I’ve been trying out Sengi — perhaps the closest a Mastodon interface gets to what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t want to say that it’s the closest I’ve found to a Tweetdeck mimic — because I’m trying not to just reproduce how I was consuming social media through Tweetdeck. […]
Was saving these notes in my files but the story was entertaining enough that it reminded me I have a public notebook I should use for more of my notes. (And then I put some effort into making my notes comprehensible to others and it reminded that I shouldn’t waste […]
In Cycling in Middle England, Mark mentioned that the transport minister responded to a question about policy outside of major cities by waffling about remote places where distances are impractical for cycling. If we’re not living in big cities, apparently we’re living in remote places. Except of course, by definition, nobody lives there. […]
I’ve not been keeping up with the consultations so much, but I found 5 minutes over lunch to glance at this https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/tower-rothsay-webb and scribble the first things that came to mind… Andrew Gilligan said that things would be "done properly, or not at all." Unfortunately, while some aspects of this […]
In case they are any use to anybody else responding to TfL’s Stockwell Cross consultation: some hastily bashed out and poorly edited down thoughts I gave them. There are lots and lots of problems you could pull out of the details — positioning of lanes on bends, dangerous lane merges, up […]
Part of my job includes looking after social media. That means I can’t hide from the torrent of advice from Social Media Experts. It seems one of the standard lines is still “use bitly on twitter”. I’ve developed an excessive perhaps slightly irrational rage with that one.* It came up again at the […]
Artists, agents and galleries in New York and Hong Kong: looking to pay some PR agency lots of money to promote your next event? Perhaps piss away your money on some clowns who will spray spam at random irrelevant email addresses, harvested off the internet, of people who live thousands […]
A year ago I flagged something in feedly for a brief sarcastic comment, and never got around to it. Now that I’m having a clear out… “It is alarming that a fifth of people killed or seriously injured on our roads in 2011 were involved in a collision where at […]
Flicking through a 10 year old notebook, one of those ones made from paper and everything, deciding whether to keep these things cluttering up the place or not. Friday 16 January 2004: Martin Birch reports that he met Bill one day in the department of zoology, and apologised for forgetting […]
After suggesting to twitter that somebody who hangs out on a forum called “Bicycle Driving” might be beyond parody, I stumbled upon John Forester’s recent speech given to a Dutch conference — written up as a pseudo-academic “paper” and posted as a PDF (if ever you needed proof that this […]
Way back when I worked in academic publishing, assessing newly submitted papers and finding suitable people to peer review them, I encountered hundreds of weird and wonderful names every day. And kept a list of which most amused. Which never got published because, well, it would be mean. But… the […]
A quick note on something that keeps popping up and bugging me — a factoid that has been passed through Chinese whispers to become something entirely different, and entirely incorrect. Triggered on this particular occasion by reading The Ranty Highwayman’s account of a talk by Phillip Darnton: He went on […]
The road haulage lobby briefly grabbed a bit of attention last month when they blamed the victims killed by their industry: http://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/cyclists-go-truck-yourselves/ But really, the history of their practices is worth looking at. Mick Hamer (yes, this Mick Hamer) in Wheels Within Wheels reviews how the road freight industry has […]
Given that Stevenage seems to be the exemplar du jour of the UK’s unique culture, wedded to the motorcar and impossible to persuade to use a bicycle — a representative sample of the English attitude and environment, and definitely not just a self-selected population of suburbanites in an anomalistic mid-20th […]
Everyone point and laugh at Barclays and their latest risible contribution to cycling safety PR stunt… From: Lauri Beecroft <lauri.beecroft> Date: Mon, May 20, 2013 at 3:45 PM Subject: Barclays and SportsDirect team up to offer discount on helmets Hi, How are you? Just wanted to get in touch as […]
My father was a compulsive hoarder. Well… an enthusiastic collector of things, at least. Some of the things are quite amazing. Today I am flicking through the folders labelled “Weymouth Relief Road”, ahead of tomorrow’s seaside infrastructure safari along the new Relief Road Cycle Track, and was delighted by this […]
I have tickets for the Caledonian Sleeper. I don’t think I’m going to be able to use them. They are £39 advance "bargain berth" tickets — non refundable. Technically, they’re not transferable either, so they’re not for sale. But I could possibly aide somebody in their pretending to be me. […]
Oh hooray, more "encouragement" to be "confident on the roads". That’s sure to be useful. Why has nobody thought to try doing that before? From: Natasha Lytton <natasha.lytton> Date: Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:27 AM Subject: Cycling and the City – Christine Bleakley wants women to get on their […]
I was at a thing with some people who thought that the Hierarchy of Provision was a good idea. Have campaigned for it, and had their campaign organisations push it.I’ve explained before why I think it’s worse than useless.In attempting to defend i…
Xin Shen, Hui-fen Zhu, Feng-rong He, Wei Xing, Li Li, Jing Liu, Juan Yang, Xing-fei Pan, Ping Lei, Zhi-hua Wang, and Guan-xin ShenAn anti-transferrin receptor antibody enhanced the growth inhibitory effects of chemotherapeutic drugs on human non-h…
Popped into town to see @mgtmccartney talk at Conway Hall about some of the reasons behind the paradox that screening a population for disease, if not properly thought through, can do more harm than good.I just wanted to make a note of one of the …
Some brief half-thought-through notes on Paul Davies’s delightful article in CiF today on cancer evolution. Davies describes his theory that the evolution of cancer is kinda the evolution of life in reverse: that cancer cells pick up the functiona…
yet another “a helmet saved my life, i know that for a fact because it was smashed” comment reminded me of something, but i don’t have time to write properly about it, so here are the quick thoughts. a couple of years ago i was knocked over by a m…
Some amazing numbers about the response to deaths/injuries on London’s roads buried in a Robert Davis post caught my eye: Prosecutions: 7/216 deaths; 227/811 ???Serious/Life Changing??? (???Serious / Life Changing??? is an unofficial category Something li…
I was writing about the casual way we accept dangerous roads and streets, using a few case studies where deaths resulting from appalling careless and incompetent driving on badly designed roads have been dismissed as “accidents” — not just someth…