Skip the first paragraph

A while ago I read the book “On Writing Well” (amazon affiliate link) by William K. Zinsser. A fantastic book on how to write non-fiction. Amongst the many great suggestions made in the book, there is one suggestion that I find most useful: skip the first paragraph.

Most of us struggle to write the first paragraph and ‘introduce’ our topic. Zinsser suggests to just do away with the first paragraph and start by writing the second paragraph, the meat of the subject matter.

I would offer to extend that gem of advice and suggest that it applies when reading material as well.

Safari 4 tabs need improving

The Safari 4 Beta brought some much needed improvements to the browser, and the changes are noticable. The browser is snappier, more intuitive and has moved its relationship with the web standards to the next level. Great, except the tabs are frustrating to use at times.

When clicking between tabs, roughly 1/3 of the time I end up very subtly triggering its “dragging” action, instead of bringing the tab to focus. So over time I learnt to expect that to happen and try to click a second time in fairly quick succession.

This works most of the time, except when I click it too quickly the second time it minimises the browser. Useless functionality if you ask me. I’m not convinced the whole double-clicking to minimise is that useful, or even desired that often. Any way you look at it, the tabs are far from ideal in their current state.

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.