Between December 2024 and February 2025 on work was done to improve Worthy Road, Winchester between the junctions with Stoke Road and Dyson Drive:

© OpenStreetMap contributors

The improvements included a much-anticipated parallel crossing for bicycles and pedestrians:

Other improvements included:

Bus Stop Access: The footpath near the north-bound bus stop will be widened by 0.5 meters over a stretch of 50 meters, along with improvements to the existing uncontrolled crossing near Dyson Drive.

Uncontrolled crossing near Dyson Drive

This was previously indicated by reflective bollards:

But now the crossing is less visible, especially at night:

Compare the new Orion bollard at the North end of the improvements near where the path emerges from Francis Gardens:

An official response (see “Email thread” below) stated:

The bollards at this location were a historical feature and in the past bollards were used more readily than they are now. Addressing the use of yellow high visibility bollards on Worthy Road, a location recognized for its rural and conservation significance. Hampshire County Council's current policy advises against the use of such bollards in rural and conservation areas, except on high-speed roads, locations with a history of injury accidents, and sites with limited visibility. Recent improvements to street lighting have brought the crossings up to current standards, ensuring good visibility for pedestrians whether traveling northbound or southbound. Consequently, having bollards at this crossing serve little purpose.

Dangerous bicycle detour

Strangely, bicycles travelling North are now routed off Worthy Road:

On 4 March 2025, two youths on an electric bicycle were seen cycling up the narrow pedestrian path and round the blind corner into Stoke Road. This arrangement seems to be an accident waiting to happen.

It turns out (see “Email thread” below) that the intention of the detour is for cyclists to come off and then cross via the uncontrolled crossing and join the northbound cycle path. Apparently: “The horizontal hazard paving prior to and beyond the dropped kerbs for cyclists clearly indicates the extent of the western path cyclists are allowed onto.”

What proportion of the general public understands the intention of the hazard paving? There is no mention of such paving in the Highway Code's Rules for Cyclists. According to Cycling England's Footway Crossings and Tactile Paving, tactile hazard paving is to warn sight-impaired pedestrians that they are entering an area shared with cycles.

I ran a straw poll of people in the neighbourhood with the following results:

Comments

According to Worthy Road, Winchester Pedestrian and Cycle Improvements, the contact email address for feedback is [email protected] and the phone number is 0300 555 1388.

Cost

According to the Hampshire Chronicle, the cost of the improvements was £1.37 million.

Email thread

I sent the following email on 5 March 2025.

To: [email protected] Subject: Serious safety risks of Worthy Road pedestrian and cycle improvements  Dear Sir or Madam  I would like to draw your attention to two serious safety risks with the recent pedestrian and cycle improvements on Worthy Road. I have described these on the following web page: https://notes.underlap.org/worthy-road-pedestrian-and-cycle-improvements.  To summarise, the risks are poor night-time visibility of the uncontrolled crossing near Dyson Drive and a dangerous detour of bicycles heading North up Worthy Road onto a pedestrian path with a blind corner.  I would be grateful for your consideration of these matters and a response which I can add to my web page for other neighbours to read.  Yours sincerely, 

and received the following reply on 17 March 2025:

> Uncontrolled crossing near Dyson Drive There are no longer any reflective bollards at the crossing  The bollards at this location were a historical feature and in the past bollards were used more readily than they are now. Addressing the use of yellow high visibility bollards on Worthy Road, a location recognized for its rural and conservation significance. Hampshire County Council's current policy advises against the use of such bollards in rural and conservation areas, except on high-speed roads, locations with a history of injury accidents, and sites with limited visibility. Recent improvements to street lighting have brought the crossings up to current standards, ensuring good visibility for pedestrians whether traveling northbound or southbound. Consequently, having bollards at this crossing serve little purpose.  Additionally, there is a parallel crossing located just 110 meters away from the uncontrolled crossing, providing a safe and convenient alternative for crossing the road.  > Dangerous bicycle detour: bicycles travelling North are now routed off Worthy Road: and towards the bus stop and narrow pedestrian path:  There are no detours.  People who are cycling North are given the opportunity to come off the road onto the western path and cross the carriageway at the uncontrolled crossing location to access the widened eastern footway if they choose to do so. The arrow highlights the location of the dropped kerb.  Alternatively, they may remain on the road and/or join the eastern pathway further north.  Both the eastern and western path are clearly and appropriately indicated by signage and road markings.  The horizontal hazard paving prior to and beyond the dropped kerbs for cyclists clearly indicates the extent of the western path cyclists are allowed onto. 

