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.

Some of the places I've been since my broadband disappeared a week ago BestMate's sofa: 45 minutes of proper broadband and I managed to catch up on all sorts of things, including adding the photos and links to Unblogged March which was previously bereft. Bank: I'm always amazed how often the all-encompassing adverts up the Waterloo & City line travelator get changed. At the moment the company desperately trying to get noticed is called beazley (lower case), who do underwriting or something, and I guess if just one corporate bigwig notices and switches their company's services it's all worth it. Bromley-by-Bow: I mentioned last month that the tube station's glass frontage has been seriously damaged for over two years and never been repaired. Now someone's climbed up and graffitied it with red, black and white paint and it looks hugely worse. Get a grip. Burnt Oak: A plaque commemorating "a century of service" has been unveiled in the station ticket hall, five months after the actual centenary. I was unimpressed enough not to bother taking a photo (Ian has one). East Dulwich: I was also here. Feltham: Something that's never happened to me before - the 235 bus was so full that the driver checked its weight on her dashboard and announced there was only leeway for one more person on board. Three Eastern European workmen kindly allowed me to take the last space. Grove Park: I spotted a van putting Superloop roundels on shelters along new route SL4. Half are at stops where you can't catch a special bus because the express section is all behind you. Absolute waste of money. Harrow-on-the-Hill: That's the educational outpost up Grove Hill, not the station. It's really quiet up here when Harrow School's not in session. It turns out they broke up for Easter last Saturday at 11am, a week before most schools, because the more you pay for an education the fewer weeks you get. Heathrow T4: I hadn't ridden a purple train to Heathrow before, mainly because of the cost, but can confirm that the usual £12.80 fare really is zero with a 60+ card. Honeypot Lane: I was also here. Kenley: As promised I went back and added the post I would have written on Sunday had my broadband not vanished. It's about bus route changes, to save some of you from looking. Keston Mark: The traffic lights at this busy crossroads weren't working because they'd been smashed. Peculiarly two of the four poles were bent over at right angles so it couldn't possibly have been a single accident, more likely a deliberate act of vandalism by some self-entitled vigilante who hates cameras. London Loop section 22: I took BestMate to Upminster Bridge and re-walked part of the London Loop (one of the shortest sections, I'd thought, but on closer inspection merely lower quartile). The weather was glorious if windy, and the recent drought meant the "can be muddy here" sections were reassuringly solid underfoot. We met two very nonplussed goats, disturbed a woodpecker, wondered what the crop in the field was, identified the planes stacking over Redbridge, spotted several butterflies, attempted to identify the source of some dung, crossed the Ingrebourne, admired much magnolia, noted with sadness the replacement lampposts, wondered what neighbourly feud had inspired a massive hedge, debated what would become of the tumbledown farm outbuildings, compared the constituent heights of 24-year-old woodland, passed a wooden grasshopper, Instagrammed a pylon, wondered how frogs spawn in a dried-up pond, dissed a statue of King Harold and admired the Parcels entrance to Harold Wood station. It's not the thrillingest bit of Loop but it was much better than I remembered. Marylebone: The staff in the information kiosk wear swooshy capes with 'Bicester Village' on the back, which to the target audience probably looks endearingly Harry-Potter-ish but I suspect the average Brit just giggles. Oval: I was walking around some bikes outside the station when I suddenly tripped, hard, onto the pavement and fuxbolx that hurt! I had to pick my glasses out of the road. Several kind people asked if I was OK and I said I was, then limped to a nearby wall and sat there for five minutes while I undazed. The bruises were impressive. The blood has not yet washed out. I require neither your sympathy nor your medical opinion, thanks, nor am I counting it as my first Senior Moment. But it was a visceral reminder that one day my body won't be capable of standing after a fall like that, so just be careful OK? Putney Bridge/Mortlake: I did this journey by train and bus, I wasn't rowing. South Norwood: I was also here. Sudbury Hill Harrow: The cheapskates at Chiltern Railway have removed all their timetable posters "as part of a commitment towards a more sustainable railway". Instead they've printed a poster directing passengers to their "digital timetable page", henceforth and forever, which is fine if you've got a functioning online connection but a fat lot of good if you turn up phoneless and want to know when the trains go. They do say "ticket office staff can print timetables on your behalf from most of our station booking offices" but what use is that at an unstaffed station like Sudbury Hill Harrow? This is one of London's very least used stations and now you can't even see when its infrequent service runs. The lack of a printed timetable poster isn't saving the planet, merely a minimal saving for shareholders and a self-inflicted inconvenience for passengers. Sundridge Park: I was also here. I'll be back.

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.