oh my, snakey maths is fun!
Thank you! My son's favourite at the moment is arithmetic annihilation in two player mode:
https://rupertlinacre.com/arithmetic_annihilation/
Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#42It assigns importance to the centre of the screen, but that's hard to judge precisely;
It really needs a reticle when aligning the map.
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#43Nice idea and appreciate it's a prototype - appears very glitchy for me in Chrome where bus routes appear/disappear when zooming in/out, i.e. it can show no routes at all, but then if you either zoom in or out they appear (some - not all).
Not sure if just me / my browser but thought I would share.
This is in Edinburgh btw - not sure if it's just an issue with that city.
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#44[dead]
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of London, Manchester, Nottingham and a few selected other places, busses in England tend to be fairly dire, especially as you get out to smaller towns and villages. Even if the routes are there, it's not uncommon for the actual busses to bare little resemblance to the published timetable. In some places you'll get fancy live information screens which happily announce the arrival of a bus that doesn't exist,…
> In some places you'll get fancy live information screens which happily announce the arrival of a bus that doesn't exist I worked on one of the systems for that many years ago, and one of the reasons TFL works better than many of the others is that TFL has (or at least had) extremely strict rules on what we were allowed to show. E.g. if the display could not contact our servers, we were required to remove the buses…
> If you see buses in London disappear from a display
Thanks for that explanation! Was an alternative considered—e.g. marking the bus as "lost" instead of removing it altogether? Discounted because of space constraints?
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#46the LA transit app is amazing these days. You can even pick an icon and when I see a bus coming I can see if a "friend" is on it. It's not like full on profiles and messages, just a unique icon you can pick from 1000's but I see the same lobster or alien over and over on routes I take. And it means they have the transit app open. So I step on the bus and look everyone in the eyes and try and see if I get lobster or alien vibes.
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly what I thought. Its also a long way short of what you need to plan a journey that involves changing buses. Where I live it looks like I could do a lot by bus looking at just the routes, but they are infrequent and unreliable so I usually have to drive everywhere.
Unreliable? Seriously? (I’m not from the UK, it sounds surprising.)
Rural and small town, often yes.
Varies with region. Some big cities (London, Manchester) seem to have good public transport although its been a while since I used a bus in either.
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly yes. Some bus companies are very reliable (traffic jams permitting), but there are definitely times when they aren't, and I've used rural routes where the hourly bus might just not turn up, which makes them completely infeasible for commuting or appointments. To replace cars with buses for trips you really need them to be rock solid.
Yeah I think the most stressed I've ever been about punctuality was when I was dependent on a rural bus to get to work on time. I love rural Britain but if you can't drive for whatever reason, it's often not feasible to live there.
I am thinking about whether I can do without a car. I definitely could if busses were better. As it is I think I would end up using taxis a lot.
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#49Problem with the buses (at least in London) is that they don't come very often, get stuck in traffic (getting in and out of the bus stop takes forever), often are full and full of feral youth at certain hours, they smell of piss and weed, you need to carefully inspect seats to not ruin your clothes with freshly placed bubble gum and then drivers often take breaks at random, so not only it is slow, the driver will announce evening out of the system and puts their feet up for 10-20 minutes.
If you are able bodied, most journeys you'll arrive quicker by just walking (just be mindful of drug peddlers, mental health cases, poo and maniacs on the scooters).
Re: Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)
#50It reminds me a site where you'd pick a point on map and see where you'd get to in 15/30/etc minutes, including walking iirc. Then you could even pick *two* points in map and see their intersection in time period, which was great for finding places to meet friends.
Isochrones is the word you’re after.
Even cooler are distance cartograms, where the map distorts according to travel time.
https://riatelab.github.io/distanamo/articles/web_only/with-...