A day in Hastings

Thanks to our friends (and particularly their mobility and awareness) we braved the rainy weather and paid a visit to Jerwood Gallery opened in Hastings today.

Hastings appeared to me similar to nearby Folkestone, bigger, but less nice. While the main trade street was fairly cosy there were undoubtedly more identical faceless global brands branches, betting and pawn shops, and what specifically caught my eye, many shop signs were just printed in unnaturally bright colours on plastic banners (just as they do in Russia), and there are very few things that can make a shop more ugly and undesirable.

I liked the design of the gallery building - I don't how how well do those "hand-glazed" tiles reflect the dusk sunlight (which was the idea), but they blend almost perfectly with the black wooden net huts surrounding it.

Building the fancy venue ten steps away from boats, stalls and huts used by local fishermen caused a lot of controversy in the town. It is very hard for me as for a random visitor and a foreigner to judge, but I feel that the real reason behind the discontent wasn't just the obstructed view.

For a honest fisherman or woman that gallery with strange people lazing their time away staring at some childish scrawls must be something that seriously challenges their lifestyle - which has been already threatened by market and regulations:

In London the most most famous modern art museum resides in a former power station which industrial assemblies are now serving as lifeless decorations. Boat huts around the Jerwood gallery are very likely becoming the same.

The collection the gallery started with is hardly able to impress someone who is spoiled with a luxury of visiting countless London exhibitions. Some paintings were still good enough to remember and I've written down their details to publish them later on my tumblr, only to find out upon returning home they're not yet online. Anyway we spent more time near windows apparently, taking pictures of the deserted street:

We also had a quick walk in the drizzle to the spectacular hills offering fantastic views on the seashore. The best part was the thickening fog blurring the horizon out and almost hiding the distant objects - that made the perspective very distinctive, and I couldn't help remembering Flatland I read last year.

There is also my full Hastings Flickr set if you are interested.

Folkestone and Rye

Folkestone is where we saw the English Channel for the first time (air trips not included):

While the universally recognised home of the famous white cliffs is Dover, they are also towering over the Folkestone shores:

The Eurotunnel is robbing the Folkestone port of the last bits of its former glory but still the town boasts its heritage and anchors can be seen everywhere, including real ones used as monuments. There is even a large hotel which shape resembles a cruise ship:

Speaking of hotels, there are enough of them for you to forget about the semi-abandoned port hub. The seaside beyond the harbour is a long line of hotel buildings, many of them very neatly looking and offering splendid views on the sea.

Local seafood is also available - some shops and stalls proudly advertise that they own a fisher boat. The main offers though are sea snails, crabs and crayfish with larger species tend to be brought from elsewhere.

A typical English seaside:

It is necessary to mention the welcoming personnel of the National Coastwatch post - we were spotted while wandering on the top of the hill and invited to take a look inside. This post is basically a sea traffic controlling point maintaining the order and observing the vessels passing the Channel - the sea traffic there is right-hand by the way - which is one of the busiest areas in the world (you need to type "Folkestone" in the "Go to area" field here to see).

This is the post's third building - the previous two of them have slid slowly off the cliff.

***

Rye is a small town in the East Sussex with quite a few well-preserved historical buildings and even more tourists taking pictures of them. Surprisingly shiny (yet still small and cosy) shops that could be found on its narrow streets are obviously too numerous to serve just locals. Everything there is crying for being photographed, and still there are no curtains on ground floors of residential houses, as if the interiors are also parts of the attraction.

Two inns are competing for their right to be called the oldest one in Rye. While The Mermaid Inn still retains its 12th century cellar, the "modern" building had been re-built in just 1420. The Olde Bell, on the other hand, was built in the more recent 14th century, but survived without a facelift:

One interesting detail which makes both establishments something more than two nicely looking gingerbread houses and puts things into the historical perspective for real is the secret passage connecting them and used by a notorious gang Rye once used to be famous for. I learnt about the tunnel only later at home but luckily found both buildings in the phone memory. This currently smoothed-out town knew very different days.

***
There are more bad mobile photos in a dedicated set on Flickr.

They're moving!

Speaking of the Tube and its infrastructure, check these links out:

http://traintimes.org.uk:81/map/tube/
http://liveline.aeracode.org/

With the API opened by TfL recently it is now possible to identify any particular train and its current position. A number of ideas jump to mind though most of them are hobbled by the lack of the internet connection while underground (e.g. "get-in-the-empty-train-just-hit-the-line" app).

