randform

Due to the tube strike I learned a lot about London bus, tube and train ticket systems (e.g. like the above oyster card, a 10 pounds recharge card). I am happy that my sister has an insight into the matter because the system is fairly complicated (e.g. for taking a longer trip a day ticket is better). However it is not as crazy as the subway system in Tokyo, where on a longer trip it may happen that one needs to pass several toll points and buy new tickets each time. As I understood this is mainly due to the fact that the lines have seperate owners. The Tokyo subway ticketing system reminded me a bit of the toll policy in Germany in medieval times, where virtually every feudal sovereign put up a toll station (it reminded me actually also of the german current network). And likewise the ticket problem in my last post seems to be at least partially due to national borders.

Despite of new means of communication such as cell phones, videoconferencing etc. you will still have to meet with your potential collaborators/business partners etc. in person. This implies that traffic will increase with growing globalization. So if one wants to reduce carbon output in traffic one of the first things one should think about is how to improve the train system as an alternative to planes. A better website may be a start.

As everybody may have noticed by now there has been a strike in the London Underground. The above news stand may indicate that Londoners were not so happy with it. The strike is adding to general complaints about the overall bad shape of the system and of the service provided by private companies. It reminds me of current thoughts to privatize the german railways called Die Bahn. And in fact in view that a train ticket to London costs about 500 Euros which is about five times the price of a plane ticket and the fact that you are not even able to find this price online (not to talk about online booking…), I rather do not want to think what happenes if the Bahn would have several new owners.

Due to the strike we were making trips into the vicinity, which were reachable by bus or just strolled around.

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For a change: A very 2D input device. I liked the idea and design of this selfmade multitouch pad. Some more explanations on how it is realized can be found in the blog comments if you follow the link. (via digg / spreeblick youtube direct)

Today’s post is about one of the rare examples where probably an artist made a discovery before the scientist did.

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This post is a follow up post to some posts (1,2,3) relating to the question of simulation. It is concerned with the question of how “real” a simulation can “feel”.
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Since I keep reporting from our bike trip, I thought it may be useful to report about the route itself.

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Recently there was the question coming up wether Peter Gabriels jacket in this video is generating a random light array or wether it displays some pattern, which may be only seen with a shutter of a certain frequency (a temporal stencil so to say). I don’t think so. Does anyone know?

My class mate needs again to publish a short story for her creative writing class. This time the assignment was to write an easy readable detective story which includes a decent amount of product placement. (in german)

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An impressive juggling in a cone video
by Greg Kennedy of innovativejuggler.com