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Underground
Aug. 9th, 2006 09:36 pmI was in London at the weekend and had a fabulous time, but was a little put out by the London Underground closing down bits for track work on Sunday.
I have no problem with the works taking place. I know they have to be done, and some weekend disruption is inevitable.
My issue is with the lack of information. I remember a couple of years ago there would be posters in the ticket hall of every tube station telling you of any disruptions on the system. They were hand written affairs, often on whiteboards, but they were simple, easy to keep up to date, and they worked. I was in the ticket halls of Uxbridge, Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, Picidilly Circus and Totenham Court Road, and I did not see any poster detailing the line closures. Maybe I wasn't looking for them, but I would think they should be prominant enough that I might notice them and check whether I needed to alter my journey plans.
In King's Cross, a woman asked me why all the trains were for Edgeware. She wanted to go somewhere on the High Barnett branch. I suggested she go to Camden Town where the two middle branches meet so she would have a greater selection of trans. It was only when I got there I found out that the High Barnet branch wasn't running. This wasn't too bad as the replacement bus service was running from Camden.
What really irritated me was learning that the section of the DLR out of Bank wasn't running. I didn't find out until I'd walked all the way through Bank to get to the closed DLR enterance. If there had even been announcements in the station, I could have found an alternative route without such a long walk. Better still would have been to read it on a poster at the station enterance before starting my journey (at any of the several stations I entered), so I could have planned a route that didn't take me to Bank at all.
I could have taken the replacement bus service from Monument, but I decided to head for the Jubilee line instead, changing to the DLR at Canning Town. Fortunately, I had allowed plenty of time to check in. From the way some people ran when the train reached the City Airport station, I assume they were cutting it fine for their flight. I hope they made it.
I have no problem with the works taking place. I know they have to be done, and some weekend disruption is inevitable.
My issue is with the lack of information. I remember a couple of years ago there would be posters in the ticket hall of every tube station telling you of any disruptions on the system. They were hand written affairs, often on whiteboards, but they were simple, easy to keep up to date, and they worked. I was in the ticket halls of Uxbridge, Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, Picidilly Circus and Totenham Court Road, and I did not see any poster detailing the line closures. Maybe I wasn't looking for them, but I would think they should be prominant enough that I might notice them and check whether I needed to alter my journey plans.
In King's Cross, a woman asked me why all the trains were for Edgeware. She wanted to go somewhere on the High Barnett branch. I suggested she go to Camden Town where the two middle branches meet so she would have a greater selection of trans. It was only when I got there I found out that the High Barnet branch wasn't running. This wasn't too bad as the replacement bus service was running from Camden.
What really irritated me was learning that the section of the DLR out of Bank wasn't running. I didn't find out until I'd walked all the way through Bank to get to the closed DLR enterance. If there had even been announcements in the station, I could have found an alternative route without such a long walk. Better still would have been to read it on a poster at the station enterance before starting my journey (at any of the several stations I entered), so I could have planned a route that didn't take me to Bank at all.
I could have taken the replacement bus service from Monument, but I decided to head for the Jubilee line instead, changing to the DLR at Canning Town. Fortunately, I had allowed plenty of time to check in. From the way some people ran when the train reached the City Airport station, I assume they were cutting it fine for their flight. I hope they made it.
What will I type on?
Aug. 3rd, 2006 12:19 amMy poor Psion is very sick, and has been getting progressively worse the last few weeks.
There's a nasty crack down the middle of the screen, which I suspect is the cause of some of the other problems. My own fault for being too rough with it. At first it didn't seem to affect it much, but the touch screen has gradually got less and less responsive, and the row of icons belos the screen barely work now, making it very tricky to switch applications.
It's also started showing horizontal lines across the screen, which usually means a problem with the flexi cable between the screen and the keyboard. If I open it very gently, it will usually be okay, but flexi cable problems usually get worse as the damage to the cable spreads.
At the moment, it's just about usable, but I expect that it might not stay that way for long. Fortunately you can pick them up cheap on eBay. I'm a bit broke at the moment, so I really ought to wait until I'm a bit more cash flush. Fortunately, my Dad hardly uses the one I got for him last year, so I'm sure he won't mind lending it to me for a while.
If there was something more modern that does everything a Psion does and has a decent built in keyboard, I would happily buy one. However, I've yet to Psions are available on eBay, that's what I'll be using.
There's a nasty crack down the middle of the screen, which I suspect is the cause of some of the other problems. My own fault for being too rough with it. At first it didn't seem to affect it much, but the touch screen has gradually got less and less responsive, and the row of icons belos the screen barely work now, making it very tricky to switch applications.
