Pling!

Announcing the alpha release of mancunia.mobi

macunia.mobi - it’s Manchester on your mobile phone.

It’s a project I’ve been working on for a few months, ever since I found out I’d be moving to Manchester. It’s based on the Molly Project, which is the open source framework that powers Mobile Oxford, the site I worked on in my last job. It’s still very much in an alpha phase – the UI is still “stock” Molly and it’s a bit thin on the feature ground, but I wanted to get it out there to get interest in the project.

So what can it do right now?

Bus and tram timetables for all of Manchester

What do I want it to do? Much, much more – open library search, better event listings, rail departure info, real-time tram info, etc… But to get all this, I need help:

• Better hosting (this is currently on a spare box – and it can’t stay there for long, but it’s memory hungry, so living on shared hosting isn’t right for it)
• Designers! I made the logo, and it shows. I want to get people with a creative flair to give their input, and even better if they love HTML5, because the wider Molly Project is building a HTML5 frontend, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get involved
• Developers! There’s lots of work undergoing with the Molly 2.0 redesign, so if you love coding, and have some spare time to help improve an open-source project, then we’d love for you to get involved – Molly’s a fairly easy codebase to get to grips with.

This is just a soft launch, for me the killer app will be real time tram info, but in the mean time – it’s here, and it’s ready to go, for timetabled bus info. I invite feedback!

My Virgin Media nightmare

So, I have a very confusing, and very frustrating, problem with Virgin Media.

Here’s the background – I signed up to my account at my current address in October 2010, for activation in November 2010. The engineers arrived, installed it, and it was all good for a few weeks, until I started having problems with my connection stability – apparently due to high power levels, when an engineer came round and changed the splitter between my modem and V+ box. Since then, the service has been flawless.

Now, I’m moving to Eccles to start work at MediaCityUK in September, so I rang up Virgin Media to organise moving my service – I’m still within my 12 month minimum contract with Virgin until November, so it seemed the most sensible thing to do. So I rang up the ’150′ customer services number on the 15th August and organised a house move, to be told that my new property can’t receive the cable broadband service.

Now, Virgin Media have (from my experience) a very poor database for postcodes. My parents’ postcode wasn’t on their system (back when they were Telewest), but I insisted they sent an engineer out, and they did, and surprise surprise, they could get the cable broadband. My current address was down on their database as in a cabled area, but “unservicable”, but they agreed to send a “spotter” out (as the ground floor flat on the same postcode could) and, surprise surprise, I could get the broadband after all. Now, after being told I couldn’t get cable at my new address, I typed some surrounding postcodes into their online checker, and they all could get the cable service. So I asked for a spotter to be sent out, the call centre man agreed, and the next day, I had a phone call telling me my new address definitely wasn’t capable of receiving the cable service. I was disappointed, but went ahead with the move anyway, and the spotter organised it over the phone with me. (At about the same time, I tweeted about it, got a reply, and e-mailed the ‘cablemystreet’ address).

So, the house move (as far as I was aware) was set up, and I got some confirmation e-mails about setting up at my new house, and was told an engineer was coming out to set up the new address on the 5th September, and that my current address would be disconnected on the 3rd. At this point, I’m pretty happy – I can’t get the 50 Mbits broadband, but that’s not their fault – and they’re managing to get me connected 3 days after I move in, which is pretty speedy in my knowledge.

Then, on the 24th August, I come home from work to engage in one of my guilty pleasures – fish and chips on the sofa in front of Stargate SG-1 on Sky 2. Only, when I turned on the TV, the V+ box wouldn’t tune to Sky 2. I’m not subscribed to this channel, it tells me. The TV guide function tells me I’m not subscribed to many channels at all – only the ‘free’ channels that are provided on Freeview anyway are provided. So, I pick up the phone and give 150 a call, thinking it’s a technical fault. I’m on hold for a while, and get through to the technical team. I’m told that because I’ve not paid my bill, my account’s been restricted, and that I have to be transferred to the billing department to solve it. Now, this is odd, as I have a Direct Debit set up… So I’m through to the billing team, who tells me because I moved out of my property without telling them, my account’s been marked as a “gone away”. I assure him that not only did I tell them I’ll be moving in two weeks time, that I’m currently sat in the property they think I don’t live in, watching the message on the TV that is deactivated. We’re both confused, and I’m put on hold for a while. The guy gets back to me and tells me what appears to have happened – the guy who sorted out my house move marked my current account as terminated, but didn’t put a termination date on it. He’s also not put a reference to my new Eccles account on the old one. Then, the guy who’s moving in to this property in 2 months time has placed an order on the web. As they’ve received a new order, and my account is marked as “pending termination”, they assume I’ve gone away, and terminate my account. I’m facepalming right now, and slightly concerned that it appears Virgin Media don’t have a problem with deactivating accounts without even checking if I’m still using it…