The eastern path is signposted as a shared use path, and this is emphasised with road markings at the entrance to Abbotts Lea Cottages. As shown in the photos below. 

While hazard paving is necessary and sufficient to indicate the regulatory extent of the shared path, the signs need to be accompanied by tactile paving. Therefore, and due to a concern for reducing clutter and sign pollution, we chose to do without the 4 signs faces that could accompany the two strips of tactile.  All design proposals are required to meet the current technical guidance requirements and then need to be agreed by Road Safety and Asset Management and there were no concerns regarding the Western Footpath as part of this design.  Any concerns regarding youths disregarding the signage or inappropriate/anti-social activities needs to be directed to Hampshire Police via their website at https://www.hampshire.police.uk/ 

Change history

• 5 March 2025: Initial version with email.
• 17 March 2025: Add cost and response to email.
• 18 March 2025: Merge response into body of the page. Add links and poll relating to hazard paving.

I've noticed a recurring problem on my Fairphone 4 (running Android 13) that's been happening for at least a year. When I use certain apps which load data from the internet, the app eventually gets into a state where no more data will load. I then restart the app and it works perfectly until it gets into the same state again.

I've got so used to restarting apps to work around this issue that I hardly think of it. But for some apps, such as a newspaper app, it's quite annoying to have to scroll down, potentially a long way, to find an article I was attempting to read.

This has happened on several apps including The Guardian app and Tusky (a Mastodon client). The symptoms are subtly different depending on the app, but I don't remember seeing a network error (unless that is masked by the apps).

The Guardian displays a blank page instead of the article I've just tapped on. After restarting the app, the article is marked as read, but when I tap on it, it immediately displays.

Tusky stays in its “loading” state when the issue occurs. After restarting the app, the content loads immediately.

(The NewsBlur feed reader refused to open its “Search for new feeds” page, but that may be unrelated to the subject of this post.)

I've noticed the behaviour in other apps, but I can't remember the details.

If you've also noticed this behaviour, please email me at [email protected].

I've raised this here on the Fairphone community forum.

#Fairphone #Fairphone4 #Android13

For consistency, here are the conventions I'm using in blog posts.

The basic structure of one of my blog posts is:

• Title with initial capital letter
• Body, optionally including subheadings
• Optional hashtags
• Optional postscript
• Optional footnotes

Here's the corresponding markdown:

# Title with initial capital letter  Body with optional subheadings (## and deeper).   #hashtags  --- **Postscript**  text  --- **Footnotes:**  ¹ Footnote 1.  ² Footnote 2.  ³ Footnote 3.  ⁴ Footnote 4. 

Excerpts

I indicate the end of an excerpt using the markdown below:

<!--more-->

Images

I centre and scale an image using the markdown below:

<div style="text-align: center;">     <img src="https://underlap.org/data/..." style="width: 35vw;"> </div> 

1. Create a bootable USB

2. Boot from the USB

3. Follow these instructions.

3.0 Check the file system, to determine the linux and boot partitions:

# fdisk -l 

In the notes below, the linux partition is /dev/sda2 and the boot partition is /dev/sda1.

