GPS on the iPhone - good and bad

I went to Nottingham this week for a short conference in Jubilee Park. I was expecting deep snow, but it wasn't deep at all. There was more fog than snow. Here's the view from the 'Meridian' train.

Before I left London, and it was a bit touch and go waiting at the ticket office, I bought an addendum to my train ticket. PlusBus extensions. Living in London, I'm used to the idea of a travel card, and actually it's not a London thing at all now, many bus companies offer all day 'rover' tickets allowing travel (on their network) in a region. PlusBus builds on this by putting (participating) bus companies together on one ticket. Buses and in Birmingham, Nottingham (yay!) and Sheffield, the trams too. This is what it looks like. No, nothing special.

Well, that's great, but you go to this strange city. How do you know what bus to take? I think I've said it before, so I'll say it again. Plan in advance with Transport Direct. TD, somehow has many or most, or all (I don't know) bus timetables built into it's online planner.

But this time, I did it live as the train arrived at Nottingham station. How? Because TD's buses (but not the trams) are the source for Google Maps UK public transport options on the iPhone. Well, it seems so. I took this screen shot on the tram (tramways don't seem to exist on GoogleMaps).

Off the tram, I used the compass to set me in the right direction to the bus stop. Here it is.

It seems like the TWO service is very frequent. A bus turned up 10 mins before I expected. I was rather impressed by the fake leather interior.

Slim seats, but not used to give extra legroom, sadly. I kept the maps app running with GPS on (4% battery in 11 mins!), and I was able to see clearly ahead where to ring the bell to get off. I rung the bell as we crossed the railway line.

You have to suspend disbelief at this point and just follow the map. Luckily, despite minor doubts, and walking a bit further than the map, I got there on-time. I commend this method to the masses!

View from my venue. Some interesting architecture in Jubliee Park.

So that was good.

Today, I went for a walk and because Google Maps doesn't do tracking, and I wanted to track and measure my walk, I decided to use GPS Motion-X, or whatever it's called. I find it a bit hard to use frankly. I only just now, back from my walk found how to enable Google Maps within it. The regular load maps menu just has open street and open cycle maps. You have to click further down the menu, select north up and then you get the option.

Menu? On the iPhone? Menu, hidden away? On the iPhone? Like I said, I find it a bit hard to use. Then there is the GPS. I got this for the majority of my walk.

I wasn't walking in forests. I was walking in South London, mostly in parks in the open air, or along roads with few trees. Google maps was able to get a signal when riding on a bus and when walking the narrow streets of Nottingham. This thing couldn't find a signal on top of One Tree Hill. Well, it found a signal right on top, and what a view from up there, North to St. Pauls! But off the summit - beep beep beep, no signal.

But back to Open Street map, and I realise now that Google Maps is hidden in the app. This was my experience most of the time.

No GPS signal, and no map either. I dunno, can hear a drum beat, can you hear it? I hear it all the time (when I'm using this app). It says "The master is coming, the master is coming, Viewranger is coming Viewranger is coming"

Well, I'm waiting cash in hand. This is all Motion X got.

3 miles tracked, whereas, yes I walked north through Mountsfield park and out the other side, then west to Ladywell Fields and north through it along the Ravensourne River. Out the top and up, up, up to the summit of Hilly Fields and down to the Brockley exit.

At this point I switched to another GPS app, Atlas. It got a signal where Motion failed, but it doesn't seem to have any functions. It tracks but doesn't analyse it. I think it is just an adjunct to the desktop, RouteBuddy application.

So anyway, I walked up to Honor Oak and up, up, up to the summit of One Tree Hill, passing into Southwark (gasp!). Back down and then (back into Lewisham, phew!) down Honor Oak Road to the South Circular and the Horniman Museum. The aquarium is great and definitely worth a visit. I was captivated.

Then I walked down the South Circular back home. About 4 hours of walking! I need to do this sort of thing more often. My feet were fine the whole time too, especially my right foot. Walking is fun!

Thames Clipper

Happy new year! Have an Oyster on me!

Of course, what I'm talking about is the introduction of Oyster Pay-As-You-Go to London-wide to national rail services (with some exceptions like Heathrow Express). But did you know that Oyster PAYG has been extended to river services too? I mean looking at the Oyster web page, there's no sign of it. National Rail is added, but not the boats. How about the What is new in 2010 news splash on the TfL front page. Nope, nothing there either. It's not on the Oyster map either.

You have to consciously click on the River page to see the news. I noticed that the Thames Clippers themselves are flying a large Oyster flag on their boats now. As far as they can, taking matters into their own hands I guess.

What surprised me most when I looked into this is that there is actually a 'commuter' service on the river. It's not just tourist boats and floating restaurants. I remember the first time I took a river boat, last summer. I took my cousins and aunt from Blackfriars to Putney Bridge, whence they took the train back to my sister in Feltham. That was a shock introduction to the river. I had seen the big Thames Clippers come and go and then this little narrow barge turned up. A Fast Launch they call it, and my goodness, I was expecting a touristy cruise and instead got a speed boat. A thrilling experience marred only by the occasional bad taste of diesel fumes.