Now, even though I rang up about 7.30pm, because I spent so long on hold to technical support, before being put through to billing, it’s now after 8. I’m informed that the relevant team I need to talk to have gone home, and I need to ring back between 8am and 8pm the next day. I’m reassured that I won’t be paying for the service I’m not receiving, and then plan to ring back the next morning.

24th August status
Phone: I have a dialtone, but can only dial 150, although phone calls in still work
TV: I only get the Freeview channels
Internet: No connectivity

The next morning (the 25th now), I get up early so I can ring at 8 first thing (using the 150 number), and then head straight out to work. I get through to customer services, who see the notes left on my account by the guy from the night before. We go through the details of what’s happened again, and I’m put on hold a lot. Eventually, I’m told that my service will be reactivated, and I’ll be back up and running within 4 hours. I’m going to work anyway, so I head out after about 45 minutes on the phone, expecting everything to be working when I get home.

When I get home from work, I find the TV is back up and running, but still no Internet connection, and the phone is now giving me a permanent engaged tone, meaning I can’t even dial 150. This means another phone call to Virgin to find out what’s happening, but this time, it’s going to have to be from the mobile, which is pretty expensive. I spend 30 minutes on the phone to be told that the 4 hours estimate this morning was incorrect, and it should instead have been 24 hours, and that I need to check back in the morning. I’m also told that my old account couldn’t be reactivated, so I now have a new account, with an ’03′ account number (I’m unsure what that actually means).

25th August status
Phone: I now have a permanent engaged tone, and ringing my phone comes up with a “number not recognised” error
TV: Everything is back!
Internet: Still no connectivity

Now we’re up to Friday, I’m told my reactivation order was put in at 9am on Thursday, so I don’t have a chance to check if it’s working until I go to work. When I return, I find that the situation is now worse – I don’t even have an engaged tone on my phone any more, it’s completely dead. I ring when I get back from work (from my mobile again), but this time, the man offers to ring me back to save my phone bill. When I’m rang back, I am now told that I don’t have a phone line on my account. I’m confused, and the man on the phone puts me on hold. When I get back, he informs me that the person reactivating my account didn’t reactivate my phone line. I facepalm. He puts an order in and tells me it’ll be ready “Sunday or Monday”. He sends “some signals” to my modem, and tells me it’ll be back working in a few hours, and that that part of my account is definitely reactivated, so if I’m having more issues, that it must be a technical fault. A few hours later, I still don’t have the Internet, and I’m now completely exasperated, and give up for the evening.

26th August status
Phone: The line’s completely dead, and attempting to call in comes up with a number not recognised error.
TV: Everything’s still the same
Internet: Still no connectivity, but apparently this part of my account has been reactivated

Saturday! A day of rest, or hours on the phone to Virgin? Unfortunately, the latter. I ring up again and go through to the technical support team. The man who answers sends “some signals” to my modem, and then puts me on hold. He comes back and tells me my modem needs replacing, and it’ll be 3 working days to do so. As this is a bank holiday weekend, that means Thursday. I’m moving out on Friday, and explain that it’s nonsense to bother with this, and there’s really no point to send it out. The man tells me I don’t have a choice, and I have to be sent a new modem. I facepalm and give up. I ask if he can check on the phone line problems and he reassures me that everything’s due to be reactivated when the engineer comes to visit on October 6th. I’m facepalming even more now, and tell him that this is even more nonsense. I’m fairly sure he’s fed up with me at this point, and he offers to transfer me to the transfers team. I end up there, and the woman starts going through setting up my house move. I explain that the house move should already be set up, but she can’t find it on the system and asks for my account number (which I have in an e-mail I can’t read as I have no Internet). I then mention it’s an ADSL order, and she finds it. Apparently they’re different systems. We’re now confused as to why we’re speaking to each other, and I’m told she can’t help me, so I’m transferred back to technical support. I explain the situation and how it’s pointless to send me a new modem. He agrees! He has a look at my account and is confused. He explains that my modem is ignoring “the signals” and he needs to figure out why. I suggest it’s because my account number has changed. I’m then put on hold as he goes to second line support. He comes back, and asks me to reboot my modem. The Internet is back! It’s a shame someone couldn’t have done that in the first place.