3.1 Mount the linux installation on the hard drive:

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt 

3.2 Check free space:

# df -h /mnt 

3.3 Mount the other file systems:

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc; mount --rbind /sys /mnt/sys; mount --rbind /dev /mnt/dev 

3.4 Attempt a system upgrade:

# pacman --root=/mnt --cachedir=/mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg -Syu 

3.5 If this produces “unable to lock database” error, delete the lock file and try 3.4 again:

# rm /mnt/var/lib/pacman/db/lck 

3.6 If 3.4 says there is nothing to do, force an upgrade:

# pacman --root=/mnt --cachedir=/mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg -Qqn | pacman --root=/mnt --cachedir=/mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg --overwrite='*' -S - 

Note: the use of “overwrite=*” is not recommended, but needs must.

3.7 Check for not-upgraded but still broken packages:

# find /mnt/usr/lib -size 0 

3.8 If the system still does not boot because /boot/vmlinuz-linux is truncated, boot the USB and issue:

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot # mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc; mount --rbind /sys /mnt/sys; mount --rbind /dev /mnt/dev # chroot /mnt /bin/bash # pacman -S linux 

This was a series of blog posts starting in August 2024:

1. Introduction to the experiment
2. Mathematical interlude (see also Formatting maths using Typst)
3. Requirements
4. Design
5. Ordering function (and reflection)
6. Cryptographic primitives
7. Search for Feistel networks
8. Interactions
9. Re-entry, after a month's break
10. Ordering function definition
11. Reflection and conclusion

Here are some books I've read and what I thought of them. “DNF” is “Did Not Finish”

Fiction

“Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner

Possibly one of my favourite books of all time. A bibliophile once told me that you have to be over a certain age to appreciate the book and I think that's true. It's the story of the relationships between a group of friends over the years and how those relationships develop as the friends grow older and their professional (academic) paths diverge. A joy to read.

“Angle of repose” by Wallace Stegner

Perfectly captures the atmosphere of American gold prospecting towns and the relationships in a family and their close friends. Not quite as delightful as “Crossing to Safety”, but a good read nevertheless.

“Orbital” by Samantha Harvey

The repetitive rhythm made me feel as if I was in orbit myself. The detail is well-researched and convincing. The descriptions of earth passing below are mesmerising. But the ending, if indeed there was one, was unsatisfying.

“Moonfleet” by J. Meade Falkner

This is a swashbuckling tale of smugglers and hidden treasure. I know it sounds hopeless, but it was very well written and it just carried me along.

“Saturday” by Ian McEwan

The prose was excellent with good plot twists — a real page-turner. McEwan's detailed description of some neurosurgery operations was fascinating.

“On Chesil Beach” by Ian McEwan

This was also very well written and engaging, but very sad.

“Solar” by Ian McEwan

Despite the plaudits, this was a real dud. I ground my way halfway through before realising I couldn't care less how it ended. DNF.

“Distance” by Colin Thubron

A thought-provoking, fictional account of a gradual recovery from the loss of the last four years of memory.

“The Word is Murder” by Anthony Horowitz

This was well-written and a good page-turner with interesting plot twists. The fuzzy overlap between fiction and the author's real life was an intriguing innovation. It was sometimes hard to know where the real life ended and the fiction began.

“Close to Death” by Anthony Horowitz

Another in the Daniel Hawthorne series in which the detective appears to interact with the author. An interesting plot and a good read.

“Murder Before Evensong” by Rev. Richard Coles

Quite a fun, light murder mystery set in a small English village. A few plot-holes made me wonder how carefully it had been edited.

“Educated” by Tara Westover

A biographical account of how the author grew up in a cultish religious family and then discovered education and had to decide whether to break out of her family.

“The Unconsoled” by Kazuo Ishiguru

I love this author, but have found this tome quite a challenging read. It's an extended series of events spread over three days prior to a concert at which the narrator, Mr Ryder, a famous pianist, is due to perform. There are many indications that the account is actually a dream or, perhaps, some kind of delusion. This is a book like no other I've ever read. I'm pleased to have read it and relieved that it's over. This review captures the mood of the book very well.

“Nero” by Conn Iggulden

It was a promising start, but the gratuitous violence was just too much for me. DNF. (I rarely get on with historical fiction.)

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck

A slim volume, very much of it's time (characters using racist and sexist language), but with a shocking twist at the end. Quite good overall.

