Snapshot: the signwriter’s delight

Seen on the platform of the newly refurbished Queen’s Park station in Glasgow. Perhaps any signwriters reading this could let me know roughly how much it costs to fabricate a metal sign approximately 500mm square with laminate lettering that advises you to find another sign that might be able to tell you something.

Cancelled

I’m ambivalent about graffiti and flyposting. I don’t have a problem with it, but I can appreciate some property owners do. So how does a city council deal with illegal fly posting of commercial events? They can tear them down, and then tear down the replacements, and then tear down the ones that replace them. Or they can slap one of these red stickers over them.

Smarter than your average city council…

Screenshot: forecasting

And this is summer time. I’m going to have to get used to this, I think.

Urban rhythms

The bright colours, strategically simplified angles and smooth corners of another urban transit map have seduced me. Having now spent two weeks in Glasgow, I’m becoming more familiar with the lie of the land and the names of suburbs, especially those distant ones with exotic names.

Unfortunately, Glasgow (like Sheffield) has passed the operation of most of its buses to the First Group. That means fares have sky rocketed for occasional users. So instead of paying £1.30 for a ride into town, I’ll stick to paying £1.05 for a return ticket on the train (note to self: remember to renew the 16-25 Railcard the day before my birthday). I’ve also established quickly that beside from bicycle, the train is the way to get around. Glasgow has the largest suburban rail network in the country; well… the largest in Scotland, if you’re a secessionist, or the largest outside London if you’re not.

Although the Cathcart Circle is partially closed at the moment while engineers fill some subsidence with concrete, the system is reliable, fast and runs like clockwork. During that closure, my nearest station is Pollokshields West (not to be confused with Pollokshields East, Pollokshaws East or Pollokshaws West). The walk home takes me across a footbridge that crosses the Barrhead line (red in the plan above) just north of the delightful sounding Crossmyloof station. Not only has my train been on time every time, but every time I have crossed that footbridge on the way home, I have looked south down the tracks to see the same train approaching at exactly the same spot. It passes underneath the footbridge at exactly the same time that a southbound train passes on the adjacent track.

Can’t they run late just for once?

Globalisation part II: your local news goes on tour

Following his observations on the evolution in news delivery (i.e. mass redundancies of journalists) at Global Québec and my post about virtual newsroom architecture Steve Faguy makes some interesting observations about what a green screen to do for local newscasts during the regular newscaster’s vacation. If a newscaster can go on holiday and be replaced by another presenter in another province in front a greens creen, why not just get Jamie Orchard to pack a fold up green screen to take with her to Punta Cana?