I’m now transferred to the telecoms team to sort out my phone. I’m told that I’m not having any technical problems, it’s just that my account hasn’t been activated yet, and I haven’t had a phone line installed. I’m told that the phone number I’ve been giving isn’t recognised, and my phone number is something else completely. I explain that I’m very unhappy my phone number’s been changed and no-one’s told me. I’m then told the reason it’s taking so long is because my phone number was previously assigned to a different customer, and that the work order was booked for October anyway. I explain that that’s not very useful, and go through the situation again. The guy sounds confused, and tells me that he has to talk to the transfers team, and that I’ll be phoned back within 60 minutes. Three hours later, after hearing nothing from Virgin, I ring back and am told my phoneline should be live again within 24 hours.

27th August status
Phone: The line’s completely dead, and attempting to call in comes up with a number not recognised error.
TV: Everything’s still the same
Internet: Back up and running!

And now it’s Sunday. It’s 23 hours since I last rang about my phone line, and it’s still dead. I must say my confidence in it coming back in the next hour is low.

So here’s where I stand:

• Am I or am I not going to get my telephone service back, or is some engineer going to turn up at an empty property in October?
• Do I now have a “gone away” mark on my credit record?
• What’s happening with my bills, as I now appear to have many different accounts, and I don’t appear to be able to get into ebilling any more (it tells me I only have a dialup broadband service!), so I signed up again with my new account details, which just gives me a confusing “partial” bill.
• Am I, or am I not going to get a good will gesture for the hours I’ve spent on the phone chasing up their mistakes, compensation for the days I was unable to use the service, and my £37 mobile phone bill from 2 hours on the phone to Virgin on my phone (in addition to the time spent on the original 90 minutes calling 150 on my landline, and when I was called back, which comes to a total of just over 4 hours on the phone so far)

Testing i18n in Django for the Molly Project

This was originally published on the Mobile Oxford Tech blog

Here in the Mobile Oxford team, we’ve been working with the team at Bangor University to help get the Molly Project, the open source project which grew from Mobile Oxford’s code base, ready to be translated into multiple languages (in Bangor’s case – Welsh!).

As Molly is a Django project, we can use Django’s extensive i18n framework to do most of the work for us, however, this does rely on us marking up the text for translation. When it comes to testing i18n, we needed a quick way of generating a test language file for us to drop in to check we’ve caught all of the strings that need to be translated.

Inspired by Richard Mitchell at Isotoma, who suggested using upside down English to test for Unicode bugs, we decided that testing i18n using upside-down English makes the most sense for us. And so, I wrote a script which did this. It ignores formatting strings and inside HTML, but everything else gets inverted using the lookup table defined at the top. We used this as we marked up each app in a feedback loop to make sure everything is marked up, and I think we got everything.

Data from external services (e.g., the library) isn’t translated, but where our data sources (e.g., the OpenStreetMap planet.osm dumps and the NaPTAN) do contain multi-lingual data, this is now imported into our database and tagged as the correct language, and where the data exists, it means you’ll see it in different languages!

However, we did find a few gotchas with Django’s i18n. First of all, there’s a fairly major bug in Django’s makemessages function, which means that the output of makemessages for JavaScript is unreliable as to whether or not we caught all the strings. The only real alternative is to generate a .po file by hand, however we cheated by creating a ‘dummy.js’ file which manually contains all the JS scripts, to make sure they’re found. However, this does mean we have to update this file every time we add a new string, which is a pain.

We’ve no plans to launch multiple languages on Mobile Oxford at the moment, but this is perhaps something we can look at in the future – translating the site into multiple languages to make it more useful for tourists to the city!