Disclaimer

I was wrong in my assumtions yesterday due to my loose memory - today's test has shown that the top-up made on station doesn't become visible online immediately - the balance you see at the site is always the one of yesterday. So the once-a-day-transaction theory is consistent.

The online system is even more detached - e.g. it only shows travel history for the journeys paid for online for some reason.

Okay, now I understand that.

Un-unsealable Oyster

Yesterday I’ve found myself in a bit of a nasty situation. There were severe delays almost every morning this week on the Tube line I use to get to work, so I used alternative route for several time (the office is between two stations of different lines).

I’ve never checked my Oyster card’s balance for I got used to my routine journeys to be covered by the Travelcard on it – and that turned out to be my silly mistake, because that alternative station while situated in a walking distance from the usual one still was in a farther zone. So every time I used that route, my PAYG balance decreased and finally became negative when I finished another morning journey.

I was ill-fated enough to realize that only when I tried to enter the station later in the evening. That’s how I learned that the Oyster card can’t be validated with a negative balance, even with an active and valid Travelcard on it. It’s actually no more than a trifle but not when you forget your money and bank card at home at the same day.

Geez! That was not a pleasant experience at all.

Of course I tried to access TfL website from my phone to top-up online, but in vain – the payment made online becomes active only the next day after the purchase, so I had to wait for Masha to arrive and help me out.

After that incident I got curious of how the Oyster infrastructure is organized. I wasn’t yet successful in understanding why the one-day delay is required for online transactions (perhaps this is not technically conditioned and has other explanations) but nevertheless there were two interesting facts discovered: firstly, Oyster is a value-storing card, not just an read-only ID tag (as in NYCT and other similar implementations) and secondly, all the travel records collected by readers are sent to the central warehouse at the end of the day, not simply as an opportunity arises (or in even real-time for stationary Tube readers).

There were some attempts before to hack Oyster system (surprisingly poorly described), but all of them were based on cloning cards, not on writing new values on them. Of course, after transactions committed at the end of the day two identical cards were easily spotted – and using only one in time didn’t make much sense. I don’t really understand why the new value can’t be written. My current idea is that the one-way encrypting is probably used like in PGP – say, the card is holding the “open key” only while the “closed key” is hold in the warehouse and used by readers. But that’s unlikely - as it was said, there is no permanent connection between readers and the warehouse. You can still buy a new Oyster and use it on a bus without any connection at all (which is obvious due to the bloody jumpy mobile internet in London). Maybe data of every card ever issued (even not yet sold) is loaded into every reader?

Don’t know that yet, but I am more than sure that the same system is used in a number of retail and other systems and is explained on the net. Have to read more about RFID technologies this weekend, stuff seems to be interesting. And the most important, check the wallet when leaving home next time!

Update: Oh, that's really simple! Shame on me.

One-day delay is required for online payment because all the communications with the warehouse happen at the end of the day - so the readers (in this case writers, actually) will be aware of your transaction made on central server the next day only.

That's why you need to specify a station to collect your purchase - apparently, the data is sent to that station only, authorizing its readers to top your card up, and that's still strange - why don't broadcast the data across all the stations?

Another strange thing is that when you make a purchase on the station, you can see my updated balance online immediately - so at least this type of communication is not limited to happen only in certain hours. But if you use online service, you have to wait. What's the principal difference?

Why to relocate

By this moment there are at least two things here that I am totally and unreservedly comfortable with comparing to Russian analogues - I mean fonts and climate.

Looser's Diary

The first impression relocation to UK gave to me was the luggage overweight payed for in the airport.

It'd be literally cheaper to buy tickets for the whole seats row to gain higher unpaid weight limit and to sleep both of us on three seats comfortably during this early flight.

Need help

Does anyone know why common vehicle doors design allows that annoying 'semi-closed' state? I mean, a door can be closed 'on one click' - it wouldn't open at this position but you can't ride with it nevertheless because you surely will be cursed by driver or security system if any. You have to reopen door every time you were unsuccessful enough to get the works and shut it once again with more power to close it firmly, 'on two clicks'.

So I don't get why to allow this interim state of the lock and why don't have just two clear distinctive states, opened and closed, like with the doors we've got in buildings?

The only reason I can imagine that it is done for door to close even if you pulled it really lightly. But well, if the door is one or another way closed why the heck can't you ride? I dunno :(

O HAI

Having my first longer-than-a-week vacation in two years.

Now in Taganrog, Russia, heading Sochi next week, then Min-Vody, Moscow and London finally.

One way ticket

29 Jul 2009

Domodedovo (DME)
Moscow, Russia

Heathrow (LHR)
London, UK