Spuggy
How one cancelled train can ruin the whole system
After my blog post about how maths means trains seem more frequent than they are, here’s another even more irritating rail-based maths problem.
From Germany, I’ve been feeling quietly smug watching the chaos on the UK Northern and Thameslink lines over the past few days. Well, joke’s on me, because I got my own transport chaos this morning. One tram didn’t show up this morning, which was mildly annoying. But they’re frequent – every five minutes or less at peak times – so I wasn’t too worry. Five minutes later, along came the next tram, but it was so full up that no-one could board. Another five minutes, and another totally packed tram arrived. By the time I managed to squeeze my way onto a tram, I’d missed my train to work.
How could this happen? How could a well-trafficked route, which doesn’t normally run anywhere near capacity, completely collapse with a single cancelled tram?
Recipe: Korean-style bitter orange and lime tea
No photos for this recipe, because I couldn’t find a way to make boiled citrus fruits photogenics.
This is based on the Korean yuja-cha (also known by its Japanese name yuzucha), and it’s effectively a marmalade you put in a jar and keep in the fridge. To make it up into tea, you just put a spoonful in a cup and fill it with boiling water. This recipe was mainly just something I did to use up the fruit from a bitter orange tree that I impulsively purchased, but it is really good.
Sparrow Songs: Metal that’s not about death
It’s been a while since I did one of these posts! So, one image that people have of metal music is “Oh, it’s all screaming about death and Satan and so on”. But this is not true! So, in this blog post I’m going to just post some metal songs about really random topics. Enjoy!
A map of every town in It’s Grim Up North
Where does the North begin? This debate has been raging on the Wikipedia talk page for Northern England for over a decade. Well, luckily the answer has already been given to us by… the KLF. In 1991, the band – then going under the name “The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu” – recorded a ten minute techno song “It’s Grim Up North”. The majority of the song consists of town names being delivered in a Scottish monotone over a pulsing techno beat, ending with the phrase “are all in the North”.
I’ve taken the song lyrics – using Wikipedia’s interpretation of ambiguous lines (so “Cheadle Hulme” not “Cheadle” and “Hulme”, but “Accrington” and “Stanley” not “Accrington Stanley”) and ignoring the fact that Leigh appears twice – and mapped them all.
So, what is in the North?
Urban birdwatching in Frankfurt — Urbane Vogelbeobachtung in Frankfurt-am-Main
If you follow me on social media, I’ve probably been driving you mad recently with lots of bird pictures. Lots and lots of bird pictures.
In order to have them all in the same place – and not just have them on a social media site that could disappear and/or use them to hack an election at any time – I’m going to put a little list of all the birds I’ve Frankfurt, and where I’ve seen them! (Und auch auf Deutsch!)
What is the top-heaviest country?
This post is based on an interesting Twitter thread about country populations! In particular, this pair of tweets from Josh Fruhlinger:
(2/3 of the US population is in the top 15 states, which is fewer states than i expected but still a lot less topheavy than the EU)
— Josh Fruhlinger (@jfruh) March 15, 2018
It’s an interesting thing – how top-heavy is a country or federation? In other words, how much of the population is concentrated in its largest constituents?
The periodic table of tastes, and how to cook with them
One of the more confusing bits of childhood science education is learning that there are only four or five tastes (textbooks have been slow to add the fifth taste, commonly called umami or savouriness, even thought it was discovered over a hundred years ago).* How can all the flavours, from chocolate to broccoli, be broken down into just five simple components – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and savoury?
A short Star Trek thing
Normally I’d just complain about this on Facebook or wherever, but since it’s also a spoiler for the season finale of Star Trek Discovery, I decided to put it here on the blog. Spoilers after the jump!
Sneaky Thoughts: I, Tonya
Someone suggested today that I should make a habit of writing little reviews of the films we get at Sneak Preview. So, why not?
Tonight’s film was I, Tonya, a biopic of Tonya Harding, the ice skater who became globally infamous after her rival Nancy Kerrigan was beaten in an attack linked to Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly – and possibly Harding herself.
Play: Human of the Year
This is a play we wrote for a Play in a Day event. It’s not exactly as performed (the director and actors did a good job of cutting it down and neatening it up a bit), but not bad for a night’s work.
Human of the Year (PDF)