It's also started showing horizontal lines across the screen, which usually means a problem with the flexi cable between the screen and the keyboard. If I open it very gently, it will usually be okay, but flexi cable problems usually get worse as the damage to the cable spreads.
At the moment, it's just about usable, but I expect that it might not stay that way for long. Fortunately you can pick them up cheap on eBay. I'm a bit broke at the moment, so I really ought to wait until I'm a bit more cash flush. Fortunately, my Dad hardly uses the one I got for him last year, so I'm sure he won't mind lending it to me for a while.
If there was something more modern that does everything a Psion does and has a decent built in keyboard, I would happily buy one. However, I've yet to Psions are available on eBay, that's what I'll be using.
Daleks are afoot
Jul. 27th, 2006 02:20 pm
P7240046
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
The Prague Metro is clearly an example of Dalek engineering.
Greetings From Prague
Jul. 26th, 2006 07:51 pm
AngieInPrague.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
Greetings from prague. Angie and i are here because she has had a tummy tuck operation. The op went very well and she got out of hospital today. We ventured out for some food and had Bohemian goulash. Hope to see a bit more of this splendid city over the next few days.
Can't think of the name of a program...
Jul. 18th, 2006 11:24 pmI used to have a program that would record whatever was playing on the sound card to a WAV file that could then be compressed to an MP3. Can anyone suggest a freeware program that does this? If it can save it directly as MP3, that would be a bonus. If it's open source, better still.
Thanks in advance!
Thanks in advance!
BoatRace1.jpg
Jul. 14th, 2006 01:35 pm
BoatRace1.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
There's some kind of yacht race on the Liffey today. Looks fun.
BoatRace2.jpg
Jul. 14th, 2006 01:35 pm
BoatRace2.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
There's some kind of yacht race on the Liffey today. Looks fun.
Thanks for the Memory
Jul. 10th, 2006 11:58 pmAccording to this BBC story, a new magnetic memory chip could revolutionise the way we store data. It uses a magnetic charge to keep data reliably, even when the computer is powered down.
So what? I hear you say. We've had Flash memory for years, so what's new here?
Well, Flash has two problems. It is relatively slow, and it can only be rewritten a finite number of times. As a result, it has never really challenged the humble hard disk for long term high capacity storage
MRAM, as it is called, gets around both of these problems, so it could represent a viable alternative to the hard disk.
Now I've been predicting that solid-state device would replace hard disks since my late teens. However, I have never ceased to be amazed by the inginuity of hard drive designers. Although they still work on much the same principles as the first units IBM built over 50 years ago, they are a fraction of the size and cost, yet store thousands of times more, and are far faster and more reliable.
And given the current chips store half a megabyte (by an amusing coincidence, the same amount as the first IBM drives). So I don't think the hard disk has anything to worry about just yet.
Of course, if you had enough money, you could p[robably string a few thousand of these together to make a usable solid state drive, and it probably wouldn't cost you too much more than the original IBM drive.
The current chips will be very useful in mobile devices, but we really need to scale capacity into the Gigabytes range before it's likely to make an impact into PCs. Then, loading the OS and essential files onto one to save time. This could prove useful for installing the OS on for faster booting.
People won't abandon their hard drives for devices which store less and cost an armand a leg. But the writing is on the wall for the hard drive, and the writing says "your days are numbered!"
So what? I hear you say. We've had Flash memory for years, so what's new here?
Well, Flash has two problems. It is relatively slow, and it can only be rewritten a finite number of times. As a result, it has never really challenged the humble hard disk for long term high capacity storage
MRAM, as it is called, gets around both of these problems, so it could represent a viable alternative to the hard disk.
Now I've been predicting that solid-state device would replace hard disks since my late teens. However, I have never ceased to be amazed by the inginuity of hard drive designers. Although they still work on much the same principles as the first units IBM built over 50 years ago, they are a fraction of the size and cost, yet store thousands of times more, and are far faster and more reliable.
And given the current chips store half a megabyte (by an amusing coincidence, the same amount as the first IBM drives). So I don't think the hard disk has anything to worry about just yet.
Of course, if you had enough money, you could p[robably string a few thousand of these together to make a usable solid state drive, and it probably wouldn't cost you too much more than the original IBM drive.
The current chips will be very useful in mobile devices, but we really need to scale capacity into the Gigabytes range before it's likely to make an impact into PCs. Then, loading the OS and essential files onto one to save time. This could prove useful for installing the OS on for faster booting.
