Hardly a day goes by without encountering an emergency vehicle with all lights flashing and horns blaring, usually it’s an ambulance. What staggers me is the way in which the majority of motorists react as soon as they see the emergency vehicle – slam the brakes on and stop! Doesn’t matter if they’re just short of the brow of a hill, a bend in the road, opposite a parked car or at a point at where the road narrows. I can’t recall if how to react to these situations is covered in the driving theory test? If I’m correct in thinking it’s not, perhaps that explains why the majority of drivers react as they do, although common sense should tell you what to do without having to be taught.

The Winchester to Salisbury route that is. At Broughton there is a Water Buffalo farm and usually the buffalo are way back in the fields but yesterday I was able to get a picture of this ‘girl’. She actually spotted me walking into the field and then headed straight for me to then stare at me as I stared at her. There are more, and better, photos on the farm website.

The hedge was thick with sloes. Next time I’ll make sure I’ve got a container with me and I’ll grab some to make sloe gin for Christmas.

On Thursday I started to feel unwell with all the symptoms of a cold. Friday was the first day of my 5 day break and simultaneously the cold broke. I’m being ill in my own time! At last I’m beginning to feel a little better which is fortunate because this afternoon I’ve got to take Essy to Gatwick for an overnight flight to Zimbabwe. She’s flying Air Zimbabwe who, whilst being a safe airline, don’t have too much to commend them except the baggage allowance – 40kgs hold luggage + 8kgs hand luggage. You may well think that’s an awful lot for someone going to a very hot country for a short time, I’d probably only take a few pairs of shorts and some cotton shirts …… oh, and some underwear! Essy, having exercised extreme self-control, has one suitcase of 19kg, a second suitcase of 19.5kg and exactly 8kg of hand luggage. Of course very little of this is Essy’s clothes, the bulk of it is made up of stuff still difficult to obtain, or which is very expensive, in Zimbabwe.

I just remembered something I posted 3 years ago. Here it is, a reminder of how ill I’ve been!

It looks to me like IBM have been able to patent simple mathematical division!

Utilizing gross vehicle weight to determine passenger numbers

A method, system, and computer program for determining the number of passengers riding on a vehicle in real time is presented. A total weight of passengers on the vehicle is divided by an estimated weight of each of the passengers to estimate how many passengers are on the vehicle in real time.

I’ll have to get my patent application on utilizing fuel tank capacity to calculate vehicle range filed before anyone else does.

And the message is that people are far more interested in breastfeeding than the life of a bus driver. Analysis of the last 7 days search terms used to reach this blog show that ‘breastfeeding’ was the biggest single search term by a country mile – three times more searches on the single word ‘breastfeeding’ than all the search terms including ‘bus’ in them added together!

Perhaps it would be a good idea to change ‘Buses in the News’ to ‘Breastfeeding in the News’? :-)

…… you may receive it. And we did on 16 May 2010; the day we started using the new ERG Ticket Systems TP5000 ticket machines. A week after their introduction I posted my first impressions adding that I’d “update my opinions having used the machine for longer”.

It’s now 3 months later so this is my updated opinion which isn’t very different to my first impressions. I’ve still not been able to discover much to enthuse over apart from the immediate impression I had that “Finding adult day tickets of the numerous types, child tickets, family tickets, week tickets etc. is now much easier”. The overwhelming problem, for me, is the number of key presses required to issue a ticket. There are several steps required to issue a ticket, the first is to ensure that the ticket machine is already set to your current location, I’ve not included any key presses to set that since the machine should already be correctly set. As I drove our Winchester to Guildford route today I counted the the presses required to issue either a single or return ticket from Winchester to Guildford. It’s 7 using the new machine compared with 3 using the older Wayfarer. If the next passenger to board also wants a ticket for the same journey it’s 2 key presses for the new machine against 1 for the Wayfarer. The next passenger then wants only to travel to Alton (half way to Guildford) which is 5 key presses which used to be 4. If the next passenger wants Guildford again it’s 7 key presses again. Because each route has a varying number of stops the key presses required to issue a ticket using the ERG TP5000 compared with key presses to issue the same ticket using the Wayfarer is not constant. However, I think it’s fair to say that the new machines require about double the number of key presses to issue a single or return ticket when compared with the older machines.

Have a careful look at each key board.

Don’t the Wayfarer buttons look more ‘business like’ and easier to hit? Very, very importantly it’s got a proper numeric keypad, compare that with the TP5000 where numeric input is via the two wavy vertical columns, 1 – 5 vertically down the wavy left column and 6 -0 vertically down the wavy right column! Every keypad I use – telephone, calculator, computer keyboard. chip and pin machine, cash dispenser etc has a regular numeric keypad like the Wayfarer. It’s very difficult and odd to input numeric data using the TP5000’s dual function wavy vertical columns. The other obvious difference just looking at the photos is the neat, nice, solid looking squareness of the Wayfarer buttons compared to the varying sizes and shapes on the TP5000.

The second worst feature of the ERG machines is the display in which numbers/characters are formed from pixels. The background is light grey and the illuminated pixels dark grey. Dark grey print on a light grey background doesn’t give the greatest clarity, especially in bright light. The old machines used an LCD display in which sectors were activated to display a number, these sectors were solid black against a very light background. Much better.

I could write a lot more but it’s too late now. We wished for new machines and received them!