“A Casual Vacancy” by JK Rowling

Started well, but the characters were just too unpleasant. DNF.

“Pontoon” by Garrison Keillor

This is one of the Lake Wobegon series. Keillor's writing quality is good, but there is a rather depressing recurrent theme in his writing which, even though I got half-way through, made this a DNF.

Non-fiction

“Slow Productivity” by Cal Newport

This was engaging, although not quite as gripping as the author's “Deep Work” which I read several years ago and which overlaps the thinking in the current book. I think what made this book less gripping was that the three main tenets of the book reflected my own evolved approach to knowledge work (software development, in my case):

• “Do fewer things” matched my attempts not to spread myself too thinly and to delegate and organise tasks which interfere with my main work.
• “Work at a natural pace” matched my policy of working a 37 hour week and taking all my allotted vacation. It also matched my rhythm of working in a very focussed way to develop each new piece of software and then recovering, by spending time honing and improving that piece of software, before moving on to the next project to create something new. I just about avoided burnout over my 39 year career.
• “Obsess over quality” matched my desire to understand a few things thoroughly, instead of many more things superficially.

“Vector” by Robyn Arianrhod

The book's subtitle is “A surprising story of space, time, and mathematical transformation” and the story aspect is the most compelling. The concept of vectors took many years to evolve and solidify and had to overcome disdain in certain quarters. Various notations were tried before the modern notation was generally accepted. I already knew a fair amount about the mathematics of vectors, but the evolution of the concept was new to me.

The book goes on to describe the story of quaternions and tensors (especially in relation to the work of Einstein and others on general relativity), with fascinating accounts of the various mathematicians and physicists involved. I'd only touched on quaternions and never had any inkling about tensors previously, so it was good to get some understanding of these concepts and to see how they evolved.

The treatment of tensors was a little frustrating in that the book went into significant detail, but didn't provide proper definitions of terms. So I was left thinking I'd have to go elsewhere for a definition of tensors. The Wikipedia article on tensors fills in some of the detail, but I'd need a slower, and probably more formal, introduction if I was really going to understand the definitions properly.

Overall the book was well worth reading and I'd really recommend it to anyone with an interest in mathematics or physics.

“Politics on the Edge” by Rory Stewart

A fascinating insider's account of being a member of parliament and a government minister. Having read it, I can understand why Steward doesn't want to go back into politics. Really well written.

“Good and beautiful and kind” by Rich Villodas

Villodas presents thought-provoking insights into some of the current dysfunction of Western society and how Christians can act as a counter-cultural antidote.

In this first part of the book, he diagnoses the current tendency towards self-absorption as a failure to love, using St Augustine's phrase incurvatus in se (curved in on itself). The alternative to grasping, envy, and exclusionism is to acknowledge our own shortcomings and to seek forgiveness by confession to God and asking for pardon from those we have hurt. He describes the principalities and powers in terms of institutions and forces influenced by evil and consequently responsible for fracturing our society. He then goes on to look at the way trauma and wounds of various kinds can prevent us from loving others in the way God intends.

The second part of the book presents some solutions. Contemplative prayer and silence help us deal with problems in ourselves, rather than blaming the world and others for our own deficiencies. Humility helps us lower the defences of our false selves. Cultivating a calm presence is an antidote to anxiety and reactivity and can help us learn to disagree without promoting divisiveness.

The third and final part of the book looks at healthy ways of handling conflict and the process of working through the stages of forgiveness. It closes by considering God's heart for (social and other kinds of) justice.

Overall, the book is a little wordy and valuable points are sometimes diluted. I suspect the same content compressed into 100 rather than 200 pages would have had more punch. That said, the book provided plenty of valuable food for thought and reflection.

Some older reads

Exported from TheStoryGraph.

IndieAuth is an application of link relations that provides a way of authenticating (logging in) a user identified by a URL (typically pointing at a personal website) using an authentication provider, such as GitHub or an email address. This avoids having to implement an authentication provider in a personal website.

