A Fairly Feeble Feast of Firsts

 A I, Eh? Aye; Pray Why? (Part 2)

The book on Ai duly arrived from the South American rain forest early yesterday afternoon. The print is small so reading will be a magnifier assisted challenge and certainly haf hardly started by later yesterday evening. Bedtime reading is quite hard using one hand for the book, one for the magnifier and the third had to hold the pages open. Mrs fbb's clothes pegs will help quite a bit.

But one thing is immediately certain.

First's expensive new timetable mangling software is most definitely NOT Ai.

It Costa Lot!

£4.5 million, if spread over a generous ten year life for a chunk of software, will be £450,000 a year. fbb assumes (perhaps optimistically) that the price will include a program and hardware maintenance contract.

£450,000 would cover the wages cost of a team of 10 skilled schedules officers who, with simple software, could create proper sensible timetables for the whole of First Bus - provided that Head Office were able to spread the work.

The results would be much better!

Of course. 

That is just what the passenger wants. Nothing cheers a traveller by bus more than to have the timetable changed frequently and at short notice because First now have computer software to make it easy.

Well done First.

You have to wonder whether the Ai will take into account the loss of passengers consequent upon its application of a timetable muddle intelligence.

Well done First.

Maybe First will publish the results of their survey which shows the huge percentage of passengers that prefer possible punctuality to a timetable they can easily understand. They deserve both, which can be achieved (certainly off peak) but might cost a bit more.

Reading more deeply into these (and other expurgated paragraphs) it would seem that the aim of so-called Ai is to improve punctuality at the expense of passenger numbers and customer satisfaction.,

But, at the end of the day, First does NOT want those pesky passengers spoiling its arbitrary punctuality targets by foolishly wanting to travel on a bus.

Statistics and data management are far more important than providing a bus service that people can use.

Well done First.

You have spent a huge amount of money to make life difficult for your customers.

Well done First.

Will Non-Ai Sort Out Bradford?
Some of us remember the huge bus station that was built at Bradford Interchange.

Then half of it was closed and latterly the whole lot was demolished and replaced with a new much smaller Interchange bus station.

But it, too has suddenly closed, albeit for a "temporary" period.

The PTE (which seems to be calling itself "The Combined Authority" is a little coy about the reason.

The statement does not specify how long the bus station will be closed for, but WYCA said more information will be provided "in due course". 

Statement in full on Bradford Interchange bus station closure

West Yorkshire Combined Authority said: "We have taken the precautionary measure to close Bradford Interchange bus station today following some damage believed to be linked to recent extreme weather.

"Some damage"? What damage? "Believed to be linked ..?" Don't you know?

Ah, that would be telling.

The WYCA is keeping very quiet because the "damage" was actually an attack by Aliens from the Planet Zog, attempting to steal First's new Ai software to assist wth their plans for interplanetary domination.

WYCA have successfully decoded a subsequent message from Zog ...

... which roughly translated means "Call that Ai? You couldn't organise pea soup in a brewery with that!" (Or some similar phraseology.)

The disruption to travel in Bradford is immense with buses scattered into nearby streets. But, as a good house point, the authority has issued a map ...

... and a full list of affected services.

Oddly, no one outside the Authority officials seems to have noticed the invasion.

Apparently the above poor quality picture was obtained by the Bradford Telegraph and Argus but a "D" notice was issued to prevent publication.

New Train Set : The Master Cutler?

In fbb's youth, The Master Cutler ran from Kings Cross to Sheffield via Retford and was a top grade train offering luxury service. fbb could never have afforded to travel on it!

FirstGroup’s new proposals comprise two return journeys a day from London King’s Cross, calling at Retford, Worksop, Woodhouse and Sheffield, and the company aims to provide a faster link between London and Sheffield than alternative services.

The new proposed route will give Sheffield the first regular service from London King’s Cross since 1968 and will also give Worksop in Nottinghamshire the first regular direct London trains in decades. FirstGroup estimates there are 350,000 people in the Worksop and Woodhouse catchment areas who will have direct rail access to London because of these proposals. A sizeable number of rail users in these areas currently drive to Doncaster station to pick up faster services to London rather than travelling via Sheffield.

Does First know where Woodhouse is? It is nowhere near Worksop but is a suburban stop with no facilities and all buildings boarded up ...

... and very little parking.

It is 13 miles from Worksop BUT parking as above is FREE!

Timetables have not yet been published, but trains will have to be quite speedy to beat the Midland Main Line's fastest time of just over two hours.

Currently trains from The Cross to Retford take just under two hours but with stops at Stevenage, Peterborough, Grantham and Newark. Subtract, say, 7 minutes for a slow, a stop and a sped up for each stop (28 minutes) which looks like a non-stop run to Retford in one hour 35. That leaves 25 minutes for stops at Retford, Worksop and Woodhouse and the much slower run into Sheffield.

