Remote
Will Deakin
@wnd@fosstodon.org
mastodon 4.7.3I write code and visualize data
I do governance for British railway IT plus European regulation
I believe data makes rail passengers lives better
Ask me how!
#Physicist #OpenData #DataScience
437 Followers
203 Following
50 Posts
Joined December 28, 2022
Continent:
Europe
GitHub:
YouTube Channel:
Website:
Replying to
@LoganFive@beige.party sad things happen and being told to man up was not good advice.
Acknowledging likely problems and offering help when needed would have been better.
It just made seeking treatment for reactive depression harder. So it's up there with the worst advice I have ever received.
(When it finally became clear how bad this advice was, our local doctor was able to offered grief counselling as a talking therapy. Which I would recommend in similar circumstances.)
#OkToNotBeOk
Replying to
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us (Original text: “Il vecchio mondo sta morendo, quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro* nascono i mostri.”
- chiaroscuro is a technique that highlights dark and light. A British example is the work of Joseph Wright of Derby. For example "A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery".
2/n
The Department of Transport (DfT) have published a Data Action Plan.
Give it a read, as there are some interesting things here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transport-data-action-plan-dap
Replying to
It said: "Thanks for getting in touch.
It's great to hear that you're planning another event...I actually joined one of your webinars a couple of years ago and even though I don't have a clue about transport, I really enjoyed it."
Which, as I also don't have a clue about transport, is the nicest thing some has said about one of my talks.
So let the shenanigans begin. I just need to think about something to talk about...
2/n
#LeedsDigi26
This feels apt, moreso as I remember when #UnfinishedSympathy airplay was banned in 1991 due to the UK involvement #DesertStorm
Earlier I heard the start of a cover of this outside the shut Debenhams on The Moor. A place close to where the crowd scene from #Threads was filmed in 1984
I first thought #CocteauTwins but it's the #MassiveAttack track sung by #LizFraser
"Water is my eye
Most faithful mirror
Fearless on my breath
Teardrop on the fire..."
Replying to
@inthehands@hachyderm.io @aubilenon@peoplemaking.games this feels to me a bit like "flow". Where all those years of practise, of unconscious and conscious incompetence, and conscious competence fall away and it just...flows...
Replying to
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us although hardly an original thought on my behalf, I think Gramsci describes the phenomenon well* in one of his letters from prison under the Italian Fascist government:
"When the old world is dead, the new world slow to be born. And in the contrast of light and dark monsters are born".
My albeit poor translation.
1/n
Replying to
@Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social on a separate point "it's common sense" is a class of "argumentum ad populum" logical fallacy. That is, a claim that something is right or true because it is what is supposedly thought or done by the majority. Whereas I would be less certain that computer security works like that.
Replying to
@energisch_ @Boerps meine Fremdspachelernen war kurzlebt, nur zwei Jahren in der Schule auf Französische oder Walisische studierte. Also nachdem ich 30 war, züruck zu Sprachlernen beginnt.
Replying to
@energisch_ @Boerps (I now realise should have set the DE tag and done a better job with my German)
Replying to
@anna@mathstodon.xyz I was more wilfully obscure in my willful and obscure thesis and quoted #JamesThurber:
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers".
Which I stand by to this day...
Replying to
@jalefkowit@vmst.io @jackdaw_ruiz@normal.style this seems less cokeaddled and more ripped off my tits on a particular fine brew of shrooms tea l..."I can see a pixie. It's THIS big"
...starts uncontrollable giggling...
Replying to
@bovine3dom@masto.ai also, do you have any examples of where this has been 1. done better 2. with public transport and 3. specifically rail data.
(This isn't meant to be deflection but I can think of better data portals, I struggle with public transport/open data examples.)
Replying to
@bovine3dom@masto.ai @Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social I will check the virtualenv dependencies as I run python in segregated project environments.
I then guess it comes down to where you draw the boundary as to dependencies. For example, is glibc or the Linux kernel a dependency? Or just the compiled version of libraries in the package wheel.
(Perhaps I should go full tinfoil hat and chroot jail these or only deploy to a local container...hmmm)
Replying to
@bovine3dom@masto.ai @Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social I think this is a good summary here.
It felt like a false equivalence between languages and packages that "central package repository encourage reliance on existing packages" which I guess is their purpose, so fine.
But where libraries differ is the reliance then on other packages. My experience with, say, PyPi is that the tree is short. So that something complicated like, say, GeoPandas with XML and arrow dependencies is about 8
Replying to
@bovine3dom@masto.ai @Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social ok, I'm wrong. It's 11:
certifi
geopandas
lxml
pandas
pyarrow
pyogrio
pyproj
python-dateutil
shapely
six
Where I have picked GeoPandas just because I knew it has more dependencies than most. While not risk free, I know all of those packages are of good standing because I have worked with them all before, and most standalone.
