Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Minor observations

I note they're cracking on with the building at the toll house on Bridge Street - 4 one-bedroom flats sitting on the first and second floors with 3 B1 (non-retail business) units on the ground floor. Will be interesting to see what businesses they get in there.

Both the Isle of Wight photos and the Weston-Super-Mare photos have been uploaded. I was impressed by the shots my father took on the IoW especially as they were all on Auto. He knows how to use the various pre-set scenes such as portrait and landscape, but has yet to get to grips with shutter priority etc. which is essential if you start zooming in without a tripod.

For my shots I'm still impressed by the Canon Powershot A640 in how it handles light

As I say in the description I was tracking this bird and snapped it as it went overhead before I lost it and only realised the sun was there as I hit the trigger, yet the bird is in focus and not shadowed and the sky is still blue... I'd be vaguely proud of myself it I'd planned it :-)

Looking through the shots I took on Sunday (I'll try to upload them today) I was reminded of an incident as I headed back from Woolies. I was standing on the corner of High Street and York Street when a gaggle of cyclists came up Bridge Street and turned right into York Street at the island. One small problem - York Street is one-way towards Bridge Street; oh wait not a problem they all bounced up onto the pavement and headed off along it. All proper cyclists mind in helmets and fluorescent lycra about half-a-dozen of them. The lady standing next to me queried "But it's one-way?". Yeah not for cyclists.

Likewise recently I witnessed a cyclist bouncing up the pavement to circumvent a red light at a pedestrian crossing, another cycling down the wrong way of Lion Hill on the road, not to mention those travelling up the narrow paths of Gilgal the wrong way, and a friend mentioned how at a set of road work lights a cyclist just happily sailed through a red-light against the flow of traffic.

On the plus side I have also witnessed cyclists using the cycle lane on the Stourport Road, waiting at traffic lights and signalling directionality; so like most things it may just be the few giving a bad name to the majority (there happy Dan ;-) )

For those who expressed sympathy for my sun-burnt hands (all none of you) the right one which wasn't too bad has returned to it's proper shade of off-pink with squiggly blue veins and the left one which was worse (why escapes me) is also back to its proper shade albeit with a fringe of dead skin around it. [sigh] White - red - white, damn you Coco Chanel.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interestingly, while I was out last night I stopped at a pelican crossing as the lights changed to red. I was the only vehicle anywhere near it, a load having gone through while the peds were waiting for the lights. The two men stopped in the middle of crossing the road to thank me for stopping at the red light. It counterbalanced my feeling slightly guilty earlier in the journey for crossing a flashing amber when the pedestrian still had one foot on the other side of the crossing.

That said, three times last week I pulled up gently at amber traffic lights only to be overtaken by a motor vehicle that had been going the same speed as me so should easily have been able to stop.

FlipC said...

Just to show I'm not biased ;-) I can't count the number of times I see queueing cars stopped across a pedestrian crossing. Likewise those who start off once the lights are green (heck yellow) and the pedestrian has cleared out of their lane.

As I mentioned in another entry this 'default' behaviour means that when I do things correctly, i.e. not stop on a crossing, the pedestrians waiting often think the lights have changed and start off without checking. Pfft it's their own stupid fault if they get run over by a car in the other lane.

Yesterday heading through a chicane I signalled to turn at a junction and spotted a wheelchair user trying to cross the road a little way up. He'd checked the other way and started to cross so I stopped just inside the junction, but he spotted me and pulled back onto the pavement (he hadn't gone any distance) so I carried on. I was quite prepared to stay there without fuss until he'd crossed the road as there was reasonable doubt as to whether he could have seen me prior to his starting.

On another note, that I'm sure you're fed-up off, I watch pedestrians noting a queue of cars and crossing the road between them without bothering to check if there's anything else coming. I have yet to see a collision between pedestrian and cyclist, but it's only a matter of time.

Anonymous said...

You want a “minor observation”? Here, look at this:

F#, A, C#

FlipC said...

What's type of language is A again :-P

Anonymous said...

A is the language that came before B, which is the language that came before C. :-P

(And no, I am not kidding.)

A was itself based on ABPL, I believe… So there!

Anonymous said...

No, C is based on B, which is a simplified version of BCPL, which is itself a simplified version of CPL. There was never an A language; languages with similar names include APL, A+, and Ada.