Richard Fairhurst
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richardfairhurst.bsky.social
Richard Fairhurst
@richardfairhurst.bsky.social
360 followers 67 following 160 posts
Building the world’s best bike directions at cycle.travel
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Given that our local River Learning Trust primary has got through five heads in five years, I’m not convinced they need any help from the congestion charge for staff to start leaving
The New Yorker wrote about the app I’ve spent most time in over the last 20 years: TextEdit, Apple’s bare-bones WYSIWYG text editor. Always works, never gets in the way. Less nonsense than Word 5.1, less nonsense than ChatGPT. Thank you, whoever maintains it. www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...
TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software
The bare-bones Mac writing app represents a literalist sensibility that is coming back into vogue as A.I. destabilizes our technological interactions.
www.newyorker.com
Amazingly the permanent signs on the approaches to the Botley Road rail bridge have never been patched…
KOM MAAR OP
Oxfordshire’s street design should be influenced by best practice in Amsterdam and Oslo, according to a new commission by the County Council. A revised Oxfordshire Street Design Code is being drawn up with the support of consultants Create Streets.
It is, very much (and on to Berinsfield).
They went into liquidation the other year I think – they did get bought out, but who knows what the new owners' attitude to honouring previous customers will be. Fingers crossed!
Reposted by Richard Fairhurst
Café ride to test the upcoming version of the cycle.travel app ☕️
Headed out on the Bike Friday to explore some bridleways around Oxford.
Indeed it isn’t! There are routinely three Terns on the school run here every morning, three miles of moderately hilly unlit Cotswold roads. (We were one of them until changing schools the other year, but one of the other parents still routinely borrows our GSD.)
Reposted by Richard Fairhurst
The Bluesky theory of moderation is one of those “I’d really like to believe in this, but I am dubious”, but I will put that aside for the iconic reply to “people who have convinced themselves that they are the boss of people they don’t give any money to“, a curse of social media.
Even after 35+ years of Providing Free Stuff To Strangers Using Computers (late 1980s public domain software for the Amstrad 8-bits ftw), the sheer entitlement of 5% of those strangers never ceases to amaze me
Reposted by Richard Fairhurst
In one of those wonderful coincidences, the code to display cycle.travel’s app map yn Gymraeg was finished today just as the Welsh Government announced a project to crowdsource Welsh placenames for OpenStreetMap https://media.service.gov.wales/news/new-priorities-to-help-protect-welsh-place-names
Reposted by Richard Fairhurst
just bored and thinking about how Freud's, the cocktail bar in a defunct Grade II listed church in Oxford, has been closed since 2023 'for renovations' but they haven't applied for any listed building consent and now it's the last remaining real estate in Radcliffe Observatory Quarter
“Get in, loser, we're founding a college”
neatly illustrating w3w’s complete unsuitability for anything at all
AI instant answers have their uses but “is it safe to cycle across Sudan right now” is probably not one of them
Reposted by Richard Fairhurst
Lol. How well did the last govt insulting load-bearing parts of their electoral coalition work out for them? Like they watched what the Lib Dems did to the home counties and wondered what it'd be like if the Greens did that to the two dozen largest university towns.
Right. My students working two part time jobs and/or having an hour and a half commute to uni because they have to live at home due to the cost of student accommodation lack drive and vigour. Sure thing, Peter. The UK Govt still haven't a clue about the realities of universities today.
Now if they could do a Saturday service and extend it to Beale Park…

(Brilliant little zoo/wildlife park on the Berks/Oxon border. But really hard to get to by public transport. There’s no bus so you have to walk ~1.5mi from Pangbourne station on a narrow footpath by a busy road. With kids.)
what3words is pivoting to AI to save their floundering business model and it makes NO SENSE. If "AI voice chat" can book you an Uber to "///frog.eats.donuts", it can also book you an Uber to "my mate Darren's house" and cut out the intermediate step of w3w coordinates what3words.com/products/pro