The little secret about experiences

NYTimes posted an interview with the social psychologist, Daniel Gilbert. The best part is this quote:

“Another thing we know from studies is that people tend to take more pleasure in experiences than in things. [...] One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and objects usually aren’t. [...] People think a car will last and that’s why it will bring you happiness. But it doesn’t. It gets old and decays. But experiences don’t. You’ll “always have Paris” — and that’s exactly what Bogart meant when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine? No.“

On a related note, It struck me recently how there are more and more companies selling experiences as gifts.

DSA Practical Driving Test search script

I’ve recently had to hastily pass my practical driving test as my theory test certificate was about to expire. It’s a little well known fact that some areas are well known for their long waiting periods. Hello Isleworth in London. There’s a 1-2 month waiting list as standard for that test center, which is just too long and would tip me over my theory expiration date.

So I decided to book any date (to have a failsafe, plus a booking reference is required to update a booking), and whip up a little script that logs into the DSA booking service, search for better dates in 2 areas (Ashford and Isleworth for me) and email me if anything good pops up.

The script is written in Python and uses the great BeautifulSoup library. It’s a little rough around the edges as I didn’t plan on releasing it, and I’m certain that the code is nowhere near its potential beauty and elegance. My apologies!

Download: dsa.py

I haven’t tested it on Windows (and doubt it would work on it without some tweaking), I’ve only tested it on Linux and Mac OS. If you need a hand at running it, leave a comment. I found and booked a test in Isleworth that was 10 days away on the 2nd day of running the script.