Encouragers, bug spotters and general good eggs
Many thanks to all the following for their comments and
suggestions. A mention of a bug in here means that that person found
it, and it has now been fixed (or at least made it onto the "todo"
list). Sometimes (for example on the day when the index page started
segfaulting) a dozen or more people report it. In this case, rather
than put it down as a bug report, I've taken whatever else they had to
say
Regular contributors and testers, or with many good ideas
Those who are Godlike and worthy of deep praise - Steve
Vai
Special thanks goes to those listed below who have either sent me
great quantities of data, or who have regularly tested the program to
destruction for me. Their information, ideas and encouragement have
helped to make this program what it is.
- Terry Rigden for:
- spotting a bug in the sunrise/sunset times
- spotting a rare fence-post error in the table of overnights
- finding when I'd broken the Load Popular Routes function
- being the first of many to fall foul of Froghall Tunnel
- sending me postcodes, photos, captions and gazetteer entries to go with them
- suggesting a clearer wording for the introduction to the table of overnights
- Telling me about a new winding hole at Stone
- Finding a placefinder bug
- Rod Fox has contributed many excellent photos (quite a few of
pubs), and the bad news when a pub was demolished. He pointed out that the links to multimap were wrong and a break in the River Trent
- Charles Lyne for sending me not just a good number of very nice
photos, but very useable text to accompany them as well. And for
being polite when I managed to make a mess of uploading some of
them. He also joined in some chats about future plans
- John Burnage for noticing that:
- I'd counted Whilton Locks twice
- I'd got the whole of Foxton in as a single lock
- there was a bug in the place finder
- I'd misspelled "Denham" as "Debenham"!
- You could get an arithmetic overflow with some settings
- Richard Deeley, who:
- suggested I made the introduction into a help page, and linked to it from the main screen.
- was one of several who reported the blank output from the winding
hole discussion if you didn't have a boat size set
- Pointed out bugs in the generated HTML in such a patient but relentless way that I was inspired to really tidy it up
- Showed me the idea of linear maps, that I have now taken forward with far more work than either of us expected. Careful inspection of the system will show how he has been immortalised
- Keir Gale for:
- pointing out that most trips probably start and finish at
the same place and that this should that be set as a default, with a
finish point only needing to be entered for a 'one way' trip.
- asking for a feature to enable the user to set a start/finish point,
and select a target destination along with preferred number of
hours/day, and for the planner to return the furthest point towards
the target which would be reached
- Spotting a kink in the B&F
- Suggesting that the Black Country Museum was worth an entry as a
point in its own right
- Spotting a bug in the date code very early on
- Finding a break (or two) in the Middlewich Branch
- Steve Heaven acted as a constant QA consultant; over the years he:
- pointed out a typo in Pennine Cruisers URL
- found a major bug in lock flight calculations, and spent a lot of
time working out exactly what was causing it
- found a bug in the bug reporting code (!)
- discovered a wiggle in the Staffs and Worcs near Stourton, and
another in the B&F
- helped Chris with DNS - so made the whole site more robust
- discovered that the Calcutt Winding hole broke the Grand Union
- found out that Napton lock No 9 didn't add to the lock total
- noticed that I'd managed to blow the maps up at one stage
- found a syntax error in the gazetteer
- and provided me with photographs as well
- Jim Shead:
- found bugs in the place finder, and the unknown place code
- let me use his data for my first mega data upgrade
- publicised the site - several people have mentioned that they found it by following a link from his site, or read about it in his article in Waterways World
- John Slee:
- discovered how shortest route, with leg time turned
on (which can't really work) produced silly answers
- reported unexpected truncation of the index page
- found a failure of the
winding hole feature
- has pointed out more than one
misspelling
- told me that one-way furthest places doubled the total time
Bob Wood:
- pointed out that Butcher's Bridge isn't the first bridge
on the Grand Union, as I'd described it
- told me that I'd mispelled Braunston in the FAQs
- discovered that the winding hole information for the BCN wasn't working
- pointed out that the "quickest" route option was still labelled "shortest"
- found a couple of pathological cases in route generation, which caused me some fun to fix
- found an entertaining misfeature in the automatic spelling correction code
- sent me lots of really valuable info on how to open Leeds and Liverpool swing bridges
- told me about the mis-calculation in one-way furthest places
Steve Atty:
- Provided hundreds of photos (even if he did make me scan some of them
myself)
- Came up with some good ideas on layout for the place finder
- Has acted as a sounding board for many discussions
- Has some very good javascript for cookies that I can't get to work,
and promised lots more
- Suggested that I made the index page photo into a link to the gazetteer for that place
A special credit and thanks must go the the inhabitants of .nwr.comp who have provided me with hints, ideas, advice and software over the years. You know who you are.
