When you think of Easter, or Spring, you think of a nice green valley, full of rabbits and frolicking lambs bleating their little heads off. Maybe a small goat chewing the grass in a field. Maybe you just think of chocolate and getting a tiny bit fatter.
But snow?
This was the scene from my window this morning.
I've meant to post this for a little while now. This was reported on February 12th, so I assume it happened the day before.
Dramatic photos, but fairly amazing it wasn't more serious. Click for embiggenation.
A man suffered serious head injuries when a bus diverted as a result of the weekend fire in Camden Market hit a railway bridge. Five other passengers were also hurt as the roof of the double-decker bus was ripped off. They were taken to hospital and treated for shock.The No 24 bus was using a different route because of the fire that devastated the market on Saturday night. London General, the bus operators, said that the driver ignored instructions to stay in the middle of the road when travelling under the bridge. Transport for London has started an inquiry.
[via Times Online]
Back in 1809 on this day (a month ago - I was never any good at anniversaries...), Charles Darwin was born.
As you probably know, Darwin was the father of evolution...
Plus he had a great beard.
Speaking of great beards, it turns out Abraham Lincoln was born on the same day.
I wonder if anyone else born on February 12th 1809 had fantastic facial hair?
[via Richard Dawkins]
In a recent edition of Autosport I happened upon an advert for The Guardian's Formula One Preview supplement thingy... and it's amazingly beautiful.
A simple idea, create Britain's biggest and brightest hope for the title out of all 18 circuits currently used in the World Championship, but it's how it's done that really makes it for me.
Click for embiggenation.
Five days to go...
Urban Trend has designed a line of egg fryers that shape your morning eggs into weapons of minimal destruction.
Around mischievous night, the police routinely stop youths from carrying eggs, destroying them on sight. These really do make weapons out of eggs...
[via pretty much everywhere, but specifially Orange and Urban Trend]
I think the most shocking thing I learnt this week was that giant frogs used to eat dinosaurs.
Odd.
[via BBC]
I have no idea what hippies have to do with this, apparently they tend to add things like [Stop] Eating Animals. To be honest, I'm not really aware of many hippies at all within the vicinity of Leeds. But a sticker to append a stop sign with "Hammer Time!" - that would be fabulous.
I wish I could think of another example...
It was announced recently about cameras being used to count people in cars in car sharing lanes. Now, having lived in Leeds - and also having to use the lanes on my journey to university for four years - I know that they can help congestion. but at the expense of other road users. After all, a lane has been taken away that, if used normally, would be helping to ease congestion anyway.
This article, from the BBC, explains how the new cameras work:
A new road camera that counts car occupants by detecting blood and water content on skin is being tested. How does it work?Enforcing the more-than-one-occupant rule of car-sharing lanes has been a problem ever since Leeds opened the first in 1998 on the A647. Using council officers and police is labour-intensive and ordinary CCTV can be fooled by dogs or inflatable humans. But a solution could be provided by a new camera that counts humans by detecting the unique "signature" provided by the blood-water content of human skin. Its infra-red beam penetrates the windscreen and takes two images of the inside of the vehicle, enumerating the number of people. It is being tested in Leeds. Experts at Loughborough University believe this system, called the "dtect" camera, is the most effective.
Loughborough's Dr John Tyrer - director of the firm Vehicle Occupancy and who has been working on this project for six years - says the experience in Leeds suggests that without enforcement, offending is very high. Using police officers is very costly and accuracy is only 55-60%, due to visibility issues partly from tinted windows or differing skin tones, he says. And CCTV cameras can mistake a dog for an individual or miss a small person entirely.
"We wanted to be able to spot humans, as opposed to inflatable dolls and mannequins. We thought 'What is humanness?'. We couldn't go on skin pigment, but infra-red rays see all skin in the same colour."
Blood and water is one of the things that determines we are human, he says, so he developed a system that detects human skin. When a vehicle comes into view the camera installed at the side of the road is triggered by a built-in vehicle detection system. The camera instantly illuminates the windscreen area with two different wavelengths of infrared light. Two specialised digital infrared pictures are taken of the windscreen.
The system is programmed to detect the blood and water levels in skin and then it uses certain algorithms to distinguish faces, as opposed to hands. Within a fraction of a second, the vehicle occupancy count is determined using on-board electronics. If the car has more than one occupant, then it does nothing.
"But if it can only find one person in the car, it says 'whoops' and records the number plates and other information saying 'Here is the driver.'" However at this stage the driver retains a right to privacy, so his face is "splodged" in green. But the time, date and speed are recorded. That information can then be stored on a local network or transmitted via wireless, to an automated traffic management system or to a terminal elsewhere for human processing.
There are "extraordinary circumstances" that prevent it being 100% accurate, says Dr Tyrer, but he believes his technology has the potential to eventually enable variable road charging based on occupancy numbers. And it could spark a significant increase in the number of car-share lanes.
But Paul Watters of the AA says there are doubts about its reliability. "If approved by the Home Office it needs to be 100% reliable. People could be at the receiving end of a hefty penalty so to be falsely prosecuted would be abhorrent. At the moment this is new technology being used on moving traffic. Vehicles are different types and sizes, with different windows and different heat systems. This is very radical. Other countries use manual enforcement."
Other motoring organisations have raised doubts about the principle of the lanes, saying there is not enough road space.
Quite funny guy called Demetri Martin, although I don't get the guitar. Contains some strong language and takes up 14 minutes of your life.
[via AndrewTatham.com]
