Take the A Train

To misquote the old Klingon saying, today is a good day for working with the patio doors open and a deliciously cool breeze blowing through the house.

I've submished my T175 CMA, and polished off the last question on my M150 TMA writing a report on the use of CCTV by police and video cameras by protesters during the G20 demonstrations in London last year. It really did raise some interesting (and worrying) issues about the omnipresent and ubiquitous use of surveillance technology and how it can be countered to a certain extent by 'sousveillance' where people can record the actions of the police and bring them to account.

On matters political, I fed the latest poll results (Con 31, Lib Dem 29, Lab 27) into the BBC swingometer tool which predicted that Labour would still end up with the greatest number of seats (279) and almost three times the Lib Dems total of 104. It just goes to show how broken the first past the post system is at the moment, and perhaps the best that we can hope for is that the Conservatives will finally recognise the case for electoral reform.

In games news, I found a scenario for Transport Tycoon that maps the North of England from South Yorkshire up to Teeside and I've been having fun sorting out the buses and trains around Sheffield and Ecclesfield in the 1950s before building up a highly profitable airline business in the 80s with a fleet of the game's equivalent of Concord shuttling between Doncaster and Darlington. It's rather relaxing watching your little trains (and boats and planes) pootling around the map. It works perfectly on Linux and is ideal for transport wonks and repressed train spotters like me.