Replying to
@Boerps @musevg @energisch_ (ich bin mir nicht sicher was die kannonische Biblesüntersetzund auf Deutsch ist).
Replying to
@Boerps @energisch_ naja, wir hatten gerade unser erstes Kind bekommen, und mir wurde mit Peinlichkeitsgefühl bewusst, dass ich, obwohl ich ziemlich gut ausgebildet bin, keine Fremdsprachen sprach, und konnte nur idiomatische Englischsprach. Also ich beginnte einen Nachtkurs in Italien...
Replying to
@energisch_ @Boerps währscheinlich Britischenglisch auch...definitv auf Nordenbritischenglisch...
Replying to
@anna@mathstodon.xyz I don't know if my thesis is online...although for all that is holy, that is probably not a bad thing...
Replying to
@Kimberley@ecoevo.social I was on the top-floor in the Diamond yesterday. I didn't know the falcons were back. They were great last year.
Replying to
@jalefkowit
"my flashlight brings all brings all the boys to the yard
and they're like, 'it's better than yours'
damn right, it's better than yours..."
Replying to
@Doreen32128 @indivisibleteam 'The Fairhope city attorney [said] “There is no constitutional right to wear a total erect penis on the side of the road,...I’m sorry.”'
...apparently others would disagree...
#FreeSpeech #PenisCostume
Replying to
@slowe I echo the comments of others.
Without ODI and your example, I don't think I would have some, or any, of the things I ended up doing with data.
It was great to meet up and I still use your Garth map as.an example of what started me with data visualisation.
I always enjoyed the events that I could make it to at the old office. It was a highlight when I go to write up a blog post with your help about rail origin-destination data.
Good luck and best wishes for whatever you do next.
Replying to
@arianvp on the off-chance you haven't seen this, you may want to have a look at something like @transitous
For example, here is Berlin Bösebrücke to Wansee
https://api.transitous.org/?time=2026-04-11T12%3A21%3A00.000Z&fromPlace=52.5545508%2C13.4014075&toPlace=52.4211482%2C13.1589374&withFares=true&fastestDirectFactor=1.5&joinInterlinedLegs=false&maxMatchingDistance=250&fromName=B%C3%B6sebr%C3%BCcke&toName=Wannsee
Replying to
@Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social this is an interesting point you raise. I would be interested in seeing any evidence to support this statement.
(Full disclosure I have contributed to PyPi and have used npm and cargo. I am then only aware of two incidents with PyPi in August 2025 and February 2026. Both were then identified, fixed and additional security validation put in place...)
Replying to
@bovine3dom@masto.ai yes.
I need to be circumspect here but these are all points that have been noted.
Also I think you over state the amount of money spent versus the cost of capturing and hosting historic data.
Replying to
Replying to
@robinlovelace@fosstodon.org I have put in for a talk, so it is in the lap of conference Gods
For those who would like to see prior art, here are recordings of these talks. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair:
3/n
For those who are interested in such things, based on open passenger consist data it appears that the longest trains on the British Network are Avanti Pendolino at 571 metric tonnes, and are the longest at 264.83m but the Greater Anglia 12 unit FLIRT while the most seats are on the Greater Anglia Stanstead Airport service with 702 seats on the 11 unit service.
#Rail #DataAnalysis
Replying to
@jalefkowit you are truly the hypeman, nay the Flavor Flav, of the podcast era...yeah boy...
Replying to
@ephemeromorph
Woop! Woop! https://youtu.be/9ZrAYxWPN6c
KRS-One - Sound of da Police (Official Video)
Replying to
@Boerps @katemorley@hachyderm.ioIch
ich hatte gedacht, alle Deutschen seinen so erleuchten, dass kein Buch wie dieses Braucht wäre.
Replying to
@Solemarc@mastodon.social @jbz@indieweb.social as I see it there was one PyPi package (mistralai) that was proven exploited. Outwith this, there is the following note with regards Shai halud:
"PyPI has not been exploited, however some PyPI credentials were found exposed in compromised repositories. We've revoked these tokens as a precaution, there's no evidence they have been used maliciously."
https://blog.pypi.org/posts/2025-11-26-pypi-and-shai-hulud/
Plus information to mitigate the risk. While not great it does appears better than npm. YMMV
Replying to
Replying to
@slowe I went to Harry Ramsden's in the early '90s on a bus with some friends from University. I then have an abiding memory of stained glass windows, which felt unusual in a secular building.