soledad penadés

repeat 4[fd 100 rt 90]

I don't know why but I always miss these things. This time it happened one week ago and I get to know now :-(
Anyway, there you have this supercool video of a mob con recorded in one of my favourite train/tube stations, Liverpool Street Station.

Grrroooooooovy!

Me ha pillado la noticia por sorpresa, recién vuelta de España, con mi madre preocupada por mi hermana. Y la verdad es que no me sorprende, siendo sincera.

Mi recuerdo de la línea 1 es del color blanco y negro del NO-DO y la España del racionamiento, aún a pesar de que no pertenece a esa época. Descacharramiento, traqueteo insoportable y olor a aceite quemado, como el radiador de un coche sin agua, minutos antes de reventar.

Lo habitual era, como muchos usuarios habituales han comentado, evitar los convoyes más antiguos, y cruzar los dedos en los otros. Afortunada de mí, no tuve que utilizar esa línea más que en un par de ocasiones, así que mis recuerdos son objetivos, no cargados con el odio y el asco que acaba provocando el utilizar una línea cochambrosa día a día mientras cada año se incrementa el precio del billete.
He leido por los foros y los comentarios de 20minutos cómo la gente se alarma e indigna por dos hechos: ¡que los trenes son de los años 70, y que hay filtraciones de agua en los túneles! Como no puedo aportar luz sobre las razones del accidente me gustaría reflexionar sobre este par de cuestiones, desde la experiencia que me da utilizar el metro de Londres diariamente.

¡Que los trenes son de los años 70!

Lo importante no es la edad del vehículo sino su mantenimiento. Un tren cuyos vagones apestan a radiador quemado es un mal presagio, sea viejo o sea nuevo. Por lo visto, en Londres los trenes siguen un plan de mantenimiento y diariamente ves trenes de los años 60 en marcha (por ejemplo, los de 1967 de la Victoria Line). Pero los asientos que tienen, por ejemplo, no son de 1967. Las cosas se renuevan, no se dejan deteriorar hasta que revientan.

De hecho, prefiero ver trenes renovados/mantenidos en funcionamiento que renovar la flota completa cada 50 años, cuando los trenes se desmoronan, si me entendéis.

¡Que hay filtraciones en los túneles!

Por lo poquísimo que recuerdo de la historia de L'Horta (la comarca a la que pertenece Valencia), digamos que no está asentada sobre árida y sólida roca viva sino más bien sobre un montón de tierras sedimentadas, que tienen una afición a hacer bolsas de agua y riachuelos subterráneos que da gusto. Vamos, que no es una ría porque han construido encima, pero la Naturaleza a veces es más terca que la Humanidad. Así que no es que sea posible, es que lo raro es no encontrar algún tipo de humedad cuando se construye.

En Londres también se bombean litros y litros de agua al día en los túneles, y se tiene como bastante asumido (de hecho, habían considerado aprovechar esa agua para un sistema de ventilación experimental).

Y ojo, que no estoy justificando la desatención hacia las filtraciones, obviamente deben ser vigiladas para evitar que deterioren las instalaciones (¿no fue la estación de Mislata la que hubo que restaurar porque se produjo un derrumbe provocado por filtraciones?).

Siento no poder decirles quién es el malvado culpable de lo que ha ocurrido pero me parecía interesante compartir experiencias y aclarar cosas que se dicen desde la ignorancia, no sé si para crispar, marear o simplemente sin razón alguna.

Mis condolencias a los afectados.

… that maybe it may be better that you just ignore that movie at all, as it's even worse that one could imagine. But if you feel really curious, you can find the details for this tube ambiented movie in imdb: Death Line.

I could never think that I would say that Creep (Your journey terminates here) it's cool, but in comparison with this one, it completely rocks. The stories are quite similar: people which get suddenly kidnapped when travelling or working on the underground. At least with Creep you can feel some panic or scare, while with Death Line (also called Raw Meat) the only thing you can feel is a mix of disgust and boredom.