Trackernet and the NaPTAN

At work I’ve been playing around with the TfL TrackerNet API to add real-time tube departure information to the Molly Project, in a similar way to how we provide real-time bus information from Oxontime.

The biggest problem I came across was the fact there’s no mapping (at least, I couldn’t find one – someone may now comment and show me I wasted an hour of work this afternoon) between the NaPTAN and the station and line codes that TrackerNet wants for its detailed predication API. So I had to go make one.

So if anyone wants a prepopulated Python dictionary mapping ATCO identifiers to lists of tuples of line codes and station codes, save yourself some pain and just use the one I just made (under the Academic Free License):

IT Professionals in Schools

Our industry has a problem. It’s not a new problem, and it’s a fairly well known problem. Our industry is suffering from a skills shortage, but this is just a symptom of the problem. The problem starts in schools.

Anna Debenham articulates the problem better than I ever could, and if you’ve not seen this presentation yet, I highly encourage you to watch it:

(more…)

Github to JIRA

I love JIRA quite a lot, ever since I got my first license from Atlassian for the Nouse website (in an attempt to get some form of project management going on), and here at OUCS, where we use JIRA internally. Up until now, we’ve managed the Molly Project using the public Github issue tracker (and private Mobile Oxford stuff on our internal JIRA), but I’ve finally got round to setting up a JIRA instance and getting an open-source license from Atlassian for the Molly Project, but I wanted to get our existing tickets (just under 80) from Github into JIRA, and ideally not by hand.

Fortunately, JIRA supports CSV comment imports, and Github has an API, so it’s a simple task of putting the two together to get what I want.

I don’t think the Github issue tracker is really suitable for any type of real use (you can’t assign tickets, there’s only two states – labels are a bit of a hack compared to actually having component fields/versions, etc), so if you’re thinking about getting a real issue tracker for your open source project, give JIRA a whirl. I’ve put my script up on Github for anyone who’s doing the same: https://github.com/cnorthwood/github-to-jira

Meal for One: Steak & Chips

One of my favourite meals is steak and chips. It’s easy to make and delicious. I normally replace chips with wedges, as they’re healthy, oven chips suck and I don’t own a deep fat fryer. It takes a bit longer to make, but it’s worth it. Veg is normally an issue, I normally have some sweetcorn with it, but my girlfriend and I decided to experiment this weekend by making a breaded, stuffed mushroom.

For this, you’re going to need:

• One (large) potato
• Olive oil
• Steak (your choice, I normally go for sirloin from a supermarket butcher)
• A mushroom (we used normal closed cup ones, but I suspect the big flat ones will have been better)
• Garlic
• Mixed herbs
• A piece of bread (we used wholemeal, but there’s no reason you can’t use something else)
• Some cheese

We didn’t have many mushrooms (only 2, in fact), because it was a spur of the moment thing, so we had sweetcorn as well, but that’s definitely not necessary if you have enough mushrooms!

The wedges normally take the longest to make, so start by peeling your potato and chopping it up into wedge shaped pieces. Boil the kettle and then whack them in a pan to parboil for around 7 minutes. Once the potato goes on the hob, preheat your oven to 220ºC.

Whilst the potatoes are boiling, dice a garlic clove, and then get a roasting tin out suitable for the wedges. Once your 7 minutes are up, drain the potatoes, transfer them into the roasting tin, and then coat in olive oil, the garlic and some mixed herbs for flavour. Then whack it in the oven for 40 minutes, remembering to turn over half way through.

Now, it’s time to make your breadcrumbs. We used a food processor on a slice of bread in a jug, and then diced another clove of garlic and mixed that in (add more if you like it really garlicy!). Now, remove the stems to the mushrooms and put your favourite cheese in the cup, and then cover with your breadcrumbs. We tried to add some olive oil to get it to stick together, but it didn’t really work (suggestions on how to get the breadcrumbs to stick to the mushrooms better would be appreciated!). Ideally this should take you 20 minutes, so you’ve got 20 minutes left on the wedges. Flip the potatoes and add the mushrooms to the tin (they’ll need about 20 minutes).

