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Leeds Tube map updated

Feb 24th, 2013
by Rich.
1 comment

My Leeds Tube map was an unexpected hit on Twitter, and I even ended up being in the Yorkshire Evening Post!

I also received some feedback from people who would like to see my fantasy tube support more of the population centres in Leeds. Some of the feedback was very constructive so I’ve taken the time to update it with two new lines, the East Circle, connecting settlements in East Leeds, and the West Line that connects Armley and Bramley with the rail network.

Leeds Tube map updated

Click to view a larger version on Flickr.

I also updated the Google Map to show the real1 locations of these stations.


View Leeds Tube in a larger map

As before, this is released under an attribution-noncommercial licence, so feel free to print it out or use it yourself for things as long as you credit me and don’t make any money from it. And the SVG source is available too.

If you have any comments on the update, leave them below or on Twitter!

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  1. Well, as real as they’ll ever be. [↩]

Posted in: Leeds.
Tagged: · · ·

Leeds Tube map

Jan 31st, 2013
by Rich.
18 comments

Hello visitors! See this update!

Leeds is an amazing city: my favourite place I’ve ever lived. But one thing it does really badly is public transport. We have one massive railway station in the centre of town and then (with a few exceptions) the rest of the city is accessible by unreliable, expensive and unpleasant First buses.

As I have got to know the city better, one thing has kept coming back to me: wouldn’t it be amazing if Leeds had a metro system? So I imagined an alternate reality where the city I love has an amazing and reliable underground railway called Leeds Tube.

Leeds Tube Map

Click to view a larger version on Flickr.

Leeds Tube has several lines that connect the major population centres and attractions, including the Meanwood Line which connects the various settlements in North Leeds that have a very close relationship with one another and the Leeds-Bradford Line that connects the airport with Shipley for onward rail connections to Bradford and its suburbs.

I drew a fancy tube map1 (above) and I also plotted roughly where I think the stations would be on a Google Map (below):


View Leeds Tube in a larger map

How would your life be changed if Leeds had a Tube? What journeys would it help you with? Would you put the stations or lines somewhere else if you were designing it? Let me know in the comments!

Edit: Following some feedback on Twitter, I’ve made a couple of changes to the Beeston area, which I’d been thinking about before but didn’t make, for some reason.

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  1. I’ve released the tube map under an attribution-noncommercial licence, so feel free to print it out or use it yourself for things as long as you credit me and don’t make any money from it. If you’re interested, the SVG source is available too. [↩]

Posted in: Leeds.
Tagged: · · ·

Leeds Beer Quest

Nov 27th, 2012
by Rich.
No comments yet

Regular readers of my blog (if such a thing exists) will notice it’s gone quiet here recently.

I’ve not vanished, but I do have another project to keep me occupied!

Emily and I are on a Leeds Beer Quest! We’re on a mission to visit every single pub and bar in Leeds city centre and review them. We’ve done 36 so far, which sounds like a lot, but we’ve got at least 140 to do!

Check us out over there, especially if you live in Leeds and you’re looking for some ideas about new places to go out (or places to avoid). The address is pretty memorable: http://leedsbeer.info/

I’ve also not given up my commitments to Twitter and Flickr, and you can find me on those sites by following the links to the right hand side.

I do have loads of ideas for writing on this blog too, so you never know… another entry might appear in the next few weeks!

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Posted in: Leeds.
Tagged: · ·

Success stories reported as failure

Jul 30th, 2012
by Rich.
2 comments

Something I often see happening in the media is the reporting of success stories as failures.

The scenario is this:

  1. Something unfortunate and unpredictable happens.
  2. The authorities / people responsible clean up the mess and few-to-no parties are harmed, physically or financially.
  3. This major success is reported by the news as a failure.

