges in Preston Road.

While I didn't intend it, my latest reply was also too big for Blogger to accept. It turns out Blogger has a 4,096 character limit on comments. Here's my latest response:

First of all, thank you for reading and responding to my post :)

You have however given me a politicians response. In your second paragraph you again repeat the "assumption that one area is being singled out". I didn't suggest this. I did say that this is a sort of second attack on Preston which is true, but I made it clear that I understand this is more of an administration harmonisation. What I said is that I disagree with having a single borough wide one-size-fits-every-street harmonised parking pricing/policy.

I also don't know where the North vs South issue comes into it. I also think it's rather amusing how we in the North feel the South is over prioritised yet the South feel the opposite. I think the citing of the civic centre is obviously a big issue for 'southerners' but what this divide has got to do with parking on Preston Road I don't know.

It's interesting that instead of talking about Kingsbury & Wembley as you did in your previous post you now mention Willesden, Chamberlayne Road, Harlesden. I can't see how Willesden (which is essentially the capital of South Brent) and Harlesden again compare with Preston Road as per the arguments I outlined as to why Kingsbury & Wembley should also not be compared against Preston Road.

As for Chamberlayne Road, I don't know that area. However I'm not saying Preston Road should be a special case. What I'm saying is that it has a very successful scheme at the moment. I think there is scope to adjust that scheme to improve usage, but I don't think charges of the high scale that are being proposed are correct. If there are other comparable streets as Preston Road then yes they should have the opportunity to remove their parking meters if that's what the users want.

In terms of motorists contributing to Transport Expenditure. That's what the Road Tax is supposed to be for. While I accept that expenditure on roads in this country probably exceeds the total some of all collected road taxes, I completely disagree that parking charges for public on-street parking should be set to cover maintenance. For public and private car parks, yes they should because there's a facility, but the maintenance of roads should be fully costed anyway. Whether the council can afford to repair the pothole outside your shop should not be dependant on how many visitors visit the shop!

Your comments about enforcement is interesting. There are already supposed to be wardens enforcing the existing scheme. I guess the only reason why you might suggest other parking problems might be dealt with more effectively under the proposed scheme is that there will be more wardens sent out as it's now a revenue generation for the council rather than a simple enforcement of the rules situation. That makes me feel a bit sad, because it implies the council only cares about doing its job properly when there's added revenue for it on top of its 'wages' , but I guess that's human nature not just Brent Council.

You're right to highlight the issue of the Preston Road car park. I've lived in the area my whole life, but didn't even know the car park existed for two thirds of my life! It's a little bizarre that a shopping area like Preston Road has such a big car park. Even Wembley High Road doesn't have an on street car park as big as this. I guess one motivation might have been the tube station, making the car park available for commuters, but commuters tend to opt for the side streets, and there are not so many of them as to make it a nuisance for residents. I believe the current charging strategy for the car park (something like £2.40 for all day) was campaigned for by PAPA, but I think that's the reason why the car park is still underused. If it was free or set more along the lines of St. John's road car park (£1 for the first hour) then it might be better used. Are there any plans to review its pricing or harmonise it with the proposed road charges?

As you mention upkeep of the road. Has it actually been stated anywhere what proportion of the revenues raised by this specific scheme are going to be spent on:
1) Maintenance of Preston Road itself
2) Paying for extra wardens to enforce the screen
3) Paying for and maintaining the parking meters for this scheme
4) Going into the general transport pot
5) Going into a more general pot that can be used for non-transport things.

That would make interesting reading. If we set parking charges much lower I think the scheme could be successful without threatening businesses too much. Something like 10p for every 15 mins up to a maximum of 90 mins with no return then for another 90mins.

I've long complained to the council about the hogging of certain car parking spaces by a certain minicab company. The council complain they can't enforce their rules because the drivers drive off. I disagree, if they council wanted to make an effort it could do something here (even just a voluntary agreement with the business). I worry that with the introduction of these charges the particular spaces I'm taking about will indeed become a permanent free car park for this minicab firm.

