back from Lyon

More cathedral than train station?

I’m just back from a short trip to Lyon, attending the kick-off meeting of our new EU research project, EvoEvo (“Evolution of Evolution”), selected for the FET Proactive “Evolving Living Technologies” call.  It was an excellent meeting, promising lots of interesting and exciting research over the next three years.  Our task at York is to develop a novel bio-inspired algorithm for tackling open-ended problems, based on the biological experiments and computational modelling being done by the other partners.  It’s going to be great fun.

It was my first trip to Lyon.  A 90 minute EasyJet flight from Stansted arrived at Terminal 3 in Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport, which is a sort of temporary high tech cowshed with metal walls and a plastic roof.

blue sky!

Sights architectural improved rapidly at the adjacent railway station, with its gorgeous swooping roof.  From there is was a 30 minute shuttle-tram ride into Lyon itself, then a shorter tram ride to the hotel.

… amoeba-table

amoeba basin …

The hotel itself, although perfectly comfortable and fine, had clearly embraced some form of crazed design concept. The first clue there was something different about the place was its stealth lifts, entrances cunningly camouflaged with a garish mural.  Then there was the the shape and colour of the hand basin in the en suite, manifesting as some sort of fluorescent green amoeboid entity.  This was clearly deliberate, as its colour and shape were mirrored by the small table in the room proper.

I never actually
tried sitting on this

looks like steel;
feels like lino

The decor continued in a sort of industrial-chic flavour, with a tin chair, and faux riveted brushed steel flooring (actually a very pleasant-feeling warm lino).

This being France, the food was, of course, excellent.  Even a mere sandwich from an airport cafe on the return trip was delicious.  On the Monday we sat outside to eat lunch in glorious sunshine.  It was blustery (probably the edge of St Jude’s storm), but very warm: I was actually rather concerned about the possibility of sunburn!

Another short hop, back to Stansted.  The flight arrived 10 minutes ahead of schedule, due to a strong tail wind (yet more remnants of the storm).  By happy chance I ended up first in the queue at passport control, and was thinking about where I had to go to get the bus to the airport carpark.  I realised the guy looking at my passport had asked me a question. Uhh. Rewind.  Oh, he’d said: “where was your flight from today?”  I looked at him blankly.  I’m in Stansted.  That means I’ve just flown in from somewhere.  Where?  Taormina?  No.  Where then?  Uhh...  Oh.  “Lyon”, I said, after a long, suspicious pause.  He looked more closely at my passport, but then let me through.  Whew.

So, safely back home.  Now to get down to the research…

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it's dead, Jim

I arrived home on Friday evening, after a four hour train journey back from a meeting in Manchester. [Small rant: as we were coming into Nottingham, there was an announcement: "for those of you travelling beyond Nottingham, this train splits here.  Please make sure you are in the rear mumble coaches if you want to travel beyond Nottingham." It wouldn't have helped me even if I could have made out the mumble.  I had no idea which coach I was in (a very long train arrived at Manchester; I got on it somewhere; the train changed direction at Sheffield, confusing my already weak grasp on reality.)  I have a suggestion for these sorts of trains: make the announcement only in the "wrong" coaches, and tell people there that they have to move.]

Anyhow, I got home. I had tea.  I went to my study to switch on my computer.  Nothing.  Did all the obvious things.  Still nothing.  Dead as a nit.

Well, it is nearly 8 years old, so I'm probably due an upgrade.  So I spent a pleasant time speccing up a dream replacement, then down-speccing it to a more reasonable price.

But ... I'd arrived home (near Cambridge) by train.  The car is in still at work, in York.  I can't get to the computer shop until next weekend.  I'm having to making do with this little laptop that has none of my standard software on it.  Grump.

Oh, what first world problems we suffer!

Still, being without a computer this weekend isn't the disaster it might have been.  I have a pile of exam scripts to mark, and no time to surf do important computery stuff, anyway.

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thank you for travelling

In the Good Old Days you travelled as a passenger on a British Rail train, and that was that. (These Good Old Days to which I refer were, of course, after the original Golden Age of Rail Travel.)

Then BR was privatised, and suddenly we were all "customers" of a variety of different franchises. Signs sprouted in stations, saying "Thank you for Choosing to Travel with XYZ franchise", as if we actually had any choice in the matter.  Franchises are mostly geographical with little overlap (except for a few main lines), so if I want to go from Cambridge to London, say, I don't exactly have a vast array of rail operators to choose from.

Anyhow, franchises don't last for ever, which leads to continual repainting of rolling stock in their new liveries, and a continual need to change those "thank you" signs to the new franchise name.  Evidently they got fed up with all that palaver at my local station, which has resulted in a sign that was mildly irritating becoming simply ridiculous.