Those making useful suggestions or contributing snippets of information
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognising good
ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better. - Eric S
Raymond
- "VERMA [at] aol.com" hinted that giving the number of days as a decimal
wasn't very friendly.
- Tony Alcock sent me some photographs
- Andrew suggested that "Always show options" should also work for
"Furthest Place"
- Robin Cook pointed out that it would be nice not to have to set
the number of days; an incentive for the new overnight
calculations
- Phil Crowther suggested I should look at making printing better.
There is now an FAQ on this, and I'm still working on the problem
- Neil Curry for suggesting that all route planning preferences
should be on one intermediate page
- Christopher Davis sent lots of little snips of information about
the Leeds and Liverpool, and corrected a mislabelled motorway on the
Bridgewater
- Debbie provided some entertaining reviews of pubs
- Andrew Denny gave me up to date information on the Anderton Lift and sent me some photographs
- Pete Drinkell told me about a pump out and a missing swing bridge
and sanitary station on the S&SYN
- Philip Dumelow made several suggestions including that I should
explain what the facilities codes mean on maps, that I should make the
wording about first/last days clearer on the options screen and that
the itinerary maps could show good moorings. Some have been done,
others are on the to-do list
- Jane Dunk provided opening times for Tuel Lock
- Philip Duerden for general chat, and linking from the Ownerships
Website as well
- Richard Edwards has sent me lots of photos on the Mon and Brec.
I've added some, and the rest will appear soon. Thanks also to Graham
Johnston, who actually took them
- Andrew Fanner alerted me to the fact that the Medway wasn't joined
onto the Thames. He also sent me some ideas, which chime well with
my own, on how to improve the scheduling
- Stephen Gay for a link to a good website for Stone
- Peter Glasscock suggested allowing "on-the-fly" adjustments to
routes. This will be provided eventually; he also wanted a
stand-alone version.
- Harry Goplerud (of Tampa, Florida) wanted to use Canalplan for the
newly opened Scottish Canals
- Michael Griffin-Sherwood who sent me some photographs
- Malcolm Gray for pointing out the long delays that Stanedge Tunnel
can cause - this lead to the warnings for it and Harecastle etc being
added
- Marie Heaster suggesting that cruising times should appear in
route tables. She also offered to buy me a beer - others take
note.
- Dave Hearmon gave me lots of info on Braunston, that I've finally
got round to beating into shape and adding.
- Steve Herbert suggested that Grindley Brook locks deserved a
warning about potential delays
- Richard Holt sent me some photographs
- Gordon Horner suggested that the "furthest place" feature should
work for one way trips
- Steve & Linda Horton of Brisbane, Australia sent me some photographs
- James Hustler is an enthusiast for intermediate stopping places
(the "scheduler" feature I keep promising to work on!)
- Andrew J Instone-Cowie was one of several who found the first/last
hours boxes confusing. I hope I now have it right
- Phil Irons suggested that popular cruising rings should be
included, and that places off the canals should feature
- Dave Jackson sent me some useful pieces of text about the Pooley
Hall area
- Jezza gave me a heap of interesting info about Bristol
- Ron Jones pointed out that not including swing bridges would upset
calculations on some canals (especially the Leeds and Liverpool). So,
of course, I had to do something about this...
- Alastair Lack engaged me in some interesting and productive
discussions on mapping; the first fruits of which were better autoroute import options
- Dave Larrington suggested that I added the Wash as a seaway
- David Mack pointed out that it would make sense to have different
speeds for lock flights than individual locks
- Simon Marshall suggested I downloaded pictures from his website, which I
have done.
- Andrew Mathieson told me of some extra facilities on the Kennet and Avon
- Penny Mayes for first alerting me to the need for dummy entries
for cities, spotting a bug in the cruising time calculator, and
suggesting a contact email on the main page
- Dave Moore for suggesting some warning notes for the top of the
Llangollen
- Tony Morris sent a great description of Market Drayton
- Martin Nicholas suggested I avoided using absolute font
sizes.
- Alan Oliver sent me three good photos, now included, and has
promised more.
- "PDnsfrd" sent me some useful notes on Gledrid
- Alan Saunders sent me info on Great Bedwyn
- Alan Scott suggested I included headroom information. I may yet
do that at some stage
- Paul Scott suggested that places (Aynho Wharf for example) should
be in primarily as a place, with their bridge or other detail as
secondary information, instead of the other way round.