The only interesting bit that I found was seeing how was the tube in 1972. It's funny to see how little has it changed, specially since I'm reading some books about Tube history (thanks to mr.doob in my birthday!). It's also amazing the little light that there was in those days, with just some poor lightbulbs in the corridors and staircases. And the people smoked inside the trains! ARGH!
I could say that the trains which appear in the film are the same model -if not the same train itself- than the old District Line trains which have those ball-shaped holders hanging from the ceiling, and are still in service. A pic here, look at the ceiling… (each time I use one of those trains I can't but feel compelled to hit those balls as if they were punching bags! :D)

Although I don't know if that's been an artistic license, but I never knew that District Line trains went through Russell Square (where the movie action is located). Nowadays map locates Russell Square in the Piccadilly line, so I tend to believe that is an error. Same goes for the location of the "abandoned British Museum station" where the evil monster stores his victims, which is in the Central Line, not the Piccadilly Line. So even if Russell Square is quite near the British Museum I'm not really certain that both tunnels were actually connected.

I think I have to investigate about this! And you, well… you can try to see the movie actually, but only if you feel really curious and have a gore-proof stomach!
And if you can understand spanish, here's my post about Creep, almost one year ago: Argh.

There's just one rule and it's very simple: just try to reach your workplace by tube while half of the network is delayed, severely delayed or definitely closed. I.e.: Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith closed, Northern Line semi closed and delayed in the rest of the line. The other lines are packed as usual in the morning rush.
Sounds funny, uh?

There are some minor rules which apply. These rules are sponsored by Mr. Murphy:

1. When you take one train, the restrictions which apply to your destination station might have changed. For example it can be closed while you're heading towards there. Your train can be stopped in the middle of two stations, or in one station. In this late case, the driver will try to calm down the passengers promising them that the train is to depart shortly. They know he's lying and has a pessimistic feeling that the line is going to be suspended shortly instead but does his best to make them believe him.
2. When changing between lines, all the escalators will be packed with people (so the queues for boarding the escalators will reach the platform). Sometimes there's an alternative stair which you can gently use, so your legs enjoy some morning exercise, but that just happens when the number of steps is more than 20, or an equivalent height of 15 m.
3. When entering a train somebody will stick his elbow or suitcase on your back, and won't be able to remove it until the next station, as there's not space to undo that human tetris combination.
4. Ugly people will step on your feet in a 90% of cases. 99% if your feet hurt because of your new shoes. 100% if you're wearing flip flops or sandals.
   They will never say sorry. You can insult them if you feel relief… Hijoputa is allowed, short and easy. If you fear they can understand such famous spanish words, try using something less known such as botarate, cretino or giliflautas.
5. When you arrive to your final destination it will be raining and you will discover you've forgotten your umbrella.

Enjoy the game!! <:-P

Getting the right music, and the right inspiration

Some years ago, in the almost already forgotten summer of 2003, trace sent me a test of a song he was making. If I remember properly, it was called B04.IT, and featured the characteristic samples one can get using fuzzion's 4k synth. Actually, it reminded me a lot to the music of "insert coin", by fuzzion & threepixels. I think trace did the song for using it in another intro, but it was forgotten.

And some months later he passed me again the song but it was B05.IT then and it had more stuff - almost finished! It had passed through sml's and wizard's ears too. This time I really liked the song and thought that I wanted to do something with it, although I didn't know yet what exactly. So I just converted it to mp3, copied it to the ipod and let it appear whenever the random mode decided. One day while I was in a Circle Line train, entering Moorgate station, the song was playing and I had something like a vision, when I saw the platforms along with the signs, the sensation of movement that fitted with the song and its somehow agressive feeling… and I decided that I would do something related with the tube!

Then almost a whole year was spent developing something to be able to do the demo, as I switched to mac, and also wanted to do demos in a more decent/cleaner way that I was doing until that moment. And finally as I got the tickets for Breakpoint06, I decided that I definitely would do the tube demo for BP06, as I knew that it would rock big time to see it on the bigscreen.

At the beginning I thought of alternating 3d scenes with the 2d animations that I was going to put in there, but since I didn't manage to get a decent port to opengl of neonv2's graphics engine, I just set apart that idea and concentrated on getting the best animations I could get.

How to record in the tube (without looking suspicious)

That part was really funny. I borrowed trace's camera, which is way more discreet than mine, and the 1GB memory stick he got for his PSP, and just headed towards the tube on a nice sunday evening.

Why I chose sunday and not any other day of the week as it would have been more representative of the real stress of the daily commuting it's relatively simple: when there's so many people you would have seen only the first row of people and maybe think that I was taking pictures in a protest march. So that's why it just shows half empty trains and stations.

With that camera it was relatively easy to take pictures as it is quite small and doesn't do any noise when switching it on (in contrast to mine!). So most of the time I just walked as if I was going to take a train, with the camera in my hand - and recording it all!

