Categories
Politics and activism Toxic Custard newsletter

To get better, we need to look ahead, not back

Disclaimer: this post isn’t perhaps as polished as I’d like, but it’s time to get it posted. I love nostalgia. How many blog posts have I written that fondly look back? 78, apparently. But I’m acutely aware that rose-coloured glasses distort our view of the past. And while we might like to visit the past,  ... [More]

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Sydney 2014 Toxic Custard newsletter

Sydney trip day 3: Saturday

Backdated. Posted on 16/11/2014. Saturday! The weather was warming up — have I mentioned how I’d jetted in on Thursday, a day after a huge storm passed through the city? Good timing (well, luck) is essential to any holiday, even a short one. After breakfasting at The Bunker in Darlinghurst, we caught the train across  ... [More]

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Toxic Custard newsletter transport

Sydney’s Opal card

(Backdated. Posted 14/11/2014.) During the Sydney trip I tried out Opal card, and M got one as well to try. It’s worth remembering that although the system is provided by Cubic, who built London’s Oyster system, its cost is not insubstantial — $1.2 billion over 15 years. It’s not quite as expensive, but is in  ... [More]

Categories
transport

EWL “congestion-busting”? They promised that for Citylink, and it wasn’t.

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]

Categories
Geek

Stupid web site stuff they could fix easily

(This could have gone to Geek Rant, but it’s not overly technical…) Some stupid web site stuff, that would be easy to fix/avoid, that bugs me: When you click to watch an online video, and the player shows you the video advert, but then stops working when it comes to play the actual thing you  ... [More]

Categories
News and events TV

Hillary and The Chaser

Was it just me watching the news last night who thought: Hold on, have the Chaser infiltrated Hillary Clinton’s Secret Service escort? I’d swear one of them was the spitting image of Chas Licciardello. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time they’d tried something like this.

Categories
transport

No choice: at Fountain Gate, the car is king

The Westfield Fountain Gate web site’s advice for getting there by public transport has a list of the buses that serve the centre (the list being out of date — the 826 and 794 don’t exist anymore and the 839 and 840 no longer go there) and notes it’s a fifteen minute walk from Narre  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Bad advice

From a distance, I couldn’t hear the conversation, but from the gestures I guessed it went something like this: He, on platform 2: “Is this the platform for Frankston trains?” She: “No, I think it’s platform 3. Down there, across the tracks.” “Thanks.” So he followed her advice, went down and across the tracks. Perhaps  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Dodging telemarketers

When I moved, I rang up the phone company to get my new number, which like the old one, is silent, to dodge telemarketers. I also asked if it was a fresh, unused number, and the operator said it hadn’t been used in five years. Excellent. And to avoid telemarketing calls, I’ve started quoting a  ... [More]

Categories
Geek

Telegrams gone

Just wondering, now that telegrams have been phased out, what does the Queen send you now when you turn 100? An SMS? Something along the lines of: Congrats 2u Re 100 b’day. Rgds E2R Σ:-)

Categories
General

Neither here nor there

On Wednesday night, I suddenly found my car spot had been vacated. Where the mystery car came from, or where it vanished to, was destined to remain… err… a mystery. On Thursday night I went and gave blood. I was all prepared for a long wait like last time, and took a book. But to  ... [More]

Categories
Working life

Typos

At work today, typing mid-sentence I started to type the word functionality. I stopped after a few letters, because it was all coming out wrong: the first letter was missing, and the order of the next four letters got muddled, resulting in a word that quite definitely should not be in a system design document…