The Reading List of 2010 (so far)

So I’m trying to read one book per week, to help bring down my reading stack and claim back some of the space in my room. This is what I’ve finished so far this year, I’ll try to update the ol’ blog here with the other books I read this year. Since I have a bunch of comic books to read as well, I’ll include those too as I finish them.

The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin…overall a decent read, but it’s a bit dated now I think. It was written in the early 70’s and there’s a lot of wordy descriptive stuff to wade through, which was hard for me to absorb. I think I was trying to read it just to get through it, and considering it’s supposed to be a fantasy epic in the classic sense, it doesn’t really strike me in the same way I remember The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings hitting me the first time I read those books.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris…this one was really funny and quite good. Each chapter varies in length and is a balance of funny observation and deep thought. A great bathroom reader, or for the bus or similar short trips, although it’s very easy to read for longer reading stints.

James Allen on F1 – 2009: A Revolutionary Year by James Allen…Selected blog posts from last year’s Formula 1 racing season from the former ITV race commentator, this is pretty good if you want extra insight into what happened race-by-race. It’s more a season review and an inside look at some of the political wranglings than a technical rundown, so if you’re thinking about getting this make sure you know what you’re in for. The blog posts are in chronological order of course, with each chapter being one month, and each post takes just a couple of minutes to read, so it can be a quick read if you want something ‘light’ to read.

Burn Night (haggis again!)

Yep, it’s Burn Night. Every 25th of January, fans of Robert Burns, Scotland’s most favorite son (and most famous poet) gather to recite Burns’ poetry, eat haggis and have whisky.

I’ll be celebrating in a bit with:

• the haggis I got from Costco
• neeps (mashed turnip with salt, pepper and butter)
• tatties (mashed potato with salt, pepper and butter)
• whisky (Glenfiddich 18-year old, yum)
• a couple of Burns poems (why the hell not! Traditionally, ‘Address to a Haggis’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at a minimum, but many others in between – get them all at Project Gutenberg)

A complete running order with videos of past televised Burns Night Suppers is here on the BBC web site.

I won’t be piping in the haggis, but maybe a small toast, just for tradition, is in order!

The movie filter

I’m on a roll here. Many blog updates in a row! Wow. Shame not many people read this anyway, but that’s alright…

Anyway I was talking to a friend at work about movies, and he mentioned that he’d recently seen Romeo Must Die. I said that never made my cut of movies to see, and then I had to explain how my movie filter works.

When I see a trailer for a movie, or even hear about a movie and who is in it, I will automatically place the title of that movie in a mental hierarchy, such as this:

1. See as soon as possible in the theater/cinema, preferably opening night – this covers good 3D movies like Avatar, action movies like Zombieland and Sherlock Holmes, epic movies like The Lord of the Rings, etc. Probably going on the DVD/Blu-Ray wish list as well.

2. See in the theater before it stops showing – this includes movies I’m sure I’ll like such as Coraline.

3. DVD wish list for future ownership, but not necessary to see on the big screen – movies like 40-Year Old Virgin, The Hangover, etc. Movies that aren’t ‘necessary’ to see on the big screen with full surround sound, and all the whiz-bang cinema stuff.

4. Borrow it from someone who will buy it. I don’t do this often (although I’m happy to lend out my copies…only one at a time so I know where everything goes!) but in the past this has included movies like Batman Begins, which turned into an eventual purchase.

5. Definite addition to the DVD rental list – this includes stuff like I am Legend, which I don’t think will be great but I want to see.

6. Look for it/record it on movie channel (HBO, Sky Movies, etc.) – at the moment I don’t have this ability anyway.

7. When the movie finally shows on cable, my ears will perk up and and I’ll look out for it, and record it if possible – reruns of Smokey and the Bandit and the like fall into this category. Of course this could be years down the line, possibly never, so something like Romeo Must Die and Don’t Mess with the Zohan will get shuffled into this category.

8. Perhaps controversially, the next-to-last level is to simply download the movie. Yes, I download stuff. I still  purchase plenty of movies (wanna see my Amazon wishlist?) and I rent loads as well (Lovefilm DVD rental FTW) but if I’m not sure about a movie and it’s been out a while I might download it and check it out. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a few films (like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto) and have had my suspicions confirmed by others (such as Steven Segal’s A Dangerous Man). So here’s what I do: if I liked the movie, I’ll add it to the future purchase list and spread the word it’s a good movie; if I didn’t like it I don’t buy it and probably keep my mouth shut, and it’s like nothing happened. See, everyone’s happy in the end.

