The term blog is a shortening of web log… well, this blog post is a log for primarily my own purposes, though it may be of interest to others. Seems the cluster headaches are back this morning. They often return at the change of season, but I haven’t had them since about two years ago. ... [More]
I spotted this a while back, but forgot to blog it. It was published by the ABS in October 2012, but it’s still worth noting: “While the household car is still the preferred method of travel to work for most Australians, the train has overtaken walking as one of the most preferred modes of transport,” ... [More]
The Melbourne General Post Office was built in the 1860s, and served as GPO until 2001. Nowadays it’s a shopping centre. Australia Post moved its retail operations a little north, to the other side of Little Bourke Street, with a big (but no doubt cheaper to run) Post Shop. Now that too has closed, in ... [More]
Well, here we are. Some more thoughts on the Doctor Who anniversary… Warning — below are spoilers for those who have not seen the special episode yet November 23rd Anniversary day finally arrived. The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special episode “Day Of The Doctor” aired in the UK at 7:50pm GMT Saturday night which is ... [More]
News from London is that they are planning 24-hour Tube services on five lines from 2015 at weekends. It’s tied to a grand plan which will also see staff taken out of ticket offices (in favour of helping customers more directly, for instance with ticket machines), more Wifi on stations, and contactless bank card (eg ... [More]
For anybody with an NFC (Near Field Contact)-compatible phone (such as my new Google Nexus 5), you can use the this little app — Tag Info Lite to read Myki cards. Not that it’ll tell you very much — see below. All the actual useful information appears to be encrypted. Apparently in some parts of ... [More]
Another of my collections of ten year old photos, this from November 2003. This rather striking (I thought) image is from near Seymour. I don’t remember the circumstances, but evidently it looked like a storm was coming across the hills. I’m working on a new blog template, to fix some bugs in the current one ... [More]
This tram is bigger on the inside: The 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is fast approaching, and fans are getting into a fervour. Normally it’s only sports fans who wake up early to watch live TV. Sci-fi fans? Not so much. All that will change next Sunday morning, when the special anniversary episode Day Of ... [More]
Regular passengers using Flinders Street Station will have noticed that while the platforms are numbered from 1 to 14, there’s no platform 11. It’s not a Harry Potter scenario with a hidden platform. There used to be a platform 11, the twin of 10, facing the river, and commonly used by St Kilda and Port ... [More]
Over the years I’ve tried to avoid being sucked into buying the latest and greatest technology just for the sake of it. But I must admit being keen to check out the new Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and Google Nexus 5 phone. What would I need a new phone for? I could put Kit Kat ... [More]
Veteran road industry figure Max Lay made something of a startling admission last week in an opinion piece in The Age on the proposed East West Link: that the intent of major road projects isn’t to fix congestion: Opponents play the congestion card, arguing that previous projects have not eliminated congestion, forgetting that this was ... [More]
The PTV logo is gradually replacing the Metlink and Viclink logos across the public transport network. It’s just the latest rebranding — remember, some trains and stations have had up to seven different logos in the last 20 years… from the old The Met three-pronged logo, to the newer Met logos, to Hillside/Bayside trains, to ... [More]