Now, put some oil in a pan and heat it (but not so hot the oil is smoking – that’ll just make it burn), and then turn it down to a medium-high heat, then add the steak. Timing the steak is always the trickiest bit, but I’ve found 4-and-a-half minutes on each side works well for medium. This should work so your steak is done about 3/4 minutes before the potatoes, so take it off the heat and leave your steak to “rest” for the last 5 minutes. When your potatoes and mushrooms are done, get them out, dish it all out, add vinegar, salt, ketchup and whatever else you want, and then enjoy!

Nom!

Meal for Two: Sunday Roast

So, this is something that’s been bothering me for quite a while – the lack of decent recipes when preparing meals for one. I live by myself, so normally eat by myself. But meals for one are pretty boring, and repetitive (it’s difficult to get portions at the supermarket that are suitable for one), so I like to experiment.

But I’m not that creative, and I’m often busy – which is why I end up getting takeaways or ready meals fairly frequently, which is bad for my health and wallet – so I look up recipes on the Internet, but they’re often pretty fancy in terms of ingredients, and are for larger meals (families, etc), are expensive or take a long time to prepare.

So this series of blogs is inspired by Jamie Oliver’s “30 Minute Meals” series, but are designed for one (and occasionally two, when I’m visiting my girlfriend). They’re experimental (I’m not a chef, I’m a web developer!) and I disclaim all responsibility for if it goes wrong

But the general rule of thumb for recipes I’m going to blog is this – they’re quick to prepare (although perhaps not as quick to cook), fairly healthy and not too exotic in terms of ingredients or equipment.

I’m of the opinion that cooking is an art, not a science (which took me a while to accept as a scientist), so I’m never exact in my measurements, just rough guidelines.

The first recipe here is going to break the “Meal for One” rule, as it’s for two (and not the healthiest being such a heavy meal – but have it for lunch and then you won’t need much for tea, maybe just some toast), but it’s a classic, always reminds me of growing up in Yorkshire, and is surprisingly easy to make – the typical English Sunday roast.

What you’ll need:

• A nice bit of beef – unfortunately most supermarkets sell family-size joints (Morrisons occasionally seems to be an exception!), so you’ll have to be lucky or go to the butcher counter if you shop at a big enough place. Or just accept you’re going to have roast beef sandwiches for lunch all week – 450g seems to be about right for two in my experience, with some left overs;
• Potatoes – I always make too much (<3 roast potatoes), but 3/4 seems to be about right (I’ll let you judge);
• A parsnip (optional);
• Veg – your choice, we normally go for a carrot and some broccoli;
• Bisto;
• Plain flour (at most 100g);
• An egg (large, and go free range);
• Some milk (about half a pint);
• A Yorkshire pudding tin (perhaps a bit exotic, but worth it to make this meal properly, and they’re dead cheap);
• A roasting tin (big enough for your meat and potatoes);
• A pan big enough for your potatoes;
• A jug (about a litre);
• A weighing scale;
• A slotted spoon;
• A colander (or cheat and fish things out of the pan with the slotted spoon);
• A spare plate (or chopping board) to carve the beef on;
• A whisk (or a fork).

Here’s a note about the beef – it’s very variable in quality, and you’ll find a considerable improvement by paying £2 more for a nicer bit. The quality of the beef makes or breaks this meal in my opinion, so it’s almost always worth to go a bit higher. Exactly how long your beef will take depends on the size of it. For medium, 25 minutes at 220ºC and then 25 minutes per 450g at 180ºC is a decent choice, so you may need to take longer to cook it based on this. Also, you could very easily replace beef with lamb or pork in this recipe, adjusting times etc appropriately.

Start with pre-heating the oven to 220ºC, and placing your meat into a roasting tin – don’t put it into the oven yet.

Peel the potatoes and then boil the kettle (enough to cover the potatoes in your pan), whilst the kettle is boiling, chop the potatoes into chunks based on how big you like your roast potatoes and then put them in a pan. When the kettle’s boiled, pour the water on the potatoes. If you’re making a roast around 450g in size, now’s the time to put it in the oven (otherwise you may need to do it before you put the potatoes on to parboil). Set a timer on the beef, as we’ll use that for reference from now on.