While yes, we need a single parking strategy for Brent, that strategy doesn't have to be a one-size fits all. We can class different parking spaces differently and price them accordingly. There should be a single solution for parades that are comparable to Preston Road. However having a single solution for Preston Road and places like Kingsbury, Wembley High Road, Willesden High Road is both lazy and maddness in my humble opinion.

What I really don't know, and would like to, is whether our ruling exec really believes in the type of over centralisation they are currently enforcing on Brent across a multitude of policy areas, or whether they're just taking the easy solution to raise revenue and deal with complaints of unfairness.

James Powney implies that librarians are more frustrated than he is with the delay to the high court decision on Brent's Libraries

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:13:00 +0000

In this post in James Powney's blog he expresses his frustration at the delay until October for receiving a decision in the High Court challenge to Brent Council's Library Transformation Project, however he says that librarians are more frustrated than he is at this delay, implying that campaigners against the library closures are causing unnecessary suffering to librarians who are keen to give up their jobs. What a load of rubbish. Here's my response, which he has yet to publish:

I for one am glad that the judge is taking his time to make a considered and balanced decision. Not only does this decision affect the Brent Libraries landscape for decades to come but may set a precedent for the other cases that are building up by campaigners in other parts of the country. For the judge to rush just to suit one executive and one council's efficiency would be contrary to the meaning of justice.

I'm not sure I'd agree with you on this situation being more frustrating for the staff than you. Just because someone takes voluntary redundancy doesn't mean that they want to give up their job. It just means that for them after weighing up their personal situation and the fact that if voluntary redundancies did not succeed compulsory ones might follow. Has any front of office librarian actually approached senior council management or yourself to complain about not being able to leave as early as was previously expected? If so there's a simple solution, at times the libraries are overstaffed anyway. You could go about addressing that in the medium term without breaking the undertaking not to make changes that would fundamentally damage the service until the judgment was delivered.

There's actually a whole load of other constructive things that you and senior council officers can do regarding the libraries project between now and October. If you were to work on the basis that you are going to win the case (which is almost certain if I believe your commentary of the performance of your barrister to ours) then the sensible thing to do is to further develop your plans to address some of the shortcomings/concerns raised such as what to do about computer provision being maxed out etc. etc.

If you're really concerned about the budget how about you commit today to not appealing should Brent lose its case.

Finally it's worth pointing out that Brent's legal bills are also paid by the taxpayer.

Introduction of parking charges in Preston Road

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:12:00 +0000

James Powney had this post in his blog on the issue of the introduction of parking changes in Preston Road.

I wrote a rather passionate reply as a comment, unfortunately I think that it was too long for Bogger to handle. So here it is. I do hope he or someone that is pro-charges engages me in some dialogue on this:

This is yet another example of where you, your executive and Brent Labour have got things completely wrong.

It's bad enough that you're trying to close down our library. Now by introducing these parking charges which either shop keepers, residents or shop users want you threaten to destroy our shopping street when it's already been struggling in the last few years. Already so many newsagents have converted to mini-marts only to close shortly after and leave vacant shops. Already some businesses that have been present in Preston Road for years have closed down. Now by introducing these _unwanted_ and ridiculously high parking charges you threaten to drive away shoppers from Preston Road instead towards large businesses that can afford land to provide free parking such as Asda and Sainsburys'.

You're going to turn Preston into a nothing-town, devoid of facilities. Libraries turned into flats, shops turned into offices or yet more flats. Shame on you! Why this sustained attack on Preston? Yes we stood up to Brent Council and the Labour Executive over Preston Library, but that's our democratic right.

Once again you are adopting this centralised, one size fits all approach which suits your corporate minded executive and corporate minded senior council officers. You chose to ignore the wishes of the people that elected what they thought was a LABOUR council and instead have got a Conservative-like council.

Once again, just like with the libraries, you take such a narrow short sighted strategy rather than thinking about the long term. Sure you'll make some money when the meters are initially installed, but they will expedite the destruction of Preston Road's retail custom and in the long term users of these parking spaces will fall.

