Backstop

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• Don't read the comments!

  @Backstop started

  • 164 comments
  • 21,774 views

  @Vanneau replied
• Stars / Astronomy

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 days, 3 hours

  

  Having worked at a research observatory I did know that ;-) Still worthy info to point out

• Stars / Astronomy

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 days, 5 hours

  

  It will take half an hour for your eyes to dark adapt, which means no artificial light at all, over that time the amount of stars that will become apparent should be great.

• Bicycle Tag of bike

  in General • 3 days, 12 hours

  

  That bench faces east or north east, but I haven't see it before...

• 60th Birthday Ride Canonbury to Cambridge (train home)

  in Rides & Races • 1 week, 5 days

  

  One day after the wife's due date so probably won't get a pass. If I do I'll happily join.

• Cycle lanes

  in General • 2 weeks, 2 days

  

  What doesn't help TFL is their insistence on bespoke designs for each piece of infrastructure. The principles are fairly well established but every design must require an army of analysts and engineers.

  At Archway they needed to consider giving priority to particular cycling routes, instead of just tacking on a lane here and a track there in an attempt at providing an off road route for all directions, which they didn't even manage.

  I don't suspect they were helped by TFL's dogmatic preference for Bus travel.

• TFL Cycle Superhighways

  in General • 2 weeks, 2 days

  

  The criticisms of current cyclists towards tracks seem to be missing the point to me, the tracks are built for those who don't want to play/fight with motor traffic, not those currently happy to brave their way through it all.

  The goal of segregated tracks is to enable 8-80 cycling, take a look at the roads you currently think are ok for cycling, then put an unattended 10 year old in there.

• Cycle lanes

  in General • 2 weeks, 2 days

  

  It was redesigned and rebuilt under the dangerous junctions scheme by Boris. Like Oval it suffers from being a piecemeal approach. The road running up the hill isn't a junction and was therefore outside of the designers remit. I would also say there is a flaw in the philosophy of peninsularisation, where one arm of the gyratory is closed, cf. E&C. It adds a ton of complexity to the junction design and without the political will to provide time as well as space through the junction it's a mixed bag for segregated cycling.

  The obvious and tried solution is a bus stop bypass as you have on Blackfriars and elsewhere. Sadiq has been thoroughly underwhelming so far in producing infrastructure so don't expect any changes soon.

• Home DIY

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 weeks, 5 days

  

  When having our boiler serviced the engineer was unimpressed with our combi boiler in a cupboard. He even stuck a sticker on the boiler warning us about the fact the boiler was in a cupboard...

  I can see the point, lack of air flow = CO death.

• Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

  in Announcements, Help & Testing • 3 weeks, 5 days

  

  Pretty sure as a public forum the press have fairnuse rights to reproduce what's written on here