Anyone fancy a hello 2009 challenge?

[sven945]

P.S. Sorry this is happening on the first day of fare rises. Sorry.

Damn! I should have got my travelcard yesterday! (Not sure if I'd have been able to get it for the cheaper price or not. Anyway, doesn't matter now).

[Going Underground]

Same rules as last time, no Gardens or Broadways just Wood Lane to add.......

Oh also there is an alternative, alternative challenge going on today. I understand that Dr Who and ping pon (don't know about The Beer Baron) are having a crack at the Tramlink

[Going Underground]

Central Line currently suspended between Marble Arch & Liverpool Street due fire alert at Holborn

Let's hope this is sorted before we get started as Chancery LANE will be tricky as well as route planning for the other stations that share this stretch of line, Liverpool STREET, Tottenham Court ROAD & Bond STREET

[greatkingrat]

You can say that again!

[joy54]

The results for the RSL 2009 are:

joy54 (and scrsixi & dudey until Gloucester Road)- 3:54:51 Started at North Acton
greatkingrat- 3:57:36 Started at Gloucester Road
Going Underground & sven945- 3:59:46 Started at Blackhorse Road
al- 4:03:05 Started at Perivale

[Starkey7]

Wow! Such little spread among four teams is excellent.

[joy54]

Wow! Such little spread among four teams is excellent.

Yeh Me, Kev and Jack finished on the same train (although I thought they had finished on an earlier one as they were already on the other side) but I forgot that they may of started earlier than me and in the end they did and our time was the fastest.

[jbom1]

Looks interesting - does this technology have any potential for GWR ratification purposes (presumably it doesn't work in deep tunnels)?

[tubeguru]

Am I to take it that tube challengers are now using GPS?!

[Going Underground]

Yes indeed 4 cracking efforts and I thought that our sub 4 hour time would be a winner only to come in 3rd

We did have a debate at the start and having looked at the original post both last time and on Friday it never actually stated that you had to start from a Road, Street, Lane station which was always the intention with this challenge, but that you could start anywhere as long as the finish was Mornington Crescent...
After umming and erring at the start we decided to allow a start from any station so long of course that you started the watch there and not the first Road, Street, Lane station you arrived at.....

[gasman]

I can't see it harming to send such data, though it's easily manufactured (the data is seemingly an xml file that could easily be constructed from scratch) so wouldn't carry much weight.

I would have thought it'd be harder to (convincingly) fake a GPX log than, say, a list of train numbers or a set of timestamped photos.

A couple of years back when the OpenStreetMap project's coverage of London was way patchier than it is now, I went through a period of pestering tube challengers to take GPSes with them. From what I heard the data-collection process wasn't massively successful, largely due to the difficulties of finding a unit that would a) run on batteries for a full day, b) do a decent quick job of picking up a signal as soon as it emerged from a tunnel, and c) not require constant babysitting to achieve the above. I suspect the technology has made a few leaps forward since then though.

[joy54]

Yeh I took a GPS device around with me lent to me from a guy who was involved with Open Street Map (most probably yourself). We had to duct tape it to our rucksacks and even then the results were not so good.

[dudey]

That GPS track is really good Matt, the only bit it misses out is the double back to (ironically) GPS, presumably because it's all underground. Any chance you could link us to where you can get your little gadget thing? I remember i was only a little thing, so it's pretty cool that it can do all that.

[al]

Can you only look where a person was, i.e. retrospectively, or can you log on to the net to see where they are in real time?

[RichieG]

On the subject of GPS, and slightly on the subject of TCing (only very slightly though, actually possibly not) does anybody recall a while ago when a number of London taxis were given GPS devices for a sort of 'realtime' version of Monopoly?