Who Are You? Tell Us!

[Das]

I am Das(Darryl) Stevens currently living in New Milton,New Forest,Hants .Born at Central Middlesex Hospital(Park Royal) in the freezing winter of 1964,lived in Northolt and Wembley and grew up in Stevenage,Hertfordshire,moved to Groningen NL in 1989 returning to Stevenage in 1996.I drive 13 metre trucks for a occupation for Tesco Distribution out of Southampton.Married to Shell from Gateshead,2 daughters from a previous marriage.In my spare time I am secretary of a local football club N.M.O.And we have 1 5 a side team in Brockenhurst and 2 x 6 a side teams in New Milton plus a Bournemouth Sunday league side.I do the occasional parkrun and Brockenhurst is my homerun,decision to do these was after I retired from long and ultra distance events,80 half marathons,18 full marathons,6 triathlons,a 100 km European Championship and a 80 mile World Trail Running Championship.I do a lot of walking mostly through forests,bottle of brandy in hand.I have just one full tube challenge behind me out of 4 attempts.I am from the age of 6 a Leeds United supporter.I dont know how to post a photo on here.

[Tube Geek]

Image:

Click/tap "Img", then put image url in middle

[roblo97]

I'm Rob. I'm 19 and I'm from Basingstoke (yes, it is still rather boring). I work in the IT industry in tech support. In my spare time, I am a keen if laughably poor sim racer, mainly on Gran Turismo 6 at the moment until I get my PC working again. I also enjoy watching motorsport. I've been watching F1 since the Hungarian GP 2004 and I have missed 9 out of 231 races in that time. I mainly follow sportscar racing these days although I still follow F1, BTCC and Formula E very closely indeed. In fact, I have booked flights to the Monaco FE round and I will probably be going to Paris for the following round the weekend after as well as planned trips to Silverstone, Paul Ricard and Zandvoort lined up this year as well as the now traditional visit to Thruxton. I mostly listen to metal and hard rock and I support Tottenham.

[Going Underground]

I mostly listen to metal and hard rock

Now this part is awesome, welcome Rob

[roblo97]

I mostly listen to metal and hard rock

Now this part is awesome, welcome Rob

Thanks!

[TeamHelsinki]

I only just discovered this thread, though I've been lurking here for a few months now.
My name is Jaakko Mäntyjärvi (or Mantyjarvi, in case the system does not like umlauts). I am 54 and live (as my screen name indicates) in Helsinki, Finland. I am a freelance translator and, in my parallel career, an internationally moderately successful composer of choral music.
I have been fascinated with the Tube since living in London at age 4 but have only recently developed the idea of actually doing a FNC. My son has inherited my fascination -- he is a mechanical engineer who recently got a job in commuter timetable planning with the Finnish State Railways. Our first FNC attempt will take place on Tue 3 Apr this year.

JMan

[Lunaticonthegrass]

Having been on this forum for a little over a year now, I feel I should say a bit about myself...

I'm James, (currently) aged 30 and living in Birmingham, and I work as a structural engineer.

Right, that's enough boring stuff. I've been fairly interested in trains and railways from a young age, including the Underground. I first became aware of the World Record in about 2006, but didn't give it much thought at the time. Then, in 2017, my girlfriend Casey and I ended up chatting about the underground, it turned out that she was also aware of the Record and we decided that we should do our own tour for fun. We finally got around to doing this in September 2019. (There's a detailed write-up in Zone 1). I expected that to be it, but she then found this forum and I discovered all the fun of alternative challenges. Since joining, I attended the Birmingham R15 in February 2020 with Casey, but have yet to attend a London-based event. Hopefully this will change shortly after we're allowed to move freely again.

When not designing buildings or running for a train, my other hobbies are church bell ringing, performing in amateur opera and mountain waking. I also like canals and usually spend a week of the year on a narrowboat with some friends of mine. I'm one of the least sporty people on the planet, so don't ask me anything about football, and don't ask me to play darts if you wish to retain your eyesight. However, I do occasionally do Parkrun. My music tastes are centered around 70s Rock (hence my username) but I do like the odd bit of classical as well. And that's about it.

P.S. Although she found this forum and told me about it, Casey hasn't joined herself. Tube Challenging is going to be mostly 'my' thing, but she says that she will come along occasionally.

[Brighton Local]

Dave, 48, Brooklyn NY, USA

Found this forum recently after watching Omari's take on the Snake Challenge. I work in higher education.

Been a train fan since I was this high ( nyc subway actually was a calming institution to the three foot version of me).

Been dry running challenge in New York since right after the 468 station record was broken for the final time. It's now 472 stations and I'm still trying to break 27 hours. I did a hardcore no exit the subway until all 472 were stopped in 2018 in 29:15.

Away from the platform I LARP, make garb from Norman to Elizabethan period, and follow North American sports ( football away from relegation wars is boring).

My juke box ranges from pre Baroque secular music to disco with stops at the Silly Wizard, 1960s rock and roll, and classical piano with Grieg and Scarlatti as favorite composers

[lucybaell]

I'm Lucy, 19, Belfast, Software Engineering Higher Apprentice, part-time Rocket Scientist, wannabe Astronaut. Interested in 3D printing, wearable electronics, and machine learning.

Started dreaming up an outlandish, impossible predictive model that could map out the tube challenge in June 2020... and thought I should finally register for this forum to learn how impractical it really would be to build

[tubeguru]

I'm Lucy, 19, Belfast, Software Engineering Higher Apprentice, part-time Rocket Scientist, wannabe Astronaut. Interested in 3D printing, wearable electronics, and machine learning.

Started dreaming up an outlandish, impossible predictive model that could map out the tube challenge in June 2020... and thought I should finally register for this forum to learn how impractical it really would be to build

You are automatically the cleverest person this forum.

(except for me, probably)

[Golf]

i vote for lucy.

[tubeguru]

i vote for lucy.

Only you could take my last post seriously.

[Lunaticonthegrass]

I'm Lucy, 19, Belfast, Software Engineering Higher Apprentice, part-time Rocket Scientist, wannabe Astronaut. Interested in 3D printing, wearable electronics, and machine learning.

Started dreaming up an outlandish, impossible predictive model that could map out the tube challenge in June 2020... and thought I should finally register for this forum to learn how impractical it really would be to build

Hello there! Any plans to do any actual challenging of any sort, or are you just here for the theory? Either way; welcome and good luck with the model. Please do let us know how it turns out.

[lucybaell]

Any plans to do any actual challenging of any sort, or are you just here for the theory?

I'd love to do the 270 stations if and when T4 opens again (or possibly 272 depending on when that is), I have a few friends in London but it would still be a big mission working a challenge around Uni and work, who knows though!

I think if I were able to design a system that could plan the challenge automatically with a reasonable degree of plausibility, I'd be hard stopped from popping over to give it a go!

[EastActionWoman]

Welcome Lucy!

I use a Python script approximating the travelling salesman problem to work out a rough route for challenges. Then I manually tweak what it comes up with until I have something that look reasonable - which usually just means trying to reduce the number of interchanges. After that I download the timetable for each section in XML format from the TfL API, then run XQuery on that data to work out the optimum start time. JSON format is also available, but I'm more comfortable with XML.

I've managed to get the record for the Roads, Streets and Lanes challenge doing this, and have potential routes for Mouse and Zone 1. I think the full network challenge is probably too much for this approach, so I'd be very interested to see what you come up with.

(This also takes way too long to be useful for the Random 15 challenges, so then it's just guess work plus a map and highlighter pens).