Taxistand/Usestand/Hack Stand

http://usestands.com/

"Hack Stand" is an app for Licensed London Black Taxi Cab drivers. It is the beta version that is available in app store (for iphone only at the moment until it gets full up and running). The app is currently waiting for final approval from Apple, in the meantime the developer is adding a few features. What I would like is for my fellow drivers & all London Black Taxi Cab users to download the app and sign up ready for the first release.

What is it? The app is a way for customers to "virtually hail" a London Taxi. The customer will open the app, the driver will see the customer as an icon on a map, then all the driver has to do is go and pick them up. It will be a very basic app to start with, but will grow and develop as it gets used, and the developer receives feedback from drivers & customers.

Drivers. the app will be totally free until it a price plan is worked out (and the app actually starts to bring many customers and taxis together). Don't worry that it will be as expensive as radio circuits, it will be nothing like that. There won't be building costs, equipment costs, large staff costs etc... to cover; just a small amount to make back development costs, future updates and developments, and of course the some wages. Drivers will of course be able to eventually suggest how the charges will work - either by job, subscription, or some other method.

As a driver you are not signing up to only be part of this and no other organisation or app, you are free to use any other method to get work, this will just be another method for you to find work. I myself have all the current taxi apps on my phone, am part of TLC, and am on a radio circuit - none of them restricts me from using any other method to find work.

It still won't be very clear until the app is out and I make a video for Youtube, but the video will show the app in action, and, a tutorial for bothe drivers and customers.


So please, for now, just download the app and register ready, and the rest will follow.

NoToMob Saville Row Sting

The bikers from the group NoToMob http://notomob.co.uk have succeeded in exposing the illegal signage at the junction of Saville Row and Conduit Street in the city of London. The signage was a blue arrow informing the driver that they can only turn left onto Conduit Street, and knowing full well many motorists were either choosing to ignore it, or were simply not seeing it, Westminster Council sent one of their CCTV cars. The CCTV car would sit near the junction, with their periscope style camera pointing toward the junction, and they would cash in on a massive scale. However, as part of the ongoing scheme by the NoToMob crew to assist Westminster Council in making sure drivers adhered to the highway code, they discovered that the signage was in fact illegal, as firstly it was partially obstructed by a shop sign, and secondly, was placed at a distance that gave proper warning before, or by the time, the driver arrived at the junction.

I have been to the junction myself about 3 times in the last month to have a go at assisting myself, but each time there was no car. This is because the NoToMob crew have exposed the poor signage, so Westminster is currently finding it unenforceable.

My first time $schunting CCTV cars

The first hot spot I drove past using the location finder on Google maps, I spotted one of the CCTV cars. It was the cleverly positioned one that watched for banned lefts from Wentworth St south into Commercial St, and banned right turns from the other side. At first I didn’t know what I should do, and started to panic when I saw cars approaching, and was worried that I’d miss a few; my conscious wouldn’t be able to take that. I found a spot to park, then headed to the corner to keep an eye, still not knowing how to warn drivers before it was too late. It soon became apparent that no drivers were turning south from the eastern section, I mean why would they, as they would have just driven around in a circle. I found this out the hard way by missing a driver coming from the western section, who didn’t indicate, he just turned. I sort of leapt into the road as a reflex, but he just sort of hesitated, then carried on, wondering what on earth I was doing. So far I had watched £60 being flushed down the drain. Within the next 15 minutes however, I saved 3 cars, all who indicated right, which obviously gave me warning to approach them. They all understandably looked at me as if I was a psychopath, but when I pointed to the car, clear as day in front of them, looking like a shuttle craft from Star Trek, the smile beamed from their faces. I took great delight in informing them “I just saved you £60”; this won’t be the last time I do this for sure. The first driver I told said he just saw the driver of the CCTV indicate for him to go south, so this had me questioning myself, and had to take a few steps back to make sure I was reading the restriction properly. I had, and I told the driver to reverse a few feet and check for himself; I got another little flash from him as he passed after doing a u-turn. That CCTV car driver was a cheeky blighter indeed, it was suppose to be prevention, but he was clearly wanting them to fall into his web. The second car didn’t put his window down at all, so I had to rely on my voice being loud enough for him to hear me, and to see the car I was pointing at. I made sure I had my camera and taxi badge around my neck, as I thought this might add to my authenticity of not being a nutter (much! haha). I had stupidly gone out without a hat and gloves, and I was also starving, but that corner of London provided everything I needed. Firstly there was a luggage shop, which also sold hats and gloves - £3 each!! And then I got a chicken wrap from the corner café. By this time the car had performed a 3 point turn and legged it – now I knew the immense satisfaction the NoToMob crew must feel on a daily basis.

My Canon 5D MKII on dropping frames, and now a hot pixel.