I also wanted to be discreet not because of the passengers, but because of some news I had heard about people being arrested and their camera confiscated just when they were shooting pictures in tube stations. Just in case they were evil terrorists and were getting information of how the station was. For destroying it according to the plans. You know!

The worst of all was when recording the final part, which is actually how the Central Line trains enter Bank from Liverpool Street. I had to redo that one like three times because it didn't got recorded properly. Either bad angle, not looking good enough (the train stopping at the entering and somehow destroying the speed sensation, etc). So I had to change to the opposite direction and turn back to Liverpool Street again, and cross the fingers so nobody in the control room could notice a girl dressed with a blue electric jacket entering three times the station, and taking the train of the opposite platform three times too.

Imagine if they had asked me:

- What are you doing?
- oh just recording some movies for breakpoint 06 demo compo
- a compo!! it doesn't sound right! it sounds violent
- errrrr….

I also arrived until the ultramodern Canary Wharf station (where some movie was shot, if I'm not wrong) and took lots of pictures there, but they didn't fit at all in the demo. Apart from the "severe delays" pictures, everything else got discarded as it wasn't dynamic enough. It was so empty on a Sunday!! One can't appreciate any movement sensation if there's no reference point, like people, etc. Oh and it was so damn cold in Canary Wharf! I had to put my hat on while taking pictures of the outside…

Most of the moving images are from Victoria and Westminster stations. I missed lots of footage video as I thought that I was recording but actually I hadn't pressed properly the button. So novice!

Locations - for the map/tube addicts

So finally my travel consisted in:

• Victoria - Westminster (with the District line)
• Westminster - Canary Wharf (Jubilee Line)
• Canary Wharf - London Bridge (Jubilee Line)
• London Bridge - Bank (Northern Line)
• Bank - Liverpool Street, and Liverpool Street - Bank, three times (Central Line)
• Bank - Oxford Circus (Central Line)
• Oxford Circus - Victoria (Victoria Line)

and not it didn't cost me much money since I just went out the tube itself in Canary Wharf for taking pictures of the skyscrappers :)

Coding horror

Then we have the nightmare the day before the party. I had let until the last moment the step of doing a final test in my pc. (I developed it in mac as I said). Horror happens and it happens more specifically the night before, when tired and almost aslept you get to test your demo in trace's laptop and then discover that everything turns white. ARGH!!!!!!!!! It wasn't even a black screen, it was all completely white. I just said ok … I'm going to release it in the wild compo, I don't care if they don't accept mac entries in the demo compo, I want to sleep. And I absolutely did.

I suppose a real coder would have stayed all night trying to find out which was the bug but as I'm not a real coder I just let the pillow give me some advice. Of course, the next morning I hadn't thought of any solution for the bug yet. I even didn't find anything until for some reason I ran the demo in fullscreen in my mac and WTF!!! it was WHITE!! What was happening there?

Well it was actually quite stupid. I did some very basic filters, reading from the current framebuffer and manipulating the data. But just some filters used one code I saw in one page which said: glRead(GL_FRONT);

I simply had sticked it in my code without noticing any performance difference, so I just let it be there. Buuuuuut that was a very bad and irresponsible idea! Depending on the graphic drivers, the FRONT buffer had something - or not. In my old pc it didn't make a difference, but in trace's it made everything go white. And I don't know why, I hadn't tested the faulty filters in full screen in my mac. Maybe in fullscreen the opengl gets like a different context or something like that (I don't have any clue, I must recognize), and that's why it showed different results when running in a window or in fullscreen.

I proceeded to remove that code from every place where it appeared and voila! it was working perfectly fullscreen on mac! Then Corsario/tlotb offered to help me to compile a win32 version - and hence release the demo in the demo compo.

Forget libc

I used visual studio 6 in my old pc. It worked pretty well - apart from thousands of warnings from the STL, of course. But Corsario had Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. He said it should be ok. Of course, it wasn't. There was some kind of funky incompatibility with the headers that my project included and what MSVS2003 decided that was ok. Basicly they had deprecated (and removed) libc!

But Corsario managed to identify which of the libraries introduced the libc dependency and replaced it with a compatible and appropiate (for VS) header. And oh it worked quite well! :)

The remaining was simply a question of putting the nice layers that trace gave me in a more or less meaningful order, and syncronize things a bit. Also, trace convinced wizard to do another pattern for the song so it could get a bit more polished. So we had another star in our team!! :D
As you see, it's very easy to do a demo! You should do one too!