Virtual trainspotting

The second day of BarCamp London is going great — I’m amazed a the energy and enthusiasm after a night of very little sleep for everyone. The lack of sleep can be attributed to Simon and his damn Werewolf game.

I’ve just seen the most wonderful presentation from the excellent Matthew Somerville. He works on They Work For You… and I just found out that he’s the guy who did the renegade accessible Odeon site!

He’s built a fantastic mashup of maps and train times. Maybe I shouldn’t be drawing attention to it because he’s getting the data by screen-scraping — because there is no National Rail API — but damn, this is sweet! You can find out when they’re due to arrive at a station. You can see the trains moving along the map. Click the checkbox to speed up the movement by ten.

See how Brighton is in the drop-down list of stations? Matthew added that in the middle of the presentation in response to my request. After all, I need to get back down to Brighton later today.

Have you published a response to this? :

Previously on this day

15 years ago I wrote The approaching storm

Frances is getting closer to Florida. The good news is that, at the moment, it has decreased from a category four to a category three hurricane.

15 years ago I wrote Waiter, there's music in my DRM

Microsoft has soft-launched its music downloading service. Naturally, lots of people are comparing it to the iTunes music store and evaluating their relative merits.

15 years ago I wrote The calm before the storm

Hurricane Frances is getting closer. People here in Saint Augustine have been stocking up on water and other supplies. Things are still quite calm here though.

16 years ago I wrote Laptop lamentation

I had a horrible experience today. My mobile world literally came crashing down around me.

16 years ago I wrote The Uncertainty Principle Is Untenable

It really takes a lot for spam to be memorable, but this is one of the weirdest I’ve seen a long time.

17 years ago I wrote Stop me before I paint again

Banksy is a London grafitti artist. This is my favourite painting of his.

17 years ago I wrote BBC + RSS = :-)

Excellent news. The BBC now has RSS feeds.

17 years ago I wrote Featured Freelancer

Catch it while you can. I’m a featured designer this month over at the Freelancer Network.