First time I’ve walked out of a keynote.

Cocaine enthusiast announces that cocaine is here to stay.

I do like how "a black and white roundrect with `>_` in it" has become a universal symbol for "Terminal". Like, I threw one together in Inkscape in 30 seconds for a talk and it was instantly recognisable.

I'm not particularly trying to make my blog topical or anything; I just have been following developments in Clacton and noticed that Count Binface's face looks rather different to its appearance in some archive pictures, so I took a closer look: https://tachibanakana.day/2026/08/08/binfaces.html

Rather than going to bed at a reasonable time, I spent an hour writing nonsense about the upcoming Clacton by-election.

Features a point-by-point look into Count Binface’s manifesto, and a bonus aside on railways that may be my silliest rail idea yet:
https://tachibanakana.day/2026/08/05/binface.html

Wow, what a colossal waste of a day. Chasing down an issue, only to find out it was that I forgot a `= 0` to make a method pure virtual, so the linker was getting confused trying to concretise my abstract base class.

Really disturbing: I just managed to get my Mac into a state where it was displaying one user account on the built-in monitor and a different user account on the external monitor (and projector).

Given that I use a dedicated user account for teaching, I'm glad that I didn't have anything too confidential open on the private account, since there was no way to move the mouse to the external display to close it.

Once I'm not in a workshop I'll see if I can work out how to reproduce the issue.

Discovering that when my Mac is plugged in with MagSafe and I have bluetooth headphones on, I get a horrible 50Hz hum whenever my hands touch the metal. Stops as soon as I lift them, or when I unplug.

Curious that this has a Korean and Chinese name despite being closer to the Russian border than the Korean: https://chitter.xyz/@random_osm/116266579009577484

Problems on the Munich U-bahn this morning. Now I’m watching people walking down the line leaning against the third rail 🙀

Spent the morning dreading opening my work email because I dreamt that the director of the HPC facility I use bumped into me at a meeting and warned me that he’d just sent some really unpleasant news

After reading @jon's post yesterday on the European Commission's new High Speed Rail plan, I wanted to understand their map, the current state of play on the routes listed, and what improvements might deliver the planned journey times. https://tachibanakana.day/2025/11/05/eu-hsr.html

The LGV used for the French record was specially selected from all the LGV in France for its gradients, including some generous downhill

The Yamanashi test track is built on the route of the Tokyo–Nagoya route. While it has been deliberately built with the gentle curves and gradients needed for500km/h+ operation, it doesn’t get to pick and choose where it has downhills to get a better top record apeed

4/

Operation V150 used a 140km section of LGV, requiring 70km of acceleration to reach the record speed.

The Yamanashi test track, the longest and currently only test track, is 42.8km long. It has to get up to its top speed and then stop again in that distance.

3/

The L0 series used for Chūō Shinkansen tests, while prototypes, are as close as they can be to the production vehicles. They routinely carry passengers (I believe a full complement of them) on tests.

The trainset 4402 used in the TGV trials was heavily modified for the tests, stripped down to be lighter weight. 2/

A lot of rail fans criticise the Chūō Shinkansen (the under construction maglev railway in Japan), and maglev more generally, for being pointless, as it will only do 500km/h in service, and only has a speed record of 600km/h, barely faster than the 2007 TGV record of 574.8km/h using traditional steel wheels on rail.

Being the maglev enthusiast I am, I wanted to take a couple of toots to suggest why this is an unfair comparison. 1/

Move aside Virgin and Trenitalia, Apple Maps has revealed a surprise new entrant into the #CrossChannelRail market.

I’ve had a tab open pointing me to this game for the better part of a year; I finally got around to playing it. Definitely worth a try if you aren’t on mobile and have a little time.

https://www.freem.ne.jp/win/game/24639
Note that the “Play on browser” button is at the bottom of the page, past where you might think. (I spent longer looking for this than I really should have.)

Thanks @hikari for the recommendation!

Rate my new battlestation

This expands on an idea I may have tweeted before but never got down to the nitty gritty of the timetable: in a few years, it will be possible to go from the southernmost to the northernmost station in Japan in less than 18 hours