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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 7h

while tides can be predicted (modulo wind) ~decades in advance with a sum of cosines calibrated for each location with some constants, so you just need some idea of location and time,

The Admiralty (a brand name of the UK Hydrological Office, part of the Ministry of Defence) owns these […]

Original post on masto.ai

masto.ai

Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 7h

I was thinking it would be a fun project to replicate this [1] cute tide clock. Fell down a rabbit hole because I knew practically nothing about embedded devices or electronics. A day later, I now know all about MAX7219 controlled LED matrices and the various merits of nrf52/stm32/esp32 SOCs and […]

Original post on masto.ai

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 10h

A timetable between two cities that can be described in a few bullet points

Sitting very jealously in France with our twenty page timetables with thirty footnotes

https://mastodon.social/@claudsch/115339377479664886

```
New train timetable REX 25xx Bratislava main station - Vienna main station:

19 trains daily from Bratislava hl. st. to Vienna:

departures from Bratislava city center daily every 50 minutes from 4:50 to 23:50,

arrivals at Wien Hbf always at the 46th minute.

19 trains per day from Vienna to Bratislava:

departures from Wien Hbf. daily on the 14th minute from 5:14 to 00:14,

arrivals to Bratislava city centre always on the 10th minute.

```

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 18h

@jon hah. anecdotally yesterday i noticed that quick/regular public transport between freiburg and colmar goes right up to the border and then just stops. google claims that the fastest route is via basel...

https://masto.ai/@bovine3dom/115334086198557762

Oliver Blanthorn (@[email protected])

Attached: 2 images an hour ago i opened up my isochrone toy to work on adding caching to it i didn't add caching but i did have fun playing with it for an hour. quite a few depressing cases where the accessible basin neatly follows borders

masto.ai

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 1d

in fairness, there's a river there, but advanced technology exists and is used elsewhere to overcome such obstacles, as below

you can play with it here for now but if more than like 10 people look at it at once i might need to take it down. because i didn't add […]

[Original post on masto.ai]

an isochrone map of travel times at 5pm around saint etienne in france. despite the presence of a river people are able to traverse it somehow

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 1d

an hour ago i opened up my isochrone toy to work on adding caching to it

i didn't add caching but i did have playing with it for an hour.

quite a few depressing cases where the accessible basin neatly follows borders

isochrone map of travel times at 5pm around freiburg in germany. the accessible area neatly hugs the border.

isochrone map of travel times at 5pm around colmar in alsace. the accessible area neatly hugs the border.

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 1d

@redjives ooh this is making me want to run some code on Wiktionary to see how many words have single word translations

anecdotally between French and English I notice more often that English words don't have tidy direct translations, the most recent of which was "flightless" (like a penguin) […]

Original post on masto.ai

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

new measure of political centralisation just dropped: how big is your biggest gtfs file?

Output of `btdu`, a cool sampling alternative to `ntdu` for btrfs filesystems for a hive partitioned directory of GTFS feeds. the first two letters after source= in each directory correspond to the country code

Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

@moof the open transport community conference surely is already the fedi-meetup

(i will also be there)

@maartje @jon

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

@smsm1 are you sure it has limited zones? i thought it had expanded into lots of normal national rail territory now and would charge you the standard fare. or is that a different system?

@jon

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

@jon ooh i hope they copy the Dutch idea of surcharges for certain trains using certain lines that you have to tap into using special terminals on the platform

is there a good reason not to copy Oyster? it seems to work pretty well in London

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

@jon they need fifteen years for the staff on the current contracts to retire so they can work new hires "dangerously long hours" like Transdev does

Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 2d

Bretagne aims to have one train an hour at its biggest stations by 2040.

