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My adventures in the world of Lomography continue. I’ve recently procured an instant back for my Diana F+. It provides all the retro, light leaking fun of a Lomography but also provides instant gratification in the form of a credit card sized photo. There’s a certain element of magic in watching an image slowly appear on what looks like a plain white piece of paper.
You can have all the usual fun with coloured filters and double-exposures, etc., so definitely worth playing with.
One week in and I’ve hit my daily Nike Fuel target for seven consecutive days. Tomorrow, my daily goal rises to 2,500. Some days have been pretty easy – walking the long way from the station, a game of squash – others have seen me doing star jumps in the kitchen at 10pm in a desperate bid to hit the daily target.
The star jumps have got me thinking about the nature of commitment. In particular, about how it fades over time.
Thinking back to GCSE physics, I think there’s a useful analogy with the half-life of radioactive materials. Right now, one week in, my commitment levels are high, how long will it take for me to become half as committed as I am now? How long before I decide that I’m willing to miss a daily target rather than jump around late at night? More importantly, how do I prevent the rot from setting in?
Well, #ASE_Fit_Club is itself a way of staying committed. Collaborating with others who have similar goals and sharing experiences helps maintain focus. I’m also posting updates on Faceook and Twitter as well as blogging about it – by regularly, publicly re-committing to my goals, I hope to extend the half-life.
It seems slightly negative to talk about fading commitment this early on, but it’s important to recognise that it happens and to generate ideas to maintain commitment.
How do you maintain commitment to a goal? What techniques do you use?
This blogpost was originally posted here on #ASE_Fit_club.
It’s always easier to achieve your fitness goals if you’re part of a group who’s committed to achieving theirs. I’ve been lucky enough to find such a group: #ASE_Fit_Club.
Now, I’m not an ASE consultant, so am a bit of a gatecrasher. However, they’ve been kind enough to include me and I’m definitely going to push myself harder as a result. My goal is to get back into the team.
You can follow my progress on my fit club page and track the group’s progress and find out what we’ve learned about collaboration, data and a whole host of other things on the fit club blog.
Commuters constantly complain about how awful British train services are.
We complain about ticket prices but are told that the increases are needed to pay for better services in the future and to offset reductions in government subsidies (the jam tomorrow argument).
Commuters also complain about capacity: there are never any seats available, if you manage to get on a train at all. This issue is often met with the dual refrain of suggesting we work more flexibly and that capacity is being increased (using those record increases in fares).
Most of all, however, we complain about delays. Whether it’s signal failure, leaves on the line or the wrong kind of snow, there’s always a delay of some sort to contend with. The response is often that we’re wrong. That services actually run quite well, some lines are among the best in Europe for train punctuality.
Here’s a question that’s not often asked: what if train punctuality is a false measure? Perhaps commuter punctuality is what we should really care about? Instead of the number of trains getting to stations on time, perhaps we would get more useful information if we tracked the number of people being delivered to stations on time.
The majority of rail journeys occur in two bands during the day, when people are travelling to and from work. If a problem happens in rush hour, it’s possible that the majority of journeys that day will be delayed, this could be true even if the majority of trains are not. Yet we only publically measure train punctuality. Regarding passengers, we have statistics measuring kilometres travelled, the total number of passengers and capacity.
Presumably, there already exists some method of collecting data about the volume of passengers travelling at different times of the day – train operators, Network Rail and others must use such data when planning train timetables and scheduling maintenance. Such data should be made public. There is a push by government, Passenger Focus and the ORR to make more rail data available and make it available in easy to analyse formats, so change is coming on this front.
Overlaying estimated passenger volumes onto train timetables would give an initial, and fairly reliable, idea of how many people were being delayed. Such a move would switch the focus from trains to people.
It’s perfectly true that it’s easier to accurately measure train punctuality but the current measure underestimates the economic cost of rail delays. This means that train operators, Network Rail and government all make suboptimal investment decisions about rail and related infrastructure projects.
This blog post is not meant as a dig to train operators, Network Rail or any other group. Indeed, any analysis that demonstrates that delays cause higher economic costs than previously thought, might reasonably be used to argue for more funding for rail.
This idea is very simple and I cannot be the first to propose it, although searches via Google and within the ORR and Passenger Focus websites found no reference to the concept. Simple though it is, the idea is compelling. It captures lost economic output and focuses rail network performance on people not rolling stock.
This article also appeared here on the Huffington Post.
Usually, a trip to Twickenham sees me imbibing pints, sipping scotch and heading off for a post-match curry. However, for various reasons, this wasn’t a usual visit to the home of English rugby, so I took the opportunity to test out Sony’s 50-210mm lens.
I should flag up a caveat right at the start, the editing on these pictures is a bit varied – consistency in editing is something I’m still working toward. They’re all taken from 68th row of the stadium’s middle tier, so pretty far back but with an excellent view.
