Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.
Dog poetry I wandered, lonely as a dog With my peeps to Footscray Hill, Amongst the grass, dirt and city views, And just the occasional golden daffodil. Street art Probably overlooked by most, this is inside a road sign on Centre Road.
Here is another in my series of old photos from when I first got a digital camera. M>Train (which came after Bayside trains, and before Connex) had a rather nice livery and logo. Here’s a Comeng train heading towards the city on the outer stretches of the Upfield line. Myself and Peter, another PTUA bod, ... [More]
From the (hopefully) easy to change, but quite beneficial department: What if they ditched the rule that to touch-on a Myki (without an active Pass on it) you need at least 1 cent, and made it zero instead? Why would they allow touch-on with $0.00? Well… Pros Myki cards would become a de facto single ... [More]
Half the gunzels in Melbourne are chattering about this: through the wonders of green screen and stock footage, the most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother (which aired last weekend in the USA, and on Thursday night in Australia) featured a Melbourne Comeng suburban train in Connex colours. Update Tuesday 2/10/2013 7:30am — ... [More]
The Metro app is quite handy for finding out what’s happening on the train network, and can send notifications/alerts to tell you when something’s affecting the line(s) you use regularly. As previously noted, it’s not perfect — the SMS alerts that it replaced were customised to your specific station, so you didn’t have to try ... [More]
Anybody who likes to minimise their food miles might like to note this… increasing numbers of Woolworths supermarkets are using bags for fruit and vegetables that are made in the USA. That’s not to say other supermarket bags aren’t also imported from a long way away. As far as I’ve noticed, the Woolworths ones are ... [More]
Refactoring is a legitimate strategy in software development. It’s where you feel the design is (more-or-less) right, but the software implementation has gone wrong, and needs to be completely cleaned-up, by chucking it out and re-writing it. So here’s a thought: if the single most annoying, unreliable, sluggish part of the Myki system is the ... [More]
This is one of those blog posts which is about something really quite mundane but which might possibly be quite interesting in a decade or three. Maybe. You’ve seen lots of these around. This is a fire hydrant. Or at least, it’s the cover of a hydrant. The bits that actually work are underneath it, ... [More]
This very prominent sign spotted in Malvern, at the southern end of Glenferrie Road: Jeremy snapped this picture in Elsternwick at the start of the year, when the Coles “Down down” ads were at their height. This one was in Bentleigh — I found this one amusing: …Then a few weeks later, this one. Not ... [More]
I noted this tweet from my local state MP, boasting of improved punctuality on the Frankston line since she and the Coalition came to power in November 2010: Frankston line punctuality in Nov 2010 86% & Aug 2013 93% =7.6% improvement. Vic Coalition delivering 4 #Bentleigh &Frankston line commuters — Elizabeth Miller MP (@EMillerMP) September ... [More]
What is the likelihood that 5 varieties of sliced ham — including a supposedly “lite” version — all have precisely the same nutritional values, despite tasting and looking different? Each one 112 kilojoules per serve, 0.7 grams of fat, and 204 milligrams of sodium. Hmmm. Thankfully their sliced chicken breast product appears to have different ... [More]
Inspired by Andrew’s post a few months ago, here’s a list of the mobile phones I’ve had over the years. Ericsson GH198 (from 1994). It had a twirly antenna that could be flat against the main part of the phone, or twirled around and up to make calls. I seem to recall it cost me ... [More]