The person who holds the world record for basketball free throws shot over 2,000 consecutive baskets in a row. But if you put them in a stadium and a tight score between the teams, they might not have been able to shoot two. The main difference between playing basketball in a rec league and playing […] The post Professionalism and pressure appeared first on Herbert Lui.

After waking up yesterday I checked my router in case my broadband had restarted overnight. Still red, so no. "We wanted you to know that the fault you reported to us is now fixed. Please turn your router off and on, and your service should be fully restored." Ho-bloody-rah. Which was odd because the BT Service Status Checker now thought everything was now fixed. I re-reported the fault and they sent me another text message. "We can see that the line from our network to your home is working so let's take a look at the connection in your home. The good news is that these issues can often be fixed quickly and easily with a few simple checks. You can check find assistance on our website at [link] to guide you through what to look for. Let's see if that fixes the problem." This was their list of things to try. 1. Use the BT Broadband troubleshooter 2. Make a call on your landline 3. Restart your Hub 4. Check the lights on your hub 5. Power cycle your modem 6. Try your test socket I now had no broadband but BT didn't think I had a problem, This was even less ideal. There really was a fault, nothing had been fixed and they didn't know how long it might take to solve. I was back to square one. But I have no idea how long this is going to last - it could be only a few more hours or it could be another fortnight. Also trying to contact BT is easy but speaking to a human is hard. Every path through their customer service telephone portal seems to lead to a text message or a website and them ringing off, thinking their job is done. "We're working on it" is all very well, but by Day Six you really want to know more than that. i) offering up useful advice ii) advising me to do something I'm already doing iii) mitigation I have no intention of pursuing iv) a suggestion someone else has already suggested v) explaining how best to complain vi) recounting how it all went wrong for you vii) telling me I'm foolish for not having done something viii) detailing a separate problem you have ix) claiming BT are the spawn of the devil x) frenetic spleen Generally the nearer to the top of that classification the more useful, and the nearer to the bottom the more I roll my eyes. Aim high, ladies and gentlemen. Commentswise I also note that collectively you're far more interested in my broadband woes than say buses through the Silvertown Tunnel, so why struggle to write 1500 words about the suburbs when corporate failure is an easier target? Do please bear with me during this difficult period. Full refunds are available if you don't think you're getting the service you deserve.

This was a lesson one of my bosses shared with me: most people don’t improve consistently every quarter. Instead, progress ebbs and flows.  Sometimes—maybe many times—you might feel like you’re going through a plateau. Many other people would quit. If you remain confident you’re heading in the right direction, then you need to stick with […] The post Progress ebbs and flows appeared first on Herbert Lui.

When the Silvertown Tunnel opens next week, one thing the Mayor will enthuse about is the new Superloop bus route running through it. People like the Superloop, they know it gets them places fast, so no doubt they'll be enthused too. But the new SL4 isn't going to be as super as people might think, nor as fast, because in this case SL might as well stand for Stopping Lots. the SL4 is about to do. eight times on the way to the tunnel. Every stop between Canary Wharf and the tunnel portal gets an SL4 tile, every single one. Then comes the big dive under the Thames, deliberately not stopping at North Greenwich because that would slow things down. And after climbing to the fringes of Blackheath it then stops at every single stop all the way to Grove Park, every single one. Nine stops, three mile gap, seventeen stops. Hardly Super. This is the last stop before the Silvertown tunnel heading north. It's at the Sun-in-the-Sands roundabout where Shooters Hill Road meets the A102 dual carriageway, two whole miles from the tunnel portal. It's not near any stations, nor an especially easy place to get to, nor somewhere you can reach North Greenwich quickly from. And yet this is the last place south of the river you can board or alight, the stopping pattern assuming that what you really want to do from here is go to Canary Wharf, not anywhere inbetween. It's just as non-stop on the northern side. The SL4 emerges by a snazzy new gyratory but there's nowhere to stop so it doesn't. City Hall is close by, also the Royal Docks, the Dangleway, Royal Victoria DLR and lots of flats, but no way to get on or off. Indeed although the SL4 emerges in Newham it doesn't stop anywhere in the borough so there's no easy way to make onward connections. Serving Newham is the 129's job, the other new bus through the Silvertown Tunnel, but at no point do the SL4 and 129 stop anywhere near each other so potential interchange doesn't work either. This is Orchard Place, a backwater road which ten years ago you'd only have visited if you were hiking to the cultural outpost of Trinity Buoy Wharf. It first gained a bus service in 2017 when hundreds of new flats started to be built at City Island, joined since by hundreds more at Goodluck Hope. Route D3 already terminates here four times an hour and is about to be joined by the SL4, in both directions, running twice as often. That's brilliant if you live here and want go to Canary Wharf, but less useful if you thought you were riding a fast bus and find yourself dawdling down here instead. 2022 consultation TfL asked whether respondents would prefer the new bus to take the most direct route or to go via Orchard Place to serve the Leamouth Peninsula. "Our preferred option is the direct route", TfL wrote. But the public disagreed, quite significantly... A total of 613 respondents answered with the majority, 58 per cent, preferring the route to go via Orchard Place. This is compared to 19 per cent who preferred the most direct routing, and the remaining 24 per cent of respondents who had no preference. ... hence the extra twiddle. My hunch is that the London City Island and Goodluck Hope Leaseholders’ and Residents’ Association strongly encouraged their leaseholders and residents to respond to the consultation, and this pile-on swung the results decisively in favour of Orchard Place. The LCIGHLRA didn't get everything their way. In their submission they also asked for a 'vital' extra stop at North Greenwich for the benefit of their residents, and also could the bus please go to Lewisham because Grove Park lacked useful amenities. But they did get TfL to gift them 250 extra Superloops per day, so you can curse them for the delay should you ever decide to take a ride. remarkably often - every eight minutes from 6am to 8pm - based on the untested proposition that thousands of people want to travel by bus to Canary Wharf from a thin sliver of southeast London. detail on why they chose this particular route. I summarised what they said in this post here, and basically it's because their planning models suggested this was the best way of maximising demand. If you want to mouth off and say "But I don't see why they didn't..." go read that first. My hunch is that the SL4 will be an insanely frequent white elephant of limited use, made worse by the lengthy gap in the middle. But it'll also be free to use for the first year which'll bump up its ridership no end, especially for local journeys in Lewisham where only a fool would board a 202 or 261 when they could board the SL4 for free. It will thus appear hugely successful, its ridership figures inherently meaningless, and the Mayor will clap his hands and say I told you it'd be brilliant. As with so many dubious projects it'll only look great to those who've never ridden it, the frankly baffling SL4, Stopping Lots.