Today’s story about the keys at Wembley going missing was a great example of this phenomenon. Something very unfortunate happened – a set of keys went missing at a major Olympic venue. But here’s the thing: this fact was discovered instantly, and security protocol was initiated which resulted in all the locks being changed before there was any chance of security being compromised. This proves the security systems are working! A failure would be that the loss wasn’t noticed until it was way too late to know if anyone had got in. And yet the media reports this with headlines like “Wembley keys loss embarrasses police”. Why not “Wembley keys loss demonstrates police efficiency”?

It happened last year with the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Safety systems at a nuclear power plant failed, and a number of meltdowns occurred. But due to the huge number of safety measures, no one died and only 2 people suffered radiation-related injuries. This was a huge success story – something went massively wrong with an incredibly dangerous piece of equipment and no one died.

I think it’s the public’s ability to remember and latch onto the bad things and not to celebrate the good ones, and the media doesn’t help with this.

Think of the Manchester bomb in 1996. People remember there was a terrorist attack that wiped out a large part of the city centre. What they don’t remember is the amazing effort by the emergency services that resulted in not a single life claimed.

And how about the Y2K bug? The number of times I hear people say “well that was a big fuss over nothing, wasn’t it?” No! It was a potential major international disaster that was completely averted by thousands of engineers tirelessly working to fix all the broken code before it became an issue. But of course “Y2K bug fixed; no one hurt” is not a great front page headline.

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Posted in: Cultural, Psychology.
Tagged: · · · ·

Lords Reform: Time for a Senate of the modern age?

Jul 16th, 2012
by Rich.
4 comments

The House of Lords is a bag of balls. We know this – you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone other than a foaming traditionalist who believes that having almost two-thirds of our country’s lawmakers being appointed, rather than elected, is a good idea.

The recent news about the latest bill for Lords Reform  — the latest in a line of small-scale tweaks — is the most exciting yet because it promises a large proportion of the seats to be democratically elected.

But do we need another set of politicians elected the same way as the Commons? Will the public even understand why they’re voting for two different representatives? Will they care? It’s hard enough to get people to turn out for elections when they’re only voting for one.

In many countries such as the USA and Ireland, the Upper House is called the Senate. This name comes from the Latin senex, which translates into English as elder. In modern usage, an elder is someone who has acquired deep knowledge of a subject or community, perhaps due to age (the historical definition) or perhaps just due to extraordinary experience.

The primary purpose of the Upper House in most bicameral systems, including the UK, is to apply specialist knowledge to bills and policy debated in the Lower House. Indeed, many of the Lords are specifically appointed because of their knowledge of law, religion or (to a lesser extent) subjects like science and history. (Many of them are currently not, also.)

We are a complicated mixed bag of a country, and a lot of the things that really matter in this modern world, like technology1, disability and immigration are not represented adequately in our Parliament. Reform is an opportunity to address this!

And here is how we could distinguish the Commons from the Lords in a fully democratized Parliament: representatives in the Lords should only be elected by the people they represent. For example, you could have Healthcare Lords who are elected only by healthcare professionals, Disability Lords who are only elected by disabled people, Immigration Lords who are only elected by immigrants, and so forth.

This isn’t de-voicing the rest of the populace on those issues — the Commons are still elected the same way, and they’re the ones who make the laws — it’s just delivering the power to slow bills and the power to suggest amendments into the hands of the people they affect hardest. One wouldn’t have to be disabled to be a Disability Lord, but one would have to be elected by disabled people.

Obviously, this would be a nightmare to implement (how do you decide if someone is Caribbean enough to vote for the Caribbean Lord or disabled enough to vote for the Disability Lord?) but it’s an interesting thought experiment.

What subjects or communities would you want to be represented by their own Lords?