9. And at the bottom-most level of my movie-watching list is the Never category. Into this falls all the instant shite movies like pretty much all RomComs (ROMantic COMedies, if you’re not down with the Hollywood lingo), anything with Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Steven Segal, Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Chuck Norris and a host of other deadbeats that should have given up their careers long ago.

So maybe that explains things. Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s a hell of a lot more info than I can squeeze into a Twitter comment!

Haggis, haggis, haggis!

So I’ve been having haggis lately. It’s just £4 for a small one at my nearby Costco, that’s £1 per serving. That’s a large serving, too, about 120g for what I can get in the store – restaurants in Scotland serve less than half the amount I have, even less if you go to an expensive place.

The English folks here won’t eat haggis because a) it’s Scottish and b) they don’t even know what goes in it.

Well…here’s what goes in it, according to Wikipedia and many other websites:

Haggis is a dish containing sheep’s ‘pluck’ (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal’s stomach for approximately three hours.

Alright, I’ll admit that a sheep heart, liver and lungs doesn’t sound appealing. There’s maybe a reason why this stuff (plus stomach, kidneys, etc.) is called ‘offal’.

However…have you ever eaten sausage?

I won’t go into the old ‘lips and assholes’ myth (which is probably true for very cheap sausages), but let’s face it, unless you’re paying full whack for the best handmade, top rank gourmet sausages from an actual butcher you’re getting reclaimed meat and tendons at best, and at worst you’re getting fat with pink food coloring. Oh, and MSG, sugar and other crap.

Want to know what sheep eat? Grass. Pigs? They eat feed out of bags, and food scraps at best.

Here’s some facts and figures about British sausage, from Channel 4, one of the major TV networks:

A typical economy sausage recipe might look like: 30% pork fat, 20% recovered meat, 30% rusk and soya, 15% water and 5% assorted e-numbers, flavourings, sugar, flavour enhancer, preservatives and colourings.

Premium sausages look hand made. Good sausages use joints of meat, minced; you’ll be able to see the granules of fat and meat through the skin.

At the top end, the ingredients list is much shorter; something like 40% belly pork, 40% boned shoulder of pork, 10% breadcrumbs, 5% water and 5% herbs and spices.

What is meant by ‘meat’?

(I love how this even needs to be defined)

The definition of meat is hard to explain. Meat can contain certain percentages of fat, connective tissue and skin and still be considered ‘meat’. What most consumers consider ‘meat’ is what we call ‘visible lean’. A pork chop is 90 per cent visible lean. A sausage label may say that it contains 60 per cent meat but that could be as low as 15 per cent visible lean.

What is connective tissue?

Gristle and the tissue that holds muscle to bone. The definition of meat is understood to include some connective tissue; good butchers don’t abuse that understanding. In cheaper sausages connective tissue is used to bulk up meat.

Does it matter that economy sausages aren’t all lean meat? Isn’t this a good way of eating the whole pig?

You could construct an argument that using connective tissue and fat is better than wasting them but the fact that extra flavourings, salt and fat are added to the pork slurry undermines this. Nearly two thirds of sausages at standard and economy level contain MSG. Good butchers won’t use it.

So, pay loads for quality sausage, or get the stuff people won’t eat because of their sensibilities and pay much much less. How about that?

This doesn’t mean I don’t eat sausage – far from it. I love a good sausage, but only buy the good stuff. No frozen bulk variety packs for me. But the idea that haggis is disgusting or nasty or whatever…come on, if you don’t try it how can you know?

By the way, haggis tastes and looks like a meaty stuffing, like what you’d put in a turkey or duck dinner. In fact, some people use it as a stuffing for pheasant, grouse, goose, etc. And posh haggis is made with venison and other top-drawer meats, just like gourmet sausage…I’d love to try that stuff!

What Twitter is About (according to me)

I wrote the following in response to a thread where a woman on a web forum I go to, who wasn’t into Facebook or other social media sites and decided to give Twitter a go. I respect the effort but she only put in 3 days of work, and gave no indication of who she was trying to follow, but I’ve read SO BLOODY MUCH about people who don’t get Twitter and think it’s some mystical universe that they’re just mystified and never give it a real try. Seriously folks, this is nothing compared to, say, the furry sections of Second Life! Anyway, the post follows:

To be honest, there is nothing to ‘get’ about Twitter.

