Arrival times on DC Subway

So awesome! I found that you can get the Metro's next train arrival times on your phone! It's exactly the same data you see on those electronic boards on the platform – I checked it for the Courthouse station, and saw that I had two minutes to make the train, and I ran down to the platform and just barely caught it.

It's extra nice that the page is intended to be displayed in a popup – so it's a tiny download.

1. Google “wmata <name of your stop>”
2.The second link (usually) goes to a small page showing the train arrival board. You can also find it on the station's page.

Like this: Clarendon

If you have an iPhone with the Jan08 update, add that sucker to your home screen!

Typing speed update

I'm still on Dvorak. I guess that's really the big news, because it has been occasionally infuriating that I can't get words onto "paper" as fast as I think. But the more I get mad at this shortcoming, the more I'm reminded of how great it is to be a fast typist, and that's tho whole goal here.

I have taken the labels off five keys now, returning to their glorious and blank Das Keyboard state. I'm also still working on TypingHero, my Flex app that's supposed to make it fun to type faster. Gabe helped me out over the weekend to improve the wiring of my mxml views to their backing controller classes. It's great to work with true components, but it's frustrating that using best practices in Flex is so contrary to the examples and sometimes the language makes it awkward.

Sadly my speed has leveled out over this month, and is stuck at half my QWERTY speed...

1/7
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

1/21
Net Speed: 33 WPM
Accuracy: 97%
Gross Speed: 34 WPM

I'll get a more useful and fun version of TypingHero soon, and of course I'll speed up my typing considerably using it. Of course!