First Rail will need some clever timetabling to achieve their advertised aims.

Maybe they will use Ai?

But before folk get too excited; please note that this is an application for track access. There is no guarantee that Notwork Rail will make the requisite paths available. We keep on being told that the East Coast Main Line is full!

fbb will keep a close eye on this one.

 Next Weekend Variety blog : Sunday 7th January 

A I, Eh? Aye; Pray Why? (Part 1)

fbb has watched the Christmas Lectures on TV from way back in the days of steam-driven 504 lines on the BBC. Here is a bit of a silent clip of equipment being set up for examining soap film and ultimately bubbles.

Ah, those were he days when real demonstrations were shown LIVE! Remember Mr Coates? Seen here whimsically demonstrating a Wimshurst Machine.

Below: Mr Coates (always the star) demonstrating and Dr Lawrence Bragg about to Lecture.

This year's lectures were on Ai which, if you write it "AI" (both capital letters), means artificial insemination!

And here is lecturer Professor Mike Woodridge shaking hands with a hand - as you do.

Arriving through the letterbox at fbb mansions today should be the Prof's book in the Pelican series.

fbb is hoping it will be more informative than the lectures which were disappointingly "thin" with weak demonstrations.  It is hard to think of suitable visual demo material when the whole caboodle is wrapped up in hgh speed computer chips and involves assembling and responding to many truck loads of data - also in impenetrable bits and bytes.

A while back fbb expressed alam about recent timetable changes in Sheffield.

The result of this new policy was to take, e.g. a fixed 15 minute interval timetable for the 1a from Chapeltown to Herdings ...

... and replace it with this!

The new timetable still offers four buses an hour but at varied and very "non-fixed" intervals. So, for the poor passenger, there is no chance of remembering the times of their bus and, effectively, the service becomes officially unreliable as a result.

At the time, fbb used the word "crackpot"; but it appears that this sort of thing is more crackpotter than fbb has, in his worst dreams, imagined.

First have spend oodles of pounds on new software to create these potty timetables.

This was First's headline for a press release a few weeks back,

It may be worth pausing to try t understand what exactly is meant by Ai.

Computers are not intelligent. In fact, computers are ineffably stupid. All they can do is add 0s and 1s. They cannot even subtract, divide or multiply. But it is what their humanity designed programs can do when the chips have done their simple sums that can be impressive - but only because their simple calculations can be done hundreds of times every second.

But that is NOT "intelligence"; it is just lots of simple sums done very quickly and using the results to make things happen.

Here, for example, and revealed only to the fbb blog, is the next Managing Director of First Bus.

So we feed her/him/it with every bit of information we can find and tell her/him/it to run a large bus company. The robot MD would still not be "intelligent". To be  "intelligent" we would have to allow the robot above to make value judgements, to get things wrong and to learn from its mistakes.

That would be beginning to show the first signs of intelligence. Maybe we have to design her/him/it to "have hunches"; to ride on buses and watch how human beings interact with the system. Then the computer will need rewards for success and punishment for failure.

And a very good pension!(?).

As we move closer to real intelligence, the fear is that the machine will protect itself; will not allow humans to unplug it and will "exterminate" any human who gets in its way. 

That might make running buses with Ai quite tricky.

Maybe the writers of Dr Who were more visionary than we think? As a reminder, herewith the first ever instance of Ai on black and white television.

Roger French's blog (yesterday) revealed a similar nonsense with another traditionally frequent service, route 4 in York. 

Whilst investigating, fbb noticed that in both York and Sheffield, First are not running any buses on a Monday!

So here is a chunk of the 4 timetable, once operating every 15 minutes clock face, but is now not quite every 20 minutes.

Artificial intelligence?

If, as Mr F avers, these hyper-potty turntables were created using Ai, you would be forced to challenge the use of the "i".  Creating timetables that are obviously more difficult for the customers to use is about as "intelligent" as inventing a chocolate teapot.

fbb needs to look more closely at First's full press release to try to understand on what the company has spent its bags of money.

First appears to have been sold a pup, a pig in a poke; indeed a chocolate teapot of a piece of software.

More tomorrow.

And, Talking Of Intelligent!

Like many mobile phone owners, fbb is plagued by adverts for Stagecoach Megabus. He is unlikely to take a ride, mainly because there are no Megabus services nearer than Exeter.

Many aeons ago, fbb had a jolly ride from Portsmouth to Brighton (route 700), from Brighton to London (Megabus) and from London back to Portsmouth (National Express). That was the first and the last Megabus journey he took.