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calling at...

Just as a train leaves a station, there is an announcment of where it is calling.  I suppose the announcement occurs at this point, rather than the more helpful just before the train leaves, to stop all the people who are on the wrong train piling off, and delaying it.

I was recently at a meeting in Bristol.  Returning to York, I boarded the Dundee service at Bristol Parkway.  As we left the station, there was a slight variation on the standard announcement

This service is the departure for Dundee, calling at ... just about everywhere you can think of.

causing much hilarity amongst the passengers.

I sympathise with the announcer.  The service was calling at: Cheltenham Spa, Birmingham New Street, Burton-on-Trent, Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Wakefield Westgate, Leeds, York (yay!), Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Dunbar, Edinburgh, Haymarket, Inverkeithing, Markinch, Ladybank, Cupar, Leuchars, and Dundee. Phew! We would have been nearly at the next stop before the announcement was over!

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retrospective holiday diary day 5: trains

Monday 24 September, and the long-threatened rain finally arrived. So this was the ideal day for the planned Carlisle-Settle rail trip.

Built 1870-75, with its 14 tunnels and 17 viaducts, the line is a triumph of Victorian engineering. This is still a commercial passenger rail line, with diesel engines, but a lot of people also take the trip for the tourist appeal.

On the way out on this 72 mile, 100 minute journey, there was someone walking through the train selling official guide books. We bought one,  and counted our way through each tunnel (easy to spot) and viaduct (sometimes quite hard to spot). A gentleman who got on at Kirkby Stephen (on his way to Skipton) who knew the route well also pointed out some interesting features to us.
 
The views of “England's most scenic railway” were spectacular, even through the rain and low clouds.

It’s not really possible to photograph much from a moving train through rain spattered windows,
especially not the viaduct you are on …

 … so here’s a picture of the Ribblehead viaduct, from the tourist guide

 We lunched in Settle, then hopped back on the train for the return trip.

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redressing the balance

We tend to remember outliers, especially negative ones. So, just to redress the national stereotypes balance, here is the (much more representative) departure board at Kings Cross, exactly three weeks later:

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national stereotypes

I've just got back from a very productive three day meeting in Paris. Just around the corner from where I was working, there was a marvelous cobbled street (Rue Mouffetard) lined with oodles of little speciality shops: boulangeries, patisseries, chocolatiers, butchers, fishmongers, fruit stalls, cafes, and, within less than 50 yards of each other, four fromageries.

The smell was amazing. (I think there were a few shops selling non-food items, too, but they didn't really register.)

Friday evening, I travelled back on the Eurostar, arrived punctually at St Pancras, crossed the road to Kings Cross, to be met with:

Home sweet home.

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Lake District holiday

We spent a couple of days in the lake District as part of our holiday this year-- neither of us had been before.
We had a great time -- marvellous scenery -- even some good weather! (View a larger map.)


We did the usual touristy things -- first off to see the Castlerigg stone circle, and try to spot how the stones are aligned on peaks and valleys:

We had a trip on a steam train, sitting in a carriage that is exactly like ones I remember from my childhood (except much cleaner!), and looking at the lovely views:

We did a lot of driving round, marvelling at the scenery of lakes and mountains. Some roads were a little alarming -- hairpin bends on steep inclines with little room to pass traffic in the opposite direction (fortunately there wasn't that much traffic) -- topping the brow of a hill and being unable to see anything but sky past the front of the car -- learning to sneer at "mere" 20% incline warning signs -- sitting at the top of a 30% incline, thinking, it looks vertical! But the scenery was worth it all.

We even made friends with some of the exotic local wildlife -- sparrows!! -- who were tame enough to eat crumbs from my hand. After I made the mistake of providing some food, lunchtime turned into a scene from Hitchcock ... suddenly sparrows, hundreds of them!

We were expecting scenery and stone circles -- it was why we went. But an unexpected highlight was the Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick. We saw this advertised in a tourist leaflet at our B&B, and so we just had to go. Now, I've never really given a lot of thought to pencils beyond the obvious "so how do they get the lead in there?", but, like just about everything really, there's more to them than meets the eye, as we learned at this fascinating museum.

The local pencil industry grew up around the local graphite outcrops (I learned that it was only relatively recently named "graphite", after the Greek for "drawing/writing", as in "grapheme" and "graphic"). The hardness is altered by adding clay -- more clay gives a harder "lead". Then the industry branched out into coloured pencils, watercolour pencils, and more. And there's lots more fascinating bits and pieces -- including wartime spy pencils, manufacturing tricks, and more. We would have stayed longer, but our car park ticket was expiring, so we had to leave after about an hour.