No it’s not for everyone, and yes it’s a much simpler version of the Facebook status update, and yes that’s all it really is: status updates. But if you use it and follow a few people you’re interested in and maybe write to them it can be a lot, LOT more.

You don’t have to sign up with an account, it just makes it easier to follow more than one person at a time. Without an account, you’d have to bookmark each celebrity or friend or website or organization that you want to follow. With an account, though, you can have all of those people arranged in a timeline on your home page.

You don’t have to message anyone – but if you do message a celebrity you really like and then get a response – it feels really cool! If you’re not a celeb hound, you can still message people you know.

Advanced tips: If you end up following loads of people you can organize them into lists. I have a list for expats, another one for celebrities, another one for websites, etc. If you still feel you follow too many people and can’t be bothered looking up all the posts you missed while you were sleeping or whatever, there’s a site called Twitter For Busy People (www.t4bp.com), which organizes all the people you follow into who’s updated in the last hour, the last day, and farther back than a day.

A lot of people use Twitter and Facebook as the new era of marketing, which can be a pain because if you suddenly get loads of people following you, you may start to wonder why.

However, if you’re just using it to connect with people then it’s not a big deal and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything with it. It simply becomes another site to visit. You literally don’t have to post a thing and just read what other people are talking about. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s major. I get a lot of my headline news sort of stuff from there (an account called BreakingNews is very good for this).

I use Twitter to post to my Facebook status sometimes, but most often to share interesting & provocative links to people I know. At least, I HOPE they’re interesting and/or provocative!

(if you care to follow me, see the link to the top right or look me up @krushgroove)

Analysis: Bus or Drive to Work

Well the car is back in my hands, but the repair costs have basically bankrupted my budget for the rest of the month. So I’m back on the bus, at least for the rest of the month. I’ve been wanting to do a cost analysis of getting to work via bus compared to going by car, so this is as good a time as any to do it.

I used to carpool with another person or two, but everyone in my area who worked with me has left the company, so I was forced to drive on my own. This is fine for a while, because sometime when I would leave on time the other guys I’d be driving with would be leaving much later, or if they were traveling I’d have to drive in on my own anyway, etc., plus if I had stuff to do in the evenings it was easier to get around.

However, fuel prices are notching their way up again (£1.08 per liter at the station down the road from my work, it was £1.03 at the same station not long before Christmas) and it cost me £60 to fill up my car yesterday at a station that had regular fuel at £1.05 per liter.

So here’s where the cost breakdown comes:

DRIVING
I drive about 160 miles per week on average to and from work, plus every other week I’m driving to my D&D gaming group. Driving to my girlfriend’s place is 180 miles round trip, and if I drive at normal motorway/highway speeds it takes half a tank. At reduced speeds of 55-60 mph I can get there and back in 1/3rd of a tank – and don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m not doing this, every single time!

So basically I can get about 400 miles per tank with combined motorway/street driving, so to drive every day costs about £60 per week.

BUS
I can catch the express bus by waking up half an hour earlier, walking less than 10 minutes and paying £18 a week. Then it’s another short walk from the centre of the next town to a friend’s house, where I catch a lift as he’s just setting off. After work, I can relax for half an hour while he’s finishing up, and then he drops me off at the bus stop, where I’m back home about 20 minutes later than I would be if I’d driven.

On Wednesdays my friend leaves work early, so I can either drive both ways on my own, or get a lift to work with him and take a total of 2 buses home, costing an additional £2.30 and about a 40 minute wait.

On the weeks I visit my girlfriend, I could take the train but it’s just as fast to drive and costs the same in petrol as it does for a train ticket, so that’s a wash unless you try to go totally car-free (which would reduce wear-and-tear, registration, inspection and insurance…but that’s a different topic, see below). So basically that’s about £20 in fuel, but average it out to £10-13 a week since we usually take turns visiting each other, and I tend to go up to hers more often.

So the total cost of bus travel to/from work is about £33 a week (£18 for the weekly ticket, £2.30 for the extra bus on Wednesdays and average of £10-13 for fuel to get to/from my girlfriend’s). Plus I get a bit of a walk every day.

