Holidays = My social life takes a holiday too?

Periodic Tables

It's been a month and a half since my last Chemistry paper. That means 1.5 months of not seeing this:

Periodic table of elements

Since then I have been very active surfing the Internet. And recently, I bumped into this:

Periodic table of memes

Have fun exploring the various "elements" of the table! ;)

Documentary: Underground Singapore

Today, I have another series of videos from the Discovery Channel, and it focuses on Singapore's very own MRT system! More precisely, the construction of the Circle Line, which of course was fully opened today! This makes the MRT system map fully completed as of now:

The complete map, with the Marina Bay extension!

Here's the first part of the episode, and the rest can be accessed from the related videos section. Enjoy!

My (non-existent) social life ...

An accurate reflection of my social life, at least ever since A Levels have ended ...

Forever Alone?

The original Forever Alone guy :(

From the creators of the Forever Alone meme, comes this:

After 4 movies, Kevin is Forever Home Alone :(

Haiz, looking at all the developments going on (in the relationships sector!) around me, I can (and do) feel a little bit down sometimes. And so I go to many different sites to find funny stuff to cheer myself up - it's not good to keep feeling sad about history. Here's a rage comic from one of the sites I frequent:

I can totally feel for the guy here ...

And somehow looking at these comics can allow me to feel a little bit better. Maybe it's because I know I'm not the only one that is in such a (bad, undesirable) situation ... And I certainly wouldn't want to be like this guy, whose proposal was rejected in front of hundreds (thousands if you consider the Internet audience) of people: (Would I even get to have a chance like that in the future? ...)

Hmm, maybe the female "lead" saw him as someone in the "Friend Zone"? (Poor guy ...) Heck, there's even a song for this!

Oh well, at least I'm not alone in being forever alone ;)

Expanding bus service coverage

Singapore has come a long long way since its independence in 1965. Thanks to modernization/urbanization, many old places have made way for the new, as seen by this article on Punggol:

Taken from Straits Times, 20 December 2009

Likewise, in my Simutrans world, the cities have also become more and more urbanised from when I first started my game. Here's an edited screenshot of one of my cities, Hillchester. In the screenshot below, the orange outline shows the boundaries of Hillchester city 200 years ago (when I first started this game), while the red outline shows the current boundaries of Hillchester city.

A recent screenshot of Hillchester city, before a new feeder bus network was implemented.

While previously the feeder buses could cover the whole area of Hillchester city 200 year ago, city growth meant that there were now new areas that were not covered by the feeder bus network. Therefore I had to (sit down and) plan a new feeder bus network that could cover the whole area of Hillchester city. Some considerations for planning include:

• Where shall I locate my bus stops? This (of course) is easy to do on its own; the challenge comes below:
• What route should the buses take? This may seem easy to do, eg. just have one bus route visit all the stops in the city, but to plan optimal routes takes more careful planning!

Here's a screenshot of Hillchester city, with more bus stops that enables more of the city to be served by the feeder bus network:

Hillchester city, now with more bus stops and a new feeder bus network!

Of course other cities also have such improvements. Here are 2 other cities with similar improvements, Pinemouth and Brentham, with before and after screenshots below:

Pinemouth city, before improvements.

Pinemouth city, after improvements.

Brentham city, before improvements.

Brentham city, after improvements.

Coming soon, a focus on some "special" bus services!

Documentary: The London Underground

Today, I thought I would like to share another series of videos from the Discovery Channel, and it's called Super Structures of the World - The London Underground. While this episode focuses on one of the newest lines (or extensions - to be precise!), the Jubilee Line extension, the episode provides a great depth of information regarding the history of the London Underground, the oldest metro system in the world!

Being so old, the London Underground is one heck of a complex system:

System map of the London Underground. I really want to tour this network of stations!

Compare this to Singapore's current MRT network:

Current system map, without the Circle Extension (as of now)

And according to some speculators, in the future, our MRT network could be this complicated:

How cool would this be if it is realised in the future?

All right, here's part 1 of 6 of the episode on the London Underground; the rest of the clips can be accessed from the related videos section. Enjoy!

Don't you hate bunching buses?

In this photo, 3 buses from service 240 have bunched up!

Bunching buses - a term used to describe buses that (somehow) end up traveling together, even though they may have left the bus terminal/interchange at regular intervals. Ideally, buses that leave the bus terminal/interchange at regular intervals should keep their "spacing", so that buses arrive regularly at the bus stops (and passengers don't complain about irregular buses!).

In my Simutrans world, I have found out that when I simply let the buses run, they will end up bunching. And so the first bus is constantly packed, and the buses behind sometimes run empty (and this is unprofitable!). Therefore I had to come up with possible solutions to get the buses to keep their "spacing" between each other.

Screenshot showing the bus route that is the focus of this post

The bus route in detail. Note the first stop is an interchange and provides connections to the MRT network, and the 8th stop, the terminal stop.

One solution that I came up is applied to one of my (many) bus routes, shown in the screenshot above (with highlights showing the bus route and stops). What I did was to add a minimum load criterion for the terminal stop (8th stop in the route details), as well as a maximum waiting time (after which the bus will leave for the next stop, regardless of its load); what this meant is that buses will leave the terminal stop at regular intervals.

This measure was used with great success, and buses now run at regular intervals along the entire route. I am currently working on using this approach on other routes, but there are some significant problems:

• Most of my bus routes loop somewhere, unlike this example where buses simply run back and fro along a fixed route. This means that there are problems in deciding where the "terminal" stop should be, since there really isn't a terminal stop to begin with! Nonetheless I am experimenting this approach with some routes that loop somewhere, and hopefully I can get buses to run more regularly along the routes with loops.
• There is a need to monitor and adjust the maximum waiting time so that crowds of passengers don't build up at the interchange stations!

Coming soon, another post on the design of bus routes in the cities!

Documentary: Building The Biggest Railway

Hi there! Recently I have been wasting my time on Youtube instead of doing other more productive stuff (eg. going to the gym), and I have come across a few series of interesting videos, which I thought I would like to share on this blog.

Here's the first one. It's from the Discovery Channel, and it's called Building the Biggest Railway. This episode focuses on the maintenance and replacement of the train tracks from London to Glasgow, one of the most busiest stretch of railway in the world. Which of course reminds me of the MRT breakdowns that occured last month. Here are some of the defining photos of the breakdowns:

The tunnel walk!

So much for emergency lighting ...

The single photo that spawned multiple spoofs. What a field day for SG's photoshoppers!

WP's Chen Shou Mao among those having to take the shuttles on the Sunday morning when trains started operation later than usual for thorough checks on the MRT system. Just got to like his trademark smile! ;)

Transport Minster Lui Tuck Yew observing maintenance work at the tracks near Marina Bay MRT. Got to commend him on his proactive presence on the ground, checking the transport system ever since he stepped into office. Keep up the good work!

Coming back to the main point of this point, the first part of the episode is below, and the rest of the clips can be found under the related videos. Enjoy ;)