Once again you fail to consult adequately. Sure you may have stuck to the letter of what you are required to do as a minimum, but I live on a road off Preston Road. I thought the least I could expect when Brent Council makes such an important and serious change that would affect me and my ordinary life (by possibly driving shoppers onto the residential side streets) that they could at least inform me and consult me. Instead I had to depend on news from local papers and residents associations. That's not good enough. It's not good democracy. It shows that Brent Council & the Labour Executive don't care what the people think, well not when their views don't suit the council.

The only justification I've seen for bringing in these parking charges are something like 'every where else has them, so why should Preston Road be any different'. That's such a ridiculous argument. It shows that you're trying to squeeze short term revenue out of every avenue without assessing what LOCAL NEEDS are and what LOCAL OPINIONS are.

Charging for public parking spaces should not be to maximise or gain revenue. Charging for parking should be to bring supply and demand to an equilibrium. At the moment there is not a significant problem with parking on Preston Road. Yes there are times when I can't get a space, but when swinging round a second time I usually get a space. The current system works well, there's a good turnover of spaces. The biggest problem with parking on Preston Road is the lack of effective enforcement by Brent Council's traffic wardens when it comes to people parking dangerously in places they shouldn't be like on double yellow lines of junctions between roads. Indeed one exchange with the transport department I read a few years ago on precisely this problem showed how poor they are and how they're not willing to put the effort in to keep our junctions safe.

It's amazing how despite receiving our council taxes, business rates, central government grants funded by our central taxes Brent Council is unwilling to deal with the real problems on Preston Road yet it's happy to create problems where none are and solve what essentially is an administrative different.

Your policy is wrong. You should not have uniform parking charges across Brent. Parking charges should be set specific to a street/area to equalise the supply of spaces and the demand. Areas that you are comparing Preston Road to such as Kingsbury and Wembley are INCREDIBLY different. The current scheme of free parking for a short period with no return for a longer period would not be appropriate to those streets/areas because of the much higher demand. In my limited dealings with you Councillor Powney I find it incredibly difficult to believe that you lack the intelligence to understand this. The motives of the Labour Executive and Brent Council to bring in these charges have nothing to do about fairness. At the least they're the result of a blinkered bean-counting administrative equalisation exercise devoid of looking at local needs and the bigger long term picture, at worst they're part of a more sinister plan to destroy Brent and earn the Brent Council it's 'Barmey Brent' for all time.

Shame on Brent Council.
Shame on the Labour Executive
Shame on any councillor that supports these plans.

My next mobile...

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:43:00 +0000

My current mobile is a HTC Touch Pro II. The two key requirements it fulfilled when I bought it was that it:

1) Was a windows mobile phone
- Android was too new and unproven at the time and apple was, as it still is, too evil ;-)
2) Had a slide out keyboard and a stylus
- I felt physical input would be faster than touch screen
3) Had a GPS

I've been using this phone for 20 months now. I'm glad I got it at the time and it's served me relatively well. The key issues I find with it are:

1) It's slow
2) Windows Mobile 6.1 is quite outdated now
3) I don't like the mini-USB headphone jack (something I beleive HTC have stopped doing, at least in high range models like this).
4) Over time some of the keyboard keys have become less responsive and require a firmer touch which in turn slows down by typing.
5) GPS only ever lightly used because TomTom didn't support this phone and no reasonable sat nav software available. Also it would have killed my battery life.
6) Very poor battery life. If I go out in the morning with a full battery and do some surfing and listening to music then my battery will be flat by about 3pm. I end up carrying a spare battery with me wherever I go.

I could trade up to the new version of the same phone called HTC Touch Pro 7 as it uses Windows Mobile 7 however I feel Android has now matured and the sheer number of apps on its marketplace makes it far more compelling than Windows Mobile 7. It still remains to seen if Microsoft will ever be better than third place in the mobile phone OS rankings. They will need a real game changer. Also the keyboard on this new model doesn't look as good as the one I have.

So Requirement 1 = OS must be the latest version of Android, or a recent Android version and phone manufacturer must be known for shipping upgrqades soon after android releases. ( I guess I still consider Apple evil ;-) despite the coolness and quality of their product)

Requirement 2 = The phone must be fast. I hear LG have a dual processor phone out! Although whether that second processor is worth some of the weaknesses of tht particular handset I do not know. Also don't know if other manufacturerers are planning to follow LG's lead.