People won't abandon their hard drives for devices which store less and cost an armand a leg. But the writing is on the wall for the hard drive, and the writing says "your days are numbered!"
Bird Poop in Space
Jul. 6th, 2006 02:21 pmAccording to this report, bird droppings on the protective tiles have survived the shuttle Discovery's trip into space. The droppings were first spotted about three weeks ago and have since survived thunderstorms and the stresses of the orbiter launch. It is expected to burn off during reentry.
Perhaps this could provide a simple solution to the problem of the shuttle's protective tiles being hit by foam from the external tank: spray the entire underbody with a protective coating bird poop before launch...
Perhaps this could provide a simple solution to the problem of the shuttle's protective tiles being hit by foam from the external tank: spray the entire underbody with a protective coating bird poop before launch...
Jack and I went to the Natral History Museum in Dublin today. We tried posting an entry through Flickr with phone photos, but it didn't quite work out. The only way I can attach more than one image to an MMS message is to create a slide for each image, so I created slides and wrote text for each photo and sent them to Flickr, which in turn sent them to LJ.
What I would really like to happen is for Flickr to put the photos into my photostream, with the text from each slide as the comment for the photo on that slide, and then create a single LJ entry containing all the photos with the captions under each of them. I was prepared for the possibility that that might be too much to expect, and I'd get a seperate LJ entry for each photo, which would also be okay.
What actually happened fell a little short of that. Although the photos were added to Flickr, for some reason the last one was dropped. However, the text from the last slide became the caption for all of them, which was a shame, because the text from that slide didn't make much sense on its own. So, if I try this again, I'll know to put all the photos on slides on their own, then add an extra slide with all the text. And while I'm at it, I'll send the clever people at Flickr a suggestion and maybe they'll make the MMS processing a bit cleverer.
Anyway...
Jack and I went to the Natral History Museum in Dublin today. The museum is located in an imposing stone building on Merrion Square, next to governent buildings, and is one of the oldest purpose built natrual history museums in the world.
It really is a museum in the old style. The animals on display are interesting, but in a way its even more fascinating to wander through the museum as an example of how such institutions used to be build - and how wildlife "collectors" used to roam the wilderness seeking "beasts" to shoot and ship home and stuff and display for the subjects of the Empire.
Jack has been many times and hurtles through the museum, making sure to see everything at breakneck speed.
The museum is spread over four levels, with many exhibits spanning floors, making great use of space. Some day I'd like to get down to the basement (I'm sure there must be one) to see what else is hidden away there.
Jack said he liked the snakes, lizards and crocodiles best.
Especially the crocodiles!
They had some Archioptrix fossils on dieplay. They weren't there the last time I visited the museum, so things do change. I suspect they were replicas, but I can't be sure because because the only label read "display under construction". Change happens very slowly at the Natural History Museum.
One of the most impressive displays had to be the pair of whale skeletons hanging from the cieling.
All in all, the museum is well worth a visit if you find yourself in dublin. Make sure you check opening times here as they have a habit of closing just when you least expect it.
What I would really like to happen is for Flickr to put the photos into my photostream, with the text from each slide as the comment for the photo on that slide, and then create a single LJ entry containing all the photos with the captions under each of them. I was prepared for the possibility that that might be too much to expect, and I'd get a seperate LJ entry for each photo, which would also be okay.
What actually happened fell a little short of that. Although the photos were added to Flickr, for some reason the last one was dropped. However, the text from the last slide became the caption for all of them, which was a shame, because the text from that slide didn't make much sense on its own. So, if I try this again, I'll know to put all the photos on slides on their own, then add an extra slide with all the text. And while I'm at it, I'll send the clever people at Flickr a suggestion and maybe they'll make the MMS processing a bit cleverer.
Anyway...
Jack and I went to the Natral History Museum in Dublin today. The museum is located in an imposing stone building on Merrion Square, next to governent buildings, and is one of the oldest purpose built natrual history museums in the world.
It really is a museum in the old style. The animals on display are interesting, but in a way its even more fascinating to wander through the museum as an example of how such institutions used to be build - and how wildlife "collectors" used to roam the wilderness seeking "beasts" to shoot and ship home and stuff and display for the subjects of the Empire.
Jack has been many times and hurtles through the museum, making sure to see everything at breakneck speed.
The museum is spread over four levels, with many exhibits spanning floors, making great use of space. Some day I'd like to get down to the basement (I'm sure there must be one) to see what else is hidden away there.