If I couldn’t rely on my friend to give me a lift from the next town over, I’d have to get a local bus weekly ticket, which would be £14 per week, making the total cost about £45 per week, still a decent savings but I’d get home about an hour later than I do by driving, instead of just 20 minutes later with the friendly lift. At this point maybe the £15 a week extra cost is worth driving every day.

So there ya go – in money terms, I save nearly half by taking the bus, not too shabby.

Time-wise, I ‘lose’ about an hour a day, but I use that to listen to podcasts or read, so it’s not wasted time at all.

There’s less stress as well – I’m not driving (and I’m a shouty driver) so the only real stress is catching the bus, which is easy if you leave by a certain time. I leave the house by 7:15 to catch the morning bus at 7:33 (approximately) after a 7-minute walk – I could easily leave a few minutes later and be less cold, but I do NOT want to miss the bus, and they can arrive a few minutes early.

If you’re an ecowarrior, there’s a lot less carbon costs, etc., but I won’t get into that, everyone knows public transport is best in those terms.

Now as far as money goes, if I went totally car-free I’d save…at least £60 per month without insurance, registration and inspection costs, so maybe that’s something to consider more in the future. I guess if you add all that up it’s worth thinking if £2 per day (plus fuel) is worth having a car, especially in an area where public transport is that easy to get around. Sometimes it certainly is! but I suppose if the car is sitting on the street 5 days out of 7 it ought to be considered. In any other major city like Manchester, London, Leeds, etc., owning a car makes even less sense.

I think that about covers it!

The Perils of Wetshaving

So I’m on day 7 or so of dual-edge, safety razor wetshaving (as opposed to the cartridge equivalent from Gilette, Wilkinson Sword, etc.), and it’s been a bit of an experience so far. My GF got me a Merkur safety razor handle and a Jagger brush from my Amazon wishlist for Christmas and I’ve been learning how to spend more and more (and since this morning, just slightly less again) time in the bathroom after I shower getting a proper shave. I used to just use a Mach 5 in the shower with no soap and no mirror even, and the ritual of shaving adds time but does seem to help settle things down in the morning, which is one of the things I’ve been wanting to do.

For anyone getting into this, shaving the way your dad and grandad used to shave, you have to watch the videos on YouTube from user mantic59, they’ll tell you a lot more than reading the guides online (such as from shaving soap and handle manufacturers or retail sites). I was finally able to watch the videos last night and they helped me figure out how to get a better lather, how short the cutting strokes should be, etc.

I had to order some blades from eBay and went ahead and got some Taylor of Old Bond Street soap, even though I have some Real Shaving Company stuff in a tube which is pretty decent once I found out how to get a good lather from it. I think I’ll make it my travel lather.

I’m an unrepentant gearhead and gadget hound, which isn’t a good thing for something like this, but I’ve been a good boy so far!

Avatar

Let me get this out of the way: go see this movie. It’s amazing.

Does it have an amazing story? Well…no, not really. It’s not ‘There Will Be Blood’ or ‘The Maltese Falcon’.

Does it have truly memorable characters? Again…no, I can’t say that it does. It’s no ‘The Big Lebowski’ or ‘No Country for Old Men’.

What it does have, though – in spades – is tremendous design and effects, which will certainly solidify it in the minds of film tech geeks and most sci-fi fans for all time. Think of the effects in Blade Runner (made in the early 80’s, remember) and The Lord of the Rings movies (the effects in Avatar were done by the same people that worked on the LoTR movies) and what they did for their time.

Unfortunately, the story and most of the characters were secondary to the filming technique and FX and that’s what will make or break Avatar in the minds of sci-fi geeks. Forgetting about the ‘zoom-enhance’ scene in Blade Runner, that movie had amazing design, FX, story and acting. The same can be said for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved loved loved this movie, but as a total package, on its own, it doesn’t stand up to most other single-movie sci-fi franchises.

I’m hoping for a fantastic DVD set, but I’d rather have sequels (which James Cameron said he would do if the first movie was successful) that more fully explain some of the underlying backstory and maybe more details of the planet, etc.

A new thing: Tweets of the week

Welp, in order to add more relevant ‘content’ to the blog, and get me to do more stuff on it, I’m going to post some of my posts from Twitter (you can see my Twitter ‘feed’ at the top right of the blog page) as well as a brief backstory or further comment on the ‘Tweet’.