I bought a Canon 5D mkii late last year, and almost immediately I saw that there were dropped frames/freezing (only just noticeable) while filming in HD. At first I just thought it may just appear that way in camera, but once loaded up on the computer in Quicktime, they wouldn't be there. There were however similar issues once on the computer, but I took that as just being the size of the files, and that one day in the future all my HD stuff would play fine. It wasn't until a few months later that I finally noticed that the glitches were being seen at the exact same point while filming, on replay on the back of the camera, on my HD TV, and on my HD laptop. Before calling Canon or the shop and being told the usual "try turning it off for 5 minutes, then back on again" I decided to explore all the avenues I could to suss out if it was firmware, in camera settings, a lens issue, the image stabiliser, or that my CF cards weren't fast enough. So, I updated the firmware, turned off image the image stabiliser; these didn't fix it. Now my CF cards. I have 3 that I bought off eBay several years ago, that were cheap so obviously knock-offs, but I knew not to use these. Instead I used the 2 Compact Flash Cards that I won in competitions in photography magazines, so I knew they were legit. You could also feel the difference in speed. These were 2 and 4GB, so seeing how this camera chews up memory, I bought a 32GB Lexar CF. All of these cards produced the same results. I then looked back at the footage I had shot using a tele-zoom 100-400mm lens, and none of it had any of these dropped frames, so for the moment the 24-105mm looked like the culprit. I noticed that this 24-105mm needed some lens correction in Camera, which the camera did automatically if you chose to do so; I turned it off, everything seemed fine, but it did eventually happen again. I then remembered I took some macro footage of a spider about a week after buying the camera, with a Sigma 70mm EX lens - the second video clip contained the dropped frames, so it was now clear it wasn't the lenses. Now I had explored all the possible solutions, I called Canon and asked them what needed to be done. They were saying it needed to be sent in for repairs, which would mean 2 things - 1) I would be without my camera for anything up to 2 weeks, 2) It would almost certainly cost about £40-£50 in special delivery costs. I then called Jacob's photography in Canon St London where I bought it, and they told me to bring it in and they would exchange it once they saw the issue for themselves. I brought my laptop just in case they wanted to see all the examples, but it wasn't necessary, they were happy with the 2 clips stored in the camera. Before I left the shop with my new camera, I put the battery in and stood by the window to film the traffic outside as a test; there didn't appear to be a problem (as yet). Later that night I plugged it into my HD TV to do some tests, and everything seemed fine, but as I panned the camera I little white dot caught my eye. Now, I remember seeing 2 of these little white dots while doing close ups of some family members with my previous camera, but just assumed it was dust and needed cleaning. For this to appear immediately after the exchange was not good. I had a feeling that this might be a "hot pixel", so I did some looking about on line, and sure enough many others had been experiencing this with HD SLRs. I tried all the tips like sensor cleaning and sensor re-mapping, but the whitish pixel remained. The camera will have to go back yet again, as for me this is annoying, and if I am asked to do anything important with my camera, I don't want others complaining of this.

There are 2 examples of dropped frames here by another 5D user

http://www.landoimages.com/JefferyLando/drop_framesh264.mov
http://www.landoimages.com/JefferyLando/drop_frames2h264.mov

And here are a couple of examples of a hot pixel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2bl-CgMMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kv-w1E6WX4

My suggestion to anyone going to buy an HD SLR, is if you take your laptop with you and a spare battery for it fully charged, then you can give it a test before leaving the shop, and avoid the inconvenience of repeated trips back. A spare battery shouldn't seen as being an added expense, as I assume anyone buying one of these is a seriously into photography, and will have more than one battery; so just buy it in advance. If you buy your camera on line then you will be asking for trouble. These cameras are as cheap in stores as they are on line, so don't buy on line or you'll be paying a fortune in postage costs if it has these problems

My appeal is upheld over an alleged box junction offence

Last year my wife received a penalty charge notice for stopping in, what was considered to be by the authorities, a legal box junction. I saw otherwise, so set about researching the details of box junctions, i.e. their required measurements, faded paint etc... I didn't care if this was going to take a lot of time and work to do, as I always see these as a challenge. There are all sorts of statistics out there, of which I don't know which are true, but apparently of those people that appeal, about 60-70% are won. This simply means that 60-70% of PCNs are illegally issued, but the councils have an ace up their sleeve - the upstanding citizen. Well that's not me (in this sense anyway). Here is the video evidence I produced -



I used this website to find out what was and wasn't legal with box junctions -

http://www.ticketfighter.co.uk/yellow.htm

Here is the letter received telling me of our win at the adjudicator. Disappointingly the fact that the box was faded in my opinion, wasn't what won it for me, it was the fact that the authorities didn't have the correct documentation for the box to be in the position it was. I wonder just how much money has been made from this box when