Categories
Film

Which movies are suitable for older kids?

As my kids have grown, the choices of movies has become a little harder. With one 14 and the other 11, most kids’ movies aren’t very appealing, but many adult M-rated movies aren’t suitable either. MA15+ is a legal restriction — kids under 15 can’t legally see the movie unsupervised, and although they can see  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Culture Melbourne

Christmas is coming

So here we are, Christmas Eve. After yesterday’s heat, it was still 30 degrees C overnight. Thankfully it’s cooled down now to 25, and I’ve opened up the house to let it all in — though hopefully not too many flies. Tomorrow we’ll pile over to my sister’s house for Christmas lunch, but it’s looking  ... [More]

Categories
Social media transport

Myki newsflash

This was my favourite Twitter post of the week, which I’m repeating here while it’s still timely: NEWSFLASH: Govt to change state to the Assyrian Calendar, giving 3 more months to get #Myki right “by the end of the year” (W00t — Retweets!) And yes if you’re wondering, I had done some research before posting  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism Net

Finding an ATM

Having moved offices to Latrobe Street, I wanted to know where the nearest ATM is — that is, those of my preferred (no fee) banks, St George or Westpac. The St George ATM/Branch locator will only show five results — including Westpac ATMs. Searching postcode 3000, it shows me those closest to the the corner  ... [More]

Categories
TV

ABC: wall-to-wall kids shows

An opinion piece in The Age yesterday comments about the introduction of kids’ channel ABC3. What I can’t figure out is why, about the same time ABC3 has started up, ABC2 has dropped most of its non-kids programming on weekends during the daytime (eg before 6pm) and replaced it with more kids’ programmes. Compare for  ... [More]

Categories
Net

Searching for Google

Google has announced (somewhat early, and amongst other things) the top Australian searches of 2009. Most popular searches of 2009FacebookYouTubeHotmaileBayMySpaceGoogleYahooGmailBeboSeek So plenty of people search for Google in Google, despite the idiocy in doing so, and more significantly, the inherent dangers:

Categories
books

The mathematics of school textbooks

It’s all easy in primary school. You send the money in, you get a box of goodies. There’s few textbooks, and almost all are kept at and owned by the school. It gets more complicated and expensive in secondary school. So here’s the scenario: Two kids, two years apart. The school has a secondhand book  ... [More]

Categories
Net transport

A new tool for spying on the neighbours

Yesterday’s great website discovery: nearmap.com, which shows high resolution (and recent) satellite pictures of Melbourne and other places — a leapfrog over anything currently on Google Maps. And I discovered that Ormond station has its official three-letter code, OMD, written on the top of it. How odd; I wonder why? View it at nearmap.com Alas,  ... [More]

Categories
Net

No, I won’t

See here’s the thing, Mr Facebook. Just because someone I know on your fine service has managed to resist the temptation to add 300 “friends” (most of whom in reality he barely knows) who can bombard him with requests to play Mafia Wars and Farmville and endless pointless quizzes, doesn’t mean you can rope me  ... [More]

Categories
Clothes Consumerism

The number became a brand

Back when I worked at Hattams (mid 80s to early 90s), we stocked Levi’s jeans, primarily the 555 “red tabs”, but also the 517 “boot cut”. The numbers were Levi’s product codes. The first digit 5 signified they were for adult men’s — my recollection is that the “student” (kids/young men up to a size  ... [More]

Categories
Culture Net

Toxic Custard?

When you throw two random words together, the likelihood of someone coming up with the same combination is, I think, fairly low. A great way to think up a dot com name, I reckon. Which is why I did a double-take when I saw this: (Originally here, but now only visible in the Google cache.)  ... [More]

Categories
Film

Bullet time

You may think you’ve seen some cool stuff today, but I’ll wager you haven’t seen yourself in Matrix-style “bullet time“. It’s part of the new “Screen Worlds” exhibit at ACMI at Federation Square. Pretty damn cool huh?