If you don’t know, Twitter is a micro-blogging sort of site, where you can post links to various things (pictures, articles, videos) and use it however you like. I tend to use it as a sort of expanded Facebook status update and link to articles & videos that are funny or politically interesting.

So like I said doing this will add some stuff to the blog and maybe get some comments or whatever. I’ll start with some from the past few weeks/months to get going, and every week or two add a few of the latest tweets.

Dec 16th: RT @annie170768: @alandavies1 have you seen the X-Factor does RATM? very funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AYUqVNSsY
…Basically, a lot of people think the X Factor (a vapid attempt at a reality/talent show) sucks and is a waste of time, doesn’t bring any actual ‘talent’ to the public attention span and is completely ridiculous. The YouTube link is for a video done by a group of people that want to make Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name of’ song the Christmas #1 song, which for some reason captures a significant percentage of the pop culture attention. This is direct competition for the X Factor’s endeavour for the Christmas #1 song, done by the winner of the X Factor show. Simon Cowell (the straight-talking Brit guy) says this is a stupid thing to do, but I’m sure it’s getting more idiots to buy the X Factor song anyway, so he’s still making money no matter what he says.

Dec 11th: sign spotted yesterday on drive home (in English Midlands, mind you): ‘Mexican X-Mas Sale –>’ ….so many things wrong with that
…Most Brits have the same idea of Mexicans that Americans have of…possibly every ethnic group/country outside the US. So when I imagine the British version of Mexican Christmas stuff, I kind of shudder. And the abbreviation ‘X-Mas’ just annoys me, even though I’m atheist.

Dec 11th: why you shouldn’t waste money on health & fitness magazines http://bit.ly/8DmjHV look at the past few year’s of January issues!
…usually in January I buy Men’s Fitness because there’s always some ‘get in shape for the new year’ article, but it’s ridiculous how they feed on this kind of thing. They’re worse than gyms that get people to sign up in January for a whole year. At least with the magazines you can turn the page and ignore the omnipresent ads for cologne and faddy fitness shite.

Dec 8th: researcher has possibly learned the language of Campbell’s monkeys…wow http://bit.ly/59Irgr
…stick that up your ass, creationists.

Dec 8th: but seriously, why is this news? RT @BreakingNews Hospital update on Tiger Woods’ mother-in-law – live video: http://bit.ly/EvUVF
…I don’t follow celebrity gossip and I’m not a MASSIVE HUGE fan of Tiger Woods, but come on folks. First of all, he’s a pro athlete. Women are going to literally throw themselves at him. Didn’t anyone go to high school and see this happening with the sports team? Second of all, this is private business between Tiger and his wife and all the women claiming to be his mistress(es). The whole ‘hey I can sell my story to the papers’ mentality/industry needs a real turnaround.

Dec 4th: RT @Oatmeal: How Twilight works: http://twurl.nl/jen73b
Dec 4th: wtf, local cinema not showing ‘The Informant’, showing 3 screens of Twilight shite instead
Dec 3rd: The 10 Most Depressing ‘My Life is Twighlight’ Entries http://bit.ly/75dewz ZOMG are people really this stup- oh wait it’s the internet…
Nov 26th: pssst: Twilight is shit http://bit.ly/5cRysL http://imgur.com/cB5Ce http://imgur.com/m1jBf
…holy snaps I hate Twilight. I haven’t read the books or seen the movie, but I have read the plot summaries and other stuff. Basically, anyone who’s a 13-year old girl, or still thinks like a 13-year old girl, will possibly like these stories. If you were still reading the Babysiter’s Club books in college…this might be for you. The mere fact that the author of these books is making hordes of money with this crap is beyond belief. Worse, it’s begun a whole new, expanded trend for vampy/goth/emo shit that sees no end! Remember when Interview with the Vampire came out and Brad and Tom were superhot and all the women were crazy about them?

Dec 2nd: RT @EFF: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Facebook make stand against UK’s Digital Economy bill: http://eff.org/r.2dx
This bill is bullshit. Why aren’t big media and the record/movie industry trying to work with new media, instead of trying to quash it? Old money doesn’t transfer into new understanding very well, if at all.

