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Showing posts from April, 2013

The absurdity of the use of kph

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  First and foremost I apologise (yet again) for such a long gap in between blog posts. The return of freedom over the past year has kept me away from screens. They say it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. Running is a habit I developed over lockdown, but the return to the office (and I intend to never work from home again) and frequenting the pub has reduced frequency of this.  It is, however, not completely bleak for my physical well-being. Cramming a number of social events in after work has led to me doing a lot more walking around central London. I don’t have an Apple Watch, (other brands of smart watch exist), but my iPhone records my steps and a lot of really interesting data on my walking and running. As would be no surprise, I’ve configured everything in metric units. Thankfully, gone are the days where Apple would dictate to you , based on your location, the units of measurement you use. You have a chose whether to specify distances in miles or kilometres....
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Birmingham's Waterways

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Before my most recent trip to Birmingham, I was told that it is an architecturally uninspiring and characterless city. However, it seems that the city is highly undersold. Admittedly, there are parts of the city which are dingy, but it is evident that a lot of investment has gone into the city in recent years. Shiny new buildings dot the skyline and complement the historic baroque buildings, to some extent even allowing one to overlook some of the less attractive edifices from the 60s. One of my favourite things about the city is how car-friendly it is in comparison to London. With wide roads and lots of affordable parking, it's a stark contrast to London's narrow and winding streets, but it still maintains pedestrian-friendliness. As I'm not an employee of visitbirmingham.com, I'll get to the point of this blog post: signs on the canal. Upon descending from broad street to the canal, I was met by a sign showing all of the landmarks from that point specified in me...
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Metric Directional Sign at Putney Station (imperial finger post outside)

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There is one thing that I like to do when I get bored. This is usually get on a bus or train and venture to some far-flung place. My most recent adventure only took me as far as the opposite side of London, but I came upon a discovery that would please the few readers of this blog that are out there. A directional sign at Putney Station, which used metric units. (See photo) The sign was directing commuters to East Putney underground station, which it mentioned as "1 kilometre" away. Besides the fact that it would have been preferable to use the international standard symbol (km) rather than the whole word, it was still refreshing to see. My feeling of excitement subsided immediately after leaving the station. Right outside the door, there was a large finger post stating that east Putney was 2/3 mile away. This is yet another classic example of the British metric muddle.
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