More traffic, the Police Open day, a little tickle, and always too late.

30 minutes this morning, the traffic was backed up along the Dunley Road, Areley Common, and Hermitage Way. On the other hand the traffic in town hadn't even got backed up to York Street. So is it just SVOT, are the sensors acting up, or something else? Well it is rubbish collection day for the town centre today and they do seem to have a nasty habit of parking at the end of High Street where it splits into two lanes thus preventing the wider, longer vehicles from getting past easily. Boots also had a delivery, with their truck parked opposite the bus stop, you know the one that's not quite wide and long enough for a bus to actually fit into it unless it can move sideways. A policeman turned up, great the loading restrictions were for 8:30-9am and it was just turned 9, the guy had finished and was just packing up.

I must admit I just don't know. I note that traffic is building up at night on the Dunley Road quite a bit, and this is unusual despite the roadworks; there's normally just not enough traffic going that way to build-up. So I guess either the sensors are out of kilter or it's SVOT from somewhere else.

Just off- topic this has probably already done the rounds, still amusing though.

In a comment on my Kidderminster report Tavis Pitt, he of the excellent WFA, stated that it was front-page news for the "Kidderminster Chronicle" as usual he is perfectly correct, here's the page in question.

Sorry, picture of a policeman with a dog. I thought it was standard Chronicle fodder of "New police-dog", or "Police-dog retires" especially with the white on blue headline swamped by the "Talks on Late Night Opening". Sadly my 'ignore' filter kicked in.

It also got mentioned in the Stourport Times/Kidderminster Shuttle on page 10 like so

Uh-huh inside left-hand page near the crease starting with the words "Pup Idol"; filtered. My fault - accepted, I should read the whole articles and not just glance at the pictures and headlines. Am I wrong though in expecting a headline to actually convey some meaning about the story, surely I can't be considered naive to expect a story about an open day at the Magistrates court to be headlined "Open day at Magistrates court", "Police to hold open day" or even "Police event" if you can't cope with more then two words. Ironically here's the opposite page.

See they can do it if they try.

On a secondary note here was the map of events for Kiddy. The cluster of three arrows are the big bird, stalls, and merry-go-round. The one just below those is the Blues Brothers tribute singers who are also next to the Town Hall, and waaay down to the bottom right is the Magistrates Court.

This weeks Computing magazine had a small article tucked away that tickled me

[Company] dresses up its web sites
Leisure equipment and clothing chain [company] has implemented browse, search and merchandising functions on its web sites to encourage more visitors to purchase online.

So presumably actually allowing people to buy stuff online from your site might actually encourage them to do so, wow I'd never have thought of that. They're also allowing people to search and browse their sites, amazing. I hope places like Amazon are taking note of this new and startling use of the internet.

Bloody typical, I buy some ink cartridges last weekend and what do I get through the door this morning? A £10 off for purchases over £10 card and a 20% off ink and toner voucher from Staples. The good news is that although the card expires on 24 December, the voucher is left open.