Category: General

Everything without another home

Keeping track of traffic problems via the web

On By westiIn Asides, Useful Links

There are a number of different free and paid for sites on the web that allow you to keep track of current traffic problems that might affect you motorway journey in the uk. Two of the best are Realtime Traffic Info and Traffic England both from the Highways Agency. I have recently discovered Traffic Map which seems to be even better. It looks like an improved version of the “Realtime Traffic Info” page without the speed issues that this page can sometimes display. Not only does it display current speed and the text on the large matrix signs it is also able to display the speed matrix signs for the variable speed limit section of the M25 near Heathrow. Very useful.

Retrospective and Prospective

On By westiIn General2 Comments

Looking through my dashboard recently I realised that I was approaching a turning point – This is my 100th live blog entry! Therefore I have decided to dedicate this post to look back at what has been and looking forward at what is still to come.

Retrospective

First the obligatory statistics. As of now this blog has been up for 19 months 22 days and contains 100 posts and 144 comments spread across 15 categories. Spam Karma 2 since installed has caught over 5000 attempted spam comments. The most postings in any month was in July 2005. Looking back there have been highs and lows – some times I’ve managed to post every day for stretchs at a time and others I’ve struggled to get one post a month up :-(.

Prospective

Looking forward to the future there are a number of things I would like to achieve. First off I need to check through Jakob Nielsen’s “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” – I know at least that I still lack a proper About page! At some point in the future I feel another redesign coming on – I think I need to strip the design back down to basics and also include proper ad placement in the design – adverts came after the last design was conceived and don’t completely fit in. There are also a number of plugin ideas that I have and I would like to find time to implement at least some of them.