Requirement 3 = Phone still has a GPS (pretty standard)

Requirement 4 = Phone extendable via Mini SD card - so I can re-use the card in my current phone

Requirement 5 = Standard headphone jack

Requirement 6 = Good battery life - A colleauge recently got a new HTC Android phone and also complains about poor battery life. So perhaps this isn't a general "limitation of lithium battteries" issue but something specific to HTC? Certainly I don't see iPhone users complaining about batter life, but that said I do see a lot of them travelling with their charger (or wanting to borrow someone's charger ;-))

Okay so that's the handset itself. Next is to pick the network.

I'm currently with Vodafone. My contract is the first one I've had with this operator. In the past I have also used Orange, O2 and T-Mobile (i.e. all the big four networks).

I was expecting vodafone to be really good given the number of large corporates that use them but I have been dissapointed with the strength of their coverage in my home and work areas. I find their customer service to be better than average however. On price they're not much different from anyone else. My contract was £35/month for 24 months with the first X months free. After 9 months I switched down to the £30/month tarrif.

It would be interesting to see which of the three (O2/Vodafone/EverythingEverywhere) have the best 3G coverage. In my experiences so far O2 has been the best. I also like the fact that international texts count as part of your bundle.

Things to look at are:
- Cost/Benefit of price plan
- Data roaming charges
- Coverage
- Availability of the phone I want.

Also I need to consider buying the phone and going on a sim only contract vs. getting the phone for free on a more expensive contract. I've always only done the latter, but the former does allow you to upgrade earlier.

All recommendations welcome...

Mary Portas: Secret Shopper

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Channel 4 has a new show - Mary Portas: Secret Shopper.

Here's my feedback to them:

Just watched the first show. It's good that Channel 4 are doing this, but paying a "celebrity" like Mary Portas is unnecessary. It's a waste of tax payer's money given that C4 is funded by us in a roundabout way.

It's all obvious advice. C4 needs to follow it's remit and push the boundries rather than just do little more than what the BBC's watchdog do. Watchdog is getting lame, it's ripe for being given a run for its money by a bigger better more cost effective alternative.

Go C4 go...

Feedback to Barclays Online Banking Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Here's some feedback I sent to Barclays regarding the January edition of their Barclays Online banking Newsletter :

Please stop the squashed layout and make better use of the horizontal space. Most people have wide screen monitors! On my 24" screen, maximised your email can't even fill half of it. If you use CSS properly it will do the right thing on big and small monitors!

GMail Annoyance - Adding labels to sent emails

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 17:03:00 +0000

It would be nice to be able to attach a label to a mail before I hit send rather than having to;
a) hit send
b) switch to the sent mail folder
c) then attach a label.

Can't believe this is one annoyance google haven't eliminated (or that other people don't feel the same.....)

Clementine

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:08:00 +0000

When I switched from Linux to Windows 7 the one thing I was missing was a decent music player on par with Amarok (and no I didn't want to install iTunes). I now have it in the form of Clementine.

Clementine is a multi-platform player which takes its inspiration from amarok. I installed it the other day and am using it for the first time now. Am pretty pleased so far....

GMail's Clipped Message Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:56:00 +0000

It would be great if the clipped message could either be deactivated completely via a settings option, or on a per sender basis (in a similar way to how images are auto-displayed on a per sender basis). That way the power is in the hands of users.

I get a mail from VUE Cinemas (UK, www.myvue.com) weekly with the cinema listings and it is always clipped and this becomes a big pain.
in reference to: Message text is clipped - Gmail Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Dropbox

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:57:00 +0000

Feedback... I think Dropbox is an excellent peice of software. While there are many other services that also provide a free 2GB account, Dropbox has many features it does not.

Systems such as Mozy do backup, but not synchronisation as Dropbox does.

