Thursday

Nov. 30th, 2006 03:34 pm
jack: (Default)
[personal profile] jack
On thursday I cycled out to Ninewell, one of the small nature reserves round Cambridge. It's a tiny wood with a sluggish shallow stream leaking out of a number of chalk wells, supposedly feeding Hobson's Conduit.

It's very strange to cycle up to a layby and get out. Normally I'm either going somewhere, and cycle up to the door, or going for a walk in the country, and go in a car/train.

It's pretty. Walking around nature always gets the creative juices going -- I updated the beetles in my flash game (not online yet) making them face diagonally, which makes them feel considerably more aggressive whilst being about as easy to squish -- and enables a few more levels.

Just the other side of the wood is a national cycle route alongside the railway which I incporporated in my route back. Along the centre were coloured footlong stripes, stretching into the distance, which I wondered about, thinking it was a cycle route thing.

Do you know? See http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/projects/cambridge/shelford_addenbrookes_cycle_path.htm -- it's a commemorative depiction of a section of genome, with four colours for G, C, T, and A.

When I was walking along I wondered if I could tell which direction the pattern went. Not really, and of course, it does have one, but I probably could never have told by examining it. But if you had two (or more) colours of stripes you could use but nothing else, could you indicate a prefered direction?

Using a rainbow pattern is cheating. You can't use a 1,2 pattern because that's symmetric. You could have w,b,ww,bb, but only if you know white comes first :) wbwwbbwwwbbb or rbbgggrbbggg work. But are you sure you'd *which* way it was telling you to go? Is there a better suggestion?

Date: 2006-11-30 04:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
LOL. I can imagine. *hugs* I waved at the train just in case anyone nice/I knew was there, but it would be too early for you to have been coming back, I should think.

When I looked it up I felt I should have known -- though to be fair I can't imagine how I could possibly have. In fact, I'm amazed I *did* manage to look it up, assuming it was a universal feature of cycle paths rather than something special, and not knowing what it was called or for, but about the first thing I tried was googling for "national cycle route stripes" which popped right up with the "Great Shelford to Addenbrooks cycle path" and ""Addenbrooks to Great Shelford to cycle path" as the first two hits :)

PS. I've been doing some new pooh levels (not finished) and started doing some live action photos which may or may not work long term. I thought of you first for CR or Alice as you were kind enough to be squeeful about it when I first showed people -- but you're never going to have time :)

Date: 2006-12-01 07:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] atreic.livejournal.com
Oooh, more Pooh! I'm going to have lots of spare time, but it's going to be in Coventry, which I assume isn't much help. But it sounds fun :-)

Date: 2006-12-04 02:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
No, not so much :) But remind me if you're ever spending a sun afternoon in cam, you might still be able to drop in and be unimmortalized :)