The kind of ambition you can get when you directly award your TER contract to the SNCF for the longest time legally allowed at the last minute legally allowed […]

Original post on masto.ai

masto.ai

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Reform (ex-Brexit, ex-UKIP, Nigel Farage's lot) are in charge of Kent county council and are calling for cross channel services to restart from Ashford and Ebbsfleet

> [Eurostar] argues that restarting would require significant investment in new border systems and staff that cannot be justified […]

Original post on masto.ai

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 3d

(this is not an attack on people boosting slop. myths and legends have been part of the human experience forever. it is just not something i personally wish to partake in because it offends my science brain)

Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

Brendan Halpin @bthalpin.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · Jul 22

We visited my wife's grandmother's village of origin recently, and I got to wondering why there were so few distinct surnames in the local cemetery.

I adapted a Wright-Fisher population genetics model to explain it: https://brendanhalpin.net/blog/posts/names/

Loss of surnames in small communities: a model

We recently visited my wife’s grandmother’s village of origin, on the eastern edge of the Massif Centrale in France. It is tiny and relatively remote, in good but very hilly farmland. The town has a population now of under 500, and was maybe twice that during her grandmother’s childhood. Visiting the graveyard it struck us that certain surnames came up again and again (Débatisse, Barge, Goutorbe, Pras, Copperé, Fragne). Naturally in small communities (particularly before easy transport) people will marry locally, but to contemporary eyes it seems almost incestuous: everyone seems related to everyone!

brendanhalpin.net

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Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

John Schrag @jvschrag.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Inktober day 3: “Crown”

Please note that I know absolutely nothing about horse racing.

#inktober #inktober2025

One-panel cartoon. A horse stands on the left, wearing an elaborate three-tiered crown. To the right is a jockey, standing arms crossed, looking annoyed and disappointed. The horse says to him “Oh, be reasonable, Jerome. Why would they give YOU the triple crown? I won the damn race.”

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Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

Terence Eden @edent.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

🆕 blog! “You did no fact checking, and I must scream”

I'm neither a journalist nor a professional fact checker but, the thing is, it's has never been easier to check basic facts. Yeah, sure, there's a world of misinformation out there, but it doesn't take much effort to determine if something […]

Original post on mastodon.social

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 4d

Slightly annoying open letter from the French greens in Le Monde about the night trains

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/10/04/la-suppression-des-trains-de-nuit-pour-berlin-et-vienne-une-erreur-politique-un-abandon-ecologique-et-un-recul-strategique_6644416_3232.html

> Oui, les trains […]

Original post on masto.ai

masto.ai

Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

Tobias @tordans.en.osm.town.ap.brid.gy · 7d

@heigit did a great comparison of OSM land use data with an external dataset. But I have a gripe with how they present OSM as the inferior dataset. I blogged about it at https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/tordans/diary/407524

Authoritative Data is Not More Right Just Because It’s Authoritative

HeiGIT recently published an analysis together with the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), comparing land cover data from OSM with the official CORINE Land Cover (CLC) dataset from BKG.

www.openstreetmap.org

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 6d

@pglux.bsky.social the article claims SNCF Voyageurs 🤔

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 6d

@pglux.bsky.social we don't know what the SNCF themselves offered. weirdly the minute there is a competitive tender their bids get a lot better...

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Oliver Blanthorn @bovine3dom.masto.ai.ap.brid.gy · 6d

We have some concrete figures on the RATP bid that won the contract for local trains around Caen against the SNCF: 50% increase in train-km for no increase in cost […]

Original post on masto.ai

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Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

Sebastian Crane @seabass.social.seabass.systems.ap.brid.gy · 7d

For today's journey of mine to Aberystwyth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 from my home in Ilfracombe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, I thought it would be fun to do a #crossborderrail travelogue in the style of @[email protected]. After all, the route does involve three border crossings - albeit just weaving back and forth between a kingdom […]

Original post on social.seabass.systems

social.seabass.systems

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Reposted by Oliver Blanthorn

Braid in trains :lesbian_uz: - solidarity with :streik: @lewd.zug.network.ap.brid.gy · 6d

Happy #interrail and #CrossBorderRail news : :iryo: Iryo now accepts InterRail on their trains !

Sadly as always with Trenitalia, their high-speed trains are on compulsory reservation.

Reservations are EUR 10 in 2nd class and EUR 13 in 1st class […]

Original post on zug.network

zug.network