Here are some thoughts I’ve had:

  • Immigration Lords
  • Disability Lords
  • Women’s Lords (a post that will hopefully one day be unnecessary, but right now women are still a marginalized group in politics)
  • LGBT Lords
  • Unemployment/low-income Lords
  • Family Lords
  • Lords of specific “British International” subcultures:
    • Caribbean Lords
    • Chinese Lords
    • Indian Lords
    • etc.
  • Lords of specific religious communities (we have some already):
    • Christian Lords
    • Muslim Lords
    • Sikh Lords
    • etc.
  • Lords of specific industries:
    • Science Lords
    • Healthcare Lords
    • Technology Lords
    • Education Lords
    • Environment Lords
    • Economy Lords
    • etc.
  • Media Lords
  • Sports Lords
  • Military Lords (dare we?)
  • Political Lords (elected by MPs and Councillors? Is that crazy?)
  • Law Lords (we have these already, but these would be elected ones)
  • What else?
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  1. Does anyone in the industry think an opt-in porn block for ISPs is a sensible or ethical idea? [↩]

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · · ·

Thought for the day: Andy Murray

Jul 9th, 2012
by Rich.
2 comments

I don’t normally write about sport (or indeed, anything, these days) but I thought this was worth a moment.

The BBC is reporting today that Andy Murray’s defeat in the Wimbledon final was his “biggest disappointment yet” because he played better than ever before. And I have no doubt he feels that way.

That’s our culture that does that, not logic or common sense: the better you do and the harder you work, the bigger a disappointment it is when you fail.

Why? Is this a good thing?

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Posted in: Cultural, Psychology.
Tagged: · ·

Karaoke for snobs

Feb 28th, 2012
by Rich.
2 comments

Those of you who know me well enough will know I’m a bit of a karaoke fiend. Stick me in a room with beer and some friends and a load of backing tracks and it will be very hard to get me to put down the microphone.

The trouble is: my musical tastes and karaoke don’t strongly intersect.

A karaoke playlist will always have a bit of Radiohead, REM, Kings of Leon… if I’m lucky I’ll find some other moderately popular artists like Mumford & Sons or the Manic Street Preachers. Sometimes there’s an absolute gem like Alabama 3 or Guillemots but this is really pushing it.

What we need is a karaoke bar for snobs. A place where Kylie and Girls Aloud are banned and the playlist oozes with quality songs that really test a singer’s vocal ability.

How amazing would it be to go to a karaoke bar and see more Jeff Buckley, or Antony and the Johnsons, or Kate Bush on the playlist? To be able to choose Super Furry Animals, The National or My Morning Jacket… and to be amongst a crowd of people who appreciate these songs?

What do you think? Who’s with me? Am I nuts??

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Posted in: Cultural, Music.
Tagged: · ·

XKCD progress indicator

Feb 15th, 2012
by Rich.
No comments yet

You all read today’s xkcd and wanted to incorporate this formula into your programs straight away.

Here’s my Ruby implementation, if you would like a quick fix:

require 'date'

class XkcdDate

  # Progress indicator formatted as a date, as in http://xkcd.com/1017/
  def self.progress(amount, total)
    percent = (amount.to_f / total.to_f)
    years = Math::E ** (20.3444 * percent ** 3 + 3) - Math::E ** 3
    Date.today - (years * 365.25)
  end

end

It takes two arguments (amount and total, used to form the ratio) and returns a Ruby Date object, which you can format any way you like.

And examples of its uses, as in the comic:

>> [7.308, 31.12, 47.91, 70.33, 90.42, 100].each {|p| puts "#{p}: #{XkcdDate.progress(p, 100)}"}
7.308: 2011-12-18
31.12: 1995-02-15
47.91: 1844-01-17
70.33: -21765-11-11
90.42: -68315229-02-11
100: -13751308941-03-30
=> [7.308, 31.12, 47.91, 70.33, 90.42, 100]

For those implementing it in other languages, when Randall says “percentage” he actually means “ratio”.

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Posted in: Software.
Tagged: · · · ·

One of my new year’s resolutions

Jan 26th, 2012
by Rich.
No comments yet

Was to post an insightful and interesting article on my blog at least once a week.

Well, I kept that, then…

Normal service will resume when I have even one spare moment to devote to this outlet!

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Posted in: Uncategorized.