- Bob and Les Simpson sent me a nice photo of the River Wey
- Derek Stanley sent me a series of photos of the New Bedford
River
- Peter Stockdale suggested that the newly restored Scottish Canals be added
- Paul Stokoe sent me some photographs
- Monica Strawson sent me some photographs
- Robert & Margaret Thompson of Holland Park West, Australia sent me some photographs
- Vincent Thorp for updating my information on Middlewich
- Malcolm Tonkiss provided info on the Fossdyke
- Jeff Veteto provided information on Hopwas
- Robert Vincent who sent me a great picture of Pontcysyllte
Aqueduct
- Mark Williams suggested I added information on opening times for
locks, and also reported a bug or two
- Simon Wood sent me info on a pub, which (something over a year later) I added
- David Wright updated my info on Sawley locks
Those spotting individual bugs
Somebody finds the problem, and someone else understands it.
And I'll go on record as saying that finding it is the bigger
challenge. - Linus Torvalds
Most of these people also took the opportunity of reporting the bug
to say nice things about the program, and so should consider
themselves listed in the next section as well
- Jeff Abrams was one of two who spotted when "improvements" to the
River Thames caused the whole program to fail. Later he pointed out that I was still prohibiting leg times for quickest routes, when this no longer made sense.
- Bob Adams pointed out a problem with the home page
- Ed Aldred told me I'd lost 4 locks from the Hatton Flight, and then added another 4 when I first tried to fix it
- Dave Bates spotted a gazetteer bug where nearby places with a
number of locks in the way broke the software
- Captain Beeky reported DNS problems
- Ginie Bell noticed that the instructions talked about a "Longest
Route" button when there is no such thing. They've been fixed to
refer to "Furthest Place" - which does exist
- Peter Bignell pointed out that sometimes the "there is nowhere to
wind" message left you waiting for a completion that never
arrived
- David Brewer corrected the number of locks at Diglis. He also
found a bug where if one end of a trip was at a lock then the total
time would be different depending which was you calculated it,
although the distance and lock count was the same
- Tina Calvert was confused by the hours, days and start and end hours
- Will Chapman who reported a misspelling and an irreproducable
arithmetic overflow
- Neville Crook found a javascript error on the gazetteer
- Raymond Cross spotted when Braunston tunnel became detached from
the rest of the waterways
- Geoff Doggett found the weighting problem that caused it to take you through too many locks sometimes
- Duncan pointed out that the Star at Stone was labelled the Swan for some odd reason
- Al Duester of Woods Hole, MA reported a bug in the gazetteer - a typo was leading to
an error when calculating sunrise and sunset. He also offered me beer
- the momentum is growing
- Reg Ferguson corrected the spelling of Beswick on the Ashton
Canal
- John Finch told me that the distance from Keadby moorings to the
Vazon bridges was far too long
- Peter Foster found a bug when trying to travel to Froghall
- John Galle who discovered a single, devious, bug that was breaking
map generation and the bug report feature.
- George of nb Alton told me of a couple of errors on the Upper Peak
Forest Canal
- Simon Gray found a bug in the gazetteer javascript
- Chris Hammerton had some problems with GPS export
- Terry Harlow corrected my spelling of Ashton-under-Lyne
- Sarah Haworth pointed out that the Montgomery Canal was
missing
- Melvyn Heath found two bugs in the furthest place generation (one where
places with a distance of 0 were being produced, and the other where Stourport
could appear twice)
- Patrick Hogan pointed out that the Ribble Link needed a warning message
- Richard Holmes pointed out that the quoted time for one-way
furthest place calculations was double what it should be (the places
were the right ones)
- Brian Holt discovered a case when the map plotted didn't match the
route generated
- Geoff Hoot was one of two who found a drastic bug which caused
segmentation faults when using boat sizes
- Derrick Hunt gave me the correct punctuation of Bradford on
Avon
- Angela Jefferies found a gazetteer bug affecting Knowle
- Trevor Jones spotted a still inexplicable segfault in lattitude
calculations
- Clifford Jones, in asking for help, made me realise just how
confusing the options were
- John Kaye found a wobble in the Birmingham and Fazeley
- John Kellett who pointed out that I should be using the
cis-atlantic spelling of "kilometres".