Nov 26th: Glen Beck needs to be drafted and dropped into combat.
…Really.The guy is a moron. He uses fear and religion to drum up hatred from his pulpit on Faux News. If he’s so patriotic, join the fuck up and request front-line combat duty, asshole!  Jon Stewart recently pointed out that he tells people, on his own show, that gold is the only answer to savings in the recession, and he’s s spokeman for a company that sells gold! I mean, morals, conflict of interest, anything, anybody?! Also, I realize now I’d spelled his name wrong, but I don’t care. He should have his name forcibly changed to Complete Douchebag.

Nov 25th: RT @engadget: iPhone to be sold by Tesco in the UK, hemorrhages cachet http://bit.ly/4TlP4h
…Well this just nibbles away at the cool factor of the iPhone IMO. If I had the money and didn’t have to fix my clutch in January (among other things) I’d be in line for the new Google Nexus One phone.

in

Making friends on the bus (but mostly pissing off the drivers)

So…yeah it’s been a while since I updated ye olde blogge. At this point I don’t even know when I last updated.

Long story short, things are going OK, I’m eating much more healthy lately in an attempt to yet again lose weight, I’m exercising regularly (except for the past week and a half, I’ve tweaked my back a little) and I found out last night I have to get a new clutch in my car so I started taking the bus to work today.

So this morning I woke up a little before 6, showered and dressed and realized that I would have time to drive (carefully) to the nearby supermarket to get to the cash machine, since I didn’t have enough money to get on the bus. Parked up in front of the house and had to grind the gears to get into reverse so I can parallel park on the narrow road…so that’s the last time it’s being driven until the new year, then.

Walked to the bus stop a few minutes away and the first person I annoyed was a random bus driver that stopped because I was right next to the curb (kerb) and looking at my watch as he came up. I tried to wave him off but he was stopping and opening the door anyway, but eventually he closed the door and drove off.

I only had to make one change, in the town centre of the town near my work, so I paid my fare and got on. Noticed there was a fare special if you buy 10 trips at once, alrighty, sounds like a deal, I just paid £2.30 for one trip and I can get 10 trips for £14, that’s £1.40 each, saving 90p each time. Score. I waited until the bus was stopped and asked the driver if I could buy the 10-trip ticket on the bus, he said sure and started printing up the ticket as he was driving. At the next stoplight I gave him a £20 note and he said, ‘I don’t have change, mate, I just started.’

OK, slight hiccup, so I found £4 in coins and handed him £24, expecting he’d at least have 2 £5 notes or a single £10 note…’I just started, I don’t have a ten-pound note mate.’

This is where I started to think he wasn’t really thinking of me as a mate, and using ‘mate’ in this instance would be akin to a west coast Dude-type saying, ‘man’ or a New Yorker saying, ‘you asshole’.

Well. What to do.

He was stuck because he didn’t have the cash to give me change, and said he’d take the £20 note and I take the ticket and hope for other people that get on and pay with coins, otherwise I could get my change at the depot. I said that’s fine and sat down.

The possibility of getting change from other passengers wasn’t looking likely, and proved correct as no one else got on until the village bus station, and those who did get on just flashed bus passes. The poor bus driver was already counting off change as I approached his window, and I told him I’d be happy to go there, but there were the angrily-counted-off coins, £6 (I think, I didn’t count it) and he was huffing, ‘You don’t need to go to the bus station, I just won’t have change for other passengers.’

…

Now this is where I think he went a bit wrong. I *did* offer to take up his suggestion of going to the bus depot, which would almost certainly be closed by the time I got there at about 6 in the evening. Or maybe writing up a receipt and explaining the situation to his route manager (or whatever they’re called in the bus trade) would be more hassle than dealing with the possibility of not having enough change for passengers in the short term.

Anyway, it was a mildly interesting first day commuting by bus.

—-

Bus vs car commuting cost analysis…just for kicks

If it weren’t for the fact it takes more than twice as long to take the bus as it does to drive, I would seriously consider it as the main way to get to work. I use up about half a tank of fuel per week getting to and from work by car, which is about £30-35.

For bus travel, the daily prices are £4.60 round trip for the first bus from Derby to Burton, and another £4.60 for the local bus from Burton to the town I work in, but weekly prices are about £20 for the first bus (I think) and £14 for the second, which roughly equals the spend for car fuel. I’d have to check out what monthly fares work out to, if they’re available.

The ultimate solution is to move closer to work so I can bike in regularly. I’d do it more often now but 16 miles one way is sometimes a bit too much, but the bus takes about as long and I’d get even more exercise on the bike.