So, a good couple of days in the Lakes. I'm sure we'll be back.

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a marvellous toy

I've been somewhat unproductive this last week, as I've been acquainting myself with my latest toy -- a Samsung Galaxy S II. I'm not an "early adopter" -- I waited a decade before getting a microwave oven, for example. I tend to follow the maxim

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
--- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711

However, I'm so dependent on email, and getting more dependent on a mobile calendar, that I decided the time had come to bite the bullet. I polled a few colleagues at work for their favourites, and ended up with the Galaxy (much to the disgust of the Apple brotherhood).

I've been playing with learning how to use it for the last week. First I had to get it talking to the home wifi. Which required getting the home wifi to advertise its presence a little more than it was doing. Work wifi connection required a quick trip to software support on my part, and for them to press two menu items on the phone (I think my mind "must be too highly trained" for that sort of thing). Now I've got my GMail, contacts, and Google calendar accounts synched. Bliss.

It seemed to take a while for the GPS to synch, so the weather map and other things thought I was in Waterbeach for a while. But after a few tries, it got my location correct, both at home and at work.

First peripheral: a slip case to carry it around in, so it doesn't get pocket-lintified. A quick Amazon search found something perfect. A subsequent search for a travel adaptor so that I can recharge the device in foreign parts, in order to use these facilities away from home/work, has opened up a whole new can of worms. I've ordered a couple of alternatives, and will test them out next week during my trip to France.

Then it was the apps. Google Sky Map, of course -- and MoonWidget.

Another colleague recommended Rail Planner Live, for all your UK rail trip needs. The download route I took for this required scanning a QR code, so I first downloaded QR Droid. The Rail planner app required actual money -- a whole £3.49! -- but it's definitely worth it.

Next, got my Dropbox account loaded -- piece of cake.

Then, I played around with the camera a bit more (more than merely scanning a barcode, that it). It's got autofocus (which I really need) and zoom, and auto-smile detect, and video, and ... more than I'll ever use, I suspect. The main reason for wanting a camera is as use as a "printing whiteboard" -- after a meeting, just snap the board, and email it to the participants -- a great productivity enhancer. (And I don't even need to photograph the board square on -- Paint Shop Pro has a nifty feature to square it up later.)

Of course, the first thing I wanted to photograph, so that I could blog about it, was the device itself. Ah, well, nothing's perfect! I suppose I could have employed a mirror, but I chose the route of using a separate camera.

I also want an simple sketching utility -- not some mini-CAD app that neatens up things into squared-off boxes and perfect circles -- and not something for the inner-artist (which I don't have) -- just something for simple line drawings that are part of the notes I take in meetings. I couldn't find anything -- but sketching on paper, then photographing, is a good substitute.

Games, of course -- Scrambled Net is frighteningly addictive. I also downloaded a few fractal and cellular automata apps, played with them for a few seconds, and then deleted them. I'm pretty sure I'll be writing the odd complex systems app at some point...

Oh, I believe the device also includes a phone. I haven't used that. Years ago I heard an advertising jingle: "You're never alone with a mobile phone" -- and interpreted it as a warning. Email is so much more civilised.

So, I'm not an early adopter, but after a week in its company, you'll get my new marvellous toy away from me when you prise it from my cold dead hands.

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important safety information

Safety information when travelling is important, since we might come across unexpected hazards, as October Jones' poster illustrates.

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Computer Science meets King's Cross

I haven't been to London for a while, but I was there last week to give a talk. As I got off my train at King's Cross, I thought I heard an announcement: "The train currently standing at platform zero is the...". What? Platform 0? I listened to check I wasn't hallucinating, and there it was again: "Platform zero for the ..."

Now, I know King's Cross quite well, I thought. It has eight platforms on the main concourse, and also platforms 9 to 11 hidden away in their own private little siding. (Forget finding platform 9-and-3/4s: I've know people fail to find the real but well-hidden platform nine!) But platform 0? Srsly? Only computer scientists start counting from 0!

So when I got onto the main concourse, I checked, and sure enough, there were signs to platform 0. When I got back in Google-range, I consulted that fount of all knowledge, wikipedia. Yes, there is now a platform 0, as part of the refurbishment scheme. On the one hand, it seems a shame they've gone with platform 0, since that means platform 9-and-3/4 is still a "mistake" (there are tracks, not platform, between 9 and 10). But on the other hand: platform 0. Cool.

So I was disappointed to discover that once the refurbishment is completed, the platforms will be renumbered, starting from the much more unimaginative 1. (Presumably resulting in hilarity for all concerned as the zombified commuters, with the current numbering scheme hardwired in their cortexes, start making off-by-one errors, and end up scattered all over the country.)

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