Jack said he liked the snakes, lizards and crocodiles best.
Especially the crocodiles!
They had some Archioptrix fossils on dieplay. They weren't there the last time I visited the museum, so things do change. I suspect they were replicas, but I can't be sure because because the only label read "display under construction". Change happens very slowly at the Natural History Museum.
One of the most impressive displays had to be the pair of whale skeletons hanging from the cieling.
All in all, the museum is well worth a visit if you find yourself in dublin. Make sure you check opening times here as they have a habit of closing just when you least expect it.
I can't wait for these...
Jun. 22nd, 2006 11:41 amSony are planning to introduce robotic stores (that's vending machines to you and me):
Personally, I'm all for these. How often have we gone into an electronics store, know what we're looking for, having already compared alternatives online, only to have some twit of a sales rep start regurgitating the dumbed-down explanation of how it works that he's clearly misunderstood and has has no idea of what he's really talking about.
And then there's those crazy impulse buys. We're geeks. We see something cool We want it. We can't help ourselves. The sales guy is useless, so whe we ask "is this compatible with X?" we get a blank stare. All we really need to see is the product specification, but the guy looks like he's a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. But we have to have it, so we take a chance. We should know better because we've been burned before, but we hope tat this time might be different. We get it home, take it out of the box, and we find it has a non-standard connector, so we need to trek back to get the right adapter cable.
How much easier it will be to see our cool gadgets through the glass of a vending machine (sorry, robotic sales assistant), select an item and see all the product specs on an LCD screen, see what adapter cable we need (and will hopefully be hanging on the rack next to our gadget), insert our credit card and bingo, the gadget is ours!
Just like shopping online, but without having to wait for the product to be delivered.Initially there will be seven of them in the US, but eventually they should find their way over here. Personally, I think they're a great idea, and I can hardly wait.
Of course, I'm probably setting myself up for a big let-down.
Personally, I'm all for these. How often have we gone into an electronics store, know what we're looking for, having already compared alternatives online, only to have some twit of a sales rep start regurgitating the dumbed-down explanation of how it works that he's clearly misunderstood and has has no idea of what he's really talking about.
And then there's those crazy impulse buys. We're geeks. We see something cool We want it. We can't help ourselves. The sales guy is useless, so whe we ask "is this compatible with X?" we get a blank stare. All we really need to see is the product specification, but the guy looks like he's a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car. But we have to have it, so we take a chance. We should know better because we've been burned before, but we hope tat this time might be different. We get it home, take it out of the box, and we find it has a non-standard connector, so we need to trek back to get the right adapter cable.
How much easier it will be to see our cool gadgets through the glass of a vending machine (sorry, robotic sales assistant), select an item and see all the product specs on an LCD screen, see what adapter cable we need (and will hopefully be hanging on the rack next to our gadget), insert our credit card and bingo, the gadget is ours!
Just like shopping online, but without having to wait for the product to be delivered.Initially there will be seven of them in the US, but eventually they should find their way over here. Personally, I think they're a great idea, and I can hardly wait.
Of course, I'm probably setting myself up for a big let-down.
GeorgesDockAlgae.jpg
Jun. 13th, 2006 09:08 am
GeorgesDockAlgae.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
This is george's dock in the ifsc, dublin. I think they have an algae problem.
DartAtPearse.jpg
Jun. 9th, 2006 06:10 pm
DartAtPearse.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
"We are sorry to announce that the 17.50 service to Dundalk is delayed by approximately six minutes due to... Us being Muppets." Okay so that wasn't what the announcement really said, but it said that in my head. I know it's only six minutes, but it's the way they get your hopes up by reporting the train as on time until the last second, them wait until a train is approaching the platform to tell you its out of service. Gah!
Glad i got that off my chest!
By the photo has no particular relevance to this post, but i thought as i was sending a Mms message i might as well quick a photo on it.
The Beast Awakes!
Jun. 4th, 2006 03:45 amRight then. Just coming down from another Doctor Who high. So I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts that I'll probably completly change my mind about when I've seen it again.
( Better stick it behind here in case I spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet... )
( Better stick it behind here in case I spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet... )
Cool Lego!
Jun. 1st, 2006 10:41 pmI just gotta get one of these:
Shame it's not in two halfs so the bricks would have hollowed out bottoms and you could stack them like normal Lego.
Available from the Lego website.
Shame it's not in two halfs so the bricks would have hollowed out bottoms and you could stack them like normal Lego.
Available from the Lego website.