Anyway from this interest, I think I learned about the Oysterisation, or maybe I read it somewhere else on one of the London travel blogs. So anyway, my report!

You get a 10% discount on Thames Clippers with Oyster. This in no way makes it frugal to use however. An Oyster single is £4.80 plus transport to the riverside. Meanwhile a single train fare from Catford to central London is £2 off peak. If you have a travelcard, you get 1/3 off (£3.55), but if this was done properly, the travelcard would include the Clippers in the price. Even freedom pass holders have to pay £2.65. I'm sure Boris was saying that we needed to use the river more. This is not really the way to go about it, if he's trying to get a "breakthrough", never mind how many piers you build.

So, anyway, I walked down from my work to the river to test out getting home by boat. My nearest pier at work is Embankment. I wasn't really familiar with where that was, but d'uh, it's behind Embankment tube. The timetable looks pretty clear, but you need to read it carefully. I was going to Greenwich, so I waited in the waiting room for a boat to Greenwich (towards Woolwich). Instead at my departure time the destination on the board said Waterloo (the other way). I hung back a few minutes and almost didn't get on.

See, the timetable says that the boat starts at Embankment, so why is the destination Waterloo and not Woolwich? Is this Waterloo boat going the other way? Well it IS going to the other way, but Waterloo is like an end of line loop around. I dunno, it is CONFUSING, and I nearly missed the boat, just say Woolwich via Waterloo or something.

Anyway, the boat, the Thames Clipper is very nice indeed. It is fast but unlike the speedboat to Putney, it is very smooth. Well, I say fast but it's wasted because it has to stop. It's like an intercity train but on the slow line, stopping at every station. 30-40 mins is not advantageous over the trains for me, but I guess they'd need more long distance patronage to support non-stop services. Load seemed fairly evenly spread out along the stops on my ride to Greenwich.

The cabin is very nicely appointed. Here is the emergency exit card.

The seats are modern, comfortable and have sufficient leg room. There are plenty of seats too, and Clipper says that you are guaranteed a seat, although, I'm sure I saw a sign requiring you to be seated anyway (as if a safety requirement).

Amenities onboard included (I think) a Costa Coffee or Coffee Republic, which was licensed, selling beer and there was Wifi (not free).

A lady came around for the Oyster payment and for some reason I received a paper ticket. I think they checked the ticket on getting off the boat, but I'm not sure.

In the summer, I guess you'd get a nice view out of the windows as well, instead my trip was in pitch blackness. This revealed the next issue they'll need to sort out. Looking out of a tube train or railway carriage, when you get to the station, you can look out the window and see in big letters the name of the station you have arrived at.

Not so on the river. I looked in vain for pier names and instead had to rely of the slightly faint and sporadic announcements and my own sense of river geography. That was not very welcoming at all.

But why did it take 40 minutes to Greenwich? Because apart from curious speed restrictions, it takes too long to stop. I'm sure they are very skilled in piloting the boat, but having to forward and reverse and rotate into piers takes and kills time, whereas there only a few passengers getting on or off. I wonder if the piers could be modified to speed up docking?

I arrived and got off at Greenwich. There she goes.

I then realised that the pier was back behind nowhere to be found and yet right next to the main tourist area. I had never really noticed a pier there, next to the tunnel entrance. Almost invisible. You see the boats going up and down the river, but the piers are very incognito. I'm put in mind of the pier at Millbank. Its there, but it doesn't look welcoming, it doesn't look like YOU can use it.

To get home I walked to the nearby DLR and took a bus from Lewisham. Hmm, not really viable except for summer treats I reckon. Nice treat though for a lazy ride home.

Energy Use

I managed to get British gas to unblock my online account last week and I was pleased to see they have tables of my meter readings and consumption going back to 2006 when I moved to Catford. I spent a few minutes to retype (no export function) all the numbers in to a Numbersspreadsheet. Here it is converted to a PNG image.

I arranged the gas graph by season and the electrical graph by year.

I am rather pleased. Looking at the raw figures, I could see in the gas figures the expected drop in the summer months and rise in the winter. I think 2008 was a mild winter wasn't it? But looking at total gas consumption, I see a significant reduction. This is probably due to gradually reducing my thermostat. It's now set to about 17 degrees, which is comfortable in winter with long sleeves and clearly means the system is essentially idle for half the year.

I think I need to check the electrical figures. Autumn 09 looks freakish, but the trend is also clear, and I'm particularly pleased to see the falling slope in 2009. This co-incides with my installation of the electricity monitor and remote control sockets. Well, I hope it isn't a coincidence, I hope it there's a causal relationship and that this trend continues. I need to drop 10% in 2010 please!

I have just bought something to help on the gas side. Heatkeeper energy saving radiator panels claim to save 20% of heating costs. 20%? Shame I'm getting these just after all the snow, but still it should contribute. Not sure what to do about electricity. Oh, I can switch the halogens spots to LED. Lets see if 2010 finally delivers some pleasant warm coloured lighting options in 2010.