DropBox provides a good set of clients, with the notable and annoying exception of a windows phone client (which means I have to use DroppedBoxx which is not as good :-()

The other annoyance is that I would upgrade by DropBox account to a paid one if the rates were more competitive with other providers. Some similar services provide a 100GB for the price that Dropbox sells 50GB. Also something like flikr provides unlimited space for photos for $24.95/year. Photos along with videos tend to be the largest files of most home users. So if Dropbox were to offer a more competitive rate not only would I upgrade but I'd actually start using the excellent sharing features for photos which I currently don't and instead use facebook/flikr/picassaweb etc.

Well done to Dropbox on the excellent product, but I hope they consider the suggestions I have made.

(disclaimer: The links to Dropbox above all contain a referrer ID which means that if you sign up I will get some extra credit, feel free to go direct to their website via Google instead)

Cygwin: Unable to remap

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:12:00 +0000

Everytime I setup a new cygwin install I always forget this fix for geting zsh to work on Windows Vista or newer:

If you try to launch cygwin processes (for example, zsh) and you get this error:

24295 [main] zsh 3104 C:\cygwin\bin\zsh.exe: *** fatal error - unable to remap C:\cygwin\lib\zsh\4.3.2\zsh\zle.dll to same address as parent(0xAB0000) != 0xC10000 12 [main] zsh 2020 fork: child 3104 - died waiting for dll loading, errno 11

Then follow the following steps:
1. Make sure rebase package is installed (use cygwin setup utitlity)
2. Exit all cygwin processes. Verify in Task Manager that there are no cygwin processes running.
3. Run 'cmd' from the run menu (Windows Key + R). Go to the cygwin bin directory and run ".\ash.exe".
4. Run "./rebaseall". This will take some time.

My Cabinet Dream Team

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:28:00 +0000

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown [LAB]

Deputy Prime Minister: John Prescott [LAB]

Chancellor: Vince Cable [LIB]

Home Secretary: Anne Widecome [CON]

Justice Secretary: Charles Clark [LAB]

Foreign Secretary: Sarah Teather [LIB]

Immigration Secretary (new post): George Galloway [IND]

Defence Secretary: Nick Clegg [LIB]

Environment Secretary: Ed Milliband [LAB]

Education Secretary: Ed Balls [LAB]

Work & Pensions Secretary: Frank Field [LAB]

Health Secretary: Alan Milburn [LAB]

Business Secretary: Ken Clarke [CON]

Department for Culture, Media and Sport: Boris Jonson [CON] (not standaing as an MP)

Transport Secretary: Ken Livingstone [LAB] (not standaing as an MP)

Totals By Party:

Labour: 8

Liberal Democrats: 3

Conservatives: 3

Independent: 1

[OPEN LETTER] Questions for prospective MP candidates

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Dear Candidate for Brent North MP,

I would be most humbled if you could take time out of your busy campaigning schedule and review and respond to the questions I have posted here. http://sagsshah.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-questions-to-candidates-in-election.html

This election seems like no other I have seen in my life time. I'm very unclear whom I should vote for given:

1) Labour's poor record in many areas but Barry Gardiner's satisfactory one

2) Tory scary policies on the economy and immigration, yet Harshadbhai Patel's honest and honourable campain

3) Lib Dem's sensible, honest policies, yet James Alli lack of visiblity in Preston ward.

I guess I could vote for an independant but that just feels like throwing my vote away.

Yours sincerely,

Sagar R. Shah

My questions to the candidates in the election for Brent North MP

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:29:00 +0000

If you win, will you...

Move to Brent North, if you don't already live there? If not, why not (you may have a good reason)?
Promise to vote int he best interests of Brent North (whatever you beleive they are) even if that means going against your personal preference?
Perform your MP duties as a full time job and accept no other side income other than from investments etc.?
Spend an above average number of hours present in parliamenty sessions?
Promise to increase the number of surgeries in terms of hours and locations across Brent North?
Support the council where it has sensible policies and attack it where it doesn't?
Support the government of the day where it has sensible policies and attack it where it doesn't?
Travel to parliament by public transport?
Take a second home?
Employee any family members, friends or aqueaintences?
Advertise all staff positions in local job centres as well as other established places?
Promise to use expenses money wisely (which doesn't mean to be the cheapest MP). For example if a consituent sends you an email, and there's no confidential details, you will reply via email rather than insisting on post?
Provide a written service level expecation? e.g. if a constituent writes to you, you promise to provide an initial non-automated response in N days.