The personal website needs to link to the authentication provider to make this work. This uses a rel="me" link relation. For example, including this link element in the head section of my website:

<link rel="me" href="https://github.com/glyn" /> 

and adding my website to my GitHub profile enables me to log in using my website as my identity and GitHub as my authentication provider. So, for example, I can use my website to log in to https://webmention.io and monitor webmentions of my website.

My github profile page contains the link:

<a rel="nofollow me" class="Link--primary" href="https://underlap.org">https://underlap.org</a> 

Note: this defines two link relations, one of type “me” and the other of type “nofollow”. “nofollow” means that GitHub does not endorse the linked resource (in this case https://underlap.org).

This example demonstrates the symmetrical use of rel="me": my website links to my GitHub profile page with rel="me" and my GitHub profile page links to my website with rel="me".

Where is “me” defined?

The IANA link relation registry has an entry for “me” that links to https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me, which in turn links to the Xhtml Friends Network 1.1 specification which describes the purpose of rel="me" as: > A link to yourself at a different URL. Exclusive of all other XFN values. Required symmetric.

WebFinger is defined by RFC 7033 as a way of associating information, such as aliases and link relations, with a URI. The URI may use the 'acct' scheme to encode an account (see below).

Example

Here's an example WebFinger request and response using curl to query the URI acct:[email protected]:

curl -H 'Accept: application/jrd+json' https://underlap.org/.well-known/webfinger\?resource\=acct:[email protected] {   "subject": "acct:[email protected]",   "aliases": [     "acct:[email protected]",     "https://github.com/glyn"   ],   "links": [      {       "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",       "type": "text/html",       "href": "https://underlap.org/about"     },     {       "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/avatar",       "type": "image/jpeg",       "href": "https://underlap.org/data/glyn-avatar.jpeg"     }   ] } 

The result is a JSON value, known as a JSON Resource Descriptor (JRD), containing: * the “subject” of the JRD * an array of aliases for the subject * an array of link relations.

Advantages

An advantage of WebFinger over, say, including link relations in a web page is that it is out of band relative to the software used to generate web pages. For example, some blogging software allows only one link relation to be included in the head section of resultant webpages. But WebFinger requests can be processed orthogonally to the blog's web server, and arbitrarily many aliases and link relations can be defined.

Another advantage is that WebFinger can return a relatively small amount of data, independent of what is present on a web page.

The 'acct' URI scheme

RFC 7565 defines the acct: URI scheme as a way of encoding an account in a URI without necessarily implying that any particular protocol can be used to interact with the account (e.g. mailto:[email protected] would imply that email can be sent to [email protected]).

The acct: URI scheme is used by WebFinger for three purposes. Firstly, if an account is the resource input to a WebFinger request, it is represented using acct:, e.g. in the following example client request:

GET /.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3Aalice%40example.com HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com 

Secondly, the subject value in a WebFinger JRD file can use the acct: scheme, e.g.:

{     "subject":"acct:[email protected]",     ... } 

Thirdly, an alias in a WebFinger JRD file can use the acct: scheme, e.g.:

{     ...     "aliases": [        "acct:[email protected]"     ],     ... } 

Related standards

The following diagram shows the dependency of the WebFinger RFC on the Web Linking, the Well-Known URIs, and The 'acct' URI RFCs:

Example applications

• Translating user@domain to a Mastodon profile URI.
• Proprietary applications include, for example, okta and tailscale

• An experiment in truly open software development
• Books
• JSONPath reference information
• Link relations
  • WebFinger
  • IndieAuth
• Style guide

JSONPath is described on wikipedia and was standardised as RFC 9535. The background to the RFC is described in JSONPath: from blog post to RFC in 17 years (also available on the IETF blog)

Implementers may also find the following useful:

• JSONPath Compliance Test Suite
• Blog posts:
  • Testing non-deterministic behaviour
  • Process algebra and JSONPath descendant segment semantics
• JSONPath comparison project
• JSONPath mailing list archive

Here are some “live” implementations of RFC 9535: * https://json-everything.net/json-path * https://serdejsonpath.live/