Music of 2011

Dec 30th, 2011
by Rich.
No comments yet

As we come to the end of another year, it’s time to look at the best music released in the last twelve months.

I think it’s been a pretty good year, overall. I’ve bought 14 new albums released in 2011 and attended 9 live events, and none of them were particularly disappointing. I’m not going to try to review them all, but here are my top five albums of 2011…

#1 – My Morning Jacket, “Circuital”

© 2011 Rough Trade

My Morning Jacket are a band I’ve been following at a moderate distance for some time. Their breakthrough success Z and 2008′s Evil Urges were already among my favourite albums ever so I was very excited about this year’s release. Turns out it surpassed all my expectations and earns its place at the top of my list this year.

Circuital is a very diverse, but very consistent, record. The building repetitive power of Victory Dance leads into MMJ’s best song to date, the wonderful 7-minute Circuital, and then through many musical styles telling the story of letting go in various ways, including the brilliantly tongue-in-cheek Holdin’ On to Black Metal.

I also got the chance to see the Jacket live this year for the first time, and their set was a real crowd-pleaser: almost no hits left out.

If you’ve not heard Circuital yet, be sure to get yourself a free copy of the awesome title track by signing up for the MMJ mailing list at their web site.

#2 – Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues”

© 2011 Bella Union

I reviewed this album for this blog back in May, and it continues to be one of my absolute favourites of this year. I got to see them perform to a sold-out Leeds Academy in December and they sound just as amazing live as they do on the record.

The Shrine/An Argument was the standout track from the beginning but it just gets better and better on every listen. I’m sure this album will still be spinning on my playlist in ten years’ time.

#3 – The Decemberists, “The King Is Dead”

© 2011 Rough Trade

My top three this year are all by bands I got to see live for the first time in 2011, but I’m quite certain that’s just a coincidence.

The latest offering by The Decemberists is a return to their Americana-influenced pop after their epic and dramatic previous two albums (including The Hazards of Love, one of my all-time favourites by anyone). The songs are catchy, humorous and – most importantly – of the highest quality. Lead single Down by the Water isn’t just influenced by 80s REM, it actually features REM guitarist Peter Buck!

Extra special mention here goes to Calamity Song: the cheeriest song about the end of the world I’ve ever heard…

#4 – Radiohead, “The King of Limbs”

© 2011 Radiohead

The ever-brilliant Radiohead can’t release an album any year and escape my top 5.

This year’s The King of Limbs was a surprise release from nowhere. It’s only a very short album (under 40 minutes) but it manages to pack in a tight and well concocted sound that shows Radiohead have no plans to jack it in any time soon.

Best track by far is the time-signature-messing Codex, which sounds like an answer to Amnesiac‘s standout track Pyramid Song.

And also, let’s not forget the new video to Lotus Flower gave rise to a whole series of Thom Yorke dancing mashups, including these 31 seconds of genius.

#5 – Kate Bush, “50 Words for Snow”

© 2011 Fish People

I’ve only owned this album for 5 days and it’s already made its way into my top five. This is the second album for Kate Bush this year (Director’s Cut is reviewed elsewhere on this blog) after a six-year absence and it is typically beautifully crafted.

On 50 Words, Kate strips the music almost down to just her voice and piano, and drums by session legend Steve Gadd, with the usual stellar cast mostly lending their voices – guest vocals are provided by Elton John, Stephen Fry and Kate’s son Albert amongst others – and every track has a wintery theme. Like many of her albums, it plays more as a single long track than as a series of songs.

Kate’s more mature voice is less shrill than people who know her earlier albums might expect, and for once she has produced an album that is both artistically brilliant and also suitable to have on in the background at a party. Preferably with a winter theme.

 

This brief summary hasn’t given me chance to talk about the brilliant new albums by Guillemots, Gruff Rhys, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Bright Eyes and more, but there’s only room for five in a top five!

What are your favourite albums of 2011?

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Posted in: Music.
Tagged: · · ·

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