Chrome Features I Would Like

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:42:00 +0000

In the extensions manager I would like to have a delete option and also an option to sync the list with the files that are still present on the filesystem (if I had deleted them from elsewhere)

My opinion on Barry Gardiner's key election policies

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:17:00 +0000

I think they're a joke:

To invest in local jobs and skills to nurse families through the recession.

Not a concrete promise for anything

Reject a Tory wage freeze for Brent teachers, nurses, police, and firemen.

What about rejecting the Labour below inflation pay rise of ~@ 1% which essentially amounts to a pay cut for these key workers?

New school buildings for Copland, Alperton and Byron Court.

Aren't these things delivered by the local authority that runs the schools (i.e. Brent Council) not our MP? What about other schools that could do with larger buildings to support additional forms of entry needed by the increased demand caused by the huge growth in new flats from the Wembley City development??

Bring digital screening for breast cancer to Brent residents.

More diagnostic testing is a Labour policy, so not much effort for Barry to put in to provide this other than to turn up to parliament and vote like the sheep he tends to be

I want the politician that gets my vote to work for it, make concrete promisies of what they will _try_ and get for Brent.

What happened to campaigning to prevent the closure of our A&E's?
Increasing the government grant to Brent so the council can realisticly reduce council tax?
Providing a Service Level Agreement with constituents to answer letters within 28days or less?

Those would be things that would get my attention.

Now either Barry Gardiner doesn't care or he thinks his victory is going to be easy....

I haven't seen him or his team out campainging on my road.

His election leaflet just points to past things delivered by the labour government, not what _he_ promises to actively work to develop.

Creating a GodMode folder in Windows7

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:44:00 +0000

Create a new folder anywhere
Rename the folder and paste in the following text: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
You get access to lots of settings etc.

Features I would like to see in Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:26:00 +0000

Main Google Reader App:

Filters so I can automatically mark certain items as read - e.g. I may subscribe to the BBC News RSS feed but hate cricket so I want to set up a filter to mark all Cricket items as read automatically. Some bloggers such as lifehacker put tags in the titles so it becomes very easy to setup filters.

Google Reader Mobile (via Opera on Windows Mobile):

An option to sort by date decsending or ascending. ATM. you get date descending whether you like it or not
The site should use the user assigned for subscriptions rather than the default name embedded in the feed
An option to using GWT's re-rendering on a per feed basis rather than an all or nothing

Cygwin on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:39:00 +0000

I have been getting errors like "fatal error - unable to remap C:\cygwin\lib\zsh" ever since I started using Cygwin on Win7.

To fix:

Shutdown cygwin
From Start->Run start C:\cygwin\bin\ash.exe
Run /usr/bin/rebaseall

Book Review: Rise and Glory of Oshwals

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

I finally got around to reading the "Rise and Glory of Oshwals" book, the first published history of the Oshwals that I'm aware of.

I have to say I'm pretty disappointed, the book came across quite dull, it jumped around time quite a lot and included any annoying amount of repetition.

Early on it dived into Jainism, personally too much for my liking. The author claimed that we cannot understand the Oshwals without an understanding of Jainism but the amount of detail was unnecessary in particular the details on the diagamber(sp?) sect.

I am of no doubt that it's a great achievement to research and compile the book, I'm just disappointed that the history is not presented in a more marketable way such that youngsters would be interested to read.

Visiting Greenwick

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

I decided to explore Greenwich in my lunch break today. I travelled to Greenwich DLR station. Big mistake, I ended up walking all the way to Cutty Sark station which is nearer all the "action"

The Millenium Dome / O2

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Shah) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

In my lunch break I decided to pay a visit to NOrthGreenwich and the millenium dome. Gosh what a waste of tax payer's money. Today the dome is an entertainment area surrounded by eateries. Most of the restraunts are chains and you'd only want to go there if you were attending an event or lived in the area.