- Len Kempson report a segmentation fault when trying to do furthese
place
- Brian King pointed out that I'd lost one of the Diglis locks
- Freek Labohm sent me a list of data corrections (including
extending Tardebigge by six locks - as though there weren't enough
already), all of which I think I've implemented
- Jenny Lamb noticed I'd missed the movable bridges on the northern
part of the Stratford
- Sharon and Steve Larson reported a broken link
- Peter Lawson reported a bug where huge negative numbers of days
were being produced in particular circumstances. He also pointed out
that you can't find the Montgomery or Llangollen Canal if you don't
know to look under the Shropshire Union (which lead to me adding them
as "aliases"). Then he managed to make the logs segfault
- Randolph Lee found a very subtle bug which can cause the map and
the route table to disagree. Later he sent me several useful updates
for the Llangollen Canal
- Ian Macolm was one of two who found a drastic bug which caused
segmentation faults when using boat sizes
- George Mahoney found a bug where the gazetteer was crashing
- Martin reported when Place Finder was giving an error message, and
when Shortest Route was coming up with silly answers for times for
each leg (something it should never have offered to calculate!)
- David Mayall pointed out that the Huddersfield Narrow Canal had
grown an extra lock in the region of Slaithwaite
- Arthur Naylor found a bug in the place generation that I've been unable to reproduce, and which seems to have gone away
- John Naylor reeported a bug when the placefinder tried to find a
boatyard - I'd moved the file and not told it
- Steve Newcombe reported when an external link broke
- Roger Page told me that Swarkestone was missing the final E
- Bill Perry noticed that two locks on the Bridgwater and Taunton
Canal pointed the wrong way, and that Bridgwater was sometimes spelled
"Bridgewater". Later he reported some faulty javascript
- pete_pluto [at] btopenworld.com informed me when it insisted on
talking you via Trent Falls
- Nigel Phillips spotted that I'd put live a version with a
prototype scheduler on it, that stopped part way through
- John Price gave me correct spellings of Barrow upon Soar and
Uppermill
- Bob Pudney pointed out that the "turn left/right" information wasn't always accurated
- "Rob40v" was one of many to find the Froghall problem
- Ben Ramage had problems with hours-per-day resetting itself
- Alan Saunders found a problem with reading the XML on MS IE5.5.
This is actually an IE wart, but I'm going to find a way round it
some time
- Ian Sawyer found a bug in the index page. He also offered to give some help in redesign of the input screens, which I may well take him up on at some time
- Ted Sedman corrected the spelling of Mytchett and gave me some
extra info about the place
- David Shorto made me aware that the Middle Level dimensions were
far too conservative
- Martin Spiers
told me of a misspelling, and also a gazetteer
bug (one file had got lost in the great rearrangement of May
2002)
- Ed Stewart was one of two who reported when "improvements" to the
River Trent caused the whole program to fail.
- Mike Stone who spotted the turn-round bug at about the same time
as "Prospective boater" (you have a bug in for months, and then two
bug reports come along at once!)
- Graham Thompson pointed out that it is "Broxbourne" vice
"Broxborne"
- Chris Walstow found an erroneous link on the home page
- Martin Weisskopf of St. Gallen, Switzerland who pointed out that the total milage and lock figures were not always the sums of the individual parts
- Stewart West reported a bug in the placefinder and a rare
calculation error
- Bob Wheal pointed out that it is "Tringford", not "Tring Ford" and
"Cheddington" not "Chedington"
- Andy Wigston spotted a bug in the number of locks from Bulbourne
to Marsworth (which, I'm embarrassed to say, it took me 6 months to
fix, in which time no-one else spotted it!).
- Martin Wilson told me I had "Stirchley" misspelt as
"Strichley"
- L Wood found a bug in the place finder
- Jim Yates engaged in a long conversation at the end of which we'd
tracked down more than one bug in distance calculations that had been
there for a very long time indeed
- Someone anonymous pointed out that I had "Crookham" mispelled as
"Crockham"
- "Prospective boater" found a quite longstanding bug to do with
turning round
- BLEASEPMCA [at] aol.com found a bug in multiple use of the placefinder
Those who sent me nice words about the program.
There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and to
encourage a will to learning, as is praise - Roger Ascham
(1515-68)
These people have, at the very least, sent me words of praise and
encouragement. Sometimes they've also had ideas or suggestions, but
haven't made it into the list above, perhaps because someone else thought of the idea
first, or it was something I'd love to do, but don't have the resources for.
Just because they are listed last, doesn't mean that their
contribution is the least. Sometimes, when working on a project like
this you feel that you are working in a vacuum. Many a time an email has
arrived out of the blue telling me how useful the program has been,
and I immediately fire up emacs and start hacking
