Today was to be Strike Day for Local Government, but things got miraculously fixed - must be election year! Since I'd agreed to head for the Midlands, took a day off instead. Set out a little later than I would have liked this morning, and had a reasonably smooth run despite another incursion of livestock near Cheltenham - sheep this time! Arrived at a very sunny, but surprisingly quiet Rugby station a little after midday.

Aside from the usual steady diet of Pendolinos, things seemed to dawdle until mid-afternoon when plenty happened to keep me busy. First off was 87013 passing hauling a couple of Royal Mail 325 EMUs, which was soon followed by a pair of 86's on a southbound liner.

Further Class 325s passed southbound heading for Willesden, which was heartening. Mail by rail makes sense and I can only hope that the current trial involving GBRf will be continued.

No Class 87 hauled passenger workings today unfortunately, but as a bonus 87028 showed up on the reliable 'Malcolms' leading 66410. Unfortunately it was (apparently uniquely) routed via the platform line due to a passing Pendolino taking the fast line. Hence the picture is nothing special.


Plenty of GBRf action too, which pleases me because their attractive livery is a rarity in my part of the world. In addition to the booked trains, 66715 passed southbound hauling on-track plant machine 73930, then returned northbound through the station just a few minutes before I left for home - seconds before the Birmingham train 66706 also ambled in from the north.


Still light and pleasantly warm when I left Rugby. Again a smooth journey back, arriving early at Temple Meads and making a quick connection for home.

Woke to a thick mist - not optimistic about photographic opportunities. Out for the 0830 Virgin service to Bristol, and a quick change onto a Cardiff bound service before the crowds began to assemble for today's rugby match. Spotted some familiar faces at Newport as we passed and tried to make contact, but no reply. Cardiff city centre already appeared busy at around 10am. Staked out a spot at the end of platform 3 and 4, despite a sudden and unwarranted outburst from a grumpy member of platform staff. Started the morning with a steady stream of the usual units, along with 37425, 37408 and 37411 working the Rhymney services.

Each arriving service deposited increasingly large quantities of rugby fans, along with a good number of cranks. By midday, services were near dangerously overcrowded, and with the sudden appearance of bright sunshine, passengers pouring from them were very hot and bothered. A little later than planned, and in quick succession, the first two specials arrived in the hands of Class 67s. Highlight of the day for me however was the top and tailed Class 47 hauled Carmarthen-Cardiff service, which then went ECS to Newport and worked back to Cardiff again.


A fair amount of freight for a Saturday at Cardiff too including a number of steel workings, some light engine activity, and both loaded and empty coal workings relating to Aberthaw power station. Deep in conversation at one point I failed to notice a fast approaching convoy of two Class 60s and two class 66s which passed at speed with my camera pointing entirely in the wrong direction.


One final 67 hauled special and it was back in full sunshine to Newport to meet up with the people we'd tried to call earlier. Realised that despite the misty start I'd almost developed a nasty case of sunburn. Left the others to wander up to Barton Hill whilst I collected some tickets and headed back for a dinner appointment. Overall, a busy and entertaining day - and the best weather of the year so far.

A little while back, my first delve into C# code was to try to persuade Muine to output the currently playing song via a signal from the command line, for use in XChat "now playing" scripts and suchlike. I almost got things working how I wanted, but my haphazard approach was flawed and I've long since abandoned the attempt.

So I was extremely pleased to find muine-shell which achieves exactly what I wanted and more rather elegantly, via clever use of DBus. First project was to adapt a script to post the current song Muine was playing to my website. Obviously if I'm not playing anything, it won't appear, so here is a screenshot:

Some rough edges to knock off here - replacing the cover image with a default when the album has no cover for example. Fun to play with for an afternoon, and even more pointless personal information now available via this site!

Back from Birmingham where I've been attending Capita's Software Consultation Groups for the Admissions & Transfers product, and its web frontend. Despite some reservations, I found it a really positive process. From the presence of a company director at the meeting, I think even Capita expected some barracking regarding the tight timescales and almost impossible pace of change we've all faced this year. Happily it didn't happen, and it was a constructive if exhaustingly busy couple of days, and I think some of the directions suggested in the SCG will become useful developments, particularly in the area of managing addresses which is a perennial bugbear.

Stayed with my grandmother and uncle for a couple of days during the SCGs. A chance to visit a couple of Redditch pubs and catch up with family news. Quite fun to commute into Birmingham each morning, even if Central Trains rather half-hearted industrial action threatened to cause me a problem on the first morning.

Its been a strange and busy week - I've only really begun to recover from the strange virus which laid me low over the previous week, and Tuesday in particular was exhausting - first session for the CMS course in the morning, into the office for the first time in a week later, then a journey to Birmingham made longer by errant cattle near Flax Bourton and crowds of racegoers at Cheltenham. Its going to be good to get somewhere near back to normal over the weekend.