Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-10-03 08:31:28 - Graham Ellis
A busy weekend after a busy week. And already it's Monday morning again. 7 delegates on a Python course, currently (08:15 as I write) at breakfast at Well House Manor.
Saturday was a trip to Taunton ... for the twice-a-year meeting of Travel Watch South West, where representatives of user groups and public transport authorities and providers meet, to learn from one another, exchange information, and listen to eminent speakers from within the industry who - often candidly - fill us in on what happens behind the scenes, why certain things are as they are, and so forth.
The numbers of passengers that the railways convey has doubled over the last few years ... and don't we feel that sometimes. Chippenham used to have gaps in service of up to 2 hours during the day, but now there are consistently trains calling every 30 minutes, Monday to Saturday, and they're packed. Here are crowd waiting to get off the platform having arrived from Bath late on Saturday afternoon. So this isn't even a commuter peak.
So it was good to get home and take a walk across the fields, and get some fresh air. Alas, our walking area is shrinking as what was previously fields has become housing and there something less attractive about a right of way between garden fences and barbed wire strands that one where we can run off the lead.
Yesterday, (yes, Sunday), I started "learning to program in Python" - that's an optional extra day on the front of our Python Programming course for delegates who have never programmed before or who are very rusty. Here's one of the diagrams of "Bodmas" or "Bidmas" and left to right precedence, Multiplication and division happen before addition and subtraction.
08:30 ... I had better get prepared. Delegates are already settling down for the course.
The numbers of passengers that the railways convey has doubled over the last few years ... and don't we feel that sometimes. Chippenham used to have gaps in service of up to 2 hours during the day, but now there are consistently trains calling every 30 minutes, Monday to Saturday, and they're packed. Here are crowd waiting to get off the platform having arrived from Bath late on Saturday afternoon. So this isn't even a commuter peak. 
So it was good to get home and take a walk across the fields, and get some fresh air. Alas, our walking area is shrinking as what was previously fields has become housing and there something less attractive about a right of way between garden fences and barbed wire strands that one where we can run off the lead.
Yesterday, (yes, Sunday), I started "learning to program in Python" - that's an optional extra day on the front of our Python Programming course for delegates who have never programmed before or who are very rusty. Here's one of the diagrams of "Bodmas" or "Bidmas" and left to right precedence, Multiplication and division happen before addition and subtraction.