Forward Planning

We've discussed before planning strategies, such as the MiniMax algorithm, and how a limiting factor is how far ahead you plan. The planning horizon limits your options, and often the game is won by whoever plans furthest ahead.

We are perfectly happy with a planning horizon of one: what is the next thing in your way. However, we are pretty unimpressed by this video which was sent to us of a car in Clifton who'se planning horizon was zero. When a car is coming towards you, you either do two things -commit at speed or back off. What you don't do is go alongside the bicycle at 15 mph with a car coming towards you at 20 mph, as that leads to an exchange of details and some insurance premiums, especially now that tax-dodgers are starting to carry cameras and no doubt willing to supply their videos as evidence.

If you are going to overtake with oncoming traffic, put your foot down!

The source of all evil

There are two 9pm+ TV series filmed in Bristol running right now, Mistresses and Being Human.

Mistresses is set in Clifton and Redland; Papadelli's delicatessen pops up regularly, and the program focuses on the day-to-day problems of residents of this part of the city, namely who is going to jump in bed with whom while their respective spouses aren't looking. Except. It's just not realistic is it? You don't just drive round on a weekday afternoon for a bit of awayday fun with at at-home wife while their husband is out at work. Not in Clifton, not unless foreplay consists of 15 minutes driving round in circles looking for somewhere to park followed by 10 minutes of complaining about the traffic on the way there. The only way they'd be able to do it would be if the wife's house had a driveway, and she pulled her car out the previous evening or before 0700 -but she'd be left explaining to her husband why she's doing that. No, not realistic. Now, if they cycled round to their liasons, it would be a cycling-city showcase program. And a good use of showers.

Being Human is much better. It is funded by the South Bristol Marketing Board, an organisation sponsored by two estate agents, a gastropub, and some of the warehouse-sized shops in Bristlington. The purpose of the SBMB is to remind people that some of the more interesting parts of the city are south of the river and people are usually friendlier to their neighbours, even when they are in fact vampires, ghosts or werewolves. In the series, the characters all live in Totterdown, not far from the Shakespeare pub.

As part of the plot -approved by the South Bristol Marketing Board-, the enemy is a group of vampires based in a building. The building is in Alma Vale Road, Clifton, a road most well known for the Alma Tavern, a pub with a theatre attached, and just round the corner from Papadelli's, the delicatessen in mistresses where some of the characters work.

In the program, the building appears to be a funeral parlour, but in reality is something else

It is a closed down car showroom.

As far as Being Human is concerned then, the enemy of humanity are car dealers. Hmmm.

Almost on the corner

In theory, you aren't meant to park on a corner. In practise, if you can get your car almost near a corner, then it's parked, especially off Alma Road in Clifton.

Here the Peugeot Y86JHU shows that a couple of feet from a corner works ok. It's "corner-ish"


Just after putting the camera away, a white astra with Bristol Parking Services drove by. I did indicate to the passenger that there was an illegally parked vehicle, to see what they would do, but she just mouthed "sorry" and put it away.

One experiment we have been debating is to get a white car, put some "Bristol Parking Services" stickers on the side and see if we park unscathed anywhere in the city. But having seen the car this morning, we have a new theory: someone else is running the same experiment. Just think. If you could park where you want just by having BPS sprayed on your car, you'd do it.

Perhaps that woman in the car wasn't mouthing "sorry" through the window, she was saying "Oh no, it's one of those idiots who think we can ticket cars again". Someone on a bike should follow the next of these cars they meet, just to see whether there really are parking services people in them