Future bike

July 21, 2011 — Si

I love the Tube.  I love the fact that it’s always warm, dry and, if there’s not one waiting to leave right now, another will be along in just a couple of minutes.  It’s both futuristic in its automation and quirkily old-fashioned in decor.  Teleportation implemented by victorians.

But… I’ve been a cycle-commuter all my life, from the relentless hills of Brighton to the flatness of Cambridge.  I’ve relied on my bike as much as I’ve abused it – although the relationship has been improving the last couple of years.  It’s probably my only consistent form of exercise (I tried running but the scenery changes too slowly and is horribly jerky in any case).  Boris bikes are great for smoothly slicing minutes off a hop across central London but I have to go at least 3km north before I could pick one up in the morning and they favour comfort and stability over speed and agility.

So, having brought my bike down, I did feel I ought to try it sometime and yesterday morning — on a whim — I did.  Egging me on was the cycle superhighway CS7 and the hardcore CycleStreets app which claimed I could beat the less whimsical sliding doors version of me in the parallel universe who was minding the gap and trying not to stare.

For bonus geek points, I recorded the routes with the excellent My Tracks app, uploaded to Google Maps so you can check out out my derisory stats.  In my defense, I did get caught up with various landmarks on the way in and a torrential downpour on the way back.  I’m still looking for a reliable mobile weather app.

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Geeky London Beers

March 9, 2011 — Si

A nice routine I’ve adopted in the last month or so is to hook up with a couple of like-minded souls every week or two and sample a pub where the history has stained the timbers and talk a particular dialect of computing nerdish.

In Ye Old Cheshire Cheese where Dickens found inspiration, we recall our own childhood influences: Bertha, Button Moon and Chock-A-Block, GOTO statements and the sound of tape loading that was as familiar as bird song.

From the pub where Pepys watched London burn in 1666 we leapfrog impatiently into the present to hook up on Last.fm and Latitude. The Shard emerges like a crystalline volcano behind us meanwhile.

The historical scribblers above could not have begun to imagine. They may have fitted into each other’s world – a mere couple of centuries apart – with some adjustment but history has since compressed. The future is not evenly distributed, even amongst the tightest generation. This is why this time and place crackles with possibliites.

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