Whilst the potatoes are boiling is a good time to peel the parsnip. After 10 minutes, take the potatoes off, and drain them, and then with 45 minutes to go on the meat (which if you’re doing a 450g bit of beef, should almost be straight away), put the potatoes around the meat in the baking tray, and then drizzle some olive oil on them.

Once the potatoes are in, there’s a few jobs you need to do: peel the vegetables and then prepare the Yorkshire Pudding mix. Peeling the vegetables (and chopping them us as you desire) is pretty self-explanatory, so go ahead and get that out of the way first. I also like to clear up as I go along, so give the pan that had the potatoes in a quick wash (it shouldn’t be too mucky…) and you can re-use that for the veg (but don’t add any water yet – it’ll go soggy)

Don’t forget the parsnip – with about 30 minutes to go, chuck that in the roasting tin with the potatoes and meat.

Now we’ve got the veg ready to go, and everything else is in the oven, we can prepare the Yorkshire pudding mix. Grab your jug, whisk, sieve, egg, flour and milk. Ideally you should have an equal amount of egg and plain flour (about 80 grams) which’ll make 4 puds – 2 each. Sieve the flour into your jug (get lots of air in it) and then add the egg. Then you’ll need to add the milk – I normally keep adding until it gets to the right consistency, but add small amounts at first and if it’s too thick you’ll know when trying to mix it. Whisk it all together, keeping adding milk until you get it just runny enough (this will take practice and getting to know it I’m afraid). Whisk it until there are lots of bubbles in it – air is the key to making them rise.

And now we should have about 15 minutes to go. Grab your Yorkshire pudding tin and put oil in each bit (enough to coat the bottom, unless you want them to stick to the pan!) and whack it in the oven to get the oil hot – I’d also turn the heat back up to 220ºC at this point. Also, boil the kettle to get it ready for the veg.  Once the kettle’s boiled, pour it over the veg and turn the hob on, then get the pre-heated Yorkshire pudding tin out of the oven and pour the mix out of the jug equally between the 4 dents. Get it back in the oven with 10 minutes left on the beef and then wash out that jug because we can re-use it for the gravy.

Ding ding! Your timer should now be going off and the beef’s time is up, so get it out of the oven. It should be ready to go and so should the potatoes too. I normally cut into it at this point to check it’s done, but lots of advice on the Internet says to leave it to rest, so it’s up to you and how much you trust your timings. If there’s two of you making this meal, this is when a second set of hands really comes in handy. You need to carve the meat into thin slices and also make the gravy from the veg water (which should be done around now). Using the veg water for the gravy means any vitamins that’ve leaked into the water (which is apparently a lot of them) are retained to help your 5-a-day goodness. So put some gravy granules into your jug and add that veg water – make to your preferred consistency (I like my gravy quite thick). Use a slotted spoon to stop any veg escaping into the gravy, and then serve it out onto your plates. Hopefully the other person’s chopped up the beef as desired, so this is time to get everything onto the plates…

Your Yorkshire puddings should be now all done and risen, so get them out, put 2 on each plate and then get the gravy on. And then get eating (with a glass of wine/beer/cola as desired).

For dessert, we normally have a cheesecake from the supermarket, and then we’re so full we just fall asleep watching TV. Perfect Sunday.

Reporting Django exceptions to JIRA

I’ve recently started a new job over at Oxford University Computing Services working on Mobile Oxford. I’ve blogged over on their tech blog about integration Django exception reporting into JIRA – you can read the whole article there.

Live Blogging version 2

I’m pleased to announce the release of version 2 of the Live Blogging plugin for WordPress.

The Live Blogging plugin offers lots of functionality for WordPress bloggers, especially those who blog following live events. Using Live Blogging, you can create many small, microblogs within a single post, with each update automatically appearing on your readers screens.

For a demonstration on how to use the plugin, and how it works, I’ve created a 4 minute screencast demonstrating it.

For users of version 1, version 2 is an almost complete rewrite, adding many new features – the most important of which is the removal of the requirement of Meteor for automatic updating (although using Meteor offers improvements over the standard polling situation), so the effect demonstrated in the screencast is available to everyone. More customisability is available too, for those who have used Live Blogging v1.

I’d also like to thank the beta testers for helping me debug the release before I released it. Also, thanks to all the users who are using the live blogging plugin.

Please spread the word!