So the new year challenge is to find a Megabus timetable, because, as you know ...

It's All On Line!

The web site is oozing with friendliness ...

... but before you book it is best o know when and where you might be booking for. So that implies a map and a timetable. 

There is a list of good things on the site.

But where is the timetable? Will this page help?

Yay! A "Birmingham Timetable".

Only it isn't!

It is a humungously huge departure list of Megabus services from Birmingham in departure time order - but no arrival time details or stop detail.

How about this list ...

... which offers you clickable routes; maybe a clickable route with the added bonus of a timetable?

And the timetable?

Erm, no!

Traveline for the M38?

What a surprise!

fbb fed the above data into his personal artificial intelligence facility and the following replies came back after a brief period of artificial thought ...

Go by National Express

Go by train

Go by car

Stay at home

It's good to have the benefits of the latest technology to speed your onward journey - or maybe not.

But fbb's Ai seems as lacking in intelligence as First's. SEE AI BELOW.

 Next Artificial Insemination blog : Saturday 6th Jan 

Post-Festive Pot Pourri (8)

The Mystery Of Macau Money

Chinese currency is (usually) the Yuan, but can be spoken of in terms of the Remnimbi. fbb will be happy for his readers to research the complex topic. For simplicity fbb will think of things in terms of the Yuan which is about 11p in good old Blighty dough.

But if you cross the border from Chinese China into Chinese Macau you currency will, in theory, have to change. Macai uses the Pataca ...

... worth a little less than 10p. So it may well be fun at the border.

Unusually in today's public transport climate, the Macau LRT has graded fares according to distance. You must pay in Patacas! But you do not pay in specie. You nuy a token ...

... which operates the gates. Here are the fares for token holders - the equivalent of cash.

Or you can pay with a smart card ...

... in which case the fares are reduced.

.. to half!

So the full length of the green line (currently the only line) will cost £1.20 with token or 60p with card.

Much, much cheaper than chips.

CHRISTmas Gift Review

Forget the heap of brightly wrapped mysterious parcels. After some years of trying to buy each other something meaningful, fbb and his lovely wife gave each other a goat - that's two goats.

Less readers should fear for the fbb's luxury shag pile soiled by refractory caprine creatures, both these goats were donated to a Christian charity for goating overseas.

(click on the panel above to enlarge - their text is not text and thus won't download as such.)

For the fbb's, the goats cost £55 each and will go to needy folk in Kenya enabling them to build a sustainable farming business.

Surely a far more worthy use of cash than chocs or bath salts!

But No 3 son gave this to his aged papa.

It is a hammer and pliers with a suspicion of non-Swiss Army Knife accoutrements folded into the handle. In some ways fbb was disappointed in this joyous gift as it did not have that ever useful tool, namely a device for getting stones out of a horse's hoof.

Yes, that's the fellah, at the left hand end!

But 1 son managed a packey of the Australian equivalent of Bombay Mix (Brizzy Mix?) ...

... also an essential antidote to the spicy "Mix" were two one-pint glasses for slaking the inevitable thirst. 

But the highlight of No 1 son's gift was a hedge.

This was not another charitable gift, designed to improve the agronomy of some folk beset by climate change in Wigan, but a OO scale model hedge ...

... or, more accurately, the wherewithal to make one. A spot has been found on the layout already; Installation will commence when the usual circular platter is obtained as its companion.

Book Review

The collection of photos was published in 1993 by the city's much loved evening daily newspaper and contains a fair selection of pictures that fbb has not seen before in the myriad of similar books.

There are plenty of tram and bus related snaps including this one of the very first Pond Street bus station, later Central Bus Station and even later Sheffield Interchange.

fbb came too late to Sheffield to enjoy the somewhat primitive original.

Tomorrow's blog will include a selection of then and now pictures and ask a challenging question about pedestrianisation.

Coaches Crisis in the Cotswolds?

It is true that Bourton on the Water was not built for coaches ...

... but it wasn't buil for cars either!

An old news rweport appeared to have settled the matter, BUT ...

The owner of Station Road Car Park said he would have to stop coaches parking there following complaints

Coaches can carry on parking in the "Venice of the Cotswolds" after an agreement was reached about soundproofing.

The owner of the only coach car park in Bourton-on-the-Water had threatened to ban the vehicles, following complaints about noise and air pollution.

However, business owners said trade in the village would be "killed" if coaches could not drop-off tourists.

A soundproof wall will now be erected between the car park and houses.

... the crisis rumbles on.

Surely getting rid of coaches will bring even more cars, even more traffic chaos and even more noise and exhaust pollution?

And An Embarrassing "Whoops"

 Next Pot Pourri blog : Friday 5th January