Categories
transport

Caulfield interchange needs to improve

Changing trains at Caulfield is about to become a lot more common

Categories
Geek Net Toxic Custard newsletter

The need for speed part 1: Internet uploads

Not to pre-empt anything, but this year I expect to have two film and television students in the house. For this, I’m considering upgrading my Internet. We’re currently on iiNet Naked ADSL2+ costing $69.99 per month (for 1000 Gb of data, of which, to my surprise, we’re using about a quarter). Actually I’m paying an  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Geek

Daniel vs the ATM

My recollection is that Automatic Teller Machines used to be much simpler devices, and much faster. I’m sure back in the day I timed myself getting cash using the basic buttons and 1-2 line dot-matrix LED “display” they had back then and had it down to under 30 seconds. These days ATMs are complex beasts  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Known Myki bugs, and all the other things they should fix

In discussion the other week, the topic of what they should fix with Myki came up. You know, ignoring the imagined problems. But first I want to mention the known bugs… that is, leaving aside “by-design” flaws and issues such as bus/tram incorrect zone detection hopefully likely to be resolved by the end of Myki’s  ... [More]

Categories
Culture transport

Happy birthday, Flinders Street Station

The current Flinders Street Station is 100 years old today. There’s a newish book on the history of Flinders Street Station called Beyond the Facade by Jenny Davies. Recently I was walking through the Degraves Street subway and noticed a display for the book. Then something in one of the windows caught my eye; amongst  ... [More]

Categories
Video games

How fit are wii?

I’m still really enjoying the Wii. The favourite game with the kids is tennis, playing on one side together, though we’re getting good at it and it’s been giving us some pretty tough opponents. (I can only imagine that tennis purists are aghast at Wii Sports tennis; from the “best of 1/3/5 games” to the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Get a grip, you people

This morning’s train in: And if you think that’s crowded, you should have seen the one before it. Admittedly this was down to earlier cancellations, but regular peak hour travellers know this kind of thing isn’t that unusual. So, are they buying more trains? No. (In fact they just scrapped a bunch.) But hey, they  ... [More]

Categories
Culture

Are actors rich?

I wonder how much money actors make? I don’t mean the megastars, I mean just your average medium-sized stars. Random example: Gareth Thomas. Played the title character in Blake’s 7, which must have occupied him for the three-and-a-bit years he was in it back in the late-70s, and made him famous. Since then IMDB lists  ... [More]

Categories
Melbourne

Scorcher

It’s days like these that you begin to appreciate why some people go and spend thousands installing and running home airconditioning. Yikes. I suppose we should be grateful it didn’t quite reach the forecast 43°, but stopped short on a mere 42.4°C (108.3°F) instead. I spent some time today listening to the bushfire updates on  ... [More]

Categories
Politics and activism

John Howard and state schools

John Howard commented over the weekend that he thought parents were taking their kids out of government schools and moving to the independents because state schools are “too politically correct and too values-neutral”. What a crock of shit. Too politically correct? Values-neutral? What does that mean? That schools that don’t conform to Howard’s nostalgic vision  ... [More]

Categories
East Gippsland 2003

Eden

Mallacoota Up the road yet again and out of Cann River, we zoomed up along the highway towards New South Wales. The roads on the Victorian side of the border had been pretty much clear of roadkill – at least I hadn’t noticed any. But I was able to count the number of dead animals  ... [More]

Categories
General

One for the geeks

Properties… No, Disable… Arrghh! At work. Need to check the configuration on the server… okay here we go! Click, click, open Terminal Services, log on, click, start, Settings, Network, Local Area Connection.. Okay! Now to look at the Properties… click… Whoops. Got the other button. Disable. Disable network connection